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Seeking Jerusalem – Day 26 “Suffering and Glory”

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in 3. Steps To Maturity, Seeking Jerusalem

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.  I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  (Romans 8: 17,18 NIV)

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10,11 NIV).

“And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given you” (Romans 5:2b-5 NIV).

The Suffering and the Glory (4)

I have an idea for a book (and maybe a movie) called A Glimpse of Glory.  It’s the story of a black worship leader who loses his sister to a mugging gone wrong and she is stabbed and killed.  Of course this creates a crisis of faith and he goes into a tailspin of grief and guilt which leads him into a frantic search for his sister’s killer.  He ends up one night in the very same bar, nursing a drink and wondering what he is doing with his life.  He decides to leave and try to get his life back on track but, first, he has to go to the bathroom.

On the way to relieve himself, he feels a knife pressed into his back and a voice in his ear telling him to step outside through the back door.  Once in the alley behind the bar, his assailant demands all of his money, using his knife as a warning and a motivation to hurry.

But Brandon wants nothing to do with it and starts to argue with him, asking him if he is the same thief who killed his sister weeks ago.  The mugger is confused and obviously high on something, but Brandon won’t let it go and starts to push back – hard.

The thief reacts like a crazy man, shoves Brandon back against the brick wall so fiercely that Brandon’s head cracks against the hard surface sharply.  At the same time, he feels the knife in his gut and he sinks to the ground in a heap.

Here is where things get interesting.

The book is called A Glimpse of Glory because Brandon is transported back into ancient Israel (or is it heaven?) at the time of David in his early years when he first became King.  A lot of other things happen, but one of the key moments is when Brandon insists on going into the Holy of Holies, unafraid for his life and only focused on his grief.  David warns him of the dangers, but Brandon goes ahead with his plan and enters the Temple bent on confronting God with his grief.

Outside, while David is waiting for the inevitable to happen, he sings one of my favorite songs (all of my books are actually musicals).  The song is from Shane and Shane and is called Though You Slay Me.

In the middle of the song, at least on YouTube, Pastor John Piper has a few words to say to those who are suffering grief and hardship.

“Not only is all your affliction momentary…

Not only is all your affliction light….in comparison to eternity and the glory there…

But all of it is totally meaningful.

Every millisecond of your pain from the fallen nature or the fallen man….

Every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience

is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that.

I don’t care if it was cancer or criticism…

I don’t care if it was slander or sickness…

It wasn’t meaningless.

It’s doing something.  It’s not meaningless.

Of course you can’t see what it’s doing.

Don’t look to what is seen…

When your Mom dies…when your kid dies…when you’ve got cancer at 40….when a car careens into the sidewalk and takes her out…

Don’t say “It’s meaningless…”    It’s not.

It’s working for you an eternal weight of glory.

Therefore, therefore, do not lose heart but take these truths and day-by-day focus on them.  Preach them to yourself every morning.

Get alone with God and preach His Word into your mind until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for.

And then Shane and Shane come back singing their song one last time.

“Though you slay me, Yet I will praise you.

Though you take from me, I will bless your name.

Though you ruin me, still I will worship.

Sing a song to the One who is all I need.”

Do you see it?  Right there is your glimpse of glory.  Right there is the character of Christ revealed in us.  It makes no sense.  It shouldn’t be there.  But it is.  It’s not something you can create on your own by sheer will power or training.

It is something created by God in the midst of suffering.

You would have every right to complain, to argue, to get mad at God and turn away from him forever.  No one would blame you.  In fact, there may be more than one who, like Job’s wife, suggest that you just “curse God and die.”  After all, it is clear that God has abandoned you, so why not turn your back on Him as well.

Yes, you could.  But you don’t.

Instead, you go to God with your pain and grief and pour it all out before him in the Holy of Holies and, like Jesus in Gethsemane, you finally whisper “Not my will, but your’s be done.”  Not that it is easy.  Far from it.  But you do it anyway because, in the end, God is all you need and all you want.

That is the glory of God revealed in you.  Just as it was for Jesus.

It makes your testimony meaningful and real to the people around you who are also hurting and in pain.  Now you can pray for them.  Now you understand them.  Now you can tell them the good news that Jesus also endured pain and suffering for their sake, to save them from their sins.

That is what Paul is talking about here in our passage.

To the degree that we share in the suffering of Christ for the gospel, to that degree we will share in his character and glory both now in this life and, even more, in the life to come.

It is only in the context of suffering for the gospel that God can create the character of Christ.  There is no other way.  That is why we must rejoice in our sufferings because it produces hope (Romans 5:4).  It forces us to take God’s promises seriously and to risk our lives on them.  God calls that faith.  It forces us to look forward to our final redemption and the resurrection of our bodies and the defeat of death and the end of our struggle with our sinful natures.  God calls that hope.  It forces us to look at our neighbor and deal with them not in pettiness about mundane things, but in terms of issues that have an eternal weight to them.  God calls that love.  

So far in our study, we have talked about the first promise in Romans 8:1 that “there is no condemnation fro those who are in Christ Jesus.”  This promise includes FAITH, HOPE and LOVE.

Then we looked at the second promise of Holy Spirit power in our lives in Romans 8:11 where Paul reminds us that “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

Not only is there NO CONDEMNATION but there are also NO EXCUSES.  We have the power of the Holy Spirit within us to deal with temptation and sin and we therefore need to be trained in the ways of righteousness.  The Bible calls that Discipleship.  We don’t want to fall into the trap of perfectionism but rather understand that this is a struggle and that we need to go on from glory to glory, becoming more and more like Christ each day.  Training in righteousness will be needed.

Then we looked at the third promise of the ASSURANCE of our salvation given to us by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit – that is, if you actually have the Holy Spirit within you.

A lot of people assume that it is so but don’t demonstrate any evidence that it is so.  We talked about having EVIDENCE OF LIFE and what that would look like.  If you have that evidence, you will have the assurance of your salvation.  The evidence does not save you, it only tells you that you are saved.

Both the power of the Holy Spirit and the assurance of salvation that He gives us are appropriated by FAITH.  We talked about David and his Mighty Men and the faith that they needed to have to fight the Philistines on the one hand and hide from Saul, their King, on the other.  It was a balancing act of faith that bore much fruit.

Now we go on to the fourth and fifth promise in Romans 8 which requires us to turn our thoughts to the concept of HOPE.  And HOPE is desperately needed in this crazy life of faith where things do not always go as planned.

In fact, if you are still under the impression that the Christian life is one free of pain and suffering where God will protect you from all harm and danger, then I have some bad news for you.

Our example is Jesus Christ, and, although we do not have to go to the cross and suffer the wrath of God, we still must pick up our cross daily, take on His same attitude toward the cross, die to self and live for God.

Prosperity theology does not do well in this context and if you are still suffering under those lies and deceit, perhaps this is the time to renounce the pleasures and passions of this world and start to live for God.  Exchange your Prosperity Theology for Abundance Theology.

Remember that we are talking about suffering for the gospel, not just suffering the circumstances of life like everyone else.  Yes, that too counts in terms of how you deal with it (see my next post) but the true disciple of Christ follows Him into the world to bring the gospel to those who need it and in that context will suffer as Christ did and therefore, be glorified as Christ is glorified.

It is all meaningful.  No matter what you go through.  You matter to God.  Every tear is precious to Him.

You may not know specifically why God is allowing you to suffer but somehow you need to get to that place where you can say with the apostles that you rejoice in that suffering for the gospel because it produces perseverance and that, in turn, produces hope.

This is not an insipid, weak-kneed hope in a better future but rather a strong conviction that God will fulfill His promises to us and save us from this body (and world) of death.  That is why we persevere.  That is where the patience comes from.  Hope.  Without it we could never endure the suffering and pain of this world much less that persecution inflicted on us in our efforts to spread the gospel.

So, like Pastor John Piper suggests, we need to get alone with God and preach these truths to ourselves, remind ourselves that we are new and cared for, that this is part of the process to become like Christ.

It does NOT mean that God is against us or that He is punishing us for some sin we have committed.  We are still polluted with sin and we still consciously commit sin (even when it makes us sick to do so).  Welcome to the struggle.

God disciplines those He loves and He loves us as His children.  So, no, it isn’t punishment.  It is always discipline and discipline is always for our good.

Yes, God is willing that we suffer to become like Christ.

Yes, God is willing that we endure persecution to bring the gospel to those who do not have it.

He sees the eternal ramifications of sin and is willing to do almost anything to save people from that eternal fate.

Are you?  Are you willing, like Paul, to do whatever it takes?  That is the question after all, isn’t it?

Do we agree with God’s eternal perspective, his loving priorities, His tough but good will?  If you remember our discussion of Romans 12:1-4, we talked about spiritual maturity and the process we go through to become more like Christ.  In the end, will we agree with God that His eternal perspective on this redemptive emergency is good, pleasing and perfect?  Or not?

If we are in agreement with God, then there is a price to pay.

Jesus paid the ultimate price and we don’t have to face the wrath of God.  But we can share in his sufferings for the gospel and, in that context, become more like Him.  That glory, that character, will be revealed in us here and now as well as on the last day.  That glory, that attitude of Christ, that mind-set of Jesus, will empower our testimony and life ministry and we will have the anointing of God to fulfill our purpose on earth.

Frankly, it doesn’t get any better than that.  It is the source of meaning and all joy for each of us.  A joy that is not bound by circumstances but one that is in us always no matter what we go through.

I want that joy for myself.  Don’t you?

The Desert Warrior

Lord, I want to have that joy that passes all understanding.  It is rooted in hope and springs forth in the context of suffering but I want it badly.  Please continue to reveal Christ’s character in me until my final day.  In your name I pray.  Amen.

Seeking Jerusalem – Day 1 “The Plan”

01 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by in 1. The Transfiguration, Seeking Jerusalem

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.  He spoke plainly about this…” (Mark 8:31,32a NIV)

The Plan

Jesus did not use parables to teach them about the cross, he spoke plainly.  It was his life that would be the lesson, his experience that would be their teacher.  The Way of the Cross is always so.  It is clear and plain and needs no fancy words.  It is a path which we must walk, not endlessly discuss.  It is the dust of the road on the way to Jerusalem that is the aroma of real life.

It is not an easy way, this Way of the Cross, but Jesus still calls us to follow him.  Not with cheap fastings of junk food, or social media, or fish on fridays but in the real world where suffering and rejection hurt, and hurt deeply, and where dying is a real possibility.  Apparently, following Jesus, even today, will bring you down a path where friends and family, and even fellow Christians and church leaders may reject you, misunderstand you, mock you, shame you and with every blow you die a bit more, die to self, die to them, to the community, perhaps even just die alone, on the streets, or in a hospital bed, by yourself.  Just like him, outside of Jerusalem, the Holy City, rejected by the people of God, the very people you tried to serve, to save, to love.

I have a friend who is a street evangelist.  He is not all there and he has a certificate to prove it.  An only child, he was abused by his parents both physically and emotionally.  He never finished school but learned the basics of reading and writing in special classes for people like him.  When he was a young man, both his parents died a few years apart and he inherited the farm.  He couldn’t manage it on his own and he didn’t want to.  He gave it all to his church and joined a mission and traveled the world preaching the gospel.  He wasn’t very good at it, frankly.  He doesn’t speak his own native language very well much less any other language.  But he makes up in passion what he lacks in understanding.

His life is a study in paradoxes and more things happen to him in a year than happens to most of us in our lifetime.  He has been beaten up, robbed, thrown out of churches, homeless, misunderstood.  He has also preached the gospel (in his own simple way), visited countless people in the hospital to encourage them and pray for them.  He has led numerous people in the sinner’s prayer.  He has roamed the streets bringing facturas (pasteries) and mate (a hot argentine drink) to people in need.

He is no saint.  He has an ego problem (like all of us).  In his desperation he is sometimes a thief, sorrowful and contrite afterwards, but a thief nonetheless.  But he is also willing to rush in where angels (and churchgoers) fear to tread.  He is a well-intentioned dragon, coming to church smelling of the streets, asking for money, and generally making people feel uncomfortable.  He is married but completely rejected by her kids and family.  One child of his own, at age 13, an accident, taken from him and kept apart, who grew up to become a missionary and was killed with her husband and two kids (by witchdoctors and their followers) in Africa a few years ago.  He can’t really work but he considers his ministry to be his work anyway.  He has nothing but Christ and he knows it.  He is worthless in the eyes of the world and he knows it.  His simplicity is uncomplicated, without distractions, focused on the one thing that matters. He is not pure but he is righteous.  Not mature but still following.  Not without problems but making every effort to continue down the path.  He has nothing else in this life.  I envy him.

He also has a tumor in his brain.  He just found out.  He is scared to death.

He is my friend.

I can’t say that he is a particularly godly man, or that he walks the Way of the Cross very well or consistently (neither do I).  What I can say is that he wants to.  His passion is Christ’s glory.  He is a sinner made righteous by the cross.  He follows Him down the path seeking Jerusalem.  He stumbles and often falls.  He gets back up.  He is tripped up by fellow Christians and religious people alike.  He is even pushed off the path, rejected, threatened with calling the police if he enters the church again.  You can see him there weeping in my arms with my family all around laying hands on him and praying for him, the one thing that matters to him, the love and care of his spiritual family carelessly and thoughtlessly ripped from him as if it doesn’t matter when it is the only thing that matters in all the world.  Outside of the community, on a street corner a few blocks from church, afraid to come into the sanctuary and join in the praises of the people and hearing the Word of God.  Seeking Jerusalem.  The new Jerusalem where spiritual unity through the power of reconciliation and seeking the anointing of God are the meat and drink of those who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness.  Seeking Jerusalem and not finding it.  Weeping over Jerusalem and, like a mother who has lost her child, not even wanting to be consoled.  If we only knew that one day his life and passion and how we treated him will be the standard by which we are judged.

“The King will reply, ”I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40 NIV).

This Lenten season I will join my friend outside the walls.  Seeking Jerusalem.  I will not simply fast my addiction to sugar and carbs or deny myself meat and eat fish instead.  I will not simply give up some entertainment or stop using social media so much.  This is not pretend.  This is real life and it hurts and I will suffer…..and perhaps even die.  Following the way of the cross is not for the weak of heart.  It is not for the half-hearted.  It is not for the religious or for the moral.  It is for followers of the One who suffered and died for us, for me, for my friend.  It is the path of our Lord and Savior and we are called to walk in it.  It is time to get rid of everything that hinders us from following the light of the world into that dark vale.

It is an invitation, of course, but it is also a command for those who have chosen to accept commands and trust them when they come from the King.  The Way of the Cross beckons.  The path is before you.  The first step must be yours.  It’s time to follow.

The Desert Warrior

P.S.  Talk to Him (right now, go on).  He can´t wait to hear from you.

“Lord, thank you for the cross and your willingness to walk down that path of suffering….for me.  I have to assume that my situation is far worse than I can imagine if you decided that the cross was the only solution.  I have a lot to learn.  Teach me the Way of the Cross.  I want to follow in it this Lenten season and for the rest of my life.  I want to confess something to you and I need your help to make it right……..(go on, keep going)…….”

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“The Three Truths of Holiness”

28 Saturday Apr 2018

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Temptations2The Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“I am the vine, you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit;  apart from me you can do nothing……if you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.  This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15: 5,7,8 NIV).

The Three Truths of Holiness

The first truth of a holy life is that the abundant life of full surrender and consecration to His service is the NORMAL Christian life (which includes unconscious and unintentional sin and pollution of sin lived in humility in the shadow of the cross).  The abundant life is the normal Christian life.

The second truth of a holy life is that living in sin (whether intentional, conscious sin or spiritual drift) is dangerous to your spiritual health and demands a relational answer to the question of whether or not we are saved and if so, whether or not we want fellowship with God more than we want to live in sin (if saved and immature we are like a married man living like a single guy in a bar flirting with the barmaid).  Living in sin and complacency is dangerous to your soul.

The third truth of a holy life is that relational maturity is the “complex good” work of God which he does as we seek the “simple good” of character maturity making every effort in faith to please God while living the abundant life walking in the Spirit but sometimes failing and falling into conscious sin temporarily.  Holiness is a heart set apart for God.

Holiness is the desire to be exclusive (set apart) to God and intimate with Him so that you can know Him and enjoy Him forever and expresses itself in a heartfelt participation in the process of  growing in Christlike character in the context of relational maturity. 

Without holiness, the Bible says, we will not see the Lord.  The problem is that holiness is not merely moral perfection but a heart set apart exclusively for God  growing in character in the context of ongoing growth in relational maturity.

It’s like saying, without true love, every marriage is a sham.  True.  Relational and character growth in the context of a marriage commitment empowered by the humility of confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation based on the cross of Christ makes for a very romantic and ministry oriented marital relationship.

True oneness (unity).  True glory.  True holiness.

But it is a oneness or unity in Christ. It is the glory of Christ in us and it is the holiness of Christ lived out in our lives.  That holiness is relational.

Holiness is being set apart for a relationship with God resulting in service to others.  Holiness is revealing the glory of God through a Christlike character in the context of a growing intimate love for God.

It is the holiness of walking in the Spirit in the righteousness of Christ set apart unto good works as a living, walking testimony of someone who loves God and wants to please Him out of true love not for the temporal benefits.

Without that true love for God rooted in Christ, we will not see the Lord.

You may be married, but the question is “do you truly love your spouse?”  Given that 50% of marriages end in divorce and the other 50% mostly live in complacency and often stay together for the kids and or their social/spiritual reputation or fear of being alone and rejected, the question stands.  Yes, there are bright spots and exceptions, but the question still stands.

Do you truly love God?  If the answer is no, but I truly want to, you are on the right track.  That is the evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And furthermore, how do you know?  What is the evidence of your love?  or your desire to learn to love?

Is it passive and complacent or passionate and romantic?  How does it hold up under pressure, temptation and time?  If true love is the litmus test of our salvation, would we admit that we aren’t actually Christians at all or perhaps luke-warm and immature and in desperate need of repentance?

If the call to abundant living makes you feel guilty and pressured, it’s time to recheck your relationship to God.  Are you in a relationship with God through the work of Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit, or not?

If the abundant life is something you desire, then get on your knees and humble yourself and pray because adventure and power and blessing beyond measure await those who are committed to true love (in marriage and in spirituality).

Holiness is a matter of the heart.  Holiness is a mature, exclusive, true love for God in full surrender and consecration to his service in the context of quick confession and ongoing repentance/discipleship when we sin.  We desire fellowship with God over a life apart from Him in sin and rebellion and it is possible because of the cross, the glory of God expressed in the work and person of Jesus Christ.

It is the holiness of Christ in us that is our hope of glory.

The Desert Warrior

P.S.  Let’s talk to God…..

Lord, you know the cry of my heart is to live in your presence, in the abundant life in your Spirit.  I cannot do it without your help but I also know that I must make every effort as well.  I also know that this lifestyle of faith and abundance was meant to be lived together with other believers.  Help me to find a small group of believers that can help each other live this normal Christian life of abundance and spiritual prosperity even in the desert.  In your name I pray.  Amen.

 

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Seeking Jerusalem – Day 50 “The Road to Jerusalem”

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by in 5. The Road to Jerusalem, Seeking Jerusalem

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away……One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”  And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.  It shone with the glory of God….I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.  The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp…..On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there….”(Revelations 21:1-4, 9-11a, 22,23,25 NIV).

The Road to Jerusalem

When my daughter was 12 years old, she was full of curiosity.  And she would ask very good questions too.  But she didn’t always like the answers.

“Why is God hiding?” she would ask.  “Why doesn’t he protect me from hurting myself.  Doesn´t he love me?”  “If God loves the whole world, why doesn’t he just get rid of hell and let everyone go to heaven?”  Those were the hard questions.

But she had other questions as well.  “Who was Cain’s wife?”  “Who created God?” and “What is heaven like?”  Obviously, we had a lot of talks together coming home from school, walking in the park, sitting in my office.

Everyone knows that by age seven or so, kids become able to make moral distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad.  By age eleven or twelve, they are full of curiosity about their world (and spiritual things).  By eighteen, society deems them to be responsible for their own actions but it is still an open question when real maturity sets it.  For women it seems to happen earlier than with men but in both cases it appears to have to do with relationships.  Marriage for women and a firstborn child for men.

The curiosity of a twelve year old is part of the natural order of things.  They are curious about everything.  There is nothing all that strange in it.  It is more of an innocent curiosity directed toward a multitude of subjects.  If you are a spiritual family, it will naturally evoke a lot of spiritual questions.  That doesn’t indicate spiritual maturity necessarily, just spiritual curiousity.  Which is great!

The truth is that when an adult is curious about spiritual things, even hungry to understand the things of God, we would consider that NOT to be normal for an adult and therefore it may be an indication of a holy curiousity, perhaps even evidence of the presence and work of the Holy Spirit within.  But whether twelve or twenty, the answers can still be frustrating.

Why is God hiding?  Well, he is and he isn’t….

Why doesn’t He protect me?  Well, he does and he doesn’t…..

Why am I not perfect?  Well, you are but you aren’t…..

A lot of answers are like that in the spiritual realm because of the disconnect between the way we see the world and the way God sees the world.  We think the world is normal.  God thinks the world is deeply abnormal.  We judge things by what we can see.  God judges things by what is unseen.  We think in terms of the temporal.  God thinks in terms of the eternal.  And this difference makes all the difference in the world.

Yes, by all rights, if the Bible is true, if the resurrection has already happened, if Jesus has triumphed over the grave, then things should be different.  But they aren’t.  And yet they are.  Things are already true but they have not yet been revealed as true.  It isn’t obvious to the entire world that God exists, that Jesus is king, that the Devil is defeated.  The book of Revelations talks about war, and people dying, and great disasters happening before the end will come.  There is still a purpose, a job to do, a war to be won in the hearts and minds of people, and churches, and nations.

We live in an in-between time, a purgatory of sorts, that defines our worldview.  This is the time of already but not yet,  here but coming, true but not yet revealed.  Nothing makes sense if you don’t understand this one truth.  This existence is abnormal and strange.  It is a truce of sorts between God and a world in rebellion.  God stays His hand in judgment so that He might turn His face toward us in grace.  All of this is made possible by the cross.  We are at war.  We are working for the King behind enemy lines.  Our union with Christ is our identity.  His great rescue attempt is our purpose.  Our role and testimony is crucial in the process and that is our significance  This identity, purpose and significance is what brings meaning to our lives.

Yet, most people are living their own lives with their own purposes, usually focused on business and family success as defined by the world.  There may be a religious veneer to give it a better shine but, at heart, their stewardship is not on behalf of the king but on behalf of their own lives and projects.  They are hedging their bets, doing enough in the church to calm their own consciousness but not enough to upset the apple cart of their own worldly ambitions.  I am just as guilty as they are.

Somedays I just give up on seeking Jerusalem.  I no longer have the energy or the will to continue to fight for something that nobody else wants.  The book of Revelations describes the new Jerusalem in absolutely wonderful terms, glowing with gems and gold, perfect in dimension, like a bride beautifully adorned for her bridegroom, Jesus.  All of those things are metaphors of course.  John makes it clear that we are the bridegroom of the King, the true church, all believers from every tribe and nation, those who have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb.  It sounds wonderful and it will be when we are in glory.  But what about now.

We are already now the bride of Christ.  Yes, I know that we live in the already but not yet but the already is already here.  We are the bride of Christ.  Our unity in Christ, our spiritual unity in following the way of the cross, in confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation is already here.  It is what marks us as Christians, that we love one another as Christ has loved us.  It is our calling card, our testimony, our holiness set apart for his use as vessels of mercy and clay pots filled with the treasure of a new relationship with God through Christ.  And in that spiritual unity we receive the anointing of God to be and do what He has called us to be and do.  A holy nation.  A called-out people.  A light in the darkness.  The new Jerusalem where God dwells among men not just as individuals having the Holy Spirit within but as a community where the Holy Spirit is evident in the relationships between those same people.

It sounds good but where is it to be found?  Can anyone name a place?  I had a taste of it in Bible College (even more than Seminary).  They say that the L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland was that kind of place.  Many parachurch organizations (especially among the youth) have achieved some real spiritual unity.  The evangelical revivals in sub-sahara africa seem to bear the marks of this kind of fellowship.  Individual churches such as the Brooklyn Tabernacle in NY or Rey de Reyes in Buenos Aires have accomplished it to some degree. Perhaps there are even more places that I am not aware of right now.  Certainly in many small group ministries this kind of fellowship is achieved at least for a while depending on the leader. And there are many instances where one person will reconcile with another regardless of what is going on in their church.  God always has his remnant who follow Him.

And yet, my point still stands.  Why is it that so many churches do not exhibit the marks of a true church, a true spiritual fellowship living under the anointing of God?  I think there are a number of reasons.

Wheat and Tares

1.  Jesus told us that there would be both wheat and tares (weeds) in the church and that we should not try to tear them up but rather leave them until the final judgment and let God separate the sheep from the goats.  The only problem is that I think Jesus was assuing that the wheat would be in charge of the church and not the weeds.  Or perhaps Jesus simply doesn’t care much about the institutional church and believed that the wheat is always the wheat and the weeds would always need to be ministered to, evangelized and transformed before the final day comes.

Leadership Positions

2.  But, even so, the institutional church still has a role to play and we should hope and pray that the leadership of the visible church, local or national or international, would still be wheat and not tares.  That is also not always true.  In my own church, it is amazing to point out that over the years, anyone and everyone has been invited into leadership whether they were Christians or not, spiritually mature or not, good leaders or not.   It was a question of bodies and getting positions filled.  If we are so foolish as to give up our positions of leadership to people who are weeds (by their own confession) or even wheat but immature and not yet ready for leadership, then we are just asking for trouble.

The Spirituality of the Pastor

3.  Even when we have a group of leaders who are Christians with varying levels of maturity, a lot depends on the Pastor and his or her spiritual life.  In worldly terms, we say that the leader determines the culture of the organization.  The same is true spiritually.  If the Pastor does not practice the way of the cross and prioritizes the spiritual unity  of the leaders (at the very least) in order to get the anointing of God on all of their efforts, then nothing much will actually happen.

The Spirituality of the Board

4.  When it comes time to choose a Pastor, the Board needs to be clear about what kind of Pastor they are seeking.  But if the Board members themselves are not seeking Jerusalem (spiritual unity that brings the anointing of God) then they will not choose a Pastor who is seeking Jerusalem.

Jim Collins, in his book Good To Great, describes companies that make the leap from being a good company to being a great company  The key element seems to be that the Board chooses what he calls a Level Five leader.  Most of the time the Board did it by accident but, once it was done, the Level Five leader would create an executive team of up and coming Level Five leaders as well as encourage and transform the Board into a group of Level Five leaders.  That is his main work so that he can leave behind him an organization deeply rooted in the culture of  Level Five leadership which knows how to transform themselves into a great company on an ongoing basis.

That same idea is necessary for the church.  It all starts at the leadership level.

Spiritual Conversations

5.  That doesn’t mean that the spiritual leadership doesn’t have a lot of work to do in the congregation as a whole (which is full of wheat and weeds).  It does.  Their focus is, of course, in ministering to the weeds, bringing even more weeds into the church and ministering to them as well.  The leadership will become adept at Spiritual Conversations in terms of salvation as well as discipleship.  They will encourage people to accept the cross and to walk in the way of the cross.  Every elder (as well as other spiritual leaders) will have a small group to work with but also be trained and expected to engage in spiritual conversations whenever and whereever possible.  Each one of them have a Life Ministry in which they share their walk with God, their faith, their hunger and thirst for righteousness, answering questions, giving comfort, and lighting up the darkness with the truth of the word of God.  If they aren’t able to do this kind of work, why are they elders?  The administration of the church can be done by a small executive council of three people who can take care of the mundane issues in the church.  Any strategic issues can be brought to the Board once a month.  The idea is to stay focused on the real work of an elder.

Preaching the Cross

6.  Pastors need to preach about the way of the cross.  When was the last time you heard a sermon on sin in your church?  Or confession?  Or repentance?  We always hear about forgiveness but not about reconciliation.  Many Pastors have lost their edge (or they never had it in the first place).  The Devil works hard to keep us confused about the heart of the gospel.  He doesn’t care about moralistic sermons or twenty minute talks about something in the Bible that everyone has heard a hundred times before.  It makes no difference.  It doesn’t change any hearts.  The Devil laughs on the back row.  How many times I have seen the Pastor (or a preaching elder) preach on a topic one moment and right after church do the exact opposite.  One elder preached on mercy but in a meeting right after church with a young woman who needed some help and asked for some mercy, he denied it, even getting mad at her for having the gall to try to hold him to the very thing that he just preached about.  How dare you?  Pastors need to live the way of the cross but they also must preach it.  Paul said that he preached Christ, and him crucified.  Nothing else.  We would do well to do the same.

The Priority of Prayer

7.  Finally we need to talk about Prayer.  The whole point of God giving us an impossible job to do is to remind us that we cannot do it alone.  It must be done in dependence on the Holy Spirit in prayer.  Without individual and corporate prayer focused on our purpose and rooted in our unity in Christ where we take hold of the will of God and the promises of God by faith and apply them to our daily situations, we have no resurrection power to get the job done. Resurrection power is within in the presence of the Holy Spirit but it can only be accessed through ongoing reconciliation with others and full surrender to God.  In prayer, the anointing falls.  In prayer, the solutions come.  In prayer, our focus sharpens.  In prayer, God acts.  In prayer, we are transformed.  Nothing happens without prayer in spiritual unity.

The Religious Spirit

Let me try to be clear.  What point is there in going to church on a Sunday morning if you are not willing to get right with God in full surrender or reconcile with your brother or sister before you come before God?  That is the whole point after all.  How difficult it is to go to church knowing that your Pastor doesn’t know, like or trust you.  How hard it is to see him or her preaching their heart out and yet knowing that this guy over there and that woman over here are stiff and hard to anything he has to say because he hurt them so deeply.  Whether in high church tradition or low church informality, whether the Pastor weeps as he preaches or calls everyone to literally fall to their knees in worship as we sing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”  It means nothing, it transforms noone because there is sin in the camp.  I’m not saying that God, in his mercy, cannot still minister through a Pastor like that, because he can.  But Jesus also said to those who claimed that they cast demons out in his name, that he never knew them.  Ministry effectiveness is no excuse for spiritual deadness and disobedience.  This is the religious spirit and we are all prone to fall prey to its deception.  Having the form of religion but denying its power.

Seeking Jerusalem is a question of seeking the spiritual unity that brings the anointing of God upon his people for effective ministry.  Seeking Jerusalem is about seeking the presence of God as a body of believers (or at least as a group of leaders).  Seeking Jerusalem is about walking in the Spirit together as a body.  The problem with mankind is broken relationships between us and God and between us and others.  The solution is the cross.  Jesus came to die on the cross to heal relationships.  Healed relationships are the highest priority in the church.  It is already true that we are reconciled to each other but it is also not yet complete.  It is in that focus, that struggle, that priority that we will discover the resurrection power of God within us as a group of believers that will transform our world and empower our ministry.

The Desert Warrior

P.S. Let’s talk to God……

Lord, the truth is that I don’t love you enough to do things your way.  Help me to have that focus, that priority and help me to fight for it everyday.  Of course my sinful habits draw me away from that unity to my individual life and concerns.  Obviously, my lack of love makes me selfish about my own issues and desires.  I need your help to overcome.  Seeking Jerusalem is the struggle but it is a struggle already won even though it has not yet revealed itself fully.  Help me to stay focused and to work hard towards that spiritual unity.  In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.

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Seeking Jerusalem – Day 46 “Hanna’s Secret”

23 Friday Mar 2018

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1,2 NIV).

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, 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” (Romans 12:1,2 NIV).

The Secret

Do you remember the book, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne that they also made into a movie?  It was really popular for a while and promoted what they called The Law of Attraction which claims that thinking positively about something can make it appear in your life.  A dubious idea at best.  It was clothed with some religious language (ask, believe, and receive) and fits well into the Prosperity Gospel that has swept through the American churches in recent years.  It sold 20 million copies at least and was translated into more than 50 languages.  Rhonda Byrne certainly attracted a lot of money and fame into her life.  Maybe it does work!

Well, I have a better alternative for you to read.  It is called The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith and was first published in 1870.  It’s a classic on the spiritual life and well worth reading.  It sold only 2 million copies but was also translated into multiple languages.  Hannah Whitall Smith was born in Philadelphia from a long line of prominent Quakers.  She and her husband were lay speakers for the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life Movement in England.  They were the forerunners of the Keswick Conferences and the Deeper Life Movement that have been a blessing to millions.

Hannah didn’t have a perfect life by a long shot.  She had seven children but only three lived into adulthood, one marrying the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell.  She was quite active in the women’s rights and suffrage movements and her views on the role of women were quite progressive for the times.  But her later years were rocked with scandal because of the sexual misconduct of her husband, Robert, and his ongoing temptation with adultery.  Hannah died in England in 1911.  She lived a modest life and some would say that she ended her life in disgrace.

And yet….

Sure, she was influenced by Wesley’s view of sanctification and bordered on some dubious Christian mysticism.  She even became a Universalist in her later years believing that everyone will ultimately be saved and no one will go to hell.  Obviously, there are some things here that we should take with a grain of salt.  Many people criticize her view of sanctification by calling it the “Let go and let God” theology of holiness.  Just relax and let God do it all.  But this is a truly unfair caricature of what she taught.  The later Keswick Conferences and the Deeper Life Movement corrected some of the imbalances in her theology and are now considered to be one of the most influential spiritual movements of our time.   It is easy to miss the message of her book and that would be a real shame because she got one thing absolutely right.  She had found The Secret (and, no, it wasn’t the Law of Attraction).

It really isn’t a secret, I suppose, since the Bible certainly teaches it over and over again, but she put it so well and stayed focused on the one thing that mattered most.  We have to recognize that she, indeed, deserves her place as one of the great spiritual writers of the previous generation.  She found the Secret and I want to share it with you.

Once you understand what the secret is you will see it everywhere in the gospels as the background to all of the apostolic writings, the disciples efforts, the encouragements, the admonitions, the rebukes.  Once you see it, you will recognize it as the heart of the gospel, the focus of the cross, the one experience of the new testament church that makes sense of everything they went through.

It is only a secret to those who are still dallying with sin, still half-hearted in their walk with God, still confused about the Bible’s teaching on holiness as a life set apart to God in full surrender and consecration to his work and purposes.

There, I’ve said it.  It just slipped out.  It is a secret that the Devil will work hard to keep from your eyes but if you let the Holy Spirit show it to you, it can transform your life and your walk with God.  Hannah puts it this way.  What she means by the secret is “an entire surrender of the whole being to God – spirit, soul, and body placed under His absolute control, for Him to do with us just what He pleases.  We mean that the language of our hearts, under all circumstances and in view of every act, is to be “Thy will be done.”  We mean the giving up of all liberty of choice.  We mean a life of inevitable obedience” (p. 48).  Just like Jesus in his Temptation on the Way to the Cross in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Yes, I know.  It isn’t really a secret.  We sing songs about it in church (I surrender all) and we hear sermons that call us to repentance as a form of surrender of our wills to the will of God.  And yet so few people do it or live in that kind of surrender on an ongoing basis.  For Hannah, it was a way of life.  It was a place of rest.  She could decide once and for all (and then renew that commitment as many times as necessary) that she belonged body and soul to her Lord Jesus Christ and that meant nothing less than absolute obedience to His will.  It meant searching her heart to root out any area of secrecy or rebellion or self-will.  It meant training in righteousness for the moment of temptation and resorting to the way of the cross when she sinned.  But she got back on the path as quickly as she could and she dealt with sin ruthlessly and efficiently.  It didn’t all happen at once but the first step still could put you entirely into the abundant life even though you might have to learn and train yourself to deal with your wayward emotions, mind and will.

This is the abundant life.  It was a focus on the relationship first of all.  Hannah made a big point (and that is the secret) of focusing on the relationship first and in that context deal with the issue of sin and temptation and failings and difficulties.  Without prioritizing the relationship first, all of your efforts at holiness are bound to fail since they are rooted in the flesh and not in the Spirit.

We often try to deal with sin and temptation without first making a pledge, a commitment to one hundred percent surrender.  That is what Paul meant by trying to obey God in the power of the flesh.  Jesus isn’t interested.  It doesn’t work.  Our walk in holiness is not meant to be our work but rather Christ’s work in us.  Our job is to stay in a right relationship with him (and others) through the way of the cross by confessing our sins and then making a pledge, a commitment to a lifestyle of repentance and obedience.  We deal with the specific sin, of course, by changing our ways and getting whatever help we need to deal with it but we also need to make a commitment to the overall lifestyle/relationship that we will follow.  Just like marriage.  We cannot let sin discourage us from this posture of surrender, of loving obedience as a way of life.  We cannot let our weaknesses distract us from the relationship that is ours through faith both in terms of justification as well as holiness.

Full surrender and consecration to his purposes and will is the focus and attitude of our hearts in our relationship with God made possible through the cross.  Sin cannot stop us from entering into that abundant life.  We may commit ourselves one moment and then find ourselves sinning the next.  As soon as we are aware of it, we need to act on it.  Confess it.  Ask for God to help us with it.  Deal with it.  As one Pastor has so aptly put it, “Sin is the easiest thing to deal with if you take it to the cross.”  There are many pitfalls that we must learn to avoid and that is part of the training in righteosness.

Let me give you one example.  Sometimes our propensity to sin can discourage us and we think that this is “a righteous grief and disgust at ourselves that such things could be any temptation to us” (p. 125).  Hannah goes on to explain, “we are discouraged because we have expected something from ourselves, and have been sorely disappointed not to find that something there” (p.125).  But this is nothing but wounded self-love.  “True humility can bear to see its own utter weakness and foolishness revealed, because it never expected anything from itself, and knows that its only hope and expectation must be in God” (p. 125).

This kind of training in righteousness will keep our relationship with God right and mortify our flesh so that it cannot interfere with the abundant life.  Does that mean that we will never sin?  No.  It means that we can grow in righteousness.  It means that we can become more mature in the relationship (just like human relationships).  It means that we can certainly learn how to stay focused and not get distracted from the one thing that matters – staying connected to Jesus so that His life can flow in us and through us.

So what did Hannah mean by “letting go and letting God.”  Well, remember that that is a caricature of what she actually meant.  Yes, some of her language isn’t as precise as it should be.  She was a layperson not a theologian but what she lacked in clarity she made up for in passion.  When you look at the work it takes to stay in right relationship with God and the strength of will it needs, the determination it takes, you wonder what part God has to play in all of this.  What Hannah believed is that our wills would be strengthened by God and that our determination to follow Him with our whole hearts would be supported by the Holy Spirit but we have to take the step of faith.

We have to believe in faith that the resurrection power of God is there waiting for us to access it and that it is free for whoever wants it badly enough to commit their lives into the hands of God.  That full surrender and consecration to his purposes and will is the secret that unlocks the power of the abundant life and brings peace and joy and love beyond measure.

The idea is to let go of our own self-will and to take hold of God by fully committing ourselves to His will for our lives.  When we take this step of faith, God will respond and will give us access to that resurrection power that can transform lives.  There are literally thousands of testimonies that it happens exactly like that.  Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith but we must take hold of him by faith through a complete (not partial) surrender of our wills.  If you love me, Jesus said, you will obey my commandments.  Period.  You can argue all you want that your will isn’t strong enough for that (even if we are only talking about conscious sins) but that is the whole point.  Your will (and mine) most certainly isn’t strong enough to maintain that commitment or to keep our promises.  We are entirely dependent on Him to give us the power to continue and He has promised that power to us.  We need to grab ahold of it by faith.

There is a lot more to say about this secret of the Happy Christian life, not the least of which is that this happiness is really the true joy that comes from surrendering all things into his hands and then seeing his power come alive in you.  Are we always able to hold on to this power without falling?  Of course not.  That’s not the point.  Let’s not get all perfectionistic all of a sudden.  It isn’t about being perfect in our obedience at every moment of every day but rather it is about fighting to stay in constant contact, in right relationship, in the peace of His presence as much as possible.

And every time we are knocked off the path, we scramble right back up without remorse or shame because He loves us and wants us back in his arms absolutely as fast as possible.  That’s why He died on the cross to make it possible for us to sin and repent and sin and repent not seven times but seventy times seven.  That means that our desire to get right back on the path, to struggle to stay in that sweet spot, to keep coming back to him without shame is a symbol of our faith in his salvation.  There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Of course we belong back on the path in his arms.  We are one with him.  Where else would we be, where else could we go?  This is the secret of the abundant life.  Walk in it.

The Desert Warrior

P.S. Let’s talk to God…..

Lord, I want to surrender my life to you fully and completely.  I consecrate my life, my resources, my family, my reputation to your work and purposes and will.  Please train me in righteousness so that I can deal with sin and rebellion and failure quickly and efficiently through the way of the cross.  Help me to live in the joy of the abundant life.  In Jesus name I pray.  Amen.

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Seeking Jerusalem – Day 45 “The Helper”

22 Thursday Mar 2018

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away.  Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regards to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.  I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:7-13a NIV).

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (Romans 8:26,27 NIV).

The Helper

Frederick Buechner, in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, tells us that the world of the gospel is “a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight  It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too  It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive.  Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily every after….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still” (quoted in The Sacred Romance p. 46).

The Gospel as a true fairy tale.  Now that’s an interesting perspective.

The point is to understand the Bible not as a set of do’s and don’ts or even as a series of propositional truths about life or as a manual for living well.  We need to understand the Bible as God’s story, God’s great rescue operation.  It’s about people and relationships and plots and counterplots and battles against sin and evil.  It’s about saving people.  It is the greatest story, the greatest drama ever told.  It’s fantastic to be sure but it is true.

And we have a crucial role to play in this unfolding drama.  We find our identity in union with Christ (like our union/relationship/oneness with our spouse).  We find our purpose in joining him in his great rescue operation, in building his kingdom.  We find our significance in the crucial role we play together with him in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Those three things, identity, purpose and significance, create meaning for our lives.

So let’s talk about the Holy Spirit, our Counselor, our Helper.  Of course the first question to ask is what He is supposed to help us to do.  And this is no simple or easy question.

Many people think that His job is to make our lives easier by blessing us with abundant living and prosperity and health. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Many people think that His job is to make us holy through the management of situations and relationships to which we are encouraged to act in faith and repentance.  That is closer to the truth but it isn’t enough.

Even our sanctification has a purpose.

As C.S. Lewis liked to say, “God is creating a certain type of person,” one who is like Christ, most certainly, but he is creating this person with a particular purpose in mind.

In fact, it is in the fulfilling of our purpose as co-workers with Christ in His great rescue operation that we truly become like him.  It isn’t just about morality but about relationship and not just about relationship but rather a relationship infused with purpose and direction. 

Much like a marriage that is not focused on itself but rather focused outward in ministry towards others.  That is what makes a marriage healthy.  That is what makes a Christian, and a Church, healthy.

So let’s state it another way.  God is creating a certain type of person, like Christ, who has a certain type of job, like Christ, and it is in the completing of that purpose that one becomes like Christ and experiences the abundant life of wonderful blessings even in the midst of suffering and persecution.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Yes, we will need a Helper.

And Jesus said that the first thing this Helper will do is to make us feel miserable.  He will convict the world of guilt.  I hate helpers like that.

It’s the Jewish mother syndrome.  I’ll just sit here in the dark while you go and have fun with your friends at the mall, she says.  Talk about manipulation and guilt.  That’s not what we are talking about here.  That kind of guilt is false guilt.

The thing about humans is that we can feel guilty about things that are not our fault but we can also NOT feel guilty about things that are clearly our responsibility.  The work of the Holy Spirit is in the second category.  And that is important, healing work.

To deny your guilt is to suppress your true relationship with the other.  To confess in transparency and honesty is to create a healthy relationship.  Of course, this assumes that you believe that God exists in the first place and that your relationship with Him is both the source of all your troubles in life as well as the solution.

Our minds are darkened with regards to our relationship with God.

That shouldn’t surprise us much.  We are mostly darkened in our understanding of our relationship to most other human beings as well.

Let me give you one example.  It’s more on the light, fun side of things but the point is still well taken.  I remember being in Bible College and my girlfriend, who would later become my wife,  told me one day that a certain girl really liked me a lot.  I was totally blind to it.  I had no idea.  I think in general that guys are more dense than girls when it comes to relationships but I was shocked that I had no idea, that I could not read the signs, that there was this pretty girl who actually liked me.  It was flattering.  It was interesting.  I had just started going out with the girl that would later become my wife and it made me look at her differently too.  I started looking for the signs of interest and found them.  It was a real eye-opener for me.

Some of us are more blind than others.

Guys may be more blind than girls, at least in general.  Apparently you can train yourself to look for the signs, but the blindness exists and it has something to do with relationships.  Are we surprised that we are blind to the real situation in our relationship to God?  We shouldn’t be.

We will need help.  Jesus said that when the Counselor comes, the Helper, he will lead us into all truth.  That isn’t just propositional truth but relational truth.  He will reveal to us the true nature of our relationship with God, it’s brokenness, its coldness, its distance and what God, through Christ has done about it.  He will lead us into all truth.

Of course there are a lot of other passages about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives but it is important to pick up on one last one from the book of Romans where Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit knows what we need to pray about and he helps us in our weakness and in our prayers with groans that no words can utter.

First of all, note that Paul is talking about the Holy Spirit helping us in our weakness, in our brokenness.  Remember that he already helped us to get to the place of weakness.  He convicted us of our guilt, he taught us the true nature of our relationship with God and how he solved it through Jesus Christ.

Now we stand before Him in our weakness, in our inability to love, with a job far too big for us to do alone, unable to carry the burden of glory that has been thrust upon us, terrified of the importance of the role we have been asked to play in the drama of redemption.  We are in exactly the right place.  The place of weakness.  We need to pray.

But before we talk about prayer, we need to acknowledge a few pre-conditions of true prayer.

Obviously we aren’t talking about formulaic or formal prayers which are just many meaningless words thrown into the air by religious types the world over.  Forget it.  God is not a fool.

We also aren’t talking about the prayers of people who will not prepare their hearts by coming to the Lord with their sins dealt with, their relationships healed through confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.

James tells us that the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  Most of our prayers are not simply because we ignore these preconditions to prayer.  The righteousness spoken of here is not sinlessness but rather the incorporation of the righteousness and maturity of Christ as we walk the road to Jerusalem, the way of the cross.  If the cross is not central in our lives, in our relationships, in our prayers, then just forget about it.  Don’t waste the time.  Your prayers aren’t getting past the ceiling.

And when you pray, you are coming in Jesus’ name, in his authority, not in your own and so you must exercise faith in the relationship and faith in the will of God.

My wife once asked me whether or not we should pray about giving a financial gift to a pastor who was working with the poor and had a specific need that had to be dealt with.  I said no.  We shouldn’t pray.  She just looked at me.  I told her to just give the man the money that he needed.  We didn’t need to ask God whether or not we should actually do his will when the opportunity arises.  That was an occasion NOT to pray.  What were we supposed to say?  Lord, should we actually do what you already told us to do?  Help us to understand your ways, O Lord.  We are confused.  I don’t think so.  Just do it.

There are lots of other situations where we WILL have to pray because God’s will is not clear or we aren’t certain what road to take when there is more than one route to take.

James tells us that there is a prayer that God always answers in the affirmative.  The prayer for wisdom.  God loves to guide us.  He loves to show us the way.  Sometimes through direct illumination, many times through a brother or sister in the Lord, often through His word.

But when we pray, a pre-condition of prayer is that we are ready to be the instrument of God answering our prayers.  We don’t just pray for financial help for a friend, we have to be ready to provide that help.  We can’t just pray that someone else provides a car for a needy family, we go out and talk to people, raise the money, rob a bank or whatever but WE get the job done.  If we are praying for it, we have been chosen to be God’s answer (or, at least, a part of God’s answer) to the very prayer that we are praying.

Praying in faith means respecting the relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit and making sure that we come to prayer as we come to that relationship, ready to obey the will of God, having dealt with our sin and broken relationships, fully believing that he hears us and will give us the wisdom we need.  But sometimes, even that is not enough.

Tough things can happen to us to knock us off our feet.  We can get embroiled in difficult situations, be persecuted by people inside and outside of the church.  We, or our loved ones, can get cancer, diabetes, have a heart attack, an automobile accident, be raped, killed.  Life is hell sometimes and God knows it.  There is a battle going on.  He is in control but the stakes are high and people will get hurt.  We may be saved for eternity but it still hurts.

And when those moments happen, we don’t even know what to pray for.  We just cry out in a primal way to God and speak to Him with our tears.  We have no words.  In those moments, when we are in travail for a lost soul, when our wayward son or daughter has gotten themselves into real trouble, when someone is badly hurt, when life is just overwhelming, the Holy Spirit in our weakness, cries out to God the Father with groans and tears that express our deepest fears and desires and longings.  And that is a good place to be.  Even when heaven appears to be silent and no answers are forthcoming, even then, especially then, the Holy Spirit is there with us, groaning in travail to God.

You see, there is a miracle happening.

When all the rest of the world cry out “Curse God and die,” you are there crying out to God.

When all the rest of the world is trying to convince you that God is evil and we, humans, are good, you are there crying out to God.

When all the rest of the world is shaking their fists at the injustice of God, when your heart is cold, your feelings numb, when you know that you are weak and have nothing to offer and yet you still cry out to God and in all honesty tell him of your weakness, your sin, your stubbornness, your cold heart and you cry out for some sort of solution, some sort of intervention, some sort of help, you don’t even realize it but you are a living miracle, surrounded by the Holy Spirit, groaning together with you when there are no words to express your hurt and humiliation and weakness. 

God is listening very, very closely to everything that is said, the Holy Spirit translating your weakness into the strength of faith and presenting y

our situation before the throne of God. That is a relationship.  That is a desert warrior.

We are not alone. 

The world would have us think that He has abandoned us to the dark night of the soul but it is precisely in that dark night that we are closest to God and He has his ear finely tuned to hear every last thing that we say or feel.

We are not alone. 

The world would have us believe that we have been abandoned but the very fact that you are there on the floor, on your knees, spread out on your bed, crying out to God, is testament to the presence of the Holy Spirit filling that Holy Sanctuary of prayer.  It is a romance after all.  That is what the story is all about.  You are the maiden in distress.  You will be rescued by your knight in shinning armor.  He will save you from the dragon, the beast, the evil one.  Even from your own sin.

We are not alone. 

He loves us fiercely and deeply.  That lover is the Holy Spirit who is wedded to us for all eternity because of the work of Christ on the cross.  He is our lover.  He is our Counselor.  He is our helper.  He is our friend.  We are not alone in this struggle, this battle for the hearts and souls of our family, our church.  We are not alone.  We have a Helper.

The Desert Warrior

P.S. Let’s talk to God….

Lord, I am overwhelmed by the deep and fierce love you have for me that you would share my tears and groans and translate them into heavenly music and song to please the ear of God.  I am entirely yours and you are entirely mine and I would have it no other way.  Thank you for being my lover, my best friend, my counselor, my helper.  In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.

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The Holiness Project – Day 5 “The Sin Addiction”

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

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Temptations2The Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“So I find this law at work.  When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  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 7:21-25a NIV).

“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 NIV).

The Sin Addiction

Until we come to terms with war as the context of our days, we will not understand life. We will misinterpret ninety percent of what is happening around us and to us. It will be very hard to believe that God’s intentions toward us are life abundant; it will be even harder not to feel that somehow we are just blowing it. Worse, we will begin to accept some really awful things about God. That four-year-old little girl being molested by her daddy—that is “God’s will “? That ugly divorce that tore your family apart—God wanted that to happen, too? And that plane crash that took the lives of so many—that was ordained by God?

Most people get stuck at some point because God appears to have abandoned them. He is not coming through. Speaking about her life with a mixture of disappointment and cynicism, a young woman recently said to me, “God is rather silent right now.” Yes, it’s been awful. I don’t discount that for a moment. She is unloved; she is unemployed; she is under a lot. But her attitude strikes me as deeply naive, on the level of someone caught in a cross fire who asks, rather shocked and with a sense of betrayal, “God, why won’t you make them stop firing at me?” I’m sorry, but that’s not where we are right now. It’s not where we are in the Story. That day is coming, later, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb and we’ll beat swords into plowshares. For now, it’s bloody battle.

It sure explains a whole heckuva lot.

You won’t understand your life, you won’t see clearly what has happened to you or how to live forward from here, unless you see it as battle. A war against your heart.

*****

These are the words of John Eldredge, founder of Ransomed Heart Ministries, and he is dead-on.  He is one of my favorite writers and authors.  I republish his blog posts almost on a daily basis.  We can learn a lot from his perspective on the Christian life.  This blog post was called, You Must Fight For Your Life and helps us to see life as a battlefield for our hearts and souls.  Good stuff.

In his book, Awaken the Dead, John Eldredge talks about three truths that we, as Christians, must accept.  First, that there is a spiritual dimension to life.  Second, that we are a world at war and third, that we have a crucial role to play.  All three elements are found in the blog post above as well.  And it’s true, isn’t it.  Scary maybe, but also true.  And we have to come to terms with it.  Of the three enemies of our soul, the Devil is probably the scariest but, funny enough, perhaps not the deadliest.  We also have our flesh and the world to fight against.  And, of the three, it is probably our flesh that is the most dangerous to the abundant life that we all desire.

We have been talking about the Sanctification Gap, that chasm between the holiness and perfect love of God as seen in His justice and mercy on the one hand, and the depths of our sin, our selfishness, our inability to love ourselves, much less God or anyone else on the other.  That Sanctification Gap continues even after we have been justified by grace through the blood of Jesus Christ.  In fact, precisely because it is a substitution, that it isn’t our righteousness, the gap exists because we are not made immediately perfect in love.  Our Sanctification is progressive.  But that gap between our Justification and our Sanctification also creates a credibility gap, both in our own eyes as well as in the eyes of other people.  And so it should.  It is a necessary part of our situation as Christians.

Why?  Why is it a necessary part of our situation as Christians?  I don’t get it.  It makes me feel terrible.  The more I know about God and his holy, perfect love for me, the more I recognize the sin that is in me.  And it isn’t just specific sins, it’s like I’m polluted with ego and selfishness and self-interest.  My commitment to my own authority is incredibly strong.  I find idols and other lovers, other priorities, other interests than my relationship with God distracting me and pushing me off the path on the road to Jerusalem.  It’s miserable.  I’m almost convinced that ignorace was bliss, but now I am no longer ignorant and I see myself as I truly am and it sickens me.  Good.  It’s supposed to.

Paul didn’t like it much either.  What a wretched man I am! he declared.  Who can save me from this body of sin?  But he also declared something else.  Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord.   Paul’s struggle did not drive him to spiritual despair or to spiritual pride (if you ignore sin and the holiness of God) but rather it drove him back to the cross, over and over again.  There is only one solution and that is the cross of Christ.  In the next chapter of Romans, Paul goes on to talk about the supernatural, resurrection power of Christ that sets us free from law of sin and death.  We can’t forget that truth.  It is also part of the cross.  Jesus didn’t just die, he also was risen from the dead by God through the power of the Holy Spirit.  That is worth talking about.  In a lot greater detail.  Which we will.  But for now, let’s just stay with this concept of  “the struggle” a bit longer.

Some people think that the solution to our dilemma is that, as Christians, Jesus frees us from the struggle.  We are free in resurrection power to live righteous lives and, from now on, sin has no more hold on us and therefore a good Christian doesn’t sin any longer.  Well, some of that is true and some of that is just plain false.  Let’s look at this in some more detail.  Paul seems to make it quite clear throughout his writings that the struggle with sin will permeate our lives until we are “delivered” into eternity.  There isn’t much doubt about that.  But he also makes it quite clear that we have resurrection power through our “umbilical cord” connection to Christ that we must access through faith which will help us in our struggle against sin.  Both things are true. 

What is not true is the conclusion that says since we don’t have to sin any longer, then anyone who continues to sin or struggle with sin is automatically an immature Christian or even worse, not a Christian at all.  Not true.

Let me make this clear.  The key to the dilemma is the presence of the Holy Spirit within.  No doubt.  He is the one who regenerates us.  But the key is not our ability to harness the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit which is available to us.  That puts the key in our own hands and we will always fail.  The key is in the hands of God, in the very presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  The question we must ask is twofold.  On the one hand, is there evidence of the Holy Spirit and regeneration in my life?  And secondly, how do I access that Holy Spirit resurrection power?  The answer to both questions is the same but different.

The answer is faith.  Faith is both a gift and a skill that we must master.  We need to look for evidence of faith and we need to learn how to harness the power of that faith that we find within.  The Bible is clear that faith is a gift and that believing in Christ and recognizing our sin are the works of the Holy Spirit.  When you have the Holy Spirit within, you are convicted of the guilt of your sin.  That is evidence that non-believers just don’t have.  The very fact that you are worried about it, that you question it, that you are looking for evidence can only be so because the Holy Spirit is stirring you up to ask the question.  Looking for evidence of the Holy Spirit is evidence of the Holy Spirit. 

But it goes even further.  When you have the Holy Spirit within you, you also have hope.  Hope for the future, hope for salvation but most of all “the hope of righteousness.”  We look forward to the time when the struggle is over and we are at peace with ourselves and the gap is closed with actual righteousness which we will receive together with white robes at the Feast of the Lamb on that last day.  We have the righteousness of Christ but we also hope for the time when we are presented without spot or blemish before the throne of God.  Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith.  He is our hope and to him we give our gratitude and love (what little we have).

In motivational terms, we call that intrinsic motivation.  There is something within us that is different, that wants something more, that struggles, that fails and then struggles again, something which cannot just “curse God and die,” something which continues on in the worst of all circumstances, that “wrestles with God,” that won’t let go until we are blessed.  Not because we are such great “strugglers” but simply because he stirs us up to do battle once again after every defeat, every failure, ever feeble effort at the mortification of our flesh.  For some strange, divine reason we have intrinsic motivation to struggle on in our walk with God.

Yes, there is some extrinsic motivation mixed in there as well.  We want to live forever.  We want God’s blessings.  We want the benefits of the relationship.  Perhaps we want to look good in front of the others at church.  Perhaps we want people to think we are good people.  Perhaps we are scared of hell.  Some of the extrinsic motivations are rooted in the Spirit and some are rooted in the Flesh.  Our job is to root out the flesh.

For some reason there is a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, some desire to close the gap, some effort at pleasing God.  Why?  Why bother?  Because you have the Holy Spirit within.  That is also evidence.  You want a relationship with God.  Why?  What’s the point?

You are willing to humble yourself in confession, put your reputation at risk, perhaps be taken advantage of, be persecuted by people (even in Church) when they get ahold of that confessional information.

You are willing to make every effort to repent, to make things right, to spend money and time in restitution and reconciliation.

You are willing to forgive, to accept the cross as sufficient payment for the sins against you, even if they do not confess or repent.

You are willing to extend spiritual trust and take the risk of being hurt again.  Why do you bother with all of this? Just forget it.  Let it go.  

You are willing to root out everything and anything that is getting in the way of your spiritual unity with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

You hunger for the holiness and power of the abundant life and the anointing that it brings.

You want to find your meaning in the significance of joint work with the Holy Spirit in joint ministry, you find your purpose in the great rescue operation that Jesus has launched in this world, you find your identity in Christ and in him alone.

Amazing.  What in the world is wrong with you?  Do you think for a moment that other people think this way, or even want to.  You are stark raving mad.  You have the Holy Spirit within.

The evidence of the Holy Spirit is not a sinless life, it is a spirit-filled life.  The evidence of the Holy Spirit is not about certain legalistic actions or words or religious efforts that you make every Sunday and Wednesday night, it is relational.

The question is whether or not you have a relationship with him and what is the evidence of that relationship.  Just because you go to church and you call yourself a Christian doesn’t mean diddlysquat if you don’t have the evidence of the relationship with the Holy Spirit.  In the same way that many people get married for many different reasons, the ones who are truly in love have evidence.  And most of the time they aren’t even looking for the evidence.  They just know.  That is what faith is.  Knowing the other and trusting that relationship.

We will talk tomorrow about how to access that resurrection power through faith and how the Holy Spirit, as our Helper, will encourage us and teach us the ways of faith, but for now, the focus is on the relationship itself.

The thing to remember is that God is in the business of creating a certain type of person and the way that he does it is to bring to the surface the sins and habits and problems of our life so that we are faced with our own demons and are taught how to overcome them.

When we sin, we need to ask ourselves some tough questions about our walk in the Spirit and our committment to Christ.  Yes, of course.  But then we go back to the cross and acknowledge that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.  You must accept and affirm that you are in union with Christ now and that this sin is not appropriate for a child of God.  You do not belong to yourself, you cannot decide for yourself what sins you will or will not indulge in.

If you are justified, there will be a corresponding desire (however small) to respect such a great salvation, to give honor to God, to live up to the life that he calls us into.  Paul says it over and over again.  Live out the relationship you have within.

If you know and believe that you have the resurrection power within you to overcome this particular sin, then what is going on?  The truth is that it isn’t about being too weak (since we have resurrection level power within us to deal with sin), it isn’t about not having a way out of the temptation (God promises that there is always a way out), the truth is simply that we wanted to sin.  We wanted to commit this particular sin.  Why? 

Now we are getting down to brass tacks.  We can ask these questions precisely because there is no condemnation.  What idols, what bad habits, what stress-relief strategies are we committed to instead of God?  The process is painful but it is God’s way of uncovering sin so that we can deal with it through confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.  We need to go further, probe deeper, uncover the filth and deal with it and that can only happen in the context and culture of grace.

Self-understanding here is key.  It is one of the two pillars of our relationship with God.  On the one hand, we need to understand the Holiness of God.  His holiness is rooted in His perfect love.  Who can argue with that?  Wait.  We do.  All the time.  Perfect love is a pain in the neck.  We tell our Mother’s all the time NOT to love us so much.  Put on clean underwear.  Wear a hat.  Change your socks.  Love you, dear.  Oh, bother.  Mom, don’t love me so much for Pete’s sake. 

But God is much worse.  The point is that God (and Mom) is not the problem.  We want the freedom to make our own mistakes, to live with dirty socks and underwear, to do what we want when we want (preferrably without too many consequences).  Problem is that life and relationships are not really about dirty socks and underwear.  Domestic violence, child abuse, absentee father, single mother’s, unpaid bills, alcholism, drug abuse, unwanted pregnancies, abortion (and the list goes on).  That’s the stuff of real life.

Well, that’s not me, you say.  Fine.  But the bar is pretty low in that description, isn’t it?  Try looking at your life from God’s point of view for a minute.  His standard is perfect love.  You may say that you are fine when comparing yourself to others but that’s like saying that being an alcholic is fine because you come from a family of alcholics.  The bar is pretty low.

The holiness of God is his perfect love.  And yes, he expects us all to love one another the same way.  We expect it too…..from others, but not so much from ourselves.  A double standard that is so normal, we don’t even realize we have it anymore.

And it is when we look at the holiness of God’s perfect love that we realize how sinful we really are, in various ways, to varying degrees but sinful we are.  We have missed the mark.  Our love isn’t good enough to solve our problems every day.  In fact, we generally make a mess of things.

But it isn’t until we try to do something about it that we realize how strong that addiction to our own sin is.  We want what we want whether or not it is good for us (or anyone else) or not.  Our desires are powerful things but they are often broken and we call that addiction.  The addiction to sin.  It may show up as a secondary addiction called alcholism or drug abuse or pornography or violence but it is all sin addiction at it’s core.

And it is not something that we can overcome on our own.  We all have it and we all need help.  That awareness is the second pillar of our relationship with God.  His holiness and our sin.  The only bridge between the two is the cross of Christ.  Therefore there is now no condemnation.  There is progress not perfection and we need each other to make it happen.

We are too quick to judge one another when we sin (even if it’s true), perhaps because it scares us too.  We need to learn how to help and encourage one another to take our failures in righteousness to heart and learn from them and then give the Holy Spirit permission to tear the idols down and root them out of our lives.  We get help if necessary.  We get educated if necessary.  We fight for the abundant life.  There is a battle going on and I’ll be damned if I let the Devil win the day.  I am a child of God and I have power within me to transform my life and the lives of the people around me, the people that I love.  The Devil will not win the day.  The world (the flesh of others) will not win the day.  The flesh (my flesh) will not win the day.

I am like a Hollywood heroe that cannot be defeated.  My story is already assured.  Yes, it can hurt.  Yes, I will still bleed.  I can get wounded, persecuted, thrown out of church, misunderstood, even die.  But I will live forever.  I cannot be defeated and my life is in God’s hands.  I can afford to take some risks, make some moves, take a leap of faith.  I can afford to follow God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength because he will take care of me eternally.  Yes, there is a struggle.  But I cannot be defeated.  I can only whimp out, quit, hide in the bushes, get distracted, lose interest, not care anymore.  I can give up on the relationship, at least for a while, but if I truly have the Holy Spirit, he is just going to stir me up and get me back in the fight so I might as well learn the tricks of the trade, take the training to be a desert warrior, fight the good fight and in the process, perhaps be used by God to save and transform another life.  Perhaps one of my own children.  Or a friend.  Or a complete stranger.  In any event, the price is worth it.  Isn’t it?

It is the quality of our fight that matters, not how many victories we have.  It is the quality of our relationship that matters not that we do everything right.  But the message for today is that the abundant life, the pleasure of God’s anointing, must be fought for.  There is a battle going on and real people are depending on you to get your act together, get your armour on, and go to war.  Life is spiritual warfare and lives are at stake and you and I have a crucial role to play.

The Desert Warrior

P.S.  Let’s talk to God…..

Lord, I didn’t really realize that I have a crucial role to play in your plan of redemption.  You decided that you needed real witnesses, people transformed by the cross to give witness to the truth of the gospel.  It’s one thing to have the Word, and another to have the Spirit but, you also decided that you needed the testimony of your saints, real, transformed lives to give credeence to your offer of salvation.  Thank you for choosing me.  I’m a bit scared of the battle but I know that I cannot be defeated.  Others (including the church) may misunderstand me and mistreat me but you know my ways, my feeble efforts, my desire to please you.  Teach me to look for the evidence of the Holy Spirit in the relationship not in acts of righteousness.  Thank you for that freedom in Christ.  In Jesus name I pray.  Amen.

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The Holiness Project – Day 6 “The Delivery”

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

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The Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener…I am the vine, you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit;  apart from me you can do nothing….If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.  This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:1,5,7,8 NIV).

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen” (Ephesians 3:20,21 NIV).

“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Romans 8:11 NIV).

The Delivery

In a mother’s womb were two babies.

One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”

The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her.  It is in Her that we live.  Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”

*****

This little story is making the rounds on the internet and on facebook.  I love it.  It’s a wonderful way to describe our situation as we live in darkness and grow and prepare for our delivery.  It is very well done.  But the metaphor isn’t perfect and I would like to improve it a little bit.  Let’s talk about the umbilical cord….

So, the two babies are there in the womb but one has an umbilical cord and is fed by her mother but the other one is dead and withered in the womb (but still able to talk and discuss and “pretend” that it is alive when it is really quite dead).  The metaphor is already starting to get ugly but it is closer to the truth.

One baby is being fed by this umbilical cord and the other is not.  One is alive and in contact with her mother and the other one is not.  And this is important because new life, real life comes through the umbilical cord.  They will both be delivered at some point but one will be delivered in a still-birth and the other will be a beautiful baby girl.  That difference makes all the difference in the world.

Jesus said that he was the umbilical cord of life (the vine) and we are the babies (the branches) and that without his life flowing through us and in us, there is no power (you can do nothing) and there is no fruit (no life).  Life is in the blood and the blood brings both oxygen and energy.  Without that life there is no change, no growth, no transformation.

So, let’s get our metaphors straight.  On the one hand, we are prostitutes who run after other lovers at a moment’s notice because we forget who we are and are we take all of our husband’s directions as obligations rather than as a path to a deeper and more loving relationship.  We are broken but have been redeemed, bought with a price and we have been given the Holy Spirit who regenerates our hearts and makes them soft and pliable and more willing to make an effort in this relationship.  We discover that we have some basic faith, some expectation of blessing, some desire for our husband but we aren’t so good at putting it into practice.  Why?

Jesus said that we needed to remain in him and that his word needs to remain in us.  In our metaphor for today, we are babies that need to have life pumped into them on a regular, continuous basis in order to have the power to live, grow, change and become more mature.  Without that connection, that relationship, we will wither and die and be just like all of the other babies that are not regenerated.  It doesn’t mean that we aren’t alive.  Maybe we are but maybe we aren’t.  How can you tell?  If you are pinching the umbilical cord so hard that life doesn’t flow through it, if you have it wrapped around your neck so tightly that you start to resent it being there, if you sit on it, ignore it, stick it in your mouth and chew on it, anything in fact, other than to take care of it and nurture it and let it feed you, then you are in trouble.  The umbilical cord is our relationship with Jesus.

So to speak plainly and not in metaphors, let me say it in another way.  We have this new relationship with God.  We have faith that it is true and that salvation is ours when our friends and perhaps even family think we are crazy.  They certainly don’t believe in these fairy tales.  And we discover that we are filled with expectation of good things, of blessings, of benefits that will come from this new relationship.  We are not in it for the benefits, mind you, but we know that good things will come naturally from it.  Like being in love.  The relationship is it’s own reward.

And finally, we have this new desire.  It drives us crazy sometimes.  We want it but we don’t want it.  We want to love God but we don’t want to give up all of our other forms of pleasure and stress-relief that we have learned to rely on to get through life.  We love, but poorly, half-heartedly, inconsistently.  And we know it and it drives us crazy.

That’s the good news because our family and friends don’t have that struggle.  They don’t even remotely care about loving God.  They don’t want God at all.  We are the crazy ones, struggling with sin, wanting to know God better, agonizing about our shortcomings, like a teenager in love, thinking about every word, every gesture, every thought and wondering whether or not it will change the way He looks at us, whether it is true that He really likes us, even though He knows us so well, especially when we still are so broken and weak and even rebellious in our efforts to love Him back.  Can it be?  Is it really unconditional?  Does He like me even when, and especially when, I am a walking mess and I grieve the Spirit?  The answer is transformative if you really believe it, hope for it and live and breathe it.  It’s called agape love.  And, yes, it is astonishing!

The umbilical cord has miraculously been re-attached, the life is starting to flow through it and we are starting to experience the steady supply of faith, hope and love and the oxygen and energy it brings to our efforts.  The Bible calls it Resurrection Power and it comes to us from the Holy Spirit when we walk with Him in abundant life.  We look forward to our Delivery (Deliverance) from this body of death into a new life on the last day or when we die but, for now, we are supposed to work with our Mother, stay in the relationship and make every effort to keep that umbilical cord in good working order.  It is our life-line to resurrection power.  When that life-line is working well, anything can happen.

Obviously every metaphor breaks down at some point and here it breaks down in the sense that a baby has nothing to do but exist and grow and get ready for birth.  But in the case of the Christian life, we are more involved than that.  Yes, Jesus is the author and finisher or our faith but we need to be committed to the relationship, ready to make every effort to take care of and nurture that relationship so that resurrection power flows through into our lives and into the lives of the people around us.

So, here is the point I want to make.  Focus on the relationship not the sin.  Confession is not about the sin, it’s about the honesty that is necessary for any relationship to flourish.  Repentance is not about rules and regulations.  If the confession was honest, then there will be a real committment to change and we have all of the resurrection power of Christ available to us through the Holy Spirit to make any changes that God wants to see in us, in order to perfect our love for Him and for others.  Forgiveness is about the love of God shown in the cross.  It is about healing not about punishment.  Reconciliation is about restoring the relationship.  Most sin isn’t about the sin even in our earthly relationships.  It isn’t about the harsh words she said or the stupid actions that he did, it’s about our fear that the relationship has been broken, it’s about our hurt that he or she doesn’t really care, that the love was just a sham, a fake, a temporary desire.  It is the broken relationship that matters not the sin.  That was just the symptom of something deeper.

And, yes, we are talking first and foremost about your relationship with God but that includes your relationship with your brother and sister in Christ.  John makes it clear that our relationship with other Christians is the same thing as our relationship with Christ.  We are one body.  One Spirit.  What you do to the least of these my brothers, Jesus said, you do unto me.

The same is true for God.  Sin is a symptom of a broken relationship.  That needs to be dealt with first, and then you will have the intrinsic motivation to deal with the sin in a progressive way.  If you can learn that one truth, it will save you a lot of heartache and keep you clearly on the right path, the way of the cross on the road to Jerusalem.  It might also save your marriage….

The Desert Warrior

P.S.  Let’s talk to God…..

Lord, I want to learn to love you more.  Not just in spiritual experience in worship but everyday in my actions and words.  I want to join your cause, learn your ways, take your paths.  Help me, Lord.  I want to focus on our relationship and learn to love you more and talk to you more.  Help me to learn that when I don’t want to pray it might be because there is something I am hiding, some sin that I don’t want to bring into the light.  Help me to learn that when I am not willing to be transparent and honest with my fellow Christian in a small group or one-on-one setting that it might be because I don’t want to be real with them because I am scared, or tired or just plain in a bad mood.  Help me to work on the relationships in order to find true resurrection power and abundant life.  In Jesus name I pray.  Amen.

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Seeking Jerusalem – Day 43 “Hosea and Gomer”

18 Sunday Mar 2018

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.”  So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son….Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter….  After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son” (Hosea 1:2,3,6a,8a NIV).

“Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife.  Let her remove her adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts…I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery.  Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace” (Hosea 2:1,4,5a NIV).

The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.  Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”  So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.  Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you” (Hosea 3:1-3 NIV).

Hosea and Gomer

“God told me to marry you.”

She stood there like a hawk, her whole frame rigid and brittle, ready to fight or run.  I wasn’t sure which.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Yes.”  But no other words were spoken.

“I know this might come as a shock to you….”

“You think?”

“….but I assure you that I have the best of intentions.”

Silence.

Exasperated, I blurted out, “Do you want to marry me or not?”

“Who could resist a marriage proposal like that,” she said, the sarcasm dripping from her words like venom.

“Great.  It’s settled then,” I said.  “I’ll make all the arrangements.”  I was relieved, but little did I realize that my problems were only just beginning.

*******

Who knows how Hosea might have breached the subject of marriage to Gomer.  You have to take into account the culture, the fact that he was known as a prophet of God, and the fact that she was a loose woman.  Talk about a rebound.  Apparently, she was married before and committed adultery and had children by her other lovers.  The timeline isn’t all that clear.  Even the storyline is a bit confusing but something strange was going on.

First of all, are you kidding me?  God tells his prophet to go marry an adulterous woman who has children out of wedlock.  Talk about the lowest of the low.  The Pharisees gave Jesus a hard time for letting a prostitute wash his feet with anointing oil before his death in Jerusalem.  He should have known what kind of woman she was.  Preposterous.  Ridiculous.  God told you to do what?  God would never do that.  I’m certain of it.  Yeah, right.

His reputation is kaput.  His lovelife…..well, let’s leave that alone for the moment.  All we know is that Hosea obeys.  He decides that Gomer fits the bill.  Some people think that she was a loose woman before they got married, had a husband but was divorced for adultery.  Hosea marries her.  Has three kids with crazy names (that’s another story) but then something apparently happens.

In the second chapter, God is speaking to Hosea’s children and telling them to rebuke their mother.  She is an adulterer (again) and things get so bad that she ends up in prostitution (meaning that she is owned by her pimp).  Somehow she is tangled up in a web of lies and deceit and unpaid bills.  Hosea saved her from a nasty divorce in the first place which left her on the street where nobody would touch her.  She has three kids and a couple of good years with him.  Then she falls back into her old ways and hits absolute rock bottom – broken, destitute and uncaring.  Her ability to love Hosea was broken to start with but now she is like the prodigal son (or daughter), living in the filth of despair and manipulation.

But unlike the prodigal son, there is no repentance here.  There is no obvious signs of remorse.  She is not begging him to take her back.  She is a defeated woman who has hit rock bottom.  Her only salvation is her husband, Hosea, who is still her husband and apparently still loves her.

As we enter Chapter 3, we see God taking the initiative and telling Hosea to go and reconcile with his wife again.  Apparently he has to buy her back, pay off her debts, and make it right with her pimp.  And she is expensive for a prostitute.  Fifteen shekles of silver and more than a homer of barley.  Wow.  And Hosea gives her very simple, straightforward directions.  Live with me.  Don’t be a prostitute.  Don’t be intimate with your other lovers.  I will live with you.  This sounds a bit like God’s covenant promise to the people of Israel, “You will be my people and I will be your God.”

In our church last year we put up three banners with those famous three lines that are supposed to summarize our walk with God.  Do no harm.  Do good.  Stay in love with God.  Pretty good stuff actually.

But I have some better ones I would like to put up in our church sanctuary.  Don’t be a prostitute.  Don’t sleep around.  Live with your husband.  I don’t think our board of elders will go for it.

What are you saying, that we are all like adulterous women who have prostituted ourselves to run after other lovers?  Well, no.  I’m not saying that.  God is.  Yes, about you and me. We don’t love Him.  We make it about rules and regulations and obligations and we rebel against that but we forget that it is, first and foremost, a relationship.

Pretty harsh stuff don’t you think?  But also pretty realistic if we think about it.  The whole point of what God was doing was to use Hosea and Gomer as a real live demonstration of the relationship between God and Israel, between God and the church, really, ultimately, between God and you and me.  The question is whether or not we will accept such a description.

I have to admit that as I struggle with the Sanctification Gap, I have times I think I’m doing pretty well and times when I truly feel like an adulterous woman who has become a prostitute and is running after other lovers.  It is easy to slip out of that sweet spot of love and fall into the trap of “wanting what we want whenever we want” it.

Maybe we still love Hosea.  We had a few good years, didn’t we?  It was a nice honeymoon.  The early years were heady and wonderful, full of signs and wonders and the parting of the Red Sea and conquering the land but, now, its the same old, same old.  We’ve lost the old fire in the belly.  Like David, we just want to stay home from the wars and indulge the flesh.  After all, we deserve a break now and again.  The seven year itch.  The twelve year crisis.  The fifteen year divorce.  Oh, yes,  we know the drill all too well. 

God is pretty well dead-on with his metaphors.  He is no fool.  He is fighting for the relationship and it starts with an honest conversation.  He is willing to forgive and reconcile but, for our sakes, we cannot just ignore the problem.  The problem isn’t the sin itself.  That is just a symptom.  The problem is how we view the relationship.  That’s what He wants to talk about first.  And He is right.  We aren’t very good at loving Him.  In fact, we are exactly like a prostitute who has destroyed her ability to love her husband by selling herself for money or benefits or the “what’s in it for me?” mentality.  We think Hosea married us to give us certain benefits.  We think God is here to help us with our lives, to help us build our kingdoms, to give us eternal life after we die.  But that isn’t the nature of the relationship.  We are here to love Him, to build His Kingdom, to have eternal life right now in a new and wonderful relationship with Him.

Attachment theory tells us that the stronger the attachments a child has when he or she is young, the more they are able to love someone when they are older.  Makes sense.  The opposite is also true.  The more you destroy or manipulate attachments when you are young (or old), the more you are not able to love another.  Again.  Obvious.  But maybe not so obvious to us.

When we do something wrong on purpose and we do it anyway (thinking we will ask for forgiveness later), then (if we are Christians) we feel terrible like we betrayed God.  Which is true.  That’s hard on the relationship and it often leads to despair and more sinning.  But, on the other hand, when we are right with God and things are going good (or at least we think they are), then it is so easy for us to fall into spiritual pride.  After all, we have our shit together.  What’s wrong with you?  But the truth is that whether we wallow in despair or strut in our pride, we are still a bunch of prostitutes whoring after every bauble and trinket that the Devil shows us.  Our capacity to love (just like Gomer) was broken from the beginning and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can get on the right path.

So what is the right path?  Really? 

We’ve been talking about the way of the cross for forty three days now.  Yes, that’s the path.  And don’t make the way of the cross into just another obligation with a set of steps and a program of penance and make it all external.  That would miss the point altogether.  It’s about a relationship.

Hosea (God) just wants us to be honest (about ourselves) both in terms of our inability to love Him as well as to acknowledge that we are loved anyway.  There is no condemnation.  We have been bought with a price.  We belong to Hosea (Jesus) now and that’s who we are in our deepest being.  We have a life project that we need to fulfill together with our husband.  We need to be honest and repent when we do wrong but also continue to learn and grow in our desire for Him and in our ability to walk with Him every day.  We have to want the relationship and that means to respect it and work on it.  Just like all marriages.

If we truly accept our identity as being one with our husband, then we must also accept our role as a partner, a lover, a friend who will make every effort to live with our husband and share his projects, his business, his interests, his beliefs and values.  And he will take care of us and work with us and teach us the ways of love.  And we desperately need to learn.

It isn’t just about morality, although morality is important.  It is what is underneath morality, what causes morality that matters.  Morality does not cause relationship but relationship causes morality. 

When theologians talk about the law of God and how we should relate to it (in both the Old and New Testament), they like to talk about autonomy, heteronomy and theonomy.

When someone simply doesn’t accept the law of God at all, they are autonomous.  They are a law unto themselves and go through life doing whatever they want.

When someone accepts the law of God as binding on them, they enter into a state of heteronomy.  The philosopher, Kant, describes it as an “encounter with a law not willingly accepted from the depths of the heart, but resisted like a straitjacket or outwardly adopted like a mask” (Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p. 112).  This can create a kind of “dead goodness” or even open rebellion.  It looks like something that might have happened to Gomer.  She married Hosea and they had some good years but the brokeness in her heart in terms of her ability to love another (as evidenced by her first marriage breakup) was still there and never dealt with.

That dead heart, which was not able to love, needed to be made alive again in Jesus Christ.  When we are justified before God with the righteousness of Christ, our hearts have not yet been changed.  We are made righteous in almost a legal way.  But that does allow God to give us the Holy Spirit who would normally not be able to live continually in our hearts because of our sin.

At that moment of regeneration, our hearts of stone are made into hearts of flesh and we are given the three spiritual virtues of faith, hope and love.  But that doesn’t mean that our lives are perfect in love yet.

In the process of sanctification, we discover our hearts of flesh and the presence of faith, hope and love and we start to learn to walk in the Spirit.  We are broken people, made righteous, regenerated with new hearts of flesh that actually believe (faith), actually expect positive change (hope) and actually wants the relationship (love).  Even we are surprised that it is there in our hearts, a gift from God.  We are broken people who have been healed but now need to go through a physiotherapy process to make that healing complete.

When that brokeness and inability to love is healed and we are given a heart of flesh and not of stone, then our response to the law of God (to his direction, guidance, correction and rebuke) becomes theonomous.  It is understood to be coming from our lover, our husband, the one with whom we are one, the one who bought us, who reconciled with us, gave us a second, and a third, and a fourth chance, the one who loves us enough to die on the cross in order to have a new relationship with us, the one who calls us brother, friend, lover.  It is relational.  It isn’t about obligations, it’s about learning to love again and letting our lover teach us the way.  It is about surrender.  Not in an unhealthy way but rather in a healthy way.  With humans you have to be careful because we are all sinners but with God, through Christ, we can take the risk of one hundred percent surrender to his will, to his guidance, to his law, to his ways.

If we do not break through to this relational heart of flesh (rather than stone), we will be “trapped in patterns of dead conformity or angry resistance” (p.112).

Funny thing.  This is just as true in human relationships as it is with God.  You don’t even want to see the statistics of people who are trapped in bad marriages because of social pressure or for the sake of the kids.  Or, on the other hand, where one or the other partner breaks out with angry resistance to the deadness of the relationship with adultery and affairs or pornography.  God knows his metaphors.  It really isn’t rocket science.

To change the metaphor from the woman to the man (just so the men don’t feel left out), Professor Lovelace, in his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life, describes it like this.  “The typical relationship between believers and the Holy Spirit in today’s church is too often like that between the husband and wife in a bad marriage.  They live under the same roof, and the husband makes constant use of his wife’s services, but he fails to communicate with her, recognize her presence and celebrate their relationship with her” (p. 131).

When you reduce the law of God to a bunch of do’s and don’t’s, you miss the point entirely.  You are supposed to be like David, a man after God’s own heart, who said, “I love the law of God.  I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.  Open my eyes that I might see wonderful things in your law.  I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word” (Psalm 119).  That does not mean that David would not sin because he did and grievously.  What it means is that God would reconcile with him because he knew David’s heart.  They had a relationship.

David truly worked at the relationship.  He knew he had a lot to learn about God and His ways.  He knew that to love God meant to let God be God.  Let Him lead.  Let Him direct.  We must respond.  We must follow.  He is holy in righteousness and wonderous in might.  We are sinners, prostitutes who have been forgiven, who have been given new identities, new soft hearts of flesh rather than stone, but who still have a lot to learn.

The moment we reduce our obedience to obligation, we have taken away the dynamic of love.  That is why we call it “loving obedience.”  Jesus was clear.  “If you love me you will obey my commandments” (John 14:15).  Obedience is necessary.  Because of who He is and who we are.  But it is always the obedience of love.

We think of God as holy and perfect and the first thing we think of is that He never makes a mistake, He does all things well, He is high and lifted up.  But we don’t think of His holiness as perfect love which is reflected in His law (and the rest of the Word of God).  He is perfect in love and all perfection is the perfection of love.  The love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is perfect love and is the source of His holiness.

We need to understand the character of God.

There is no argument with the fact that God is just.  Absolutely just.  You can’t turn him from His justice with a bribe or a sentimental argument.  You can’t set aside His justice in the name of love.  We don’t allow it in earthly judges, so we know that our heavenly judge will be absolutely correct in every way with regards to His justice.  Justice is an act of love for the victim.  God is the victim of our rebellion but so are lots of other people we interact with everyday.  We often think of God’s justice from the point of view of the offender but what about the one who was offended.  Should they not claim for perfect love in the form of justice from God.  Fairness.  No corruption.  Love.

The problem is that it makes us tremble to think of it.  Not because we don’t expect Him to be true to His unyielding character of love.  What else do you expect?  But because we know that we could never stand before Him and make any kind of argument in our defence.  We are lost and we know it.  That is the holiness of God.  But it is only one side of His holiness.  One side of His love.  Because He loves both the offended and the offender, there is more to be said.

The other side,  the side that is patient, that is longsuffering, that is able to find a way, to make a way, that side of God is also His holiness.  That is also love.  God’s justice is rooted in his love but expressed in his might and power.  He knows all things.  He is everywhere present.  He is absolutely good.  He knows the truth of every accusation, every rebellion, every intention of the heart.  He is the only One who can be the Judge of all mankind.  He is the only One who knows what is good or bad (a discernment rooted in love).  He is the only one capable of being the Judge and enforcing His law of love on all powers and beings, both human and demonic.

But all of the power and might of the God of Heaven cannot solve the problem of sin.  All of the power of God that created the heavens and the earth, the stars and the hosts of heaven, the creative power of God that can explode megatonnes of nuclear fusion in the stars cannot change the heart of man through his power and might.  It is impossible.  The nature of love is such that it cannot be forced, only enticed, only wooed, only seduced and, even then, only after the justice of God has been satisfied.  It is only the love of God in self-sacrifice upon the cross of calvary, the Son of the Living God worth more than all humans put together and his three days in hell worth eons of hellish living by all the rest of us, that made it possible for the justice of God to be satisfied with a substitute who was worth more than a million earths full of stubborn prostitutes who have rejected the love of their Creator.

That love, which fulfilled the justice of God, calls forth your love.  It gives you a new identity, a new heart, a new purpose, and significance.  A new meaning in life.  And it calls you to live in it.  Embrace it.  Talk about it.  Remind yourself of the fact that holiness is a call to the perfection of love and that every law, every rule, every guidance and training and effort is a step down the path of love, the way of the cross.

If you remember anything this Lenten season, remember that you are a prostitute learning to love again.  Of course it will be hard, but he loves you and he will help you do it.  After all, he bought you with a price.  His own life.

What woman can say that of her husband?  You can.

The Desert Warrior

P.S.  Let’s pray to God…..

Lord, how easy it is for me to forget the love you have shown me.  I love you, help me to love you more.  I am a prostitute, bought with a price, and I now belong to you.  Teach me the ways of love.  For you and for others.  That is the holiness you ask of me.  Thank you.  In Jesus name I pray.  Amen.

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Seeking Jerusalem – Day 42 “The Sweet Spot”

17 Saturday Mar 2018

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THE WAY OF THE CROSSThe Way of the Cross – Lenten Season 2018

“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31,32 NIV).

“So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.  The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him” (John 8:28,29 NIV).

The Sweet Spot

I remember the early years of Bible College when I was surrounded by other young Christian students and we studied and prayed and discussed and argued to our heart’s content.  We went on Mission trips together.  We sang songs with our guitars, the Sound of Silence right along with Amazing Grace and Hallelujah.  We ate pizza and watched movies but most of all we talked about the reality of God.  It was great.

I come from a religious family in the Dutch Reformed tradition and discovered that I was good at public speaking in High School.  I won all of Southwestern Ontario and was supposed to go to the Big Apple and speak at the United Nations for the North American Public Speaking Competition.  But I didn’t go.  I was already committed to a summer mission trip and in a burst of religious zeal, I decided that my priority should be the church.  Not that I was a believer really.  But I was convinced that I should become a Pastor since I had the “gift of the gab.”

So I enrolled in Bible School and I was a pain in the ass.  I was determined to find out the truth about all of this religious stuff.  If I was going to be a Pastor, I wanted to know if it was bogus or not.  I had a lot of questions I wanted answered.  And so I asked.  And I asked.  And I asked.  Every time they would say, “Jesus is in your heart,” I would raise my hand and say something like, “My heart is a pump for blood.  Nobody is living in there.  Why can’t you just explain things in English.”

I have to give the teachers credit, actually, because they were not only patient, they also had pretty good answers.

“Where are you?” they would ask me.

“Whaddayamean?” I would mumble.

“Where are you?” they would insist.  “In what part of your body would you say your consciousness resides?”

“Well, probably somewhere in my brain, I suppose.”

“Great,” they would say.  “Wherever you are, Christ is there with you, living in you  if you are a Christian.  The heart is just a metaphor for your seat of consciousness.”

“Oh,” I would answer.  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place.”

Of course one question would lead to another and after a while the teachers would have to ask me to do some of my own research and write a paper on the topic.  They would help shape my questions a bit and then give me more work to do.  I didn’t really mind.  I wanted to learn.  I was interested.

It wasn’t long before I realized that there were some very interesting answers to my questions and that mostly I didn’t even understand the right questions to ask.

The Lord, in His wisdom, gave me a wonderful roommate who was a devout believer and his devotional life moved me beyond my mind to my heart and made me wonder about this relationship we were supposed to have with the Lord.  I had “confirmed my faith” in my church before I came to Bible School, but I rededicated my life to the Lord a couple more times after that just to make sure.  But there was still a problem.

I was being educated beyond my obedience.  There was no system of discipleship, no accountability, no encouragement to put things into practice other than some daily devotions and some Mission trips.  My church background took great pride in their superior theology and their dedication to the truth.  We had all of the best Christian publishing houses, the best schools, the best theologians and it was more or less true.  That is usually where Spiritual Pride takes root – in the areas you are truly good at.  But that had nothing to do with our relationship with God (or very little at least).  Dead orthodoxy is still useless in the kingdom of God.

I remember making lists of the things that I should do as a Christian.

If I was going to be obedient to God, I should read my Bible every day and pray (and I had a long list of people on my prayer list:  family, friends, schoolmates, my pastor, the elders, the missionaries connected to my church or to the Bible School, and on and on it went).  I would study all of the Spiritual Disciplines, the Spiritual Armour, the Spiritual Gifts, the Spiritual Fruit and try to make all of them work.  I would make charts and lists and strategies and plans and they would fail everytime.  I simply knew too much.  I couldn’t live up to the expectations of what I thought was the normal Christian life.  I would read books and articles and write papers but the truth was lurking there in the shadows.  I simply could not measure up.

It was like a conspiracy.  As soon as you become a Christian, you start to study the Bible and, in good faith, you would try to be obedient to all the things that you find there.  If you study the Bible a lot (or in depth), the list starts to get fairly long.  And it is overwhelming.  The more you know about the holiness of God, the standard of Scripture, the beauty of the law of God, or the life of Jesus, the more you would realize how sinful you were, how far from the mark you have fallen, how much you still rebel against the authority of God in your life.  The Sermon on the Mount, well, don’t get me started.  That’s just not fair.  It’s impossible to do everything that Jesus expects of you.

Professor Lovelace, in his book The Dynamics of Spiritual Life, calls this the preconditions for renewal.  This awareness of the holiness of God and the depths of our sin and the incredible gap there is between the two sides of the chasm is essential for our salvation but also for our renewal (sanctification).

Yes, this is true for people in the process of becoming Christians.  Of course.  Jesus is the bridge between the two sides.  The Four Spiritual Laws.  I read the booklet.  No problem.  I get it.  Jesus is our justification before God and he bridges the gap between the holiness of God and the depths of our sin.  Thank God.

But that wasn’t the problem.  Now that I was saved, I expected the gap to go away.  But it didn’t.  It got bigger.  The more I studied, the more I tried.  The more I tried, the more I failed.  The more I failed, the more depressed I got.  Which usually led to more failure.

Paul put it this way.  He said, “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  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 7:21b-25 NIV).

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

And just like Paul, I knew it was Jesus who was the answer.  But I still didn’t understand the question and therefore I didn’t really understand how Jesus was going to rescue me.  Why did the gap continue even as a Christian, and why did it get bigger?  In our last post, we called this the Sanctification Gap but it really is a credibility gap.  How can we live credible lives, how can we be a credible witness if we continue to sin, if the gap widens even though we are doing more and being better than ever before?  It’s never enough.  

I believe that the Biblical analysis of human nature is deep and profound and provides one of the most pragmatic proofs for the truth of Scripture.  Beyond morality, “relationship” is the fundamental problem and therefore “a restored relationship” is the solution.

Even Freud talked about our rejection of the primal father in order to pursue the intimacy that comes from our mothers.  He had no intention of providing an indepth analysis of spiritual truth where we reject the authority of our Heavenly Father in order to embrace the sensuality and self-fulfillment of our own authority (in the arms of our mothers who we think will let us have whatever we want).  But he hit upon the primal truth of our existence even though he denied the spiritual application of it.  We crave intimacy without loving authority and we end up with neither, destroying our lives on the altar of our own self-will.

The fundamental discovery of all times is that we are not capable of managing ourselves, of creating our own meaning, of finding true intimacy, of establishing our eternal value as self-conscious, rational beings.

Our self-knowledge as seen through the lens of Scripture will reveal the true source of evil in this world as well as the only solution possible.  That solution is the atonement.  A substitute has been found who is willing to take our place and therefore there is a brief, small window of opportunity to restore that primal relationship with our Father and find fulfillment in the intimacy of divine authority that values us eternally far beyond anything we can hope or imagine.

That identity of a relationship with our Creator Father, creates purpose and significance in joining his cause and become essential to his goals, all of which brings deep and lasting meaning to our lives.  Enough said.  It is beautiful in it’s simplicity.  It’s about relationships.  Instinctively we know that it is true between humans as well as between us and our Creator.

What does that have to do with the Sanctification Gap, the credibility gap that we agonize about constantly?  Everything of course.  In order to have a relationship, one must know the other and know ourselves (especially in relation to the other).  Basic.  Our problem is that we are blind or ignorant of who God really is and why he is hidden and why he is said to be so angry with us.  On the other hand, we are confused as to what the problem is with this world, with our neighbors, with ourselves.  The question of evil troubles us.

As middle-class Americans with good jobs and nice families, we are troubled by the evil we see all around us.  We may even be troubled by the evil we detect in our own lives, albeit in a more subtle, gentler way.  Gossip, resentment, backbiting, pornography, adultery, recreational sex and drugs, depression, prescription meds.  But we don’t blow people up or shoot up schools or hijack cars so our brand of evil is more acceptable.  But even we can’t maintain that lie for very long.  And if we happen to be good, law-abiding, church-going folk who would never hurt a fly?  What then?  Are we deluding ourselves into thinking that we are all right?  Not for long.  It isn’t just about our actions.  They are a symptom of a lack of relationship.  That’s what we need to deal with first. 

If we dare to read the Word of God, we will discover God’s anthropology (a study and analysis of man) and his evaluation of our situation.  The word shows us the nature of God and His intention in our creation as well as our rebellion and the problems it has brought us.

The problem is relational and the solution is as well.  We are the only religion in the world which claims that a relationship of love is at the heart of it all.  But we must accept the picture that the Bible paints of our situation.

James tells us that “anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” (James 1:23 NIV).  God’s analysis of human nature fits the evidence of our experience like a hand in a glove.  But most of us reject it out of hand and we are blind to it’s truth.

Unlike the world, when we become Christians the Holy Spirit convicts us of the truth of these revelations about God and about ourselves.  That is where it starts.  We are convicted of our guilt but that is only the first step.  We must also have faith in God’s solution in Christ.  That solution is called the substitutionary atonement of Christ.  We cannot accept the solution until we are overwhelmed with the enormity of the problem.  This doesn’t always happen immediately when someone becomes a Christian or joins the church.  There are lots of reasons why people come near to God at the beginning, but sooner or later they will come face to face with this chasm and have to ask themselves some serious questions.

One thing is to accept Christ’s sacrificial, substitutionary atonement for our sins in the process of becoming a disciple but what about afterward?

Once we are Christians, the problem is aggrevated and the breach seems to grow larger and that’s exactly what God wants to happen.  Listen carefully.  God wants us to feel the chasm between our obedience and his holiness on a daily basis and resolve it only in Christ.  That is at the heart of our sanctification, not just our justification.  Embracing that chasm and truly believing that the only solution is the cross of Christ is the heart and soul of the gospel as well as our walk in the way of the cross.

Professor Lovelace tells us that “men and women cannot know themselves until they know the reality of the God who made them, and once they know the holy God, their own sin appears so grievous that they cannot rest until they have fully appropriated Christ” (p.82).  He did not say until they became Christians but rather until they have FULLY appropriated Christ.  C.S. Lewis is famous for stating that God is in the business of creating a certain type of person.  A person who has fully appropriated Christ.  A person who is truly in union with Christ.  That is a lifelong process, a long discipleship in the same direction.  That is sanctification.

But it isn’t common at all.  Most Christians do not resolve it that way.  Let’s look at what most of us do with this awareness of the credibility gap in our lives.

One very popular way of dealing with this conundrum is to soften the character of God.  After the excesses of the Puritan legalism and Pietist isolationism, “rationalist religion began to stress the goodness of man and the benevolence of the Diety” (p.83)

“In the late nineteenth century,” Professor Lovelace tells us, “D.L. Moody determined to center his message around the truth that “God is Love” and to tone down the mention of hell and the wrath of God to the point of inaudibility.  But this was only one example of the sentimentalizing of God in every sector of the church, among evangelicals and the rising Liberal movement alike” (p.83).

We still struggle with that inheritance in our churches today.

We are “avoiding the biblical portrait of the sovereign and holy God who is angry with the wicked every day and whose anger remains upon those who will not receive his Son.  Walling off this image into an unvisited corner of its consciousness, the church substituted a new god who was the projection of grandmotherly kindness mixed with the gentleness and winsomeness of a Jesus who hardly needed to die for our sins.  Many American congregations were in effect paying their ministers to protect them from the real God” (p.83,83).

But softening the character of God is only half the problem.  The other half is the softening of the reality of sin.

Even Kierkegaard, the famous philosopher, complained that the New Testament was relatively useless for converting respectable people because it was designed for sinners and noone really believes anymore that they are sinners.  “Owing to this it is almost impossible by the aid of the New Testament to punch a blow at real life, at the actual world in which we live, where for one certified hypocrite there are 100,000 twaddlers, for one certified heretic, 100,000 nincompoops” (p. 92).

I hope you can see the problem here.

It isn’t with the New Testament but with our self-understanding as sinners.  It isn’t about our actions, whether we are seriously evil people or respectable people, it is about our relationship with God.  Sin is a relational word.  Sin is rebellion.  What that rebellion looks like may be worse or better from one case to another but it has the same source and leads to the same end.

Our judgment on the last day is first of all relational (separation of the sheep and the goats) and only secondly about our actions (rewards and punishments).  But if the true nature of sin is not preached (including the flesh, the world and the Devil as enemies of the soul) then people like Kierkegaard are right.  If there is no awareness of sin, the cross means nothing, it changes nothing, it transforms nothing.

And the result in the church is a sort of “dead goodness” without the power to really change anyone’s life.  Useless.  Religious.  Counterfeit.  A form of godliness that denies its power (II Timothy 3).

This religious flesh can show itself both in a structured formalism and tradition as well as in active religiosity that keeps people busy doing church work or social work or anything that will keep them from the way of the cross which is the only way to deal with this great chasm between God’s holiness and our sinfulness.  It is a chasm that God is only willing to bridge with the cross of Christ either in the process of justification or in the process of sanctification (which are the same for God, one simply being the start of the journey while the other is the continuation of the journey).

If there were no credibility gap, even for those who are now Christians, then “a sinless man would love God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and his neighbor as himself, constantly and with full vigor.  The most advanced saint on earth has neither the faith nor the Spirit-empowered love to do this, and therefore a continual cleansing of our experience through the blood of Christ is necessary for us to be righteous in the sight of God, and this cleansing involves the awareness and admission of our falling short” (p. 91).  The only one who achieved this was Jesus Christ.  The rest of us are dependent on him and his righteousness.

That is where the sweet spot is to be found.  Don’t be scared of it.  Embrace it.  We must be very aware of the holiness of God, of what He expects from us, of what it means to be holy, to be righteous and even to hunger and thirst after it.  But at the same time we must be aware of our sin.

There is no point in doing what the Pharisees did and simply reduce the law of God to a manageable size that they felt, with a bit of hard work and discipline, they could actually do.  Jesus put that deception to bed in the Sermon on the Mount.

And there is no point in saying that all you are responsible for is your conscious sin and leave your unconscious sin out of the equation.  God won’t go for that either.  We are polluted with sin in all of our actions, our motivations, our intentions, even when we are at our best.  If you don’t believe it, start paying more attention to your thoughts and your beliefs and values even when you are involved in charitable work and church activities.  The Holy Spirit will show you the truth.  That is one of his major jobs, to convict the world of guilt with regards to sin.

The sweet spot is a place of honesty.

It says that we aren’t afraid to look at the holiness of God and see revealed the depths of our sin because it isn’t about us.  It’s about Christ.  Our lives are hidden in his life.  There is no room for spiritual pride (even though we still have to deal with our conscious sin but always in the context of an awareness of the pollution of sin which keeps us humble).  And there is no room for spiritual depression (as though our failures have some eternal significance rather than simply being a “tutor unto Christ” to reveal to us our idols and our fears that we can then deal with in the resurrection power of  the Holy Spirit).

We have union with Christ.  There is no longer any person such as myself, only myself “in Christ.”  I am a new creation.  I will never bridge the gap.  Only Christ can bridge that gap.  I have no credibility in myself, only in Christ.  What that means is that I should not focus on my morality first of all.  That is not the measure of my walk with Christ.  It’s about my relationship with Christ first of all.

“I want to know Christ,” Paul says, “and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10 NIV).  I preach nothing but the cross.  It isn’t about me.  It’s about him.  If you want to judge my walk in the Spirit then you must judge my relationship with him first of all, and my actions, motivations or intentions in that context.

But wait a minute.

Doesn’t Paul warn us that the grace of God is not a license for continued sin?  Yes, he does.  “What shall we say, then?  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means!” (Romans 6:1,2a NIV).  But that’s not what we are talking about.  We aren’t suggesting even for a moment that the grace of God is an excuse not to make every effort to walk in the Spirit and to stop sinning.  Not at all.

What we are saying is that our success or failure in walking in the Spirit is a question first and foremost of the quality and nature of our relationship with God in Christ and not first of all about whether or not we have committed a particular sin.

The same is true for my relationship with my wife.  My relationship with her does not rise or fall on whether or not I cut the grass, or do the dishes, or keep every thought under control.  Our love is deeper than that and which is why I have the intrinsic motivation to live in that love, respect that love, walk in that love and therefore I develop a growth mindset that allows me to go from glory to glory beause I focus on developing the relationship not just on being perfect.

The sweet spot is a place of grace, a place of rest, a place of no-condemnation but it is also a place where I am deeply motivated to walk in the Spirit, to make every effort to be obedient to that love, to that great sacrfice, not out of obligation but rather out of gratitude.  That sweet spot is a place of love.  I have it with my wife and children.  I have it even more with God because of Christ who is the bridegroom of my soul.  It’s a relationship.  Morality is a limit to the will but love is the freedom of the will.  And that difference makes all the difference in the world.

The Desert Warrior

P.S.  Let’s pray to God….

Lord, I want to live in that sweet spot of grace at the foot of the cross.  I want to gaze upon your holiness and not turn my face from my sin.  I am made righteous in Christ and I will make every effort to respect that great salvation.  In Jesus name I pray.  Amen.