THE LASAGNA SAGA

My beautiful wife made lasagna which turned out to be inedible due to tough, rubbery lasagna noodles. I had noticed duct tape holding the lid shut on the lasagna noodle box but though little of it until we tried to eat the lasagna. It seems yours truly had found several open boxes of lasagna noodles in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen behind the bottom drawer where they had somehow fallen, when boxing to move in May of 2012. I had put the noodles in one box and duct taped the lid. Upon reflection, I have no idea how old the noodles are, or if they were even my noodles considering where I found them. They could have been behind the drawer in the kitchen cabinet when we moved into the old house eight years ago.

But this is not the end of this story. Yours truly decided to put the whole pan of lasagna down the garbage disposal, which we never use, for reasons known only to God. Upon reflection it probably would have been better to feed the lasagna to the garbage disposal a little at a time with lots of water instead of the whole pan followed by water –hindsight is painfully 20/20 – for by the time I knew I was in trouble... I was already in trouble. The other side of the double sink began to fill with ground up lasagna. After a trip to Lowes, two gallons of super-duper professional commercial drain cleaner, discovering the “sink tape” I purchased won’t fit the holes in the sink drain, and disassembling the plumbing under the sink, my sink is still stopped up. Day two begins...

One moral of this story is always use fresh lasagna noodles, but there is another lesson... a spiritual one. You see, I let this little “trial” of life get me in a pretty pissy mood yesterday, I lost my joy and peace in the midst of doing battle with the Lasagna noodles. And worse, when I realized I was in a foul mood I begin to rationalize justification for being down. I believe saints are suppose to be unflappable, rejoicing in all things because of the Blessed Hope we have in Christ, treating everything as spiritual because... well, it is.  I begin to think about the things... tough things, saints are facing, things like cancer, tragic accidents, lose of employment, failed marriages, lost loved ones... and here I am being defeated by a lasagna noodle. Obviously I am not nearly as spiritually mature as I thought I was. Please forgive me Father. I am so very thankful that all I have to deal with today is a lasagna noodle. I pray that you will make Your face to shine upon all my brothers and sisters who are fighting real battles. Strengthen them, encourage them with Your presence, and give them peace and hope... and patience, as You work good out of their bad... In the mighty name of Jesus... Amen and So Be It.

CALLED TO BE UNFLAPPABLE

THE BEAUTY OF AGING

To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, means we align our heart with His will, wanting nothing more than to be with Him. Aging is a part of God’s judgment: “It is appointed (by God) for men to die once.” Aging is the dying process... death its culmination... time its yardstick: From the moment of birth we are aging toward death. Aging is not our enemy but rather God’s will... a process to be embraced. Our culture tries to reverse the aging process, tries to defy God’s will. But the sooner we age and die... or fly, the sooner we are with the great lover of our soul... forever.

Every wrinkle has a beauty all its own, mile markers on our journey home, the tracks of time and a reminder that in the next life... our real life, there will be no time.  We recognize the aged saints among us because we can see the marks of long life on their face. We should honor and esteem them for the spiritual wisdom each wrinkle represents, the overcoming testimonies filling each sanctified heart. And besides, the decay of all the things of this pseudo-life is necessary, lest we get caught up in loving what the world loves, loving the very things our Lord warned and commanded us to avoid... Lest we stumble at the stumbling stone of life... Pride of Life in this world -- Lest we fail to “consider the work of God; for who can make straight what He has made crooked”?

The God who collects our tears in bottles and counts the hairs on our heads also knows and cherishes every wrinkle on our face. He has a plan for our wrinkles... it is called restoration. God commanded the children of Israel to take stones from the Jordan River as a reminder attesting to God’s miraculous intervention in bring about His promises to them. The wrinkles on the faces of saints are our stones taken from the River of Life to remind us of God’s faithfulness and our soon coming Blessed Hope of forever with our Daddy.

THE “STONES” OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE GODHEAD

Jesus had an indwelling Lord: Jesus drew His whole life and “out-living” from His indwelling Father, as these paraphrased snippets of The Gospel of John capture so well: My Father abides in Me and I in Him. I perceive things that are from above. I hear my Father speak. I saw heaven’s realm open. My Father is with Me, I am never alone. My Father constantly bears witness to Me. My Father sent Me here, from out of the other realm. My Father is in Me and He is doing the work. I know, through intimate relationship, my Father. I am one with my Father. I see God. I live by my Father; I have life in Me because of Him. Without my Father, I can do nothing. I speak what I hear my Father speak, and do what I see my Father do. That which is of my Father radiates out to become my experience. I and my Father are so much one that when you meet Me, you meet my Father.

If we take the things Jesus spoke concerning His relationship with the Father and put them all together, then we begin to see our Lord revealing to us the fellowship going on in the Godhead - the fellowship Jesus experienced bodily and visibly from inside Himself every day, and modeled for us.  As these paraphrased snippets of scriptures were true of Jesus they should be true of all believers. The “I” and “my” and “me” also refer to the saints...“us”, for Jesus also said: “I am in My Father, and you (us) in Me, and I in you ... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We (Jesus and the Father) will come to him and make Our home with him ... We (Jesus, the Father and us) are one: I in them (us), and You (the Father) in Me (Jesus); that they (us) may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” Capitalized pronouns always refer to the Godhead. We have an indwelling Lord... an indwelling Godhead... Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the Kingdom of God during this age is within, as is God’s temple. Our life on planet earth should be an out-living of what we see and hear the Father doing from within. The only prerequisites to experiencing this fellowship of the Godhead are Love and Obedience. Father, let all who seek this walk in the Spirit examine themselves with a willingness to lay aside every hindrance to the full experience of this truth as a 24/7 way of life. In Jesus Name, Amen

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

THOUGHTS ON CHURCH FAMILY

Don't know that I've experienced "church family" except in a small house church years ago. It gets pretty hard to be an organic body of believers... a family, when the group size gets much over 30 or so, but small churches don’t have much in the way of creature comforts or services... so... and thus begins the size dichotomy. The church leadership... pastors, etc., may experience church as a family because everyone wants to be in their inner circle and they get ample opportunity to share, care, and be supported. For ministers, church probably is like a big extended family, but for the rest of us pew warmers, church family is a myth without reality. A quick read of Acts chapter two through four sheds light on the relational dynamic of an organic body of believers. Of course “small groups” was supposed to fix this problem... and didn’t. It is sad that so many are satisfied with so little, it's like contentedly eating crumbs off the floor, never realizing there is a banquet fit for a king on the table above.

The real fix is small churches that can really be an organic body of believers... an extended family, very much like the first century churches: Small groups of believers, meeting in homes, led by home grown Holy Spirit picked Elders (note the plural), sharing life, sharing God, sharing their “stuff”, demonstrating their faith through love for their brethren, worshiping God in the unity of the Spirit. 1Cor. 14:26-33 paints a picture of this “participative” church assembly: “When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight ... Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other ... When we worship the right way, God doesn’t stir us up into confusion; He brings us into harmony. This goes for all the churches—no exceptions.” Sounds good, but taking on a real extended family is costly, both literally and emotionally, sharing our stuff... loving others as we love ourselves... rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn, praying effectual fervent prayers for one another... loving in deed and not in word? Love, Sacrifice, Passion and Obedience, the things that bring a twinkle to our Father’s eyes, were the primary ingredients of the first century church. What they lacked in luxurious facilities, creature comforts, and choreographed assemblies was dung... as Paul would say, when compared with the experience of living life as God intended, as a real family of brothers and sisters in Christ...

WE CAN’T LOVE THE BACK OF SOMEONE’S HEAD

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES

One of the most difficult obstacles to Faith is understanding why God does not, at times, intervene in adversity and affliction. I believe God is absolutely sovereign... that nothing happens to His children without His allowance... His permission. I believe... absolutely, that God heals, and have personally experienced His healing power. And, I believe that small, mustard seed size faith can move mountains, “if we ask according to His will.” So, for example, when a saint’s child is suffering with the final stages of cancer and the healing God does not intervene... well, that is hard for my faith to overcome. We live in a time when most of our proclamations of God’s healing power are nebulous declarations involving assorted aches and pains. The serious stuff... cancer and such, usually prevails, or we declare God’s healing after a costly stay at some clinic, coming under the edge of a surgeon’s knife. And many of these “wins” are really delayed losses, as time so often demonstrates.

 Maybe our tendency to rely on man’s healing power, adding God as an afterthought, is part of the problem.  We take aspirin for our heart, Tylenol for headaches, Aleve for pain, Nyquil for colds, Z-Pac for the flu, an assortment of meds for blood pressure, cholesterol, etc., and, of course, we go to the dentist for a cavity or tooth ache. No wonder we run to man for help when we get something really bad, letting God play second fiddle... if He is allowed to play at all, it is the habit we have formed... conformance to the ways of the world. Of course God can use doctors to heal, but the scripture basis for this as His methodology of choice is nonexistent. This position is all too convenient... and safe, implying we are more comfortable when man takes the lead and God just “helps.” So, our faith in the healing power of God is eroded by our ongoing daily experience... is it not? Perhaps, to see a real unadulterated miracle one must be willing to die in faith of God’s healing power rather than be “healed’ by conformance to the world’s ways. Maybe... just maybe, this exemplifies Jesus’ command to “Have faith in God.” Could this be why the first century church experienced healing miracles as a way of life, because technology had not advanced enough to allow man’s medical science to supplant God’s power?

Adversity and affliction know every saint’s address for we are, as Paul stated, “appointed to this”... it is called “life.” We will all face these decisions at some point in our journey home to Him. Maybe, in the final analysis, we are far too concerned with the length and quality of our earth-life, and not focused enough on the Blessed Hope we have in Christ. For the saint, to be allowed to go home... at any age... by any manner, is, as Paul put it, “far better” and should be cause for rejoicing, for to be forever with the Lord is the greatest miracle of human experience. And yet, with the speaking I realize these words are still in my head, and not fully in my heart. I am not advocating anything with this thought, only sharing the rumblings of a heart in hot pursuit of knowing God.

HAVE FAITH IN GOD

“I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH”

This thought is dedicated to the Ekklesia... the called out ones... the mystical assembly of all the redeemed... “The Church which is His Body.” Ekklesia must be understood two ways in scripture, the Church “big C”, just described, and the church “little c”, the individual assemblies of the redeemed gathering together at any point in time. These churches make up “The Church.” The Church is the leaven of the Kingdom of God, ceaselessly spreading God’s Kingdom through the dough of humanity. Stripped to its spiritual essentials the church functions as a purveyor of God’s Kingdom through “the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry”, which builds up the Body of Christ. The “work of ministry” is the enterprise of each member of the church who are “joined and knit together by what every joint (i.e., person) supplies” to work effective when “every part (i.e., person) does its share”, growing spiritual maturity as it builds itself up in love. Equipping the saints covers a lot of ground including teaching/mentoring spiritual growth, empowering to minister, encouraging ministry, providing a forum for ministry development, and providing essential help including facilities, equipment and resources. Individual ministry is identified, developed and released within the sanctuary and nurturing environment   of the church, moving out into the marketplace as spiritual leaven when it has matured.

 Every member of every church has a personal ministry... something to contribute to the Kingdom of God. When these personal ministries are quenched and grieved rather than nurtured, ignored by a misplaced focus on rigid liturgy and the “One man Show” syndrome, spiritual growth of the church ceases as an attainable reality. The real measurement of church effectiveness is not church size... quality trumps quantity every time in God’s Kingdom, but rather the effectiveness of the equipping of its saints for the work of ministry. Why do people become so prideful and elated simply from getting humans into a building?  Man driven church growth becomes a stronghold that burns out pastors while filling the pews with lukewarm Self-centered “Christians” that God has already said He will spew out of His mouth. Focusing on church growth... size, rather than growing spiritual maturity through the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, is simply a prideful form of Godliness that denies the power of equipped saints to leaven the world. (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 4:11-16)

“FOR THE EQUIPPING OF THE SAINTS

FOR THE WORK OF MINISTRY

FOR THE EDIFYING OF THE BODY OF CHRIST”

UNDERSTANDING GOD’S WILL

Paul’s message in Romans 12:1 is all about lordship and submission.  All Christians know Jesus as their Savior but that is only half of His commission.  “God has made this Jesus ... both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), “Lord and Savior” (2 Peter 3:18). As Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, He brings salvation.  But He is also the Lord God Almighty, and total submission as a bondservant... love slave, to His lordship is not only mandatory, it is reasonable rational intelligent service... “a living sacrifice.”  What matters now and in Rome two thousand years ago is not that we are Christians.  What matters is that we are Christlike.  Gods’ goal is not a label... Gods’ goal is a lifestyle, which brings us to Romans 12:2 where Paul addresses this issue with two commands and a promise:

* Commandment One: Stop living, thinking and acting like the world.

* Commandment Two: Start living, thinking and acting like Kingdom people by the renewing of your mind.

* The Promise: “Then” you will understand, test, and approve God’s will, His good, well pleasing and complete will for you.

Do you want to know God’s will? Here is the only recipe given in scripture: "PRESENT your bodies a living sacrifice." STOP living, thinking and acting like the world. START living, thinking and acting like Kingdom people. THEN you will understand God’s will. It takes a thorough understanding of God’s word to differentiate between the world’s ways and Kingdom ways, equipping saints under the Lordship of Jesus to complete the recipe... setting their minds on things above moment by moment, day by day. Overcoming life is life lived in the will of God... His good, well-pleasing and complete will...

GODS’ GOAL IS NOT A LABEL...

GODS’ GOAL IS A LIFESTYLE...

LIVING HIS WILL...

MAN IS A WORSHIPER

In a tropical rain forest a tribal chieftain bows before a crude figure fashioned   from sticks and stones bound together by jungle vines.  In St. Louis the CEO of a major corporation spends all day Sunday with a group of wealth power brokers, conspiring how to drive stock prices up.  Somewhere in Asia in a fantastically ornate temple a young man burns incense before a lavishly decorated Buddha.  At a gym in Denver a man moves from pose to pose, admiring the mirrors’ reflection of his years of grueling training and drug use.  In the heartland of America, a small group of locals meet in an unobtrusive building in a small Nebraska town to sing and pray together. On the ninth tee a Miami golfer trashes his clubs in a fit of golf-rage. A minister in Dayton slips silently into his study at 2:00 A.M. to Google the sensual desires of his heart. In New York a grossly overweight lady spends her day with her best friend... junk food. A group of LA high school kids meet their suppler in a parking lot before hitting the rave party circuit.  A man in the suburbs of Detroit spends the entire morning meticulously washing and waxing his foreign-made sports sedan, while his teenage daughter spends hours in a poster-plastered room listening to CDs by her favorite rock superstar.  In Seattle a lady spends three hours meticulously primping and grooming herself before leaving for work.  All of these people are worshiping.

Man is a worshiper by nature whether we acknowledge our worship, understand that we are worshiping, or recognize the object of our worship as deity, we all worship something.  The Apostle John called our idols Lust of the Flesh... Physical Appetites, Lust of the Eyes... Material Appetites, and Pride of Life... Emotional Appetites. The object of our worship may be money, possessions, career , goals, ideals, hobbies, talents, education, power, position, prominence, control, desires, pleasures, goodness, self-esteem, our body, sex, drugs, food, other people, thrills, etc., - we all worship something: The question is...

WHAT ARE YOU WORSHIPING???

“FOR IF OUR HEART CONDEMNS US”

As saints, we all struggle with besetting sin... the sin we hate to love. To deny this is to deny God’s word, knowingly or in ignorance. What distinguishes the spiritually mature is how quickly they come boldly to God’s throne of Grace.  Heartfelt repentance will usher in God’s supernatural peace... The Peace of God, if we allow the Holy Spirit to do His work. When our conscience condemns us after repentance it is our old nature that keeps us diving into God’s Sea of Forgetfulness to retrieve our sins, wanting us to wallow in shame and remorse... wanting us to do penitence... wanting us to earn our own forgiveness. The writer of Hebrews spoke to this when He stated “How much more shall the blood of Christ ... cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” Now the context is comparing Grace to the Law, but as an application the repentant saint’s sorrow and remorse are just “Dead Works.” The Apostle John, in his dissertation on the outworking of Love, also speaks of the condemning heart... the condemning conscience: “For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.” The greatness of God’s grace and compassion are displayed here. When our conscience condemns us we quiet it with the knowledge we are in the hands of a God who is greater than our heart... greater in love... greater in compassion... greater in understanding, and it is He who has forgiven us. The very worse that is in us is known to God, and still he loves us... cares for us... desires us. He sees our shallow failures... our stumbling as we miss His mark. He sees the deep hungering in the depth of our soul for more righteousness... to be a delight to Him. And, He sees our sin, hears our repentance and says to our conscience “I Am Greater”! “And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.”

GOD IS GREATER THAN OUR HEART

WORRY... ANXIETY... FEAR... DEPRESSION...

When we worry we torment ourselves with thoughts of uncertainty and concern, interfering with God’s peace of mind, causing anxiety, fearful distress and uneasiness. Worry and anxiety are the greatest tools of the powers of darkness for they are birthed in a lack of trust... a lack of faith... unbelief, and invariably lead to depression. Much of our worry stems from misplaced love... coveting the things of this world. Worry and anxiety express the belief that we really are responsible for the provisions of life, for our work, for our ministry, and express the unbelief that God will really provide for our needs. Notice that God only promises to provide for our needs... food... shelter... clothes, not our wants: People with broken “wanters” will have a problem with God’s provisioning. “Godliness with contentment is great gain”... the gain is joy. "Do not worry", “Let not your heart be troubled”, “Fret not”, “Be anxious for nothing”: When we ignore these commands of our Lord we disengage from His control switching back to Self-Control, we grieve the Holy Spirit and quench the flow of “Living Water”, and we invite depression. We put on the “Spirit of Heaviness” replacing our “Garment of Praise.” Depression is a spirit and must be resisted with praise and worship, for “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” The issue is not to strive for stronger faith, but rather to rest in The Faithful One... and practice the virtue of contentment...

PUT ON THE GARMENT OF PRAISE

FOR THE SPIRIT OF HEAVINESS

“LOOKING UNTO JESUS”

“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us”: The verb of which besetting is the participle form means to surround with hostile intent, to set upon, attack, assault on all sides, to constantly assault with persistence. In the expression besetting sin, the word “besetting” carries the added meaning of chief, principal or primary, a sin to which a particular individual is particularly susceptible. In the life of every saint there is a “besetting sin”, one to which, on account of our constitution and life circumstance, we are peculiarly susceptible and most easily and most frequently fall. Besetting sin ensnares... traps, and can tower like a mountain between a child of God and their Daddy.

There are many besetting sins: Slothfulness is spiritual or emotional apathy, neglecting what God has spoken... spiritual laziness. Worry is habitual refusal to trust God... unbelief by another name. Coveting is to allow one’s desires for the things of this life to override our passion for Godliness... idolatry in its purest form. Pride is an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments, inordinate Self-esteem and Self-reliance breeding dependence on Self rather than God.  Gluttony is over-indulgence... over-consumption, a limitless voracious appetite for something... a loss of Self-control, walking according to the flesh. And the list goes on. We all have besetting sin(s), it’s the sin we hate to love; to think otherwise is to be in Self-denial.

Saints, we all have a death to die, a race to run -- a race requiring patient endurance and steadfast persistence -- and a crown to receive. Therefore let us lay aside... discard, our besetting sins relying in total trust upon Jesus who is the author... originator and dispenser, and finisher... perfecter, of our faith. Jesus is the creator and sustainer and consummator of faith in the hearts of believers, the supreme model of the faith way of life. By His unerring life of faith Jesus made a way to God for those that follow Him, “The firstborn among many brethren.” As “Prince of life” and “The beginning of the creation of God”, Jesus is “The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep”, “The firstborn from among the dead”... the originator of the resurrection. “All things were created through Him and for Him ... and in Him all things consist.” Our trust releases the power out flowing from His resurrection, bringing our faith to maturity with enabling power to overcome our besetting sins. And in this we should rejoice...

“IF WE SAY THAT WE HAVE NO SIN,

WE DECEIVE OURSELVES...”

(Heb. 12:1-2; Acts 3:15; Rev. 3:14; 1 Cor. 15:20; Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:16-18; Phil. 3:10; 1 Jn. 1:8)