MUD PIES

”Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.  We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis)

We quickly repudiate crawling on ground glass, self-flagellation and all other forms of penitence as unscriptural, while imposing an attenuated version on ourselves, equating boring pleasure less lives with godliness. “All I need is stale bread, potable water and God, gosh darn it, and I’m happy.” Mud pies! Others of us become adept at removing the scriptural obstacles to spending desire in the world much like a saintly Edward Sissorhands, snipping out any restraining passages: “Oh, I don’t think you have to “Blank” to be a Christian”, missing the truthfulness of their first four words. Desires, in and of themselves are not wrong; the basic desires of the human heart are God given, and pleasure, the fruit of desire fulfilled, is not necessarily sinful. At issue is not that we have desires, but in what sandbox we choose to live them out.

We don’t have to suffocate our natural desires to please God, and we don’t have to ignore God’s precepts and commands to please ourselves. God, the great architect, made provision for the fulfillment of all our natural desires within the boundaries of His sandbox so the pleasure-fruit of our spent desires does not rot with guilt and empty regret. If we have patience, God’s favorite sculpturing tool, God will fulfill all our desires in His time and His way; could anything possibly be better? If we let life become a choice between enjoyment and serving God we have really missed the point, and love making mud pies.

The Christian life is all about choices. Rather than deny our need to satisfy our natural desires we need to find their fulfillment in God’s sandbox, submitted to His will as He “works in us both to will and to do for his good pleasure”, which includes satisfying the desires He put into us. And we need to keep focused on the real prize in this life, the blessed hope we are called too which can only be found in Him. Mud pies may be tangible reality, but they are still just mud! God doesn’t describe His unblushing promises in man’s superlatives, He goes way over the top and states unequivocally our language is inadequate to describe, and our mind incapable of comprehending the “good things” He has prepared for them who love Him. Can I get a “WOW” right here? Faith is the title deed to hope and the evidence of hope: Is faith even possible without hope? Choosing a holiday at the seashore over making mud pies is a choice based in hope. Faith springs from hope, and pleases God.                                         

MY DOG CHUNKER KNOWS HOW TO WORSHIP

He comes into my presence with respect and reverence, bringing his favorite bone or toy as a sacrifice of love for me. Then he waits patiently at my feet, waits for me to acknowledge him.  If I ignore him, he will gently nudge me.  He is patient but persistent, willing to wait for me but unwilling to be denied access to his master. The love that shines through his humility reflects a heart full of loving compassion and trust. I know that he would do anything for me, anything.  And he knows that I will always love and care for him; and when he does wrong he knows there is no depth to my forgiveness.

Although I may be preoccupied with many very important things - I do have infinitely more significant things on my mind, responsibilities and duties well beyond my poor dog’s finite, self centered little mind - the love radiating from his heart always draws me to him. It isn’t so much how he expresses his love for me, but the passion with which it flows forth that impels me to stop whatever I am doing and reach down to him.

With loving tenderness I reach out and touch him, the radiant glow in his eyes responding to my touch, my presence. But sometimes he wants more and presses in with an insatiable desire for me to express my love for him, to touch my face. And then something marvelous happens; there comes that incomparable moment of incomprehensible bliss when, driven by his love, I wrap my arms about him and draw him as close as I can.  His face presses against my face and for a few brief moments - as time stops - we are intermingled as one in the reciprocity of our love.  It is joy unspeakable!

It is for these precious moments that I live and it is why God created me.  He made me in His image with His capacity to love so we could love each other.  It’s the only thing He doesn’t have and can’t create because He wants the real thing, my love freely given.  God lives in, dwells in and enthrones Himself in my loving worship and will always respond to the love of my heart freely expressed toward Him.

WORSHIP IS THE LOVE SONG OF THE REDEEMED

THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER

The Kingdom of God is the heavenly sphere of life where God’s word and Spirit govern, the place where God rules the hearts and lives of His children, and releases them to foreordained righteous works endued with His power. We know “The Kingdom of God … is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17), but there is more. The organ of the Kingdom on earth is, individually, each believer, and collectively, His body the church.  The energy to perform, to work out, that which God has predestined is His “dunamis”, His “power”: “For the Kingdom of God is not in word but in power” (1 Cor. 4:20) - not in logos but in dumanis.  This simple, no frills, declarative statement unveils God’s planned methodologies for Kingdom dwellers.  Volumes have been written about the Greek word “dunamis”, translated “power”, with origins traceable to the English words dynamo and dynamite.  But, after reading far too much I am drawn to the most simple of definitions: “To Be Able.”  God’s dunamis power is simply able to do Anything, Anywhere, at Anytime, instantly, To Be Able - intrinsic power!  There are over 1 billion Christians in the world: God is ever present with each of them, answering their prayers, catching their tears in personalized bottles, thinking countless billions of love thoughts about each of them - just how many grains of sand are there is the earth’s oceans - guiding and directing the most minute details of their lives, while He “holds together” all that exists via the bonding of molecular elements, maintains the physical laws that govern our universe,  and does a gazillion other things we can’t even fathom, in less time than we can measure with our most high-tech equipment - in fact He does it all in no time since He exists outside of time and owns time.  You are traveling the interstate coming home from work and suddenly, from out of nowhere a car appears in your lane from a crossing.  At 70 mph things happen fast, and you don’t even have time to brake.  Sure destruction is nanoseconds away.  “Jes...”you didn’t even get His full name spoken, but He heard the cry of your heart.  “Jesus, help me!”  In fact, He has countless billions of years to answer your prayer - He’s in eternity.  He hears and He answers.  Remember, when you hit your next speed bump: Dunamis -- To Be Able! Makes trusting God a whole lot easier. Mighty deeds not empty words are the tokens of God’s Kingdom. 

RIGHTEOUSNESS, PEACE, JOY AND POWER

IN THE HOLY SPIRIT

THE ESSENCE OF KINGDOM LIFE

THE CURSE OF THE CHURCH

“The curse of the church has been her apathy to truth. She has nothing to fear from truth, but she has everything to fear and she has already suffered nearly everything from ignorance” (Benjamin B. Warfield).  “The old covenant was a covenant of prosperity. The new covenant is a covenant of adversity whereby we are being weaned from this present world and made ready for the world to come” (Charles Spurgeon).  “It is appropriate that a prosperity gospel (i.e., Health and Wealth) be born in the hedonistic, self-centered, get-rich-quick milieu of modern society. We are by nature pagan. Either our religion will transform us or we will transform our religion to suite our sympathies” (Michael Horton).  “Deception is birthed in half-truths ripped from their context, dressed up in desire, and spoken as revelation. Deception attempts to control God and make Him our genie-in-a-bottle, a cross between our mother and superman, promising the “good life” now. But God’s “Good Life” is Life In Abundance, our blessed hope of Eternal Life in Christ. It’s not about corruptible “stuff”, and it’s certainly not about this life now." (Me)  “For the time is coming when men will not tolerate wholesome teaching. They will want something to tickle their own fancies, and they will collect teachers who will speak what they want to hear. They will no longer listen to truth, but will wander off after man-made myths” (Paul of Tarsus).

SEEING GOD

Some behold God where countless others look and don't see God at all. David was that kind of man. Where his presumptuous priest and his scornful wife could only see a gilded box and frenzied crowd, he could see God. This has to be deepest reality, to see God, glimpsing what remains after all else is shaken out and burned. We tend to respond to the breaking in of “deepest reality” in many ways, resorting to bureaucracy, policing, aloofness, scorn, pride, false humility, ridicule… Or we may just dance!
I know a lady who dances in church. No matter how bad the music, no matter what song, no matter how much those around her disapprove, no matter how hard her life -- scorned or loved, entertaining or envied -- she worships with all her might, her face upturned and radiant, her arms spread angelic, cruciform, an instinctive gesture of relinquishment and acceptance, her body alive with God hunger. She dances because she sees God. Right there in the midst of a multitude of people preoccupied with self life, anxious to get through the service so they can go home feeling good about themselves, this lady finds the table God has prepared for her in His presence, and surrounded by the enemy, she dances.
Between death and barrenness, in a steep narrow place, David found God’s table and David danced, a little bit of Shimmy, a little bit of Twist and a whole lot of Locomotion, David leaped and twirled in wild limbed abandonment. There’s something about seeing God during worship that can drive even a king to “get down.” Undignified? Well yes. Repulsive? To some: The ones who only see God on walls under glass, framed and hung. But isn’t this the point?
Worship is all about seeing God -- His Presence, His Face – Seeing God. Christ rent the veil of separation on the cross, creating a doorway of opportunity into God’s holiest place, His presence. Sometimes we never find the veil, other times we find the rend and peek through. But there are times when we pry the rend apart stepping through the veil into Him, and we dance or pogo or prostrate or wave or vibrate or sob or run or shout…The exuberance within will demonstrate when we see God, producing energetic and prolific manifestations flowing out of bodies not yet fully equipped for divine engagement.
Worship still resides in that steep narrow place between the presumptuous, those who want to protect God from mishap or embarrassment, and the scornful, those who want to protect the dignity, sanctity and propriety of worship, with watchwords like modesty and moderation, who in reality are protecting themselves. Both want to legislate worship, but worship is a dicey thing, always wanting to push beyond man’s opinions and is by its very nature, freestyle. As long as scriptural propriety is maintained, whether one backstrokes, breaststrokes, dog-paddles or just floats is between them and God. The living water of God’s corporate worship-pool should provide the freedom to splash around without legislating how to swim; even a half-naked king should feel welcome. And somehow, in the unfathomable mysteries of God, our flailing about in His pool ascribes and declares His worth – the true meaning of the old English “weorthscipe” -- and brings delight to the Father’s heart. Go figure that one out!

                                                                 
SEE (Greek, Eido): MEANS TO PERCEIVE, EXPERIENCE, KNOW