CHECKING BOXES

The gospel of Jesus is all about our relationship with Jesus rather than about formulas, systems of truth tenants, ideas or theology.  These things are nice in that they compute easily into memory and make us feel spiritual, and possibly prideful, as we share our knowledge, but they may also blind us to the absolute necessity of intimate relationship that must be developed between our heart and God’s heart, for us truly to become His followers.  Formula Christianity may give people a false sense of security - sort of “checking the boxes”, “completing the requirements” - while stealing the sincerity and humility with which we should engage God in search of relationship.  A person must understand that Jesus is alive, that He exists, that He is God, that He is in authority, that we need to submit to Him, that He has the power to save, that He loves us very much, that He died to reestablish relationship with us, and so on.  All of these are ideas embedded in a relational dynamic, a mysterious interaction between the heart of a person and the heart of God.  Becoming a Christian is more like falling in love than baking a cake.

The analogy has been made between converting to Christianity and sitting in a chair: a person may have faith that the chair will hold him, but until he has sat in the chair he has not acted on his faith.  One can see the modernist perspective here, that truth must be tested to be true, and once tested it is possessed as truth.  In this way, the spiritual disciplines, the steps and actions religious folks conjure up or absorb from organizational structures, evolve into a sort of spiritual checklist, a barometer of their spiritual maturity.  But in our quest for proof that we are “OK” we may miss the deep relational exchange of these spiritual disciplines.  We fast because we mourn the absence of Christ and to reposition our heart closer to God’s heart.  We pray to share our heart with Him - like a tried and true friend - sharing happiness and sadness, weakness and strength and asking for help to walk in His footsteps. We study His words to understand what pleases Him, what brings a twinkle to His eyes, and we worship Him to add to and declare His value, for He alone is worthy of our worship. We take communion as a way to remember Him - His life, His death, His pain and suffering, His humility, His love for us and His glorious resurrection trail blazing the way for our new life in Him.  How sad if we treat these deeply relational acts as check marks on our “I’m OK” list, when Christ has come to explode into our hearts as the lover of our soul, our beloved bridegroom, to mend our broken relationship by marriage in a spiritual union more beautiful, more passionate and more intimate than anything this world will ever know.

IT’S A RELATIONSHIP

NOT A RECIPE

CALLING ALL CATTLE

Modern Christianity as a civilized religion claims to have a group plan negotiated with God.  Everybody gets the same package.  And of course the package is always the premium plan - get rich, get comfortable, get secure, get safe, get well when you get God.  Everybody gets the John plan; nobody gets the Peter package.  This is the sticky part of Christ’s call as seen in His admonition to Peter: “If I want him (John) to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?  You must follow me” (Jn. 21:22 NIV).  John lived to a ripe old age and Peter was tortuously crucified upside down in the prime of life: It’s not fair or equitable.  “You must follow Me” is a life and death proposition where the “you” is “you” and the “Me” is God.  This is not a cattle call where everyone called walks the same primrose path to glory.  Every saint’s life is unique before God with a divine plan and purpose - your path is yours and yours alone. “God is no respecter of persons” when it comes to salvation, judgment and eternal rewards, the only biblical contexts  under which this statement appears, but the individual methodologies He imposes to bring about our conforming transformation into Christlikeness is quite another thing.   Where God will choose to lead you and how God chooses to use your life for His glory cannot be predicted by the lives of other saints.  It is our job to follow and His job to lead the way.  Some examples:

Stephen, the newly appointed deacon who was full of faith and power, “did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people”, but was stoned to death before he could get new business cards printed.  This seems to be a senseless loss of a devout man the infant church desperately needed. But God used it to incite severe persecution upon His church spreading His Kingdom in accordance with His Great commission.

The Apostle Paul was scourged five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned once and left for dead and shipwrecked three times. During Paul’s many journeys he suffered exposure to the elements, weariness and toil, sleeplessness, hunger and thirst, nakedness/lack of clothing, and danger from robbers, wild animals (he fought with wild beasts at Ephesus) and people who did not accept his message. Paul suffered from a lifelong eye disease that necessitated the use of an amanuensis to write his letters. Paul learned that rejoicing in adversity produced abundant grace, that in his weakness resided God’s strength. Through this most difficult of lives Paul received the great revelations on faith and the church, healed the sick (his sweat rags carried healing), raised the dead and wrote most of the New Testament. And he spent years in prison and was beheaded.

“No one born of woman was greater than John the Baptist.” John called a wicked nation to repentance, heralding the coming of the Lord. John baptized the savior of the world, saw the Spirit of God     descend like a dove upon Jesus and heard the audible voice of God saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”.  John dressed in camel’s hair clothing and subsisted on a diet of locust and wild honey for thirty years, then lost his head in prison after a very short three month ministry. Why? ‘For He must increase and I must decrease.”

“YOU MUST FOLLOW ME”

SHORT PEOPLE

Zacchaeus had a lot going for a short person in a tall world. Being “Chief Tax Collector” of Jericho almost made up for a life of “short” jokes and abuse at the hands of Jericho jocks. The original “Napoleon complex” had wrought in old Zack power and wealth, but without happiness… a bankrupted life devoid of the stature of true friendship with others. That sycamore tree was a stroke of luck, surviving years of hoofs and teeth just to be at the right place at the right time at the right size to add a little elevated stature just when Zacchaeus needed it.  A little “Angel Luck” you think! And what a metaphor: How many of us tall ones, short in spiritual stature, have used a book, DVD, worship song or friend’s faith to help us “see God” when the going got tough.  When anyone steps, or climbs, into the presence of God, everything changes. A lifetime of rendering unto Caesar is nothing in comparison to a moment standing in the presence of God with the ledger of our heart opened wide. Zack’s lifetime accumulation of greed is quickly liquidated, 50% to the poor, fourfold to recompense the cheated… Jesus spoke of the difficulty of the rich entering heaven: If we look closely here we can witness the Camel passing through the needle’s eye. Anything is possible with God, who can surgically remove the callused wall around a rich man’s heart with the same ease as pulling down the perimeter wall around a great city. Zacchaeus’ name means “Pure”; he was named for what he would become… God knew. And isn’t it awesome the God we half-heartedly pursue when life gets us down continually and passionately pursues us, much more then we pursue Him, placing divine encounters of the God kind in our pathway… and when we need it, a sycamore tree. God seeks us in our sycamore tree… we need to know that!

GOD SEEKS US WHERE WE ARE

ELECTION

In Romans 8:28-30 Paul introduces five technical terms defining the succession of consecutive stages into which he divides the normal course of a Christian life.  All five of these steps are in the Greek aorist (i.e., past tense) and were completed in eternity before the very foundations of the world, from God’s eternal perspective. Before the first “let there be” in Genesis, God, in eternity past, looked into eternity future at my heart as a man living in time.  He looked beyond my sins, my short comings and my weaknesses because He had a decision to make and it would be based on only one thing; would I say yes when He called me to be one of His children?  Would I give my life, my heart and my very soul to Him?  When He seen in my heart that I would willfully serve Him, He wrote my name in the Lambs Book of Life – God Foreknew Me. Then He planned and decreed every aspect of my life to be, setting boundaries and orchestrating events of my life to make me receptive to His call and His perfecting work, to grow in me the spiritual nature and attributes of Jesus – God Predestined Me. Then, on December 7, 1999 at 7:45 p.m., like a bolt of lightning out of eternity into time the call of God came to my heart and I said yes – God Called Me. At that very moment I was set apart, separated unto God, declared righteous and placed in right standing with God through the precious blood of Jesus – God Justified Me. Since that moment I have been on a journey with God; the Holy Spirit is implementing God’s plan, the plan He made eons ago, and as I behold the glory of Jesus I am being transformed into His image, from glory to glory – God is Glorifying Me. This is the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit, manifesting Christ in me as I learn to abide in the Spirit, setting my mind on things above, letting the holy nectar of God’s presence envelope me more and more in intimate fellowship. Our end was fixed before our beginning, and the “now” we live is simply God’s plan being executed, for with God there is neither “before” nor “after.” Our “steps”, our life, is ordered by the Lord, and we are His blood-bought Love-Slaves.

Election is God choosing the people in time

who already chose Him in eternity. 

God’s foreknowledge always precedes His choosing.

DIVINE SLAVERY

Doulos is the most misunderstood Greek word in the English speaking Bible, being mistranslated “servant” approximately one hundred and fifty times, counting root derivatives. Now we know a servant is a hired domestic, legally entitled to tell his employer to “take this job and shove it”, but a slave is owned, lock, stock and barrel, to quote Kipling, and has no legal rights, much like a chair or a mule. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament states doulos is used exclusively to denote “slave” with a meaning so unequivocal and self-contained that etymology is superfluous. A slave is a possession totally subject to the will of his owner, bound to obey his will without hesitation or argument, having no freedom, autonomy  or rights, and is dependent upon his master for everything.

Whatever a person yields their Self to will enslave them (Rom. 6:13, 16), and whatever overcomes a person will enslave them (2 Peter 2:19). This is the crux of mankind’s dilemma: Without God, man yields to sin and is overcome by it and enslaved. Having neither the heart nor the will to say no to his self-serving nature, he steps into the trap of sin’s slavery, which was, as James stated, bated by his own desires. (James 1:14)

People are simply vessels in need of a master. Born in bondage to unrighteousness, we are born enslaved to sin. Our self-nature, Self, thinks it is in control of our vessel, but like marionettes in a cheap vaudeville side show, the strings are really pulled by the prince of darkness and his whoring hordes of fallen creatures who divert our time and energy from Kingdom life to Self life. Christ’s call to “Follow Me” is a call to depart from this slavery to our self-nature through its death, by willfully hanging it on the cross with Christ and reckoning it dead. In this way the enemy loses control of our vessel as we come under the lordship of God alone, by our submission to His indwelling Spirit-life. This is a change of ownership, a change of masters. Lordship is one side of the divine relational paradigm: Jesus wants to be our Lord and has purchased us out of the world’s slave market with His own blood, giving Him legal right of ownership. The other side, our response, is voluntary servitude: In submission to lordship we demonstrate the first and greatest commandment, becoming love-slaves of the Most High God. We had no choice in our bondage to sin, all are born in its clutches, but we do choose whether to stay in that slavery or to crucify our self-nature with Christ, finding freedom in His cross of death. (Rom. 6:1-23;1Cor. 5:14).

We were all homeless vagabonds adrift in the sewage of this world, with sin as our master and our future sealed in hell. Then Christ redeemed us, made us His slaves, befriended us, adopted us into His royal family, gave us an inheritance, and made us citizens of His Kingdom.  God graces us with the freedom to be all He wants us to be in this life, repairing our “Liker” so we like what He likes, and providing our necessities. The life He gives is eternally abundant Kingdom life, where “His slaves shall serve Him” forever. Divine Slavery is a choice; choose wisely and someday you will hear…

 “WELL DONE MY GOOD AND FAITHFUL SLAVE”

(E-mail for complete study)

VESSELS

I look beyond, the empty cross

Forgetting what my life has cost

The nail scared hands, the crimson stains

The ruptured heart desertion claimed

It was for me, I am to blame

I caused the suffering and the pain

I put Him there, upon that tree

No greater cost to die for me

For grace and pride, they war within

This love of self is not my friend

Once rid of all, His love remains

My life to lose His life to gain

A vessel now, how clear I see

 A slave of His forever be

Oh Lord, my Lord, You are my God

Hold now my hand as home I trod

SUNDAY SERVICE, ANYCHURCH, USA

Congregation, please welcome Paul, formally Saul of Tarsus, as today’s guest speaker: “Before my message I would like to share my testimony. I am a slave of Jesus Christ. I have lost everything this life values, its power, position, wealth and influence, along with the glittering babbles of pride and self-dependence. All of this I consider to be as dung, worthless refuse, compared to the priceless privilege, surpassing worth, and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, to know the transforming fellowship of sharing in His sufferings. I have been scourged like our Savior five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned for death once, shipwrecked at sea three times and beaten countless times in cities where I have planted churches. I have been in danger from robbers, fought with wild animals, frequently imprisoned, and suffered constant hardships including lack of shelter, weariness and toil, sleeplessness, hunger and thirst, and even nakedness. I have as my constant companion a demonic being... a messenger from satan, whose singular responsibility is to torment me with suffering and persecution. All of this has left me physically weak and infirm, and I have diseased eyes which require me to dictate all my letters. I have come to understand God allows in His wisdom what He could easily prevent in His power: His resurrection power dwells upon me because of my physical weakness and suffering. Therefore I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities, distresses, afflictions and adversity, for they are really only light afflictions preceding God’s glory. I rejoice in my suffering... glory in adversity, filling up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for I have been made to understand that troubles and affliction and hardship produce patient unswerving endurance which develops maturity of God’s character in me... approving my faith... trying my integrity. I find myself in a state of constant joyful confident hope in eternal salvation... as Christ’s life flows out of me... as His love is lavishly poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit. Yes, I rejoice in suffering. The title of my message is The Crucified Life.”  The point…

WOULD HE BE WELCOME???

ABBA FATHER

The father to child relational metaphor of God’s relationship to man is more than a metaphor. God, our Divine Daddy, loves us unconditionally, not because of what we are but whose we are, and He is, necessarily, much more than our earthly father. He is all knowing, all powerful and everywhere simultaneously, and His creation, of which we are a part, is moving and evolving according to the plan He purposed within Himself. With wisdom and power far above and beyond any earthly daddy, He is able to bring about our utmost for His highest, and He does just that! He has made us partakers of His Spirit... partakers of Christ... partakers of The Cross, that in this “Oneness” we might be transformed into the very nature of His Beloved Son. He punishes us when needed to guide and align our behavior according to His will. He lets us roam when we demand freedom from Him, and welcomes us back with open arms when we realize the cost of flying solo. He does not isolate us from the deceitfulness of riches or the glitter of the world’s pleasures, allowing us to overcome misplaced desires, learning in the process the cost of pursuing lover’s less wild then the eternal lover of our soul. He allows suffering and all the variegated hues of adversity... the pressures of this life: It is in adversity that Self walks the lonely road to Golgotha while patience endurance does its perfecting work, using that which purposes to overcome and destroy to unwittingly transform us, dying daily that the Christlife might emerge. His goal is our perfection... spiritual maturity... transformation into His very own character and nature, making us “perfect” for the abundantly eternal life He has prepared for us. He allows persecution, a measure of our Christlikeness, to further our transformation while condemning the evil that produces it, sharing in the suffering of our Lord and bearing in our body the marks of His Lordship. He knows what is best for us, and will never let our wants overpower His wisdom, giving us only good things... eternally good things, things that are truly good for us. He allows us to suffer the consequences of our actions, that in responsible reaping we may learn the power of our will to choose... that decisions have descendants, learning our need for His wisdom in all the decisions of this life, effectively drawing us into His Lordship. And in all of this He lavishly pours His love into our hearts... that we might in turn be loving, and teaches us to set our mind on things above... our Blessed Hope in Him. He allows in His wisdom what He could easily prevent in His power, loving us too much to leave us the way we are. He holds our breath in His hands and owns all our ways, setting our feet in His stocks and watching each ordered footstep... lest we wander too far. He records our every thought and act in His book, collects our tears in His bottle, and sings over us lullabies of love. And, He never, ever leaves us forsaken – we are never, ever alone!

HE’S A GOOD, GOOD DADDY