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Weekly Words of Life (2007)

May 29, 2007

Words of Life:

Confined within the ‘mega-church mentality,’ modern Christianity has settled for safety in numbers— call it a comfortable and kindly anonymous distance.  “You don’t get too close to me and I won’t get too close to you.  Then we’ll smile and wave at one another in passing.”  Christian author John Eldredge writes, we’re like “an army that meets for intelligence briefings, but never breaks into platoons and goes to war!”  {WTD, p. 198}  You could say we are an Army warehoused around the world on Sunday morning, but rarely engaged in the fight for humanity Monday through Saturday.  Understand this: A true Band of Brothers, a Fellowship of the saints, is something you have to fight for!  We have to fight to get it, and keep fighting to secure it.  But that is precisely why we’re here: to fight for freedom in the hearts of one another.  And that is my deepest desire as a shepherd: I want my own heart back, as well as the hearts of everyone I know!  It’s what I long to see right here in our midst.  Love and Freedom and Life.  These can only come as we learn to live with passion, with purity, and with power, that is, with a holy desire to see our Lord’s Life unleashed within us.  These three things will mark our Way as a Body of believers when {and only when} we choose to live and believe in the blinding Light of our Father’s love, to see the world and one another through the eternal eyes of Christ, and to walk in step with the consuming fire of the mighty Holy Spirit, whose compassion for the hurting and the heartbroken knows no bounds.

Prayer Promise:

“If you abide in Me [‘if you live in Me, dwell in a place of intimacy and openness with Me’], and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.  My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit [divine production from a life consecrated to Christ], and {so} prove to be My disciples [the world’s knowledge of our discipleship comes from the love, sacrificial and selfless, that we have for each other; the proof of that discipleship is seen in the faithful, loving service we offer to the world].  Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you.  Abide in My love [‘make yourself at Home in my heart, and never leave there’],” John 15:7-9.

June 11, 2007

Words of Life: 

What the disciples did in Acts 4:23-31 was precisely what the prophets of old down through the centuries had commanded them to do: when under an insidious attack, when you face the challenge of our common enemy, in every season, at any time, cry out to your Deliverer, call upon the name of the Lord and He will be “an ever present Help in times of trouble,” Psalm 46:1.  Here is the Brotherhood of believers living by faith and walking with their God, a Body militant and on the move, aggressive and undeterred.  So, what’s it going to take to recapture the fire and flame of our first love for Christ?  What kind of crisis must come crashing onto the shell of our self-protective lives before we open ourselves fully to the Spirit of the Living God?  I wonder what will it take for some of us before we give over to God what He’s given to us?  And that’s everything: we were, we are, and we ever will be.

Do you know what the Divine response to their prayers and pleas was?  It says in v. 31, “when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken [saleuo- ‘shake down’ to the foundations; the place where they had assembled themselves in prayer was ‘shaken’ by the mighty Presence of God], and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and {began} to speak the Word of God with boldness,” that is, with freedom and fearlessness.  Now that, my friends, is an answered prayer.  Not all prayer is answered in such a dramatic fashion, nor does all prayer require it.  But when we pray in the strength of the Spirit, with the “mind of Christ” on the tips of our tongues, and a trust of the Father deep in our hearts, we can rest assured that an answer of some form or fashion is on its way.  The Father loves to listen and respond to the prayers of His children offered in faith… because that’s who He is: a faithful, prayer-answering, self-glorifying God!  

Prayer Promise: 

In John 16:23 Jesus said, “Truly, …I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name [by My authority and in accordance with My will], He will give it to you [consider John’s words concerning the ‘assurance we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  And if we know that He hears us… we know that we have what we have asked of Him,’ 1 Jn. 5:14-15].  Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full,” John 16:23b-24.  Don’t let the epitaph of your life read like the words of James in 4:2c, “You do not have, because you do not ask.”  

Critical to our understanding of prayer is our understanding of the Father; if we get that down, we can enter into prayer with boldness and with joy.  When we realize, as George Mueller said, that “prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance.  It is laying hold of God’s willingness,” it changes everything.  This mighty word on prayer was uttered by a man who ran several orphanages in 19^th century England with hundreds and hundreds of children under his care without so much as an ounce of British sterling provided by the crown.  He knew that man was impotent to meet his needs; and that government run by man was no better.  Only God would do.  Thus, he taught those around him {including his wife} about trust in a faithful Father by a lifestyle of passionate prayer.

June 18, 2007

Words of Life:

We live in a Tale of Two Christianities: Emotion run astray with no Truth to guard or guide on one hand; and Information run amok, knowledge beyond knowledge with very little love to show for it, on the other.  Just wave upon wave of information without transformation.  And that, my friends, is as dangerously self-defeating as the former to life in the Spirit of Christ.  In some ways even more so, because it has all the earmarks of a ‘balanced spirituality,’ a ‘conservative approach;’ it has the appearance of wisdom and the authority of the Word.  For us and many of those we know and love, it may in fact be the much greater danger.  You see, nowhere in Scripture do we find an ‘information-only Christianity.’  It’s just not there.  Wayfaring in a fallen world, warfaring against the powers of darkness, a deep and passionate love for Jesus that mesmerizes our hearts and minds, engagement with the weary and the wounded, the healing of broken souls and the healing of broken bodies, lives restored, pasts redeemed, hope renewed… but no mere worship of facts and formulas.  Nowhere in the first five centuries of our present Age do we see an information-only Christianity {and probably nowhere in the first eighteen}.  It simply doesn’t exist.  The influence of Rome brings in ritual substituting for reality, yet still no worship of information-only.  Why?  Because the Call of Christ is a call to action, to engagement, for intimate involvement in the Purpose of God, a Family of Faith becoming a Community of Christ’s Followers who live and love fiercely and freely, the joy of the Father and the strength of His Spirit flowing through our souls like a mighty rushing river!  These are the hallmarks of the Holy Spirit.  Where He is active and alive— welcomed and invited to clear away the accumulated debris which has kept us from Christ, to breathe fresh Life into the deadness of our lives— we will be also.  

Prayer Promise:

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding [i.e., what you think you know].  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”  To “trust,” from the Hebrew batach, means- ‘to have a bold and secure confidence in.’  Notice it is with “all your heart” that you are to trust Him and in “all your ways” that you are to acknowledge Him.  That means every path of life in which you walk.  Only when we live by faith in the Father and in honesty about the hidden realms of our lives can we rest in the knowledge that it is God who directs our every step.  

June 25, 2007

Words of Life:

Life in the Spirit of Christ is to be lived out in the well-defined domain of a deeply relational God, in the Community of the Trinity.  Christianity is nothing if not relational to the core.  When we remove Christianity from its relational context— and our Christian lives from their relational context, first with Abba, then with others— we are left with little more than a set of rules and regulations to govern our morality {or lack thereof}.  We might as well go back to the Law of Moses, because at least in the Law we have a set of moral guidelines that are defined for us in painstakingly exquisite detail.  As opposed to the NT images of Life, eternal and abundant, which require the inbreathing and interaction of the mighty Spirit of God in every single step we take and at every twist and turn of the Way.  It is a tragedy of epic proportions to take the Life and Faith given us by an immensely personal God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who set aside His heavenly glory to enter the arena of human existence and redeem us, rescue us, and restore us to Himself, and turn it into mediocre descriptions about a divine being who operates with all the tenderness and compassion of a computer mainframe.  "Just punch in the right code and get out the right results.  If we do A, B, and C, God is obligated to always do D."  That formulaic approach to God has all the intimacy of an accounting spreadsheet; rather than being relational, it is emphatically irrelational.  And this is what we must let go of, turn loose of entirely, this formulaic approach to the Father.  It's the only way for our understanding of Him as Abba to awaken, and our intimacy with Him as the Perfect Father to intensify in its beauty.  We need divine relationship, and we need it desperately.

Consider this analogy.  It’s like a man trying to orient to his wife as a sophisticated snack machine: just figure out the right combination, how to speak the right words and manipulate the female mind, give her the right gold bracelet or the right diamond necklace, and get the sex he wants in return.  With no thought of her as a unique human being, a soul of incredible value beloved by God, with thoughts, ideas, feelings, beliefs, relationships all her own… and with a worth in the Father’s eyes equal to his own.  There is no real relationship there, in approaching her as an object to be used, a problem to be fixed, or a puzzle to be solved.  Lest you’re unsure of this, I can promise you: she doesn’t want to be fixed, she wants to be known.  And so does God.  We’re back, once again, to the realm of relationship.  What we need as a Body of believers, a Family of Faith {here at Heart’s Journey or anywhere else we might gather on the globe} in the post-Christian world of the 21^st century, is language, ideas, images of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as distinct members of the Trinity with which we have distinct relational connections.  And we must embrace these terms, ideas, and images in every area of our lives, keeping them intact and in front of our hearts at all times.  We must not— must not— remove Christianity from its relational context.  Period.  What happens when we do is that we have very little left which resembles the Freedom and Life Christ came to offer, with little or none of the passion and the power of the early Church.  If our lives are lacking anything in this day and age, it is pure passion and holy power.  It is the Love that flows from a relationship with the Trinity which provides us both in abundance.

Prayer Promise:

“While Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished [a separate occasion from the Sermon on the Mount— Matt. 5-7], one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray [not, interestingly enough, ‘Lord, teach us to preach,’ but ‘Lord, teach us how to commune with the Father like You, how to pray with passion and with power, that’s what we need’] just as John also taught his disciples [it was customary for ancient rabbis to teach their disciples a specific style of prayer; Jesus gave them, and us, a model of brevity and brilliance].’  And He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: “Father [Abba is our orientation to reality and the foundation for all effective prayer: a child-like trust in the heart of the Father], hallowed be Your name [‘let it be held in holy reverence, let the name of Abba be sanctified in our souls,’ {RR}].  Your Kingdom come [which includes the ‘rule of God’ over us, around us, and within us].  Give us each day our daily bread [that which we need to survive right here, right now: grace for this moment].  And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us [illustrates the necessity of dealing with unresolved emotional issues so as to insure we are walking in step with the Spirit of God].  And lead us not into temptation [Jms. 1:13 tells us, ‘God cannot be tempted and does not Himself tempt anyone;’ so, the concept may be better expressed as: ‘lead us far away from temptation and even testing’],”’” Luke 11:1-4.   What we have above is a model for prayer, an outline to follow as we pursue intimacy with the Almighty, beginning with His glory and His Kingdom {which is always the proper perspective}, then moving on to our needs, which are summarized beautifully as the physical {daily bread}, the relational {forgiveness}, and the spiritual {temptation and testing}.  It’s phenomenal how much of life is covered under the daily provision of grace to meet the needs of the moment, forgiveness on two counts: with God and toward others, and a wide berth around temptation and victory over testing trials.

If you’ve ever prayed, “Lord, teach me to pray like the Son of God Himself,” then this is the first part of your answer.  According to Romans 8:34, Christ is “at the right hand” of the Father “interceding for us” this very moment.  That is present tense, meaning ‘constantly and continually.’  If we want to learn how to prayer and what to pray, we should look to Him directly.  Because whatever it is He’s praying, we want to be in on that!  May we learn the lessons our Lord is teaching, and has promised to, as we humble ourselves in His School of Prayer.

July 3, 2007

Words of Life:

In answering the objection of why God chose to enter enemy-occupied territory in disguise rather than invading it in force, C.S. Lewis said: “Christians” believe “He is going to land in force; we do not know when.  But we can guess why He is delaying.  He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.  …I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does.  When that happens, it is the end of the world.  When the Author walks on to the stage the play is over.  God is going to invade, all right [see Isaiah 42 below]: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural Universe melting away like a dream and something else— something it never entered your head to conceive— comes crashing in, something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?  For this time it will be God without disguise, something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side.  …That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chose, whether we realized it before or not.  Now, today, this moment is our chance to choose the Right Side.  God is holding back to give us that chance.  It will not last forever.  We must take it or leave it.”  Mere Christianity, p. 65  {Italics and Capitals mine.}

Prayer Promise:

Isaiah 42:1, 3-8: “Here is My Servant, whom I uphold, My Chosen One in whom I delight; I will put My Spirit upon Him and He will bring justice to the nations.  …A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish [which shows the compassion of the King, for how often have we each felt like a ‘bruised reed’ about to break, the fire in our souls like a flickering candle with water slowly dripping on it?].  In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on the Earth.  In His Law the islands will put their hope.  This is what God the LORD says— He who created the Heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the Earth and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people and life to those who walk on it: ‘I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness; I will take hold of Your hand.  I will keep You and will make You to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles [Lk. 2:30-32], to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.  [For] I am the LORD; that is My name!  I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols,’” {NIV}.

I chose this particular passage this week because it pictures the Son of God in His 2^nd Advent, His return to rule in righteousness and Truth, what we call the Millennium, Latin for the “thousand years” set out in Revelation 20:2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.  It is a glorious image of a God who cares deeply for the hearts of humanity, the lives of those whom He Himself created— Colossians 1:16.  I love the latter section where the Father speaks to the Son and say’s, “I will make You a Covenant for the people [Israel] and a Light for the Gentiles [quoted by Simeon of Jerusalem, that old and faithful worshipper of God, as he held the baby Messiah in his arms; he said, ‘Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace, according to Your Word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel,’ Lk. 2:29-32], to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.  For I am the LORD….”  Every man has been blind {and most still are}, every woman has been captive, every child born into this world is under the bondage and darkness of spiritual death until set free by faith in the Lord of Glory.

July 9, 2007

Words of Life:

I believe that critical to our understanding of prayer is our understanding of the Father.  If we can get that down, we may find ourselves entering into prayer in a completely unexpected way… with boldness and with joy.  Imagine prayer not as a duty, but as a delight.  Prayer not as something rigid, but as something relaxed, entering into the Father’s presence not with clenched fists but with open hands ready to receive, with a boldness, a joy, and an open-hearted trust in all that He is and all He’s capable of being to us.  When we realize, as George Mueller once said, that “prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance.  It is laying hold of God’s willingness,” that changes everything.  This statement was made by a man who ran several orphanages in 19^th century England with hundreds of children under his care {hundreds} and without so much as an ounce of British sterling provided by the crown.  He knew that man was impotent to meet his needs; and that government run by man was no better.  Only God would do.  So, he taught those around him— his wife included— how to trust in a faithful Father by a lifestyle of passionate prayer.  God doesn’t ask {and even command: 1 Thes. 5:18} us to pray, just to impose some sort of spiritual discipline on us.  When it comes to the passion for prayer, we’re not talking about Law, we’re talking about Love.  E.M. Bounds wrote:

“Prayer ought to enter into the spiritual habits, but it ceases to be prayer when it is carried on by habit only.  …Desire gives fervor to prayer.  The soul cannot be listless when some great desire fixes and inflames it….  Strong desires make strong prayers.  The neglect of prayer is the fearful token of dead spiritual desires.  The soul has turned away from God when desire after Him no longer presses it into the closet.  There can be no true praying without desire.”  {Italics Mine}

Amen. 

Prayer Promise:

“Admit your faults to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed [we have to see this in light of the larger context: of faith-filled prayer delivering sinners and healing the sick; as Peterson puts it in v. 15, ‘Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet.  And if you’ve sinned, you'll be forgiven— healed inside and out,’ {The Message}].  The earnest prayer of a righteous man [any man or woman, any believer in tune with the heart of God and in step with Spirit of God] has great power and wonderful results.  Elijah was as completely human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for the next three and a half years!  Then he prayed again, this time that it would rain, and down it poured, and the grass turned green and the gardens began to grow again,” James 5:16-18 {TLB}.

I chose the Living Bible, an obvious paraphrase, as the version for our prayer promise this week because of the ease with which it expresses the essence of this passage.  I want to share with you a key point concerning the latter half of v. 16 and ‘the prayers of the righteous.’  The last verb is sometimes translated “as it is working.”  The verb energeo here can be either a present middle participle or a present passive participle.  If it is passive, then the idea would be “the prayer of the righteous has incredible power when it is active, when it is operative, when it is exercised!”  You know what happens when the sons of God neglect the privilege and priority of prayer and all of its profound power?  Nothing …absolutely nothing.  As James said earlier in this letter, “You do not have because you do not ask,” James 4:2c.  “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full,” John 16:24b.

I’ve included Eugene Peterson’s powerful paraphrase of James 5:16: “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.  The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with,” {The Message}.   “The prayer of a person living right with God….”  Beautiful.

July 16, 2007

Words of Life:

The phrase “our Father always near us, our Abba within and around us,” from Matthew 6:9 {my personal paraphrase} puts us at the very center of what Christ came to reveal: His Father is our Father.  And we are to call Him Abba because His heart is one of tenderness toward His children, of forgiveness for our sins and affection for our souls, a heart of Light to dispel the shadow of our shame.  What does this revolutionary statement signify in the spiritual realm?  [1] It is the essential reality of redemption: Christ delivers us from the Curse so that we may become the children of God— John 1:12; and Galatians 3:13.  And [2] it explains the miracle of regeneration in Titus 3:5: the Spirit in the new Birth gives us new Life in a new Family forever— the Family of the Father, which is the Family of Faith.  In John 3:5 “Jesus answered” Nicodemus, “Truly… I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit [first physically, then spiritually], he cannot enter the Kingdom of God [‘unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God,’ v. 3].”  “Our Father, everywhere and always.”  The opening phrase of the Model Prayer in Matthew 6 is the key to all prayer.  That child-like trust in the Father’s heart which carries us through to the experience of His everlasting love is at once the simplest and yet most profound lesson in the School of Prayer.  It is only in the experience of God’s heart as a Father that the power of prayer takes root and begins to grow.  A prayer-powered life finds its joy in the uncompromising care, concern, and compassion of a perfect Father who is always ready to hear and to help.

“Our Father in Heaven and on Earth” is not a phrase borrowed from earthly life— transposed from the temporal to the eternal.  It’s not an idea or an image bound to the circles of this world, for God Himself is the Author of fatherhood.  He alone is the perfect image of fatherhood, of what it truly means to be a Father.  The ideal of fatherhood doesn’t proceed from us to Him, from our realm upward; it comes down from God to us.  It is He who gives meaning to the human concept of Father; not the other way around.  One of our greatest fears as believers seems to be embracing God as a tender-hearted Father.  We’re okay with a harsh taskmaster in the labor of our lives, an intense inspector of our moral inventory {rifling through the suitcase of our shame}, or an angry accountant adding up our sins, but the Abba of Love reigning over and within us is a little too much for most.

Open the eyes and ears of your heart, O’ fearful sons and daughters of the Father and relish your role as His chosen ones!  God loves you, infinitely and unerringly, not because you’re bold, beautiful, or brilliant, but because He is your Father, the Abba of Eternity!  The Cross of Christ did not make God love us, nor does it make us loveable.  It is the outpouring of His love to us.  His love lies beneath everything that is; it is the foundation of our faith, our present, and our future.  We must get this.  We must grasp it by faith and get it down in the soul as the rock-solid Foundation of Life.  Not growing and maturing up into that love {as if it were something we had to earn}, but moving and maturing up out of that love, stretching our roots down deep to spread out in the fertile soil of His everlasting love, so that His love becomes the motivation for everything we are and everything we do.  The all embracing Love of the Lord is what fully and finally sets us free to live without fear and love the same way.  

Life in a fallen world demands that we reach above and beyond ourselves for the kind of serious inner strength, genuine lasting joy, uncompromising conviction, abiding hope and lasting love which sets both us— and the real people around us— free from the fear of living.  We find these glimpses of grace when {and only when} our divine relationship begins and ends with, “our Abba always near us.”

Prayer Promise:

Isaiah 40:29-31 says, the LORD “gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.  Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength [they will exchange the human for the divine], they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint,” {RSV}.  To “wait for the LORD” is a beautiful picture of faith in the Hebrew.  It means to ‘look for with eager expectation, to hope in.’  It was originally used for someone taking frail strands of cord, breakable by themselves, and twisting them together into a strong and resilient rope.  Qavah speaks of a child of the King who takes the promises, provisions and rock-solid realities of the Sacred Word and weaves them into an unbreakable rope of faith.

July 25, 2007

Words of Life:

Being a lover of famous quotes, especially those which bring us back to the realm of reality, I couldn’t help but notice how accurate {and ironic} one of D.L. Moody’s is to where we are in the Church today.  One of the things you notice early on as a pastor— which anyone can see if their eyes are open— is the enormous number of believers who love to complain just to hear themselves complain, who will seek out opportunities to vent their frustration with their faith, their anger at themselves, and their disappointment with God.  And yet never desire to move beyond this simple stage of life.  What I’m saying to you is that everybody has moments like this… everybody.  But the Few, the humble {as opposed to proud}, the Lovers of God, refuse to stay there.  They will not wallow on the field of their defeat; they grab hold of the grace extended in the hands of the Master and find themselves once more standing on faith-full feet.  At the height of his evangelistic ministry, when the eternal wisdom of the Word and the mighty power of the Spirit were working hand in hand to bring the souls of multitudes into the glorious Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, along comes a man to one of Moody’s crusades who can only be described as a 19^th century version of those we encounter so often today.  When he said to Moody, “I don’t like the way you do this,” Moody asked him, “How do you do it?”  The man said, “Well, I don’t,” to which Moody replied, “I like the way I do it better than the way you don’t do it.”  He refused to get suckered in by the arrogance of the enemy’s mouthpiece.  Here’s the point.  It takes no character or courage, no sense of destiny or desire whatsoever, to denigrate and demean the lives, loves, and labors of others.  But it takes a real man or real woman {one “after His own heart …who will do all His will,” 1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22} to get down in the mud and the blood and the bones of another’s existence and say, “I will live with you in strength and honor, I will offer love to you— just as you are— and I will labor beside you in the Cause of our King.”  That is what Life in the Spirit of Christ is made of.  That, and nothing less.

Prayer Promise:

Paul say’s we can “know” {not think, guess, or speculate but know} without a shadow of doubt, “that God causes all things [pain, sorrow, rejection, loss, abuse, abandonment, betrayal, you name it] to work together for the ultimate good of those who love Him, those who are called according to His perfect purpose and perfect plan.  …What, then, shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?,” Romans 8:28 and 31.

July 29, 2007

Yesterday was our first ever Searching the Scriptures service, a very open Q & A session covering Life in the Spirit of Christ, reality, relationships, prayer, the way God works in the world, and any other topic of Truth which has struck us as crucial here of late.  I want to thank all of you who prayed faithfully and fervently for this service; it worked very well, flowed beautifully, and came off without a hitch.  There was a sincerity of seeking in the questions asked, and Spirit-lead responses offered in return.  Our praise is given to the God of all grace who came through for us once again… as He always does.

It is and has been my desire as the shepherd-teacher of Heart’s Journey to bring us together onto some common Biblical ground as far as our worldview {that we are at War}, our recognition of reality {see previous statement}, our passion for the Person of Jesus Christ, and the ideas and images we used to speak of a deeply relational God.  The purpose being so that we can move forward in the future as a whole, a Body intact, not fractured and fragmented.  This required the participation of all present, as well as the prayer of many others, to be meaningful spiritually.  And it was.  Thank you.  This is an avenue we may pursue once every other month; I don’t know yet.  We’ll see what the Spirit has in store for us.

The key for this, and I believe any ministry along these lines {which can be attested by years of Q & A in pastor’s conferences in the Philippines}, is one simple ordinance uttered by the Master: “Treat others the same way you want them to treat you,” Luke 6:31.  It goes a long way, for those who choose to trust it, toward taking arrogance out of the equation.  It’s amazing how wise the Son of God really is …and what happens when we choose to acknowledge that He does know exactly what He’s talking about and maybe— just maybe— He has a better grip on reality, real Life in the Father’s realm, and on the world’s ways of denying that reality and deceiving us in the process, than many of us have given Him credit for.

Words of Life:

Brooklyn Tabernacle Pastor Jim Cymbala offers this thought on the rigid regimentation of every aspect of our hearts, our lives, and our worship in the Spirit of Christ.  “Many current church leaders think the goal is to rigidly control every phase of God’s work.  I humbly disagree.  We are probably organized far too much.  The early Church had a beautiful spontaneity and freshness, without being chaotic or disorderly.”  Fresh Power, p. 124

D.L. Moody once said, and this is a perfect continuation of Cymbala’s thought:

The Spirit of God …first imparts love; He next inspires hope; and then He gives liberty— which is about the last thing we have in a good many of our churches at the present day.  I am sorry to say there must be a funeral in a good many churches before there is much work done; we shall have to bury the formalism so deep that it will never have any resurrection.  The last thing to be found in many a church is liberty.

In response Cymbala writes, “Are we making such an impact on the world for God that we can’t humble ourselves in prayer for a change in the status quo?

Revival comes when people get dissatisfied with what is and yearn deeply for what could be.”  {Italics in Original.}

Prayer Promise:

Psalm 130: A Song of Ascents.

“Out of the depths [of heartache and despair] I cry to you, O LORD!  O Lord, hear my voice!  Let Your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy!  If You, LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?  But with You there is forgiveness, therefore You are feared [‘You are reverenced with love and respected with awe’].  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I put my hope [cf. Psalm 119 for what it means to live ‘in love with His Word’]; my soul waits for the Lord …more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.  O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love, and with Him is full redemption [abundant and overflowing].  He Himself will redeem Israel from all his sins [‘He shall ransom Israel from her slavery to sin,’ {TLB}],” {NIV}.

August 6, 2007

Words of Life:

With Eyes on Eternity.

C.S. Lewis said, “Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight.  That is very like the problem for all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the Daylight of the next.  The good dress is the one that will face that light.  For that light will last longer.”  Pastor, author, and spiritual seeker A.W. Tozer wrote: “The Church is constantly being tempted to accept this world as her home….  But if she is wise she will consider that she stands in the valley between the mountain peaks of eternity past and eternity to come.  The past is gone forever and the present is passing as swift as the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz.  Even if the Earth should continue a million years not one of us could stay to enjoy it.  We do well to think of the long tomorrow….”

“We do well to think of the long tomorrow.”  I wonder how many of us— walking “in step with the Spirit of God,” Gal. 5:25— think faith-fully, fearlessly, and creatively about the short today, about what it means to live well with one another, to love well a wounded soul, to speak well with words of honor, to laugh well at the fate of our enemy, to rejoice well at the fate of our friends, and to run well to the arms of our Savior.  These are the preparations for the “long tomorrow” in the short today, in the real time of the hour we’re in and the real space of the road we’re on.  It’s here and now, in this moment, that Christ our King and fearless Commander is calling us to look around with our eyes wide open, to soak in the sights of His glorious image borne on the souls of those we love {and those we don’t}, and to live freely and courageously the Life which is ours and ours alone to live, with the eyes of our hearts resting on Eternity.

Christian artist David Bush put it this way in one of his choruses: 

So I will love you, love you

With every word I say

How can I claim the name of Jesus if I turn and walk away?

 

Yes I will love you, love you

Like I only have today

I’ve been given the gift of amazing grace

So I will love

 

                  — from the song I Will Love and the CD In Transit.

Will you or won’t you?  The choice is ours to make.  So, what’s it going to be?

Prayer Promise:

This one is a glorious reassurance for our hearts of the phenomenal salvation which is ours eternally.

“For by one offering [the sacrifice of Himself] He [Jesus Christ] has perfected for all time those who are sanctified [1 Cor. 1:2 and 6:11: ‘you were washed, …sanctified, …and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’].  And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us [believers in the Age of Grace]; for after saying, ‘THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,’ {He then says}, ‘AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE [‘never again’],’” Hebrews 10:14-17.  Thank You, Father.

August 13, 2007

August 20, 2007

Words of Life:

As the offspring of the Almighty {“I will be a Father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to Me…,” 2 Cor. 6:18}, we have already received the eternal indwelling of the Spirit.  Romans 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14 and 4:30; 2 Timothy 1:14; and Hebrews 6:4 all make this abundantly clear.  What Jesus called in Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4 “the promise of My Father,” the one relational reality which reveals the heart of God to His children as Abba, was given on the Day of Pentecost and to each of us at salvation.

What we need to pray for now is the Spirit of God to manifest Himself in new and fresh ways within our hearts and lives, in order that He might have that perfect possession of us we speak of so often— body, soul, and spirit— that He would reign with fullness and freedom over every area of our experience, and that He might continue to wage war on our behalf: covering our blindside and our backside against the attacks of the evil one!  As I was thinking over the past several weeks about new channels through which the Spirit might flow, new ways He might bring Christ roaring to the forefront and glorify the King through us and within us, here’s what came to me.  Remember the old saying about the Holy Spirit, “We have all of Him, the problem is He doesn’t have all of us”?  That’s it precisely.  Those new avenues of divine action, divine power, divine purity, divine holiness, righteousness, and love are going to come open as the old avenues of pain, heartache, hurt and despair, the old pockets of anger, bitterness, recrimination and revenge are cleansed, purged and purified by the healing hands of Jesus Christ.

Wholeness and holiness have an intrinsic connection in the Christian Life.  As our hearts become more and more whole— the wounds healed, the sorrows redeemed— we find a greater and greater capacity for the holiness the Spirit brings; and the deeper we walk in the holiness of our God, moment by moment by moment, the bolder and braver we become in welcoming Jesus Christ into those areas of profound and unhealed brokenness still within us.  Thus, leading to more and more healing and wholeness.  Do you see the relationship?  Wholeness and holiness are flip sides of the same coin.  As the healing of our hearts becomes deeper and deeper and the structure of our souls becomes more and more whole, we’re going to find that the Holy Spirit has whole new realms in which to operate within us, entire regions of the sub-conscious soul to move and to breathe in.  Now we see those ‘hidden places’ of yesteryear, those areas formerly off-limits, are wide-open channels of free-flowing grace.

Prayer Passage:

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him [a guarantee of divine faithfulness].  But when he asks [the condition to the promise:], he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind,” James 1:5-6 {NIV}.

Here’s how this sounds in The Message: “If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father.  He loves to help.  You’ll get His help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it.  Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought.  People who ‘worry their prayers’ are like wind-whipped waves,” James 1:5-6.

August 27, 2007

Words of Life:

Jesus said, “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and wealth [mammon is an Aramaic term for wealth personified and opposed to God].  Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him.  And He said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts [‘knows the very core of who you are’]; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God,” Luke 16:13-15.   “That which is highly esteemed among men” is the wealth of this world, loved by its people.

Ezra Klein of the Los Angeles Times wrote an editorial several weeks ago entitled The Reason We Work Too Hard.  The article said, “‘If you had a choice between a higher salary and more vacation time, which would you choose?’  Most Americans would prefer more time off, studies have found— yet the amount of time we spend away from our jobs is in precipitous decline.  Though we are the richest nation on Earth, we guarantee no vacation time to workers, and the average number of days taken is only 12.  …American workers put in longer workdays too, and the average male now works 100 hours more a year than the average male did in the 1970s, while the average woman works 200 more hours.  ‘Those hours are coming from somewhere: from time with our kids, our friends, our spouses, even our bed.’  Why is our work ethic in overdrive?  Cornell economist Robert Frank says Americans are caught in a cycle of wanting more goodies than the guy next door; no matter how much we have, we still feel a need for more income if our neighbor’s house or car or flat-panel TV is bigger than ours.  In other words, Americans are determined to keep up with the Joneses.  And that won’t stop until the Joneses take a nice, long vacation.”  {Taken from the Aug. 10^th edition of The Week magazine, Issue 322}

The great danger of life today is the pace at which we live it: “Go, go, go; move, move, move.  Don’t stop, don’t slow.  Move!”  The spirit of this life, the spirit of the age, which is incredibly deceptive {and seductive}, is busyness… busyness and driven-ness.  The seduction is how easily we get locked in to the competition of the kosmos— the competitive mindset of a commercial culture where the highest end of all we are is ‘to own’— and then bring that mindset into our Christian lives.  Now everyone becomes a rival: first one to the top of the spiritual heap; more power on the board, committee, or ministry than you; I have more money than so and so {they must certainly not be blessed by God}; my wife / husband is better looking than yours; we have a better house; our children are perfect and yours are not, and on and on ad inifinitum.  In the words of Eugene Peterson, we acquire the “vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival” in our “ugly parodies of community,” Galatians 5:21a {The Message}.

Driven-ness, I believe we can all agree on, is highly rewarded {and regarded} in the corporate chaos of the modern world; and when your undaunted drive to the top succeeds at work and destroys you everywhere else— physically, mentally, spiritually, maritally— what you can count on hearing from the realm of commerce is this word of advice: “You’ve got to keep going, keep the fire hot, make hay while the Sun shines.  You don’t want to lose any momentum… right?”  And we just go on, assuming that this is inevitable …the pace at which we live, the busyness we embrace.  It is not.

What we see from the Life of Jesus is that He is counter-cultural, an extremely counter-cultural figure, this Jesus of Nazareth.  He is in the face of the world, a world with the same set of satanic values as ours.  Don’t miss this point, because it’s absolutely critical to the life of your heart: You have a choice in this.  To believe otherwise is to be ruled by fatalism, destined to a defeatist mentality.  This is your life: to live or be lived for you by the dictates of a corrosive culture.  You can, in fact, take a stand and say, “I will not be ruled by busyness, nor by the incessant demands of others.”  Which is precisely what we see in our Lord’s Life, a divine indifference, a savvy understanding of how the enemy robs us of the precious gifts of Freedom and Life.  He is not indifferent to hurting people or to the hearts of those around Him, but to the pressures of the satanic system: religious, political, personal, of any form or fashion.  Not just indifferent, but antagonistic to, and rightfully so.   He chooses a thoughtful life, a considered life, a deliberate life in God and with God over anything the world {and its ruler (Mat. 4:1-11; Lk. 4:1- 13)} has to offer.

Busyness is the number one substitute for Life in the Spirit of Christ; busyness is the number one counterfeit to the reality of divine relationship!  You can’t have the Life of God and the spirit of this age.  They are absolutely incompatible.  Remember, Jesus is out for my best interest… always.  He is leading me to Freedom and to Life.  “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light,” Matthew 11:28-30 {NAU}.  If your “yoke” is not “easy” and your “burden” is not “light,” you might want to ask, “How did I get to this place, and who hooked me up to this?”  This is not the Life you were meant for, and it’s not too late to do something about it.

Prayer Passage:

Psalm 34:17-19 and 22: “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.  The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.  Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.  …The LORD redeems the life of His servants; none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.”

TEV has, “The righteous call to the LORD, and He listens; He rescues them from all their troubles.  The LORD is near to those who are discouraged; He saves those who have lost all hope.  The good man suffers many troubles, but the LORD saves him from them all.  …The LORD will save His people; those who go to Him for protection will be spared,” Psalm  34:17-19, 22.

September 3, 2007

Words of Life:

English writer G.K. Chesterton once said, “With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of a story which we are certain to misunderstand.”  You see, the world has lost its Story.  Unfortunately, so has Christianity.  This is so very vital to the context of our lives and to the Conflict in which those lives are lived out.  The Story of your life is the story of one long, continuous assault by one who knows who you really are and hates it, and knows who you could become in Christ and fears it.  And that, my friends, is the real story of your life.  Which is a huge part of the reason why— in a world where nothing happens by accident— the events unfolding around us seem so accidental, the things happening to us so random and erratic.  The veil of this world has been pulled down over our eyes to keep us blinded to what’s really going on.  The Bible puts it this way: “the whole world lies in {the power of} the evil one,” in the evil one's kingdom, under his sway— 1 John 5:19b.  Very much like, exactly like in fact, the world of The Matrix.  No wonder we mis-interpret so much of our lives; no wonder we miss so much that is incredibly valuable and eternal in magnitude.

What we live in today, not necessarily on a personal-relational level, but quite definitely on a cultural-political one, is very much a post-modern, post-Christian world where Science and Politics are the twin gods of safety and security.  Several hundred years ago the world moved {or so it believed} out of the silly superstition of the Middle Ages and into a more scientific mode, ultimately culminating in the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Modern World, with science— not Scripture— as the Interpreter of our lives.  In a brilliant synopsis of the unproven assumptions inherent in the thinking of post-modern man, Neil Postman said this about the scientific view:

In the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require.  Its story of our origins and our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory.  To the question, “How did it all begin,” science answers, “Probably by an accident.”  To the question, “How will it all end,” science answers, “Probably by an accident.”  And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living.  {From Science and the Story We Need; Italics Mine}

But a purposeful life is: a meaningful Life in Christ, in Time with a weight and worth that stretches on into Eternity.  And this is the Life God has given you; this is the Life you were made for.

Prayer Passage:

“For not all have faith.  But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil {one},” 2 Thessalonians 3:2b-3 {NAU}; the TLB has, “for not everyone loves the Lord, but the Lord is faithful.  He will make you strong and guard you from satanic attacks of every kind.”

September 10, 2007

Words of Life:

Mark 11:15-18 says, “On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there [the ‘sellers’ were providing sacrificial animals, guaranteed to be free from defect and thus acceptable at the Altar, for a 70% markup on what a worshipper of the Lord would pay right outside the Temple walls on the streets of Jerusalem].  He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves [it appears from the narrative with the men still in them: Scripture says nothing about ‘empty benches’ or ‘empty seats’], and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple courts [good for Him!].  And as He taught them, He said, ‘Is it not written [in Isaiah 56:7]: “My house will be called a House of Prayer for all nations”?  But you have made it “a den of robbers.”’  The chief priests and the teachers of the Law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching,” {NIV}.

In this story {a quite factual account, by the way}, where Jesus full of fury and zeal cleanses the Temple of its messianic merchants, is He railing against a profit motive, against capitalist economies, economic theories of supply and demand?  Is that what He's trying to teach us, as the liberal might argue?  Not at all.  Jesus was not against business, nor was He against trade, certainly not the profits that come from a job well done… outside the House of God!  Notice that, and don't forget it.  The anger of God is never unleashed in Scripture on anyone, Jew or Gentile, selling something of value, providing a meaningful service, or offering their expertise in exchange for the means to survive.  His anger was evoked here because the sellers of goods had made access to God into a business.  And a lucrative one at that.  They had made forgiveness something you could purchase, the guilt and shame of others the marketplace for their profit margin.  They turned the House of God into a den of thieves!  These were the kind of men who had become so good at the rituals of religion that they had no further need for God, and so full of themselves that there was no room left for Him.  They would rather make a profit than experience His Presence.

What about you: where do you fall in the line of worshippers?  Businessman, bureaucrat, or barbarian lover of the Lord?  Do you want the “Lion of Judah” {Rev. 5:5} or the “lion cub,” with His claws pared down and His teeth filed flat?  The tame and timid Savior of self-help prayers and Rotary Club members or the wild and adventurous God who will not relent until your heart is free?  And I mean free— fully and finally, from every last chain that binds you, every sentence of shame spoken by the dark one, every weight of guilt that keeps you down.  Even those idols you have no desire to turn loose of.  In the end, what do you really want: to make a profit or to live in His presence?  Do you want the ways of the world or the ways of the Word?  Because the two cannot be compatible, and they will never co-exist— Luke 16:13-15. 

Prayer Passage:

Micah 7:7-8 says, “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the LORD; I will wait [in faith] for the God of my salvation.  My God will hear me.  Do not rejoice over me [NIV has, ‘do not gloat over me’], O my enemy.  Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a Light for me,” {NAU}.

“But me, I’m not giving up.  I’m sticking around to see what GOD will do.  I’m waiting for God to make things right.  I’m counting on God to listen to me.  Don’t, enemy, crow over me; I'm down, but I'm not out.  I’m sitting in the dark right now, but GOD is my Light,” {The Message}.

September 17, 2007

Words of Life:

Moses’ recollection of the events in Deuteronomy 1:5-41 may be the saddest story in all of Scripture: this dramatic Exodus from enslavement in Egypt, the people of God poised on the brink of a new life in a Land of Promise.  In v. 41 Moses records the Israelites as saying, “‘We have sinned against the LORD; we will indeed go up and fight, just as the LORD our God commanded us.’  And every man of you girded on his weapons of war, and regarded it as easy to go up into the hill country,” {NAU}.  The only problem with this picture is that now it was too late.  Notice it was their decision not to fight, their conscious choice to act in fear and not out of faith, that led to their wandering in wilderness and wastelands for forty years.  We always talk about this part of the story, we just naturally flow into our own ‘wilderness wanderings’ and lack of trust in the Lord our God.  Right?  We embrace it as if it’s inevitable.  That’s not the lesson at all.  In the paralysis of the following analysis over forty years of trial, testing, and more than a fair share of tribulation, we have forgotten the point; we miss the crucial element: the wilderness was avoidable.  The reason Israel took a four-decade detour was because they would not fight.  They refused to enter the Battle.  You getting this?  To be precise, the wilderness was the consequence of refusing to trust a Warrior-God, and follow Him into battle.  What lesson of the Lord’s are you refusing to learn?  Are we still so unwilling to trust in our Father’s heart and enter the Battle for the souls of those we love?  The Time to fight is now, before the moments pass us by and the lives we love are lost to us.  This is the hour.

Prayer Passage:

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than self-protection.  “For God did not give us,” as Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:7, “a spirit of timidity [‘of cowardice’], but of awesome power, of infinite love, and the wisdom of a disciplined soul,” {RR Exp.}.

Today’s English Version has, “For the Spirit that God has given us does not make us timid; instead, His Spirit fills us with power, love, and self-control.”

September 24, 2007

Words of Life:

Take the two adjectives ‘soulish’ and ‘selfish’ and set them down side by side, and the contrast comes out in raging clarity.  Soulish is inherently relational.  It gets right down to the subterranean source of motive and meaning: a dinner your wife or mother put her soul into; a song sung with soul, the soulful eyes of another and the heart that lies behind them.  Selfish, on the other hand, is just that: absorbed in the circle of self, uncaring, irrelational, a life of surface and pretext, all glittering image with nothing underneath.

We live in a cosmic culture that has replaced soul with self in the currency of modern discourse.  Self has been substituted for soul as if they were perfect synonyms for each other.  This is a reduction of reality, a limitation on life, and it turns people for whom the Savior died into one of two things: either problems or consumers.  Neither we nor those we love have any dignity as we are for who we are, only in terms of our usefulness as a marketplace commodity.  Here’s the bigger picture of what’s happening all around us.  Post-modern culture {and by post-modern I mean post-Christian} studies us, labels us, then relates to us as functions, as things: consumers in the mindless mall of modern life.  Advertisers target us from the high chair on up.  There’s a reason ‘Sugar Crystals Cereal’ is on a shelf that’s three feet high, while Grape Nuts and Raisin Bran Crunch are on a shelf above your head!

On one hand, I have no problem being a consumer in a capitalist economy, and I doubt you do either.  But that’s not all I am as a man, that’s not the core of who I am; it’s not the predominant part of me as a child of God, redeemed by the Lamb and renewed by the Spirit.  You are so much more than just a consumer of someone’s wares; you are not here just to buy what everyone else is selling.  As Eugene Peterson once said, “Unchecked consumerism is a cancer resulting in profound depersonalization.”  We know this: every time depersonalization moves in, Life moves out.  But souls are not meant to sift, with Love and Light falling through the cracks; souls overflow with Life, the spark of God Himself.  Which is why the Psalmist can pray over and over again, “Bless the LORD, ‘O my soul!,” Psalm 103:1-2 and 22.  There is this living, breathing reality within me which can recognize God as the Father of all that is and praise Him and bless His holy name and lift my heart and hands in worship of Him.  There is something within me which came from Him as its Author, Originator, Designer and Creator, something which bears His image, was made by His hands, and was ultimately created for communion with the King.  That ‘something’ is soul.

Prayer Passage:

This week’s prayer passage concerns the promise of Eternity, what I call the Hope of Heaven.  There is infinite joy, an unbound assurance, a sense of security reaching on and on forever for the Sons and Daughters of Faith who trust in the goodness, the grace, and the glory of their Abba’s heart for His children.  He is so much larger and more loving than any term we can use to define Him, more powerful and pure, so much more creative— endlessly creative— than anything we can intellectualize or imagine, that there’s no comparison between the two: the reality and the rhetoric.  It’s time we let go of any notion of God that is not infinite in its scope or unlimited in its depth …no matter how comforting it may be to our inner compulsion for control.  How about it?  Control is our enemy and faith is our ally, so what’s it going to be?

The Hope of Heaven.

When you compare Revelation 7:16-17 with Revelation 21:3-4, you see this incredible picture of Eternity with Christ, one where His friends “will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the Sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb …will be their Shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the Water of Life.  And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.  …Behold, the Tabernacle of God [Jesus Christ] is among men, and He will dwell among them and they shall be His People….  And [once more, and beautifully] He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be {any} death; there will no longer be {any} mourning or crying or pain.”  For “the first things”— the former things— “have passed away.”  TLB translates this last phrase, “All of that [the ‘old’] has gone forever.”

October 1, 2007

Words of Life:

In Revelation 21:1 and 5a the apostle John say’s, “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.  …He who was seated on the Throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” {NIV}.  Not new every-things.  “I am making all things new” {NAU}, not all new things.  The life we now have with the people we now love in the body we now inhabit will be ours again, only this time perfected beyond all imagining… every ounce of imperfection removed.  In a glorified Universe, as God originally intended, ruling and reigning with the Righteous King, Jesus Christ, the stain of sin and shame gone for good.  And never to return.  What joy, what glory, what utter relief in the holiness that will permeate our hearts, in the purity, the power, the presence of God unrestrained, flowing like a river over us, around us, within us, between us.  C.S. Lewis imagines our souls in Eternity {and I’m using some language of accommodation here} as great open windows into a Living Library: you may pass through mine and I may pass through yours and we may know each other utterly, intimately, and completely as we have never known each other in Time.  The truth is, in that long lovely twilight, the never-ending “Day of God,” you can waltz into my soul anytime and read my Story from start to finish, because I won’t have anything to hide!  And neither will you.  We will be perfect and pure, in body-soul-and-spirit, and so will everyone around us.  All that once stood between us and those we love will finally be swept away, and our hearts released to truly love.  Every chain laid upon us, every bond we sought to break, every arrow to the heart, every rift in the soul, all of it gone— Revelation 7:16-17 and 21:3-4.  With no trace left to know that we had ever experienced it; no scars, that is, only fond reflections on how a loving Father used it to draw us to Him.  The deepest desire of the human heart, that longing to be part of a Sacred Circle, to be on the inside, reveals the tremendous treasure Heaven has in store.  For, as Brent Curtis said in The Sacred Romance, “we were made in and for the most sacred circle of all.”  Here’s what Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory:

The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.  And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire.  For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things.  The Door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

Prayer Passage:

“To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.  …No one can please God without faith, for whoever comes to God must have faith that God [1] exists [that’s God-consciousness] and [2] rewards those who earnestly seek Him [means that He longs for relationship with His fallen creatures, and has done everything in His omnipotent power to make that relationship perfectly possible through the Life, Death, and Resurrection of His Son {Eph. 1:5-6; Titus 3:5-7}],” Hebrews 11:1 and 6 {TEV}.

“The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living.  It’s our handle on what we can’t see.  …It’s impossible to please God apart from faith.  And why?  Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that He exists and that He cares enough to respond to those who seek Him”— The Message.

October 8, 2007

Words of Life:

The Nature of Worship.

Worship is not singing songs and making melodies, worship is what happens inside us when we give our hearts away to something or someone in exchange for the promise of Life… Life in all its fullness and freedom, Love to live within our hearts, “peace like a river” {Isa. 66:12}, joy and transparency, intimacy and understanding, a taste of transcendence for a terribly thirsty soul.  That’s what is meant by worship.  Worship is what you give your heart to, what you give yourself over to, in the hope of a return on Life; “This is what I want.  This is going to give me what I need.  This is a true taste of Life.”  And if it’s not Christ …if it’s not the LORD our God, then it’s not Life.  For “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life,” {Jn. 14:6}; “I am the Gateway,” Jesus said in John 10:9-10, the Doorway to Eternity with the Father {thura is used for ‘an opening, an entrance, a passage into’}; “whoever enters through Me will be saved [delivered from the 2^nd Death {Rev. 20;6}].  He will come in and go out, and find pasture [which is everything he needs to survive in the Conflict, everything she lacks to serve in the Cause].  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy [notice the contrast between the two]; I have come that they may have Life, and have it to the full,” {NIV}.

“I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”  Why?  Why does the Good Shepherd, the Wise Warrior, the Courageous King sacrifice Himself?  So “that they may have Life, and have it abundantly.”  The offer of the Kingdom of Christ to the meek and the lowly, to the hurting and the helpless, to all those who know they cannot save themselves, is Life and Love and Freedom and Light.  In a world gone mad from the darkness of the devil, “the Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” {Jn. 1;5}, nor can the darkness ever overcome it!  So, the offer of the King of Kings, the utterly incredible generosity of God, is Life Eternal and Freedom Forever.  And absolutely undeserved, every ounce of it.  Offered freely, from the gracious hand of a gracious God.

Prayer Passage:

In John 3:5-8, “Jesus answered” Nicodemus with the words, “‘I tell you the Truth, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit [‘water’ is what is present in natural birth, the amniotic fluid of the first birth; ‘Spirit’ is what is present in spiritual birth, the new birth or rebirth from above].  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit,’” {NIV}.  To be “born of the Spirit” is to be a member of the Family of Faith through your own personal trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and King, as Redeemer and Lord.   You are born into a world at War the first time {the physical}, then reborn for Battle the second time {the spiritual}.

“Jesus replied, ‘What I am telling you so earnestly is this: Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.  Men can only reproduce human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new Life from Heaven [above]; so don’t be surprised at My statement that you must be born again!  Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it will go next, so it is with the Spirit.  We do not know on whom He will next bestow this life from Heaven,’” {TLB}.

October 15, 2007

Words of Life:

I love this image: of the beauty and the movement in a dance with Deity {a metaphor used by many Christian writers, from C.S. Lewis to Donald Miller}, with God as Lover and us as His Beloved.  But I think it’s important to remember that guidance alone— that is, God leading the Dance {which He does: reaching out His hand in the person and work of our Lord to offer us a turn in the Sacred Circle}— is not the point of seeking something deeper on a daily basis with the mighty Spirit of God.  The point is and always will be relationship; the point is ever-deepening intimacy with the Almighty.  With most things in life there is both a science and an art, and relationships are no different.  You can read, hear, and learn tons of truth on God and tons of truth on women, but when you’re done do you have any idea how to relate to either any better?  I.e., do you have anything that resembles a relationship?  Or just more theory for the thought process?  Until you actually put those truths into practice, that is until you actually work them into experience, it’s all just theory.  And that’s my point.  The science of something can be taught in a classroom or read in a book.  But the art of it comes from within, from the deepest well of the soul, which is to say— from the heart.  And it seeks expression in the world around us, maturing through this thing we call experience.  So it is with living “by means of the Spirit” {Gal. 5:16}.  To walk “in step with the Spirit” is to be “filled” with Christ’s character, complete in His courage, and moved by His might— Galatians 5:25 and Ephesians 5:18.  You can read a chapter in a Christian book and gain an academic understanding of this, or you can trust God when the wind of the Spirit blows in ways that counter your intuition, that counter your ‘common sense.’  {There’s a reason it’s called ‘common;’ what we need is uncommon spiritual sense!}  It is the Spirit within that gives us Life: and He leads us further and further into the Father as we live out that Life.  It’s as we walk with Him through experiences {the good, the bad, and the ugly} that we learn to lean on Him more and more each moment.

Prayer Passage:

This section of Scripture is more of a declaration of hope than a promise of prayer.  And yet it’s a passage which can still be prayed with faith-filled devotion that this is the ultimate reality of Life in the Spirit of Christ: a heart circumcised unto God and free from the domination of sin {free to follow Christ for the first time: Rom. 2:28-29; Col. 2:11-12}, a Conqueror and Overcomer alive within us in the person of the Holy Spirit, the very flesh itself— “the sinful nature”— crucified with Christ, and the offer of a true and genuine holiness “in step with the Spirit.”  We start, as with every step of righteousness and reality, with what it most true about our lives in Jesus, then move out from there.  This is the unmitigated assertion of the Living Word of God.  We trust what is most true {absolutely true, in fact}, and trust in the Holy Spirit who reveals it, then choose to exercise it in experience; not the other way around.  We don’t wait to see it in our lives, then go back and say, “Yeah, that seems to be true.”  It doesn’t work that way.  It begins and ends— like all worthwhile relationships— with trust.

“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.  But if you are being led by the Spirit [present tense: constantly and consistently], you are not under the Law [Mosaic or any other].  …Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature [aorist tense: at the Cross of Christ] with its passions and desires.  Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit [when and where He leads, we are to follow in faith],” Galatians 5:16-18, 24-25 {NIV}.

“My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit.  Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness [and sin].  For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.  These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day.  Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?  …Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good— crucified.  Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the Life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives”— The Message.

October 22, 2007

Words of Life:

At stake in our Christianity is the crucial question: “To whom do we belong— to God or the world?”  The majority of our daily details and personal preoccupations suggest that while we belong to God {and freely admit that} we've made our home in the “distant land” of the devil, the satanic system of the world around us.  Consider this: When the keenest of criticism offered in kindness makes us enraged, when a minor rejection sends us spiraling into depression, when we look for praise to lift our spirits or seek out success for the thrill of excitement, it merely demonstrates how much of our lives is a struggle for survival.  And not a sanctified struggle but an anxious, wearied one which results from the foolish and faulty notion that it is the world and not Christ which defines me.  As long as we cling to the conditional in order to feed our craving for the unconditional, as long as we run screaming to the kosmos, “Do you love me, do you love me, do you really love me?,” we amplify the voices of our enemies and put ourselves in bondage to them.  We had a saying when I was a kid: “the biggest word in the English dictionary is ‘if’” …and the world is filled with ‘ifs.’  The world says, “Yes, I love you if”— then fill in a million blanks— “you’re affluent, intelligent, attractive, powerful, prominent, educated, elitist, driven, dominating, desperate, and addicted to it all.”  There is no end to the ‘ifs’ hidden in the world’s love: it is and always will be conditional.  As long as I seek out my true self, my inherent identity, in the lair of my enemy I will remain engaged to the world, locked in to the Matrix.  Addiction and idolatry might be the best terms to describe the dilemma of lost and lonely souls that permeate our society.  It is a wandering in the world of epic proportions.  Our addictions to the swine-husks Satan offers can only fail to satisfy our deepest needs.  You see, as long as we live within the world’s delusions, our idols condemn us to futile quests in distant countries, in lands far from the Father’s heart.  Rather than embracing the acceptance of the Father as “His Beloved” and our identity in the Son as “His chosen ones,” we replicate the path of the Prodigal and wonder all the while why the voices of the past continue to defeat us.  As one theologian in the middle part of the 20^th century put it, “Faith is the courage to accept” unconditional “acceptance,” and I would add, to walk each day within it and to live each moment from it.

Prayer Passage:

“How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Heaven because we belong to Christ.  Long ago, even before He made the world, God chose us to be His very own through what Christ would do for us; He decided then to make us holy in His eyes, without a single fault— we who stand before Him covered with His love.  His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own Family by sending Jesus Christ to die for us.  And He did this because He wanted to!  Now all praise to God for His wonderful kindness to us and His favor that He has poured out upon us because we belong to His dearly loved Son,” Ephesians 1:3-6 {TLB}.

October 29, 2007

Words of Life:

“The Jesus we need,” said Rich Mullins, “is the Jesus who shows us the love of the Father through the power of His Spirit.”  He once told an audience:

“If there is any meaning in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, it is this: that there is a God who created us, and who loves us so much that He would stop at nothing to bring us to Him.  And I really suspect that of all the things we think we want to know, the only thing we really want to know is that we are loved.  I hope you know that.  And I hope you stop worrying about all the stuff you don’t know, because I don’t think it amounts to a hill of beans.”

Amen.  With that, I could not agree more.  We seem to have come to a place in Christianity today personally, doctrinally, and denominationally where we specialize in majoring in the minors.  All the while our primary sense of identity as the Beloved of God, that coherent sense of Christ and self, that grip we need on reality and grace, gets tossed out the window.  We’ve sold our birthright for an empty bowl {cf. Gen. 25:29-34}.  We go to war against the Family to prove that we’re right, while the enemy looks on laughing and the world is watching and shaking its head.  I wonder what that says to the world about the “Jesus who shows us the love of the Father,” or how well it fulfills the command of the King: “A New Command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another [selflessly and sacrificially].  By this all men will know that you are My disciples [‘that you are My apprentices, walking deeply with Me and learning directly from Me’], if you love one another,” John 13:34-35 {NIV}.

Prayer Passage:

I’ve included two versions of our passage this week, two different versions from the one included in our weekly bulletin released on Sun. morning.  The first gives us a very sound, basic translation of the section {Rom. 13:7-10}; the second is Peterson’s ultra-modern paraphrase which captures, much like The Living Bible, the heart and soul of the Apostle’s powerful teaching: that “love is the” final “fulfillment of the Law,” that everything Christ was trying to teach us about how to deal with relationships and treat other people in the negative prohibitions of the Old Covenant {Law} can be summarized in this single positive statement of the New {Grace}.

“Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.  Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the Law.  The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law,” Romans 13:7-10 {NIV}.

“Fulfill your obligations as a citizen.  Pay your taxes, pay your bills, respect your leaders.  Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other.  When you love others, you complete what the Law has been after all along.  The Law Code— don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other ‘don’t’ you can think of— finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself.  You can’t go wrong when you love others.  When you add up everything in the Law Code, the sum total is love,” {The Message}.

November 5, 2007

Words of Life:

A famous author once wrote, that “there are two kinds of losses in life.”  The first is the kind we share with everyone we know, not just the Family of Faith but the whole of humanity.  These are the things we all experience: we have money, a job, a certain measure of security {temporal, of course}, then we don’t; we acquire a vast reservoir of resources, then it’s gone; lovers leave; time goes by; we learn, we forget; we live, we grow, and while our souls expand our bodies expend; loved ones, family, and friends fade into Eternity.  These are all things, for the most part, we have no control over.  We can’t predict them, we can only accept them.  “The second kind” of loss “is known only to the pilgrim” on the “Path of Life” {Ps. 16:11}, only to us wayfarers out here on “the Way” {Acts 9:22; 19:9; 22:4; and 24:22}.  This is a loss that we choose for ourselves, which is a totally different thing from repentance, a redirection of life away from something that was never meant to be ours anyway.  In this kind of loss we place on the Altar of Grace something cherished, something precious to us, whose only danger is that we might come to love it more than Christ.  It is an act of consecration, “where little by little or all at once, we give our lives over to the only One who can truly keep them.”1  This shouldn’t surprise us.  ‘Consecration’ is the pivot around which the whole of Christianity revolves: Christ gave His life for us, unreservedly, and now we give our lives back to Him— Mark 10:45; Romans 12:1.  In our quest for knowledge and understanding we’ve latched on to Romans 12:2 and the wonder of being transformed by the renovation of our thoughts.  We’ve forgotten what came before it where Paul said, “I urge you …by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice …which is} your spiritual service of worship,” Romans 12:1.  This v. represents the principle of consecration at its finest: body, soul, and spirit.  It represents learning how to let go: how to let go of this world and all of its gods, how to live in it not enslaved to it.  It is to recognize that there are some losses in life that will never be redressed until the Lord of All that is takes matters into His hands fully and finally; and others that must be made because the Son of Man desires and deserves our whole and undivided hearts.  To give those back to Him is our greatest gift in response to grace.  Souls surrendered to the Source of Love… that is our destiny.  

1: John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire, pp. 192-193

Prayer Passage:

I want to offer you a simple translation of Psalm 37:4-6 from Today’s English Version, then a bit of an expanded one with included commentary from the Hebrew in the second.  This is a powerful section of Scripture for believers seeking justice in the midst of injustice and longing for an impartial Judge in a cruel and contemptuous culture.  This is what our mighty God and Master Jesus Christ has sworn to do when we make Him the Treasure of our hearts and the “delight” of our lives.  This and nothing less than this.

“Seek your happiness in the LORD, and He will give you your heart’s desire.  Give yourself to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will help you; He will make your righteousness shine like the noonday Sun,” Psalm 37:4-6 {TEV}.

In Psalm 37:4 David say’s, “Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart [Hebrew verb anag means- ‘be deliriously happy about, take exquisite delight in;’ this is consecration of the entire life, utter surrender of the soul; and when you do this, when you make Jesus the treasure of your heart, when you ‘delight yourself in the LORD,’ when you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, He can ‘give you the desires of your heart’ because now His desires have become your desires, His ways your ways, His will your will, His Words your words].  Commit your way [‘your Journey’] to the LORD [word translated ‘commit,’ galal, lit. means- ‘roll oneself down’ and is a word-picture taken from the gimel, the camel, for the way he lays himself down until his master can roll whatever he’s carrying up onto his back]; trust in Him [and the key is: to keep on trusting Him, regardless of what you think you see with the physical eye {it’s the eye of faith that counts!}; batach- ‘be bold in God, have confidence in Christ, be secure in the Spirit’] and He will accomplish this: He will make your righteousness shine like the Dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday Sun,” vv. 5-6 {NIV Exp.}.

November 12, 2007

Words of Life:

God sees us as the Bride of Christ, part of a great eternal Community in which we love our Lord together and undertake cooperative pursuits for His glory.  This will continue in the World that Awaits.  We will always be individuals, but Heaven will not be a place of individualism {‘I want it my way!’}.  After all, we aren’t individual ‘Brides of Christ;’ we are collectively the Bride of Christ.  We belong to each other and we need each other.  One of the things this tells us is that we should guard not only our own hearts and lives, but those of others as well.  We are our “brother’s keeper” in the Family of Faith.  And there is abundant Scriptural testimony to back this up— John 13:34-35; 15:12-13; Romans 12:10; 13:8; and 15:7; 1 Corinthians 12:25{-27}; Galatians 5:13{14}; Ephesians 4:2{1-3} and 32; 5:18-21; Philippians 2:3{4}; Colossians 3:13{12-14}; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; 4:9 and 18{13-18}; 5:11, 13, and 15; Hebrews 10:24-25; James 5:16; 1 Peter 4:8, 9-10; 1 John 3:23; 4:7, 11-12.  I encourage you as part of this weekly word, this daily devotion, to work your way through each of these sections of Scripture and let the Holy Spirit bring these “one anothers” to life.  Randy Alcorn in his beautiful book Heaven writes, “The fact that countless professing Christians are not part of a local church testifies to our over-individualized views on spirituality.”  No doubt about that.  This is what I call the ‘Burger King Believer:’ just have it my way.  “Scripture teaches that we need each other and should not withdraw from each other’s fellowship, instruction,” friendship and insight.  “Because we will be part of a community of saints that constitutes the Bride of Christ for eternity, and because we will worship and serve Him together, to prepare properly for Heaven” we should be part of a faith-filled Family now {Heb. 10:24-25}.

If you need any more encouragement / prodding as to how much we really need “one another” and the power of each one’s prayer in building up the Whole, just see my earlier e-mail concerning the needs that are constantly before us.

Prayer Passage:

Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Before long, the world will not see Me anymore, but you will see Me.  Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.  Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me.  He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and show Myself to him [‘I will disclose Myself, manifest My power and My presence within him’],” John 14:18-21 {NIV}.

November 19, 2007

Words of Life:

Christian commentator A.E. Brooke believed that the Apostles’ approach to prayer included “only requests for knowledge of, and acquiescence in, the will of God.”  Some of your more insightful pagan philosophers understood this as well.  The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, once a Roman slave, wrote: “Have courage to look up to God and say, ‘Deal with me as You will from now on.  I am as one with Thee; I am Yours.  I recoil from nothing so long as you think that it is good.  Lead me where You will; put on me what clothes You will.  Would you have me hold office or refuse it, stay or flee, be rich or poor?  For all this I will defend you before men.”  We tend to spend the majority of our prayer-time asking God for what we want.  It’s true, isn’t it?  Consider this: powerful prayer, mighty prayer, prevailing prayer is asking God for what He wants.  It’s not only us talking to God and rattling on an ever-growing list of demands, but us listening for Him to speak.  We must learn to listen for the voice of the Spirit, and this takes place in silence and solitude.  It cannot happen in the rush and confusion of the hurried world around us.  In the end, the eternal evaluation of any prayer we offer will be whether we can say, “I’m asking this for Your sake and in Your name,” in the might, majesty, and authority of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!  

Prayer Passage:

In 1 King 3:6-10 Solomon prayed, “‘You have shown great kindness to Your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to You and righteous and upright in heart.  You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.  Now, O LORD my God, you have made Your servant king in place of my father David [the first two vv. are concerned with gratitude and with praise, with giving ‘honor to whom honor’ is due {Rom. 13:7d}].  But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties [the second half of v. 7 shows phenomenal humility for a middle eastern king].  Your servant is here among the people You have chosen [Israel: Isaiah 41:8; 43:10; and 44:1], a great people, too numerous to count or number [he presents himself as the LORD’s ‘servant,’ ready to do all His will— whatever that entails].  So give your servant a discerning heart to govern Your people [that’s the why] and to distinguish [this is the how:] between right and wrong [notice he asks for something only God can give: a shepherd’s heart {like his father’s}, the wisdom of discernment, a blessing that would bless the People of the LORD].  For who is able to govern this great people of yours?’  The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this,” {NIV}.   If you read the vv. that follow, you’ll see that not only did Yahweh Elohiym {the Lord Jesus Christ} grant his request for a “discerning heart” by making him the wisest king to ever live, He bestows blessing and abundance upon Solomon in a multitude of unforeseen ways.  And why?  Because the desire of his heart, the longing of his soul, was to serve the people of God: to understand his role as King and “carry” it “out” with wisdom and honor, justice and mercy.  I.e., to live fully as a man made “in the image of God” {Gen. 1:27}.  That, my friends, God will always bless.

The rest of the section reads: “So God said to him, ‘Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked.  I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.  Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for— both riches and honor— so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.  And if you walk in My ways and obey My statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life,’” 1 King 3:11-14 {NIV}.

November 26, 2007

Words of Life:

Our Words of Life this week were simple and succinct.  In light of the Holy Day we call Thanksgiving, I thought these two simple sentences would be fitting.  “All the praise, honor, and glory of our lives to the great ‘I AM’ {Ex. 3:14; Jn. 6:35; 8:12; 10:7, 9; 10:11, 14; 11:25; 14:6; and 15:1, 5}.  Thank You, thank You, thank You!”

What a mean and ugly attitude ingratitude is… when the shriveled, snarling soul of the perpetually dissatisfied spews its misery on everyone around it.  This may be the most vicious sin we can commit against the nature of our Abba, the God whose glory radiates in His goodness and His grace.  To be unthankful is to be unholy.  As apprentices of the Master, as those betrothed to a Lover both generous and just, we must choose and choose and choose again and again a different Way, an attitude of gratitude {which is the attitude of grace}.  Those who have fallen in love with “the God of all grace” {1 Pet. 5:10} find their hearts expanding rather than expending, growing ever larger in their capacity to love and live, to give and forgive, to speak words of courage and listen and learn from words of counsel.  And those are the hearts the world needs to know: gracious, loving, and generous.

The following paragraph is one I pulled from the intro to a study I’ve taught at least three time over the past five years; it’s called The Attitude of Gratitude: ‘Grace at Work in Our Daily Lives.’  “What a price we pay for our personal and collective ingratitude,” say’s author Nancy Demoss.  “After more than two decades of ministry to hurting people, I have come to believe that a failure to give thanks is at the heart of much, if not most, of the sense of gloom, despair, and despondency that is so pervasive among believers today.  Furthermore, many of the sins that are plaguing and devastating our society can be traced back to the oft-undetected root of unthankfulness.  The ‘attitude of gratitude’ is something that desperately needs to be cultivated in our hearts, our homes, and our society.  Its presence brings in its train a host of other blessings, while its absence has profound,” and even “lethal, repercussions.”  Ingratitude is wedded to the enemy of forgetfulness.  And ingratitude and forgetfulness are flip sides of the same coin: complacency.  On the other hand, gratitude— in its most fundamental state— is ‘a process of learning to recognize, appreciate, and express that appreciation for the grace I’ve received from God, and for the various means He’s used to show it to me.’  May we pursue this Process, and the One responsible for it, with reckless abandon!

Prayer Passage:

Psalm 138: A Psalm of David.

“I will give You thanks with all my heart; I will sing praises to You before the gods.  I will bow down toward Your Holy Temple and give thanks to Your Name for Your lovingkindness [‘Your faithfulness, loyalty, love and grace’] and Your Truth; for You have magnified Your Word according to all Your Name [and will do everything You’ve said You would do].  On the day I called, You answered me; You made me bold with strength in my soul.  All the kings of the Earth will give thanks to You, O LORD, when they have heard the words of Your mouth [in the Millennial Rule of the Righteous King].  And they will sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD.  For though the LORD is exalted, yet He regards the humble, but the arrogant He knows from afar [James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5 reiterate this idea with phenomenal force: ‘God makes war against the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble!’].  Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and Your right hand [the place of Your power, majesty, and authority] will deliver me.  The LORD will accomplish what concerns me; Your lovingkindness, O LORD, is everlasting…," vv. 1-8a.

December 3, 2007

Words of Life:

In the Epilogue to his book Developing a Conversational Relationship with God, Prof. Dallas Willard offers this brilliant observation: “We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes.  You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt.  The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character.  Only a very hardy individualist or social rebel— or one desperate for another life— therefore stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today.  Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright.  …Hearing God and receiving divine guidance …require of us a choice to be a spiritual person, to live a spiritual life.  We are required to ‘bet our life’ that the visible world, while real, is not reality itself.  …Today we live in a culture that overwhelmingly gives primary, if not exclusive, importance to the visible.  This stance is incorporated in the power structures that permeate our world and is disseminated by the education system and government.  {Looking for the ‘how’?  There you go.  Education and government: major players in the Game of ‘How the Lie Gets Around.’}  But neither God nor the human mind and heart are visible.  It is so with all personal reality.”  {Italics in Original; Bracketed Comment Mine.}  I.e., God as Trinity is a distinctly personal being, and we as His creatures are distinctly personal beings.  These two sets of distinctly personal beings meet in the invisible, the spiritual, the eternal.  This realm is the really real, the true reality.  The World Around Us with its education, armaments, governmental do-gooders, social structures and systemic evil, is the false reality, the pseudo-realm, the satanic substitute for the holy and divine.  Don’t dig your foundation too deep here, or send your roots too far into 21^st century soil, “for this world in its present form is passing away,” 1 Corinthians 7:31b {NIV}.

Prayer Passage:

“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 [the root of this verb means- ‘fall in’ or ‘meet with,’ and maybe most apropos, ‘come between;’ it carries this beautiful word-picture in the Greek of one who rescues another, one who just ‘happens upon’ another in dire trouble and serious straits and comes alongside to offer assistance and plead ‘on their behalf’] with groans that words cannot express.  And He who searches our hearts [our ‘Abba,’ our ‘Father’ {v. 15}] knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will,” Romans 8:26-27 {NIV}.

“In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness; for we do not know what prayers to offer nor in what way to offer them.  But the Spirit Himself pleads for us in yearnings that can find no words, and the Searcher of hearts knows what the Spirit’s meaning is, because His intercessions for God’s people are in harmony with God’s will,” {Weymouth’s NT}.

December 10, 2007

Words of Life:

When we talk about loving the Trinity, I think you have to start with how you love anything, or anyone.  What goes on in that love, in the realm of that relationship?  With a person, you delight in them, you rejoice in them— you rejoice in their glories and weep in their sorrows— you give your heart, the centre of your soul, to them.  You choose them, freely, over other things, other places you could be, other people you could be with.  They hold a ‘sacred space’ in your heart and in your life that will never be relinquished.  Right?  They get the lion’s share of your time, attention, affection, communication, your thoughts and thoughtfulness, your vulnerability, your presence.  This is what we do with God: with Abba, with Jesus, and with the Spirit.  We give our whole heart to God; we make Him the treasure of our life.  Just as Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34 {NIV}.  That, my dear Brotherhood, is the nature of worship: an entire life of loving God, passionately.  If we love Him with a deep hunger and passionate desire, by necessity it means we pursue Him with a deep hunger and a passionate desire.  A friend of mine whom I consider to be one of the True Warriors of the Faith uses phrases like “stalking the Lord” and “ambushing the Father” to describe a life in passionate pursuit of God.  If we love our Lord passionately, we must pursue Him passionately!  Seeking Him— above all other lovers— every day of our lives on this Earth, in anticipation of our real lives on a perfect Earth.

Prayer Passage:

This is not a misprint or mistake.  We didn’t have a chance to delve into this magnificent passage last week, and it’s too good not to look at intently.  Weymouth’s translation is from 1912, but he has a way of getting to the heart of key passages.  I love his translation here.  This passage deals with the Holy Spirit in His ministry of intercession / intervention.  Jim Cymbala has described the ministry of intercession {intervening in prayer on behalf of another} as touching the person for whom you’re praying with one hand and touching God with the other, and you are the mediator between the two.  A powerful picture.  So, one more time….

“In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness; for we do not know what prayers to offer nor in what way to offer them.  But the Spirit Himself pleads for us [the root of this verb means- ‘fall in’ or ‘meet with,’ and maybe most apropos, ‘come between;’ it carries this beautiful word-picture in the Greek of one who rescues another, one who just ‘happens upon’ another in dire trouble and serious straits and comes alongside to offer assistance and plead ‘on their behalf’] in yearnings that can find no words, and the Searcher of Hearts [our ‘Father’] knows what the Spirit’s meaning is, because His intercessions for God’s people are in harmony with God’s will,” Romans 8:26-27 {Weymouth’s NT}.  What an incredible title for the Father of Jesus and Lord of all Life… the “Searcher of Hearts.”

December 17, 2007

Words of Life:

It should be an unspoken assumption in our lives, a given, that those who walk in the Light of Grace desire holiness as a reality in their relationships.  There are two ways in which this works, two realms to play this out: loving the Lord and loving people; loving God and loving people.  How we treat people is the second most important aspect, the second most critical component of our character and convictions, our holiness and humility.  The essence of a real and genuine holiness, a Christ-centered spirituality {inspired by the Spirit}, is “to love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love your neighbor [those within your proximity] as yourself.”  For “on these two commandments,” Jesus said, “depend the whole Law and the Prophets”— Matthew 22:34-40; Luke 10:25-28.  To love people means to live in the Cause for which Christ came: “not to be served but to serve” and to give our lives for the ransom of many.  Like the famous line from the movie Tears of the Sun, “The lives of many rest in the courage of a few.”  This means we’re committed to investing our lives in the only thing that lasts: the hearts and souls of men and women.  We “love one another” in the Family of Faith by caring for each other— mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and above all, relationally.  We pursue honesty, openness, transparency in relationships.  We tear off the masks and drop the defenses.  That’s how we learn to love.  And to love is something we must learn, as the Father pours out more and more and more of Himself within our hearts.

Prayer Passage:

Psalm 102:15-22, “So the nations will fear the name of the LORD and all the kings of the Earth Your glory.  For the LORD has built up Zion; He has appeared in His glory.  He has regarded the prayer of the destitute [the ‘stripped down,’ the ‘laid bare’] and has not despised their prayer.  This will be written for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD.  For He looked down from His holy height; from Heaven the LORD gazed upon the Earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to set free those who were doomed to death, that {men} may tell of the name of the LORD in Zion and His praise in Jerusalem, when the peoples are gathered together and the kingdoms to serve the LORD,” {NAU}.

December 24, 2007

Words of Life:

We’re a heartbeat away from the day when we, as disciples of the Master, will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ our King.  Scripture reads like this: “And the angel said to them [‘to’ the shepherds in the field], ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you Good News of great joy which will be for all the people.  For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord [this sentence in the original contains three gorgeous Greek words that define for us the Mission and Ministry of the Messiah: Soter = ‘Savior,’ Christos = Anointed One, Messiah {showing Jesus as fully man}, and Kurios = Sovereign Lord and Master {showing Jesus as entirely God}, all wrapped up in one],” Luke 2:10-11.  He is the Savior of man and Anointed One of God, the long-awaited Messiah of Israel; He also happens to be very God of very God: undeniable Deity and sinless humanity welded as One forevermore.  What incredible news that is… wonderful, soul-saving— and to the nations of this Earth— kingdom-crushing News.  But there is another side to the Story.  The birth of Christ was so much more than just a picturesque event in a quaint little town, witnessed and watched by a motley assortment of Temple animals, faithful shepherds, and kings from afar.  I think you know that much already.  What you may not know is what unfolded according to Revelation 12:1-2, 4-5, and 7: that this was the moment of the Great Invasion, of Eternity into Time, of Creator into the realm of Creation, our God choosing to take upon Himself the mantle of human weakness {a physical body} and defeat Satan on his own turf.  It was as Christian author Phillip Yancey has said, “a daring raid by the Ruler of the forces of good into the Universe’s seat of evil.”  This is no ‘silent night’ for the enemies of God; this is D-Day times infinite.

The angels who appeared that night were the angelic Armies {called the ‘Hosts of Heaven’ in the OT} passing in review as their King, Creator, and Commander lay crying in the fodder— Luke 2:13-14.  Isn’t it odd?  Our modern image of angels {rosy-cheeked cherubs with golden wings} is almost as ridiculous as our modern image of God— ‘if He exists,’ wonders the world— God as the senile Philanthropist in the Sky accepting and embracing all the ‘Ways’ of the world’s religions as paths to Himself.  That’s not an image of God the Father, but rather God the Grand-father.  Nice, but easily ignored.

The apostle John told us, that “the Son of God appeared for this purpose [this sole and solitary ‘purpose’]: to destroy the works of the devil,” 1 John 3:8b; i.e., to do Battle for those He loved {4:19}.  And oh how He loves us.  Scripture tells us that He came to battle for the hearts of men {Isa. 61:1} and to offer us the Gift of Life— both eternal and abundant {3:1-2}.  My prayer, as the shepherd of a flock I deeply, deeply love, is that this perspective be ever present in our minds as we live out our days in a World at War spiritually.  One half of life is the physical, the temporal, and the transient; the other half, which the Word enjoins us to accept as the real half, the weighty half, the most crucial component of reality, is the spiritual, the Eternal, the everlasting.  We must choose to live every moment with one foot in each, simultaneously in both the temporal and the Eternal, with the latter dominating the former.  And we must rivet the eyes of our hearts on the Lord Jesus Christ alone.  For the mission He came to accomplish, my friends and fellow-soldiers, is a done deal: “It is finished” forevermore! {Jn. 19:10}.  The Battle has been won and the Ultimate Victory {the Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension} already achieved.  Don’t forget that; don’t ever forget that.  We are what He is— Victorious!  If you will choose to ‘wage war’ from that position, neither you nor your life will ever be the same.  

May the blessing of His grace, the peace of His presence, and the power of His Life rest upon you, your family, and your ministry to a fallen world full of broken people.  The year which lies before us is full of promise and of hope for those who live in the Light of Jesus’ Love.  May we embrace it, and all its opportunity, like we embrace our Lord …with the passion and hunger of a long-awaited lover.

Prayer Passage:

In Luke 2:25-26 the Scripture says that Simeon, a man righteous and faithful to the LORD, had been assured by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the promised Messiah.  Led by the Spirit, he went into the Temple and when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus in to consecrate Him to the LORD as the Law required of every firstborn male, “Simeon took the Child in his arms and gave thanks to God: ‘Now, Lord, You have kept Your promise, and You may let Your servant go in peace.  With my own eyes I have seen Your Salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples: A Light to reveal Your will to the Gentiles and bring glory to Your people Israel.’  …Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, His mother, ‘This Child is chosen by God for the destruction and the salvation of many in Israel [the Sword of the Cross cuts both ways].  He will be a sign from God which many people will speak against and so reveal their secret thoughts.  And sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart,’” vv. 28-32, 34-35 {TEV}.  Truer words were never spoken.

December 31, 2007

Words of Life:

As a shepherd, my greatest fear concerning prayer and the enormous power that all too often goes untapped is that 3-4-5 years down the road, many of our people— serious students of the written Word or part-time play-actors in the Christian ‘program’— will still be wondering: “What’s the big deal with prayer?  I don’t get it.  {An incredible self-indictment, wouldn’t you say?}  My great lack in life is not power, just principles.  I think my problems would disappear if I just had more information.”  My response is, “Good luck with that.”  Our Lord’s brother James faced a generation as unruly as ours, and here’s what he had to say.  “Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from?  Do you think they just happen?  Think again.  They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves.  You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it.  You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it.  You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you?  And why not?  Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to.  You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way.  You’re cheating on God.  If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and His way,” 4:1-4 {The Message}.  What I long to see as a leader and a man is a passion for prayer take hold in our hearts, a much greater sense of the Holy Spirit among us in our meetings, the display of His power in our lives, and the glorious grace of a loving Redeemer poured out within our hearts.  Hear me, LORD, answer me, Abba.  As only You can!

Prayer Passage:

“What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your desires [sinful ‘desires,’ evil ‘desires;’ hedone {from which we get the English hedonism, defined by Webster’s as ‘the self-indulgent pursuit of pleasure as a way of life’} is the desire for ‘sensual pleasure’ above all else] that battle within you?  You want something but don’t get it.  You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.  You do not have, because you do not ask God [and that’s the point].  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives [that’s the second point], that you may spend what you get on your pleasures [hedonistic ‘pleasures,’ same word as ‘desires’ in v. 1].  You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?  Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God,” James 4:1-4 {NIV}.  There is so much more available to us as the sons and daughters of God— Freedom and Life, Beauty and Truth, Healing and Restoration, His Presence, Power and Provision.  So much more.  Our God is waiting to answer… and all we have to do is ask.  The promise of this passage is twofold: We do not have because [1] we do not ask God; and [2] we do not receive because when we do ask, we ask with the wrong motives.  LORD, may this never be the last word on our lives in You!