T@lks Along The Way

Are We There Yet

2012-01-12T16:27:00.001-06:00

It’s been a long and tiring journey to this point - through history, that is. And even just the distance of our own little part makes our bones ache with "road weariness." And some of our brothers and sisters have already fallen "asleep" as we have traveled. But some of us "kids" are still awake; and we are just ready to be "Home." And so we ask our Heavenly Father - "Are we there yet?" And this, I suspect, might be His patient reply...

"No, dear child, we are not there yet. But we are almost there. There are a few more difficult miles to make through the night, but we will all be Home soon. Just be patient.

"Perhaps you could pass the time by thinking about just how good it will be when we get there. Your sleeping brothers and sisters will all awaken to join you in a brand new, bright and shining day. And you will all be able to laugh together in the warmth of its unending Son shine.

"Just think, when you get Home, you will never cry any more tears - except for tears of the purest joy. Everything that ever made you cry with sadness will be behind you, all the bad people, all the pain, all the haunting fears. They will all be never again experienced, and soon forgotten. Because, only good things happen at Home.

"And you will have whatever time you need to pursue your God given passions, to become great at what you love, to perfect your every effort. Your mind will be your greatest tool; and your body will entirely cooperate with all of your wishes.

"At home you will know true freedom; because, aging, and disability, and death will no longer be able to set their harsh limits upon you. Rather, you will laugh with unending laughter at the sheer joy of your creativity, your abilities, and your power, even to make the mountains play leap frog, if you wish.

"And, at Home, there will be no anger, no discord, no harm among the family. For those things will be dispersed by the rule of Love. Because Love rules at Home. And from the rule of Love will come the core of our days, a core of peace and respect that will bless us all.

"So just anticipate the morning child. With the Son rise you will be home. And you will be free to rest, or sing, or work, or soar, or contemplate, or create, or compose, or walk and talk with Me. At Home, in the morning, you will find yourself - and all that you were meant to be. Just be patient, child, and watch for the Son rise..."

"Father."

"Yes, child."

"Are we there yet?"

Irrelevant, My Foot

2011-11-14T10:32:00.002-06:00

It is a "hoot" to be a preacher today. It reminds me of the days when I was in elementary school and the teacher would ask me a question to which I actually knew the answer. It was such a rare occurrence back then, that my head would almost explode with excitement waiting for her to finish the question so I could give her the answer.

I've since discovered that there are two kinds of 4th graders: the ones who always know the answers, and the boys. I was, of course, one of the latter. And, I knew very well that the outcome of my whole elementary education mostly depended on "stayin' lucky." So, when I was, and I caught a question I could answer, I was ecstatic.

And, ecstatic is the way I feel these days. I feel so blessed to actually know the Answer to the desperate human questions. Questions like, "How can I recover from my broken life?" "Is death all there is?" or "What does God want for me and from me?" I know the one Answer that answers all of those question and so many more like them! I think my head really is going to explode.

But, I do have one problem. I have noticed lately that the question "askers" are somewhat diminishing. And, the forecast is for that trend to continue.

Still, I have been blessed across the years of my ministry to be able to enjoy interest and inquisition in the eyes of my congregation when I have preached. It has been very gratifying to see in their faces that what I was saying had value to them. But, recently, in the last few years, I have, indeed, noticed a troubling disinterest, especially among some of the older teens and the younger adults - in my mind, a pretty important social subset.

I'm not speaking here of a momentary wavering of attention. It is more like they live in one world, and I live in another; and, the issues of my world simply don't matter in theirs. So, they sort of sit there in polite disinterest. They simply don't seem to really have any questions that I can answer.

OK. I get that. I can become irrelevant gracefully - YEAH RIGHT.

And maybe your thinking, "Well Preacher, you're just slipping." That is absolutely true. But, that does not entirely cover it. I think there is another reason why they think the information that I am bursting to give them (I am squirming in my seat, even as we speak) is mostly unimportant. It is because they don't have a complete picture of their existence.

So, I'm going to paint that picture one more time. Now, I am very aware that you probably don't belong to that disinterested group; but, I have to tell somebody (it's that head exploding thing). And, I'm afraid your the only ones available at the moment. So...

A long time ago God created all of this. Then He patiently allowed all human history to play out, even to the present day, giving opportunity to countless millions to taste life. He has intervened and interacted across that history in the most loving way, especially through the Savior, clearly demonstrating His interest in the well being of humanity.

But after this opportunity for love to work, in the near future, according to His plan and timetable, the Creator is going to convene a special hearing for humanity. It will be unlike anything the world has ever seen. This hearing will be held at the crossroads of reality where the physical world and the spiritual world intersect.

At this hearing, God will call for all of humanity to stand before Him, all who have ever lived. Then, He will conduct an interview with each one of us as to how we have responded to Him. But, when He comes to the disinterested crowd, He will be the only one talking. I suspect it will go something like this...

*****

"I created everything; and I created you. I wanted to know you, to really know you. I wanted to experience the day to day ups and downs with you that create meaningful relationship.

"To facilitate that adventure, I gave you a Savior in my Son to heal the rift between us that occurred in Adam. He did that. When my Son died, I became willing to forgive your stubborn independence and your self centered approach to life. Beyond that, it was my intention to implant His living Spirit within you so that your mind, your character, your conscience, and thus, your whole life might be entirely renewed.

In this way, I intended to cement our relationship into one of love and harmony for your enduring good. In your Savior, through His Cross and His Resurrection, I laid endless life and blessing at your feet. And that opportunity was there, awaiting a response from you, every day of your entire lifetime.

"And, across the years of your life, I only ever asked one thing of you in response. I only asked humility, first in the form of sorrow for your waywardness, and then as a renewed sensitivity to my wishes. But that response never came.

"Nothing that I ever did seemed important to you. It wasn't important that I gave you life. It wasn't important how I felt about the way you lived your life. The warnings that I gave you within didn't matter. The warnings that I gave you through your life circumstance didn't matter. The love that spoke softly to you of forgiveness in your Savior, the love that offered you a new and better way forward simply had no value to you. You ignored it all.

"So, for a few years of doing as you pleased and chasing after empty, temporary things, you have sold an eternity of happiness. That is the path you chose, and now that is the path that you will finish.

"So, I hereby pronounce you forever condemned to an eternity of punishment in the hell that I created for Satan and the angels who followed him. I command that the fire of that place never be quenched; and, that you shall never be granted a reprieve, nor even a hearing for reprieve, from its natural torment - forever.

Because the Cross of your Savior had no value to you, neither shall it have value to Me now to save you from everlasting punishment. Because you never tasted the power of His Resurrection, neither shall you now taste the power of His deliverance from this judgment. Because you thought everything in life more important than responding to your Savior, now you shall have those things in full measure, for they fuel the flames of your eternity. Be gone, and be forever forgotten in the agony of the wrong choices of your lifetime..."

*****

Now see, I think if that disinterested crowd, polite or otherwise, could see that picture, the real, the whole picture of their reality, they would not be so disinterested anymore. I'm pretty certain that if they ever do "get it" when it comes to the "big picture," then that beautiful light of questioning interest will also come on in their eyes.

And I know, at least for some of them, it will happen. God's chasing love will see to that. And then guess what: I get to give them the one Answer that I know! I am ec-static! I just hope I still have my head when the time comes.

Me Two

2011-11-14T10:31:00.005-06:00

I talk and write about a lot of things, but the one subject nearest and dearest to my heart is God's redemptive effort. I have made it my life's work to understand the operation that saved my own soul. And the more I have looked at it, the more I have become enamored with the beauty and gracefulness of what God has done though Christ. To this very day, I stand in absolute awe of His redemptive genius.

In the early days of my search as to what God was up to in this soul saving thing, like most I suspect, I focused on the Cross and God's wonderful forgiveness. But eventually, my search took me past the Cross toward the redemptive outflows of the Resurrection. And as I moved past the Cross, I started to recognize something astounding. It was this: Redemption is not just about forgiveness. It is about Forgiveness and Renewal. I realized that the whole point of the forgiveness was to position the believer to experience a profound personal newness.

I eventually came to understand that the newness that the Bible speaks of for the believer is not a function of the Cross at all, at least not directly. Rather, it is a function of the Resurrection. So, it turns out, the Cross is for forgiveness and the restoration of our relationship to God. But newness is a direct result of the Resurrection.

Said another way, it is the Dying Christ who secures our forgiveness, but it is the Living Christ who empowers us to become "new creatures." And that empowerment is entirely enabled by our Spiritual Baptism into Christ. That baptism literally enables a merger between the divine nature of Christ and the human nature of the believer to revitalize us. So, our personal baptism into Christ is as necessary to the redemptive purpose as is the conversion moment.

The Spiritual baptism is primarily aimed at fixing one inexorable reality in the human condition. It is the evil inner twin that lives within all of us - even after we become believers. This is the inner, subconscious person within us who absolutely refuses to voluntarily surrender to the authority of God.

Paul, in his writings, refers to this inner person as the "old man," the "carnal nature," or "the flesh." He paints a very clear picture of this carnal us in Romans, chapter 7 where he says this, "I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Oh yeah, we know this condition. We have all felt the pressure of the chronic waywardness that lives within our inner person. This is that involuntary rebellion, even within the heart of a new believer, that refuses to submit to the lordship of Christ.

So, just as Paul describes above, with our conscious mind we have given ourselves to God. But in our subconscious mind, this carnal self wreaks constant havoc upon all of our good intentions. And though we can see the high road of God's pleasure, this inner evil twin keeps us from walking it. So every day we fight this inner battle, our conscious mind subscribing to God's way, but our subconscious mind refusing to go along, pulling us the wrong way and tempting us with a thousand evil ploys.

If this is newness, who needs it - right? But this is not the newness that Christ offers. It is just the condition in which we find ourselves between the time of our conversion and the moment of our Spiritual Baptism into Christ. And this time serves very important purposes in God's redemptive scheme, in our journey toward newness.

This personal battlefield is the place where serious believers confront their inner reality. It is the place where we are humbled by our own failure. It is the place where we are made desperate by our own frustration. It is in this place that we begin to intuitively seek after the "mystery that has been kept secret since the foundation of the world." Paul describes that mystery this way, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

So, it's simple really. The "demon self" that lives deep beneath the surface of our conscious mind, even after conversion, has no intention of ever surrendering to God. The Bible says of this incorrigible, carnal mind that "it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be." There is really only one option for dealing with this subconscious culprit. He must be subdued by one stronger than himself on that very primary level where he lives. He must be subdued by the Living Christ in Spirit form.

And that is exactly what Jesus does for the believer through the Baptism of the Spirit. This is the remedy that Paul reveals if we just continue reading in Romans through chapter 8, where he answers his own question from chapter 7: "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" His answer in chapter 8 is this, "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you."

So, when we literally become integrated with the Divine Nature, through the Baptism of the Spirit, here is what happens. The Divine Essence goes immediately to our subconscious mind to settle the issue of whose in charge. He instantly arrests this stubborn carnal twin of ours and establishes humility toward God as the prevailing value even on this subconscious level.

At that point, the spiritual tug-of-war ends. No longer is the believer's heart divided in its loyalty between God and self. This heart is now undivided. It is singularly devoted to God. And having a "singular primary devotion" is the very essence of Holiness. To be undivided in your devotion to God, both in your conscious and subconscious mind, that is Holiness. And, it is the Living Christ who enables this heart purity, through the Spiritual Merger.

And with this personal completion, a deep peace finally comes to the believer. The peace that Jesus spoke of, "the peace that passes understanding." No longer is this child of God painfully suspended between two opposing governments in his heart.

And now the believer is positioned to become truly and profoundly new as he or she begins to live life in the vitality of the of the Living Christ. Now, in real terms of the everyday, "behold, old things are passed away, and all things are become new."

So, it becomes simple, really. The Dying Christ of the Cross saves us. But the Living Christ of the Resurrection empowers us to newness and holiness (or you could say, "whole-ness") of heart through the merger of our human nature with His divine nature. We just call it "The Baptism of the Spirit" for short.

Finally, there is something else that these 30 years of discovery have shown me. It is simply this. Alarmingly high numbers of believers neglect this Spiritual completion that God offers through the Living Christ. Far too many believers in the grass roots of the modern Church are unaware even of this possibility.

Many, these days, assume themselves to simply be consigned the daily spiritual failure that this in-between, carnal condition brings. So they simply accept the failure-forgiveness-failure-forgiveness cycle as their only possibility in redemption.

Others assume the Baptism of the Spirit to be a mostly imperceptible benefit that is "automatic" to conversion. So, they simply do not invest themselves in seeking this divine completion as the Bible instructs us to do.

Still others view a realistic "newness in Christ" as more of an option than a natural necessity of the redemptive process. Thus, with all of these easier, though erroneous, options in the modern Church, this more sophisticated Gospel becomes a pretty hard sell.

And, in fact, we live in a time when minimal investment is the norm. These times have been drained of real clarity regarding God's authentic process by the long prevalence of easy believism and "pop preaching". So, it has become easy to ignore the need for this personal completion after our initial conversion. Rather, we tend to simply focus on forgiveness, and then move on to devote our energies to merely pursuing the temporal things of this life.

However, there is one thing we have trouble escaping, even in these shallow times. It is His voice. The voice of God still calls to the heart of believers to finish the redemptive course, to rise, to draw near to Him in this completely devoted way.

When I encounter a child that is converted, I am careful to tell them something before they return to their parents. I tell them this: "Just listen for His voice in your heart." I tell them to do that, because I know that, as surely as they have given their heart to Christ, He will begin to speak to them and urge them forward through the redemptive process. And those urgings ultimately always lead all of us to the exact same place - the place of the undivided heart, the place of personal empowerment, the place of a true and profound newness in Christ.

And so I would encourage everyone - run toward the voice that calls you to the undivided heart, to holiness. Obey that voice with a true passion. If you hear the Holy Spirit of God calling you to spiritual maturity in Christ, then covenant with Him to put the silliness of this life on hold, and begin to devote yourself to the pursuit of this Spiritual completion above all else.

Seek the Baptism of the Spirit with a stubborn passion as Luke, chapter 11, directs us to do. It is God's means to finish your redemption, to finish you in Christ. Our literal merger with Christ is the indispensable, stand alone,"target event" of the New Testament. It is this event to which God calls every believer, after conversion, in order to touch them with this profound renewal in their inner person through the power of the invisible Christ.

Once we make it to the foot of the Cross, the power of the Resurrection and the Living Christ and a profound heart transformation lie just ahead. It simply comes to this. True redemption is about a Christ empowered newness, not just "fire insurance."

Give Me That

2011-11-14T10:18:00.002-06:00

When I was a little boy, something happened to teach me of the ways of God. I have not forgotten the lesson to this day. I was sitting in Sunday School in my ninth year of life. I'm sure I had been cutting up and generally making the teacher's life miserable, even though I loved Ms. Crawford dearly. Why do boys express their love as terrorism? Anyway, Mrs. Crawford was trying to settle the class down and take up an offering. My mother had given me a quarter before class; so I pulled it out. I was just sitting there waiting for the offering plate to arrive so I could deposit it.

Then, I heard Him say something. Kids hear God's voice so easily. Innocence (if not good behavior) seems to afford children such an easy access to God. But on this morning, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. He said, "I want the dollar." I don't know how, but I knew God meant the silver dollar in my jeans pocket. My Grandfather had given it to me; and, I was never without it. It was very special to me. I carried it everywhere I went.

I was surprised at the tender age of nine, as you might expect, that God would want my chief treasure in the whole world. But after only a brief pause, I knew what I had to do. So, I put both the dollar and the quarter in the offering plate as it went by.

I did not hear the Sunday School lesson that morning. I was completely preoccupied with what had happened. As I remember, there were a lot of swirling question marks: "Why did God speak to me? Why today? Was it really God? Why did he ask for the dollar? Did I do the right thing?"

Then it was time for church. But I didn't hear the sermon either. (I probably wouldn't have heard it anyway.) I was still just trying to figure it all out.

Finally, church was over, and we piled in the car to head for home. The sacred seating order was duly observed, as always. Dad was driving. Mom was in the front on the passenger side. I was in the back behind Dad (the most sacred part of all). And Judy, my sister, was behind Mom on the passenger side.

I heard Mom and Dad speaking softly between themselves about something in the front seat; but, I didn't pay much attention. Some portion of my sister's dress had protruded over the sovereign international border that bisected the back seat between "her side" and "my side" and the war was on. No border trespass was ever allowed to go unaddressed. So, Judy and I were in a serious territorial war of words.

The war was cut short, however, when my Dad raised his voice to ask me a completely unexpected question. He said, "Larry, can I see your silver dollar?" The border skirmish instantly ceased, as did all sound from the back seat. I had no idea what to say. I didn't know if I was in trouble or what. But I was very aware that all of a sudden that silver dollar had surely become important to a lot of people.

After a short silence, Dad said, "Son, have you got your dollar with you?" Again, silence. He said, "Larry?"

Finally, I said, "No sir."

He said, "Where is it?"

After another short pause, I finally told my Dad the whole story. Just as I finished my story about what had happened to the dollar, my Dad's big leathery hand came slipping over the back of the front seat. He turned it over and opened it. There in the palm of his hand was my silver dollar. He said, "Here son. I bought it back for you."

My Dad was the Sunday School Superintendent at our church; and, when he was counting the offering, He saw the dollar. Dad was always very intuitive; and, apparently he sensed something of what was going on. So he redeemed the dollar for me.

I spent the rest of the trip home listening to Dad reassure me through his own occasional tears that not only was I not in trouble, but that I had absolutely done the right thing. He confirmed in no uncertain terms that it is always right to give God your all, your most precious, your very best, your complete devotion. And he made sure that I knew that if we can't do it in the real terms of "silver dollars," we are probably just kidding ourselves about doing it in the other areas of life.

I'll never forget that Sunday morning. And I have never forgotten the lesson that my Dad so carefully drove home to my heart that day. Now I know that it is really just the first lesson of all - You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.

Since that Sunday morning, I have had other similar encounters with God. They have been basically the same: they are encounters of consecration and faith. As I think about it now though, it seems that as the years have passed, the decimal point involved in His requests may have moved steadily to the right. And the "cherish factor" has become even larger. And the faith requirement has become noticeably steeper. But ultimately, all of these encounters just come to this: His "How much?" question awaiting our "With all my heart" response.

I know that this is a lesson easily misapplied. Crazy people can use the "God told me to" thing to justify a "jihad" or do harm to their children etc. But they are crazy. And crazy people do deranged stuff with or without a lesson. Nevertheless, the Bible is replete with these consecrating encounters between God and His people. And their purpose is not to encourage extremism, but to confirm and enlarge our personal relationship to Him.

The simple truth here? When God puts His finger on something and says, "Give me that level of devotion," the real purpose is not to take something from us. It is to give something to us. It's never really about the "silver dollars." In these faith challenges, God is but setting the stage for us to know the personal newness that flows from such an act of faith when it is finished.

Manageable

2011-11-14T10:18:00.000-06:00

So, it went down like this, late in 2008. Andy (our youngest son) was in the hospital in Florida, and I was in Texas. Time to travel. But the plane that I needed was in Dallas, and I was in Texarkana. Time to rent a car.

But, the plane was leaving very early in the morning on the travel day. Time to make a reservation at a hotel near the airport for the night before. This was so I could drop off the car at DFW Airport the night before the flight, catch the hotel's airport shuttle back to the hotel for the night, order a delivery pizza for dinner, sleep a few hours, get up at 4:30, take the shuttle back to the airport, and catch the plane to Florida. We won't talk about airport security that day (it was only a hunting knife - just kidding).

A week later, when the visit was over, time to catch a plane in Tampa to come back home. Once in Dallas, time to rent another rental car for the trip back to Texarkana. My arrival in Dallas was at a weary, eyes-beginning-to-burn and droop 10:30 PM. The Avis clerk took one look at me and said, "Time for a free upgrade." For that kindness, I have been a loyal Avis customer ever since.

Eventually, "three hours eventually," I arrived at my own door. Time to go to bed. I love my bed.

As complicated as all of this may sound, that was still the simplified version. For a country boy this was all a very harrowing process. I rented the first car on Saturday near noon when the rental car people (not Avis) were way more worried about getting off on time (straight up noon was quitting time) than actually renting me a car.

Dropping off the car in that city that Dallas calls an airport, you start to wonder if there really is a rental car area, and if there is, how in the world do you get to it. When I did find it, there were literally acres of cars belonging to multitudes of rental companies. And unintelligible signage was everywhere - all designed (I know) to confuse country boys.

But eventually, after working my way through this cast iron jungle - with very courteous attendants I might add - it was time to go sit at the hotel shuttle stop. Then, as the sun sets and dark starts to creep up, and you begin to realize that you are no longer in the "Kansas" of your familiar hometown, you start to wonder, "Is that shuttle really going to show up? I wonder if I'm too late to catch it? I wonder if this is the right bench for the right shuttle for the right hotel." Then, "Ah, wait! There it comes. Shooo."
Manageable. It's a nice word, and a nice condition in life. We like life to be very manageable. In fact most of us work hard at keeping it that way. We don't like to be in an uncertain or uncontrolled or unfamiliar (all just other ways of saying "unmanageable") circumstance. But, in fact, there are times when unmanageable is preferred - not usually by us "country boys and girls" - but by the God who created us. This is true because "Manageable" is often the bane of a strong faith.

If we insist that our faith be manageable, in the sense that its demands must be easy to meet and fit comfortably into our schedule, our priorities, our plans, and our budget, etc. - then we must also make ourselves comfortable with spiritual anemia - at best. Because that is exactly what an always manageable faith always produces.

On the other hand, a not so easily managed faith - a faith that places significant demands on our intellect, our will, our resources, and our personal plans and destiny - that faith stretches us, strengthens us, and matures us. That faith authenticates us, and takes us to the depths of relationship with God.

On that trip to Florida, I was way out of my easily manageable element. At every new juncture there was uncertainty, misgivings, emotional discomfort, and even, at times, PANIC. But, here is what I found the solution to be: "Surrender to the journey."

So, I did. I simply gave myself to the process of getting to Florida, whatever that entailed; and after that, it was easy. It simply became a question of meeting each challenge in turn and trusting that I could.

The same approach works for a demanding faith. By its very nature faith often leads us into circumstances that don't fit into our "druthers." It is suppose to do that. God often calls to us, sometimes very insistently, to enter into a reality that we cannot control, that is uncertain, that is unfamiliar, and that doesn't fit our idea of manageable.

But those are the very calls that a vital faith answers to. The key is not to marginalize or resist the challenges placed on us by a genuine faith, but to surrender ourselves to them. If you want to get to Heaven, then give yourself to the process that takes you there. Once you truly embrace the reality of "unmanageable" in order to pursue God's direction, then it becomes just a matter of one foot in front of the other.

God will draw on your faith. That is what He does. He is going to ask you to do some things that don't fit your parameters for manageability. Time to grow. Just say "yes." And let Him bring you to a whole new awareness of what is manageable.

Transcendent Life

2011-10-26T00:25:00.009-05:00

If, by some divine decree, I were given the opportunity to give to the whole world one awareness, I think it might surprise some what that would be. The truth that I would want the world to know is this: "Life is not really about life." The idea being, of course, that our physical life should never be thought of as an end in itself. It is not.

Certainly, the drama of this physical life is an important one. And it demands a certain level of participation of all of us. And the impact of that participation is up close and personal consequences and blessings, every day. But what we sometimes do not understand is that the greatest import of this life actually overflows the physical dimension.

In fact, this life is but an increment of a larger, a transcendent life. This physical life serves most importantly as what might be understood as an "incubation period" for our spiritual transformation.

That is why Jesus would make this statement. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? ... Therefore do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

To embrace the approach which Jesus advocates here, it certainly helps to understand the ultimate purposes of this physical life. They are these: 1. To become aware of God's perspective. 2. To experience the Savior, and the fullness of God through Him. 3. To mature toward the consummate "divine image" that the Savior was sent to complete in us. These are the purposes of the larger picture. These are the purposes that give enduring value to this physical dimension.

So, it should not be that this life becomes an end in itself. And yet, often it does. We become so immersed in climbing the business ladder, or achieving some personal success, or pursuing some intense interest, etc. that those pursuits become disconnected. We simply subtract them from the redemptive purpose that they were supposed to serve.

Thus, what God intends to be a shaping, transforming process to bring us to new levels of spiritual awareness and definition becomes derailed. Instead, life's pursuits become something we chase simply for the immediate intrinsic value that they hold.

And the pursuits of this life do have intrinsic value. That is why we become so carried away with them, at times. But what they do not have, in and of themselves, is enduring value. They are always short lived, and thus, ultimately empty, when disconnected from God's larger purpose.

So, we may get to the top of that corporate or political ladder, etc. But when we do, most of this brief life will probably be behind us. And in any case, the merely physical achievements are still very soon relinquished to death, and usually long before that, to the ravages of age.

So, the offerings of this physical existence remain seductive; but obviously, the simple variable is how long the "fun" will last. Will it be only for the brief decades that the physical dimension affords us. Or, will it be for a transcendent lifetime.

That latter course is truly empowered by the clear awareness that this life is not really about this life. So, I would love for the world to clearly understand that the present brief scene that we are viewing is only a small part of the much larger redemptive play.

Undivided

2011-07-31T21:05:00.001-05:00

Oh, we study the Bible. But - and not to be unkind - in fact, we don’t often study it "desperately," as we might study text books when we are trying to become a doctor, or an engineer, or a scientist. When it comes to preparing for our vocation, we typically seek a comprehensive, coherent, and accurate body of knowledge. But when it comes to our faith, we are too often content with a bunch of cobbled together ideas, convenient cliché's, and short devotionals, which are usually aimed more at getting through the day than attaining a thorough understanding of God and His agenda.

So, in the absence of substantial information, more and more of us are just making god up. We ad-lib god. We fashion a god that is who we need him to be, rather than who God really is.

And we always make a "good" god. That is, we create a god who behaves the way we need him to behave. For example, typically, we like for him to keep a comfortable distance until we need help. Then we want him to becomes our divine "leg man" busily rearranging life’s circumstances to serve our selfish interests.

If we need encouragement, he becomes our "pick me up" so we can get on with our personal agenda. If we boo boo, even if it’s a big time boo boo, our self made god usually just excuses us by one means or another, and leaves us mostly unbothered and unchanged.

So, in short, designer gods, the gods we fashion in our minds, don’t put much pressure on us. As a result, these little "divine figments" necessarily play down the importance of significant investment and personal struggle. Rather they wink when we cut moral corners and take ethical shortcuts and choose the easy, but wrong, way. And why wouldn’t they. It is really our druthers, after all, that shaped and defined these small and well behaved gods in the first place. So, understandably, these manufactured gods are not going to put much emphasis on personal holiness.

But when it comes to the real God - don’t count on it. Holiness matters to Him - immensely. It is an indispensable and immutable part of His own most basic identity. And He absolutely insists on making it a part of ours.

Holiness, in God and man, is no more complicated than this. It is integrity of heart. In other words it is an undivided heart, a heart that has a single primary devotion. In God, that singularity perfectly permeates His entire being and His every action. He is completely, always, and without any contradiction, entirely and singularly devoted to true goodness.

That same imperative also comes to vibrant life in all who truly live in the passions of Christ. And though we may struggle with absolute perfection in our own pursuit of goodness - we absolutely do not struggle with our devotion to it. In fact, the whole thrust of the redemptive operation is to restore that singularity of purpose in man’s heart - to give us integrity of intent.

To see the true God accurately, is to understand Him to be a Holy God, a God perfectly devoted to "rightness," and a God who cares whether or not His people are so dedicated. And while Satan and even our own warped views may sometimes attempt to discredit the idea of holiness in God and man, yet, that is not possible. If God lives, He lives with but a single primary devotion: true goodness. And if we live in Christ, that same lovely, and purifying, and elevating devotion comes to life in us through his divine nature that moves us.

The Adversary would have us to believe that holiness is an unattainable attribute for humanity. But, in fact, it is the very fabric of our existence if we have been literally baptized into the vitality of Christ. And, while we may be, on occasion, imperfect in awareness, or perspective, or understanding, or even actions; yet, ultimately we are undivided in our devotion to all that God shows us to be good.

We make mistakes in life; but these three must not be among them: We must never fashion our own convenient god. He will fail our soul in the end. We must never fail to understand the true God to be a holy God who requires the same in His people. And, we must not fail our own capacity, in Christ, to be a holy people, having but a single primary devotion.

Some day, from the high vantage point of the after life, when we review the troubles of these troubled times, mankind’s primary problem will be easily obvious. From that vantage point, we will clearly see that the spiritual struggles of these days do not, in fact, stem from any lack of capacity or ability. Rather, they flow directly from a lack of resolve - the always unavoidable dividend of shallow and multiplied devotions. Nevertheless, the first requisite of God’s Heaven stands. Heaven still requires an undivided heart.

... The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Deut. 6:4-5

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. 2 Cor. 7:1

... if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:

that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness. Eph. 4:21-24

Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy.'' 1Peter 1:13-16

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24

Pursue peace with all men, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Heb. 12:14

God Who?

2011-04-20T21:02:00.006-05:00

There once was a man who was always delighted to show off his very elegant home. It was, indeed, impressive. He had spent much time and energy decorating it according to the latest design trends. And it was beautifully and tastefully done throughout.

And the property surrounding his home was perfectly manicured. And beyond that, the latest in security features protected all.

It was very obvious that he was extremely proud of this beautiful and secure living circumstance. And given the level of his achievement, one could easily understand his pride - except for one thing.

It was difficult to ignore the fact that these beautiful and tastefully decorated environs were located on death row at a large prison facility. The reality was that the man had been there so long and had become so mentally and emotionally immersed in creating a tasteful environment in his cell that his mind had blocked out the fact that he lived on death row, and even that, but for a short time longer.

There are those in our world who say, "What need have I of God? I have a happy and fulfilling family life. I have a great job with a very nice income level. I am surrounded by many loyal and supportive and like minded friends. I live in a really good neighborhood. I have the important "toys" that I want. I have the security of various insurance coverage's, and large savings and investments accounts. I have my 'ducks in a row.' So, why do I need God?"

Here is the correct, if perhaps slightly too frank, answer to such a clueless question: "YOU ARE LIVING ON DEATH ROW, DUMMY! - and even that, but for a short time longer. It is not a brilliant move to ignore the only Being in the universe who can commute your sentence."

But isn't this the cosmic mistake of our time: Building a really great "house" in a really bad "location."

John 3:15 and following:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

High Points

2011-04-20T20:58:00.001-05:00

Among countless blessings in my life, two pinnacle events have happened to me. The first: I encountered the Cross of Christ. From a deep personal valley of failure and discouragement, I looked up to see it, a beacon of true hope, a matchless opportunity to redeem my broken life.

Glimpsing the Cross from the low perspective of your own desperation is quite different than simply hearing of its worth from others. To know of the Savior intellectually, is not even close to experiencing his brilliance, deep in your own despairing soul. Godly families are great, but even the strongest religious heritage cannot bring you to this indispensable awareness of Jesus. Even the best religious background can do no more than set the stage for the real transformation that flows from the view provided by our own personal brokenness.

And certainly, to be merely assimilated into the social network of the Church is but a cheap counterfeit of true personal redemption. Crisis and pain and deep personal investment in his lordship are simply the unavoidable requirements for a relationship with Jesus Christ. Anything, anything less is but shallow pretense.

It was this redemptive absolute that was forever confirmed to me so long ago in the emotional fires of my own deep valley. And it was this break through that became a pinnacle event of my now 62 years. It was the moment when I was finally able to see the Jesus of the Cross, not merely through intellectual eyes, but through the searching eyes of humble desperation. In that moment, Jesus alone became the magnificent King of my heart.

And once I saw my Savior from the low plane of my own need, then the promise and glory of His Cross burst across the landscape of my mind and circumstance. And the warm blanket of God's rescuing love renewed my hope and encouraged me to a new start and an enduring and sure path for my life. In that low place I found a true Savior. He saved my soul. He saved me from my own self destructive behavior. And He saved me from my then present dismal circumstance.

And that kindly rescue, in turn, enabled the next pinnacle of my life. From those early beginnings in Christ came a call to maturity and consistency. Not unlike the voice inside a child that constantly moves them to "grow up," so was this godly voice that called me forward and caused me to search for some sure and certain means of success. And in that search I experienced the second high point of my life.

So, in one motion, I found a new level of reality through my Savior; and in that reality, I also found that I was as inconsistent as God was real. In my desire to rise and walk on the high plane of God's will for my life I began to discover a new truth. Painfully, it was this: When it came to pleasing God, in both my behavior and my basic being, there was, every day, more failure than success.

While I was glad that my daily failures could be forgiven through Christ, at the same time, the pain and turmoil that those failures caused quickly became unbearable. And I found little comfort, really, in the failure - forgiveness - failure - forgiveness cycle. I wanted a peaceful, and pleasurable, and God pleasing relationship. And the reality was - It simply wasn't there.

So, to the core of my soul, I started to hunger for a means, a way, some source of sufficiency that would bring me peace, and God's consistent approval. I thought it not too much to hope that I was not saved by a holy and almighty God, only to be consigned to the constant daily failures of my fallen humanity.

Turns out, I was right. After some brief time of soul searching, and further humbling, and seeking and praying for a remedy for my constant failure, God gave me one. It was Jesus. Oh, not the Jesus of the Cross, but a new Jesus. He was the Jesus of the Resurrection.

This was the Living Jesus who had the capability to share His very nature with me. This vital and powerful Jesus, though unseen, had the ability to bring his vitality for a God pleasing life to me through the divine merger. And so He did.

On some wonderful day a few weeks after my conversion, the actual date of which I never thought to remember, I experienced the second pinnacle event. It was my spiritual baptism into the Living Jesus. It occurred by some divine operation that I do not, to this day, entirely understand in the mechanics. But, I certainly understand it's results.

Peace came to my relationship with God, and a new level of access, and a new depth of awareness. And the daily failures began to diminish. And consistency of thought and behavior began to rise. And maturity, began to show up in my walk. And eventually the question changed. It went from, "How can I rise above sinful failures," to "How can I be more fruitful in my character?"

The question changed because the issues changed. Jesus, the Living Jesus, the Spirit Jesus of the Resurrection became my power over daily sin. He became my consistency of thought and action. And when His daily empowerment became a reality, overwhelming sin became mostly the issue of the past. Eventually, the major concern became one of growth, and maturity, and fruitfulness in Him. And in that sweet pursuit, a peaceful, and fulfilling, and deeply intimate relationship came to life in real terms with the God who created me.

I will never forget the first day I laid eyes on my wife, Donna. I will forever cherish the wonderful events of our married life. I will never forget the major events and the precious memories of my children's lives. And I have been part of many great moments in my time. But in all of the composition of this thing we call life - from two pinnacle events stem the quality of all the rest: The day I looked up in humility to see Jesus on the Cross that saved me - And the day Jesus shared His divine vitality to relieve the deep and disabling pain of my inner sinful nature.

Romans 5:1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

Encounter

2011-02-27T23:10:00.004-06:00

Jesus said this. "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

The most fulfilling thing in life is to encounter the Savior in the way He intended. Sadly, most of the world in every generation will live and die and never have a serious encounter with Jesus Christ. Many will never even hear of Him. And of those who do, relatively few of us will experience the ultimate encounter that He offers.

Oh, we may be impressed by His utter selflessness. We may be grateful for His death on the Cross and all that it means. We may even be moved to embrace Christ as our Savior, the Benefactor of our forgiveness. But relatively few will actually venture beyond the realm of forgiveness, to discover Jesus on the higher plane of relationship.

But there truly is a higher plane than that which is born out of feckless gratitude. It is higher, too, than a mere orientation around our works - what we do. Our behavior is important, but our behavior is not the most primary basis for the ultimate encounter with Christ.

The ultimate relationship with Christ is based, not in what we do, but in who we are. It is the quality of our character that is at the center of God’s ultimate redemptive purpose. The pinnacle to which our faith is suppose to bring us is a true personal newness in Christ. To become new in heart, to experience a rewrite of our value system, to be changed at the very core of our being into a new and truly godly person - that is the ultimate import of our faith.

But again, sadly, most just hang around near the entrance of that experience - waiting, somehow hesitant - grateful, but hesitant. But, even while we linger - we know. We hear, if only vaguely, that divine purpose calling to us. Yet we don’t respond; because we understand instinctively that to pursue that calling would require a great deal of us.

And so, something inside often forbids us even to acknowledge the challenge, much less, to actually believe in its possibilities and risk ourselves to them. Thus, we are left loitering around the "beginning place," compensating for our refusal to go forward with the expressions of our unenergized gratitude.

But, the truth is - we are not called to shallow gratitude. We are not called to religious loitering. We are not called to rhetorical compensations. We are called to newness in Jesus Christ.

The point of the Resurrection is to provide us with a Living Savior. The point of having a Living Savior is so that we can personally merge with Him through the Baptism of the Spirit. The point of that merger is to allow us to borrow from the vitality of His life. The point of that borrowing is so that, in the power of His energy, we can truly be transformed in heart. And the point of our transformation is so that we can enjoy a relationship with God that is based in a renewed likeness to Him.

In our silly and shallow culture, we hear a lot of deluded talk about the "richness" that flows from our diversity and differences. In truth though, richness only ever really occurs in relationship if our differences are essentially insignificant, and if the things we cherish in common far out weigh those minor differences.

The reality is, if our differences are significant, they always, always, always tend to drive us apart. Think about it. Important differences are the very things we fight about. So, to believe that significant differences somehow make relationships better is, indeed, delusional thinking. They absolutely do not.

On the other hand, whether between partners in a marriage, the citizens of a nation, the members of a family, or between the creature and the Creator, always the foundation for fulfilling relationship is the mass of our sameness, our shared values, our deep agreement about the significant things. It is the volume of our agreement that is the real basis for "richness" and strength in our relationships.

And that is the gift that our transforming Savior gives to us through the Spiritual merger. By integrating His character with our own Jesus changes who we are. He brings us to a profound newness at our core by implanting within us His godly values, which, in turn, bring us into a beautiful harmony with God. And from that compatibility, flows the kindred relational embrace that we were always meant to know and enjoy with our Creator.

And behold! As Jesus changes who we are, that also becomes the enduring correction of what we do. Because, what we do always flows from who we are. Thus, it is this transforming encounter that truly redeems.

The Ultimate Encounter with Christ is to know Him as the source and power and reality of a profound newness of heart - A newness that brings an easy and natural compatibility with our God - and a beautiful and godly consistency to our behavior.

It was Paul who asked the telling question for all believers when he spoke to the followers of Christ at Ephesus. He asked, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" The answer to that question, for each one of us, decides the quality and completeness of our encounter with Christ.

Awareness

2010-12-15T00:00:00.003-06:00

I doubt if I’m the only one who’s noticed that evil seems to be expanding exponentially around the planet. On every hand the base things are rising up, from rampant drug use, to the proliferation of pornography, to political corruption, to cultural and moral decay. On and on the list goes. Add to that the reality of an anemic Church and the diminishing ability of the family unit to pass on good values and the picture of our near future seems bleak, indeed. In the face of such a wayward world, it would really help if someone would simply tell us what we can do to better the situation.

Actually someone has; and the answer is probably simpler than most believe. It lies in a concept that Jesus gave us. He said this, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

This is the simple task of the Church in these challenging times. It is to give light, to raise the world’s awareness of goodness and truth. It is to oppose the darkness by two simple means: precept and example.

It is our job, first of all, to simply tell the world, to confront evil by merely using enlightened conversation. In these times when the darkness is so ascendant we must only speak out. The simple task is to raise the world’s awareness of true goodness and God’s truth. So, we preach. We teach. We converse with the group. We e-mail. We Twitter. We Facebook. We argue. We confront. We contend for the faith. We intellectually network God’s truth in every possible way at every opportunity. We shine the light, we make the people around us aware by our voice.

Secondly, we oppose the darkness by living the light. We raise the world’s awareness of God’s truth by allowing them to see what truth and goodness looks like when it has skin on. It is our example, our every day, ordinary existence in Christ, that must also cause our world to take note, to pay attention, to become aware and enlightened as to the true God and His intentions in this world.

Now obviously, most of the world knows nothing, nor will they likely ever know anything, of my personal existence. I will almost certainly perish in obscurity, like most ordinary people. But, if we do this thing right, not before we have raised our voice to bring awareness in our own circle of influence: our family, our friends, our acquaintances and our coworkers etc., and not before we have lived our lives before our own community in a way that they might see, and in seeing, glorify our Father in Heaven.

Indeed, most of us are not capable of opposing evil on a world scale. But we can certainly oppose it on a personal scale by simply raising the awareness level of those in our circle. And that is all we really have to do to defeat evil on the larger scale. Our lights may be relatively small, individually; but if we let them all shine, the darkness will be dissipated.

So, what do we do in this time when evil is so ascendant. We simply do what Jesus said. We refuse to go unnoticed and unheard. Rather, we speak to the darkness with our voice and with our example. We become to those immediately around us the means of an enlarged and godly awareness. We become to them, the light of God. We enable them, by these simple means: our voice and our daily lives - well lived. By this entirely doable thing, we can enable some to see through and beyond the stupidity of the darkness.

People Of The Higher Plane

2010-09-14T22:39:00.001-05:00

There are a couple of levels upon which we operate in this life. The first is the level of the Base Plane where we deal with such questions as, What do I want / What do I need / What's in it for me, etc. This is the low plane of life, the plane of the minimal existence. There are few complications of conscience here. This low plane is basically about subsistence and survival - no big questions asked.

So it usually becomes, in practical terms, merely about paying the bills, coping with the kids in the minimal amount of time, doing what has to be done, grabbing after personal advantage, and keeping a low perspective to avoid the more complicated issues.

Life on this lower plane is efficient and streamlined and mostly repetitive. It doesn't require complex thought. It does not require us to become involved in the abstract or consider the larger and more noble issues. But neither does this plane add much to us, personally, or to our world. Actually, over time, life lived on this low plane makes us to be quite ugly and empty.

The second level upon which we can choose to operate in this life is the level of the Higher Plane where we do, indeed, become involved in the higher issues: Is it right / Is it good / Is it moral / Does it please God, etc. This is the plane of conscience and intellect. This is the plane where we address the more complex questions, where the abstract comes into play, where we do take on the complicated stuff of mind and conscience.

Life on this plane is not so efficient. This higher plane of life requires us to be more conscientious, more intellectually invested and aware, and more sensitive to a larger array of concerns. This plane of living simply takes more time, and thought, and energy for its processes.

As long as we are only about the immediate issues of the lower plane, basically, "What's in it for me," or "How does it benefit me or mine," we will never be great people, people of gravity, truly respectable people. Such smallness is simply not respectable. In fact, when our sphere of concerns becomes that small, we become people of the most minimal merit.

On the other hand however, we can take our head out of the "simplistic sands" of the lower plane. We can choose to look around and begin to measure our existence by the higher values of life. It is when we gage our existence by these higher values: love, self discipline, honesty, morality, integrity, honor, duty, faithfulness, humility, godliness, etc. that we do, indeed, become people of the higher plane.

And, in fact, bringing us to the higher plane of life, to the higher and more noble concerns, is absolutely God's purpose for us in Christ. However, I think it accurate to say, we are not cooperating with his intentions at the level that we did, even a generation or two ago.

What is different about the Church of today is the lower percentage of people who are willing to embrace life on the higher plane. What is different in our homes today is the lower percentage of parents that are people of the higher plane. What is different in Washington today is the lower percentage of leadership who are willing to live and lead by the values of the higher plane. What has changed in our world is the smaller number of people who are willing to pursue life on the higher plane.

Perhaps all of us operate on the lower plane of life in some measure. But not enough of us get beyond that meager level now. Not enough of us operate on the higher plane of conscience and character anymore. That's too bad. We would be much better people, have a much better life and a much better world if we did.

The Glow

2010-09-14T22:37:00.002-05:00

Yesterday morning I preached at Holy Tree Chapel, a church in east Texas, near Tyler, with a congregation of about 300 precious people. As I preached, that sweet, old thing that so often does, happened again. The glow came. I have seen it so very many times, but I never take it for granted. Every time it is brand new and wonderful. And every time it is confirming of Holy Spirit's presence in the sanctuary service.

Lest anyone misunderstand, though, the Heavenly light on their faces couldn't have less to do with the preacher, himself. Rather, it has everything to do with the operation of the Holy Spirit as He removes the "earthy" scales from the congregation's mind, the grossness from their heart.

And that impact is so very obvious from the perspective of the pulpit as God's Spirit moves through the crowd turning on the light of personal revelation. Until eventually, the room is aglow with the living, burning truth of God. Faces literally shine with a Heavenly awareness. Eyes speak volumes. At that point, as the preacher, you know that God is making His word heard, not just in their ears, but deep in their hearts.

That is when preaching becomes preaching. That is when "church" becomes a personal encounter with God. And that is when this surly world begins to lose its grip on their lives.

This glow of, "Oh! To the depth of my soul, I am 'getting' this," across the faces of a congregation is a phenomenon of matchless beauty and limitless potential. In these holy and precious moments of divine elevation, when the soul is alighted by truth, any thing can happen. Addictions can be conquered. Fears can be overcome. Weighty sins can be loosed. Broken hearts can be mended. Powerful leaps of faith can be made. And some of that happened yesterday.

Such is the power that is connected to the Christian pulpit, and attends no other. It absolutely transcends the superficial: peaked emotion, high tension rhetoric, glib tongues. All of these are but cheap illusional gimmicks in comparison to the operation of divine enlightenment. To be there when truth comes to vibrant life in the power of a Godly awakening, when the Holy Spirit very personally interprets the truth to the individual's perception and need, is an incomparable experience.

Such are the riches that the Church offers to the world - a true encounter with God, and access to His living truth. What a privilege to preach a word that comes to life as I breath it, that has its own life within itself. And what a fulfilling thing to see that renewing life splash across the faces of the congregation in the form of new joy and excitement. Without doubt, mine is the greatest job in the world - bar none.

Who Rules

2010-09-14T22:31:00.002-05:00

Over the centuries, the theological debate has been, "Do we rule over sin, or does sin rule us?" Across the years of my ministry (about 30), I have far too often been surprised by the secret sin that absolutely reigns over and oppresses many. Far too frequently, I have sat in my study as someone, respected in the church and/or the community, in a moment of desperation, revealed the dark, secret sin that was absolutely ruling over them.

On one occasion I experienced almost a group revelation of this sort. I was addressing a church men's group of about 50, and I made a remark about how widespread the involvement in Internet pornography had become; and that, if we knew the truth, there were probably men in that group who were being victimized by it, that very day.

I was not prepared for the reaction that came. It was, on that morning, possible to read the faces and body language of those men like a newspaper. Instantly, you could see a flood of emotional change go across the group. A significant percentage started changing positions in their chair, looking away, looking down, and slipping into blank stares. The group, as a whole, became aware of the change in "atmosphere." Then you could hear a pin drop as eyes began to dart around the room.

It was starkly obvious that long repressed guilt in some of those men instantly and involuntarily shot to the surface. I was, myself, totally taken back because I simply did not expect such an abrupt and visible reaction from this church group.

Does sin rule us? Sometimes it absolutely does, and in the harshest way. An exposure of the prescription that the Bible gives us to overcome the rule sin in our lives is found in 1st John 1: 5 and following. It says this, "This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

The simple remedy of "confession," (always to God, and sometimes to others) realigns us with God's moral will and initiates the cleansing process that ultimately leads to consistent victory over sin. But, it is one thing to recognize the evil of sin and wrestle your way free of its grip, with God's help. It is quite another thing to intentionally hide sin away in your life so that you can continue to practice it, covertly, without anyone knowing. Protecting, and Planning for, and Pursuing the Reality of sin in one's life is not the "wrestling match of freedom." It is hypocrisy, and pretense, and delusion. And such foolishness absolutely makes sin the absolute ruler over us and over our personal destiny.

Over the years, the walls of my study have definitely heard many confessions of desperate people whose lives were deeply damaged and even destroyed by their secret sin. And this was not sin that they could not overcome. In Christ, there is no such thing. This was cherished sin, sin they chose not to overcome. They protected and quietly embraced this sin, until they discovered they were not holding it, but rather, it actually had a death grip on them.

Usually, by the time I was hearing about this very private and protected sin, their marriage, their self respect, their reputation, their relationship to God, and/ or their hope for the future were mostly "down the tubes." Protected sin will always destroy the quality of life, and often, not just of those who are harboring the darkness, but also the quality of life for the people around them.

Nor is cherished sin merely a killer of the souls. It is a killer of relationships, of life quality, and of personal and community morale. That is not God's idea of redemption . That is the deluded destiny that we fashion for ourselves when we establish a secret friendship with sin.

God's plan is to extricate people from the darkness of sin, first by the Cross of the Dying Christ, and then by the personal empowerment that flows through the Resurrection and the Living Christ. Sin always rules when Christ doesn't. But, the redemption that Christ brings to the believer is a liberating redemption that empowers our certain rule over sin in the most real terms of everyday life. But only if we pursue that liberation with our whole heart. Anything less, and sin wins.

Privileged Access

2010-06-21T22:43:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday of this week, my job got "sunned-out." That's the same thing as rained-out, except it is a lot hotter and a lot dryer. I was scheduled do some work on the structure of a metal roof; but it was simply too hot to touch.

So, I decided to spend part of my unexpected holiday talking to the Lord. I stopped by a beautiful local park and found a good view of its small lake in the deep shade of some old growth trees. As I positioned myself under the trees, I noticed a steady 5 mph breeze off the lake. It was super nice. But the best part was yet to come.

As I sat there in what seemed a perfect environment, the Lord came in such a perceptable way. We talked casually about a number of my fears, my issues, and other people that I was concerned about, and their issues. I had a long list of thank-you's and personal sentiments. And the morning flowed past. It came time for me to leave and go try to fill at least some of the missed income for that business day. Life insisted, "It's time to go!" But I didn't think so. So, I decided to refused.

I decided that the conditions were simply to perfect, the Lord's immanent presence was too precious, and this exact moment would never come again. So, I simply refused to go. I said, "No, I'm not going to leave this perfect moment, for one that is much more flawed." And I didn't.

*****

I know that bad is on the rise. And, I must admit, these times and a great many of the people of these times worry me. I know that the present generations are in an existential transition, the likes of which the world has never seen.

I am personally convinced that in the near future, just as God's Word predicts, there will be a collision between the physical and the spiritual planes. I am equally convinced that the early stages of that collision are not going to be pleasant for anyone. And, my humble assessment is that the present turbulent sea of human activity which is rising quickly and becoming "stormish" is simply a precursor to that event. So, in a word, the long view of our short future is certainly disconcerting, at least to my simple mind.

But for some of us, and I am happy to be in the group, there is a recurring and perpetual calming. He speaks to us in tones of strength and confidence. He meets us in quiet places to encourage, to provide perspective, to give us a sense of position on every plane of life, whether spiritual, political, historical, intellectual, psychological, or emotional. He can do that because He is Christ - the Savior of the world and the God Almighty.

When I was converted so many years ago, and became a willing follower of my unseen Savior, I had no idea how just how blessed I was about to be. But, from day one, Christ made Himself available to me, as He does to all of His true followers. He came in various ways: as an inner voice, as an invisible guide through every circumstance of life - from hard to happy. He came as a constant inner Companion to help me correctly interpret life, to understand the hidden but essential things of this world - and the one to come. From the very beginning, He has been a faithful counselor, advisor, watchman, and friend.

But, make no mistake, he is by no means the "bell hop" in this very confirming relationship. If anything that is my part to play - but it is certainly not His. He is, unmistakably, the unchallenged Ruler of all realities and all that is in them. And therein lies the calming.

Tonight, as I write this, the Savior is not the least bit intimidated by any of the powers of this world or their conflicts. He is not at all fearful of the rising bad. He harbors zero concern that evil might actually triumph. He is not, in the least, disconcerted by the turbulence and storms that are building across the face of present human events.

Why? Because He is ever in charge of it all. From the individual moments of every day to the great tidal waves of a looming future, Christ, alone, says "what goes." Every creature, whether man or beast, can only play perfectly into His ultimate plan. He cannot be bested, outsmarted, surprised, or out maneuvered. He is completely and confidently in charge of all things; and no detail escapes Him. He simply knows nothing of crisis - only of perfect management.

And as we come near Him, through the enlarged access that He grants to true love, His confidence touches us. And our own frail confidence is restored. We are reassured by the perfect peace that attends His strength.

The day will always insist that other things are more important than time alone with Him. It will attempt to make us feel exposed and at risk if we dare to do such a thing. It will always remind us of the pressing material issues.

But to succumb to those pressures is to miss the majesty of what Christ offers. The door that He flings so widely open for us is the door of restoration. To experience the privileged access is to know the resolution of our fears, the healing of our wounds, the drying of our tears, and the gift of new inspiration.

So here is the simple reality that empowers our correct response to Christ's offer of divine access: The day does not rule Christ. Christ rules the day - and effortlessly. So, it's OK to refuse to be pressured from His renewing presence.

OK. God Called

2010-05-11T08:23:00.002-05:00

I like to simplify things. I don't like to overly simplify things. Much error has occurred in the world in that way. But still, in my opinion, simple is usually better.

I especially like to try to simplify spiritual concepts. It is a wonderful thing for the preacher to see the light of, "Oh, yeah, I get that," come on in the eyes of his parishioners. When people understand at a higher level, it means they have the option to respond to God at a higher level. It doesn't mean they will, but at least they have the opportunity. And I want everyone to have the best possible opportunity to know Christ at the very highest levels of relationship. There is no greater possibility afforded to us in this life.

So, here is my latest attempt at simplification: In the American culture, on a day to day basis, we essentially only deal with two approaches to the salvation of the soul. These two basic proposals for how God saves the human soul go under a lot of different "brand names;" but there are essentially just two "pitches."

The first redemptive plan is simply one that emphasizes Forgiveness. Tell you what, let's call this one "The Forgiveness Plan." Pretty catchy don't you think - and so descriptive.

Now, under the Forgiveness Plan - well - that's pretty much it. We as the "redemptees" just simply allow God to forgive us, because Christ died on the Cross for our sins. How could you beat a deal like that, right. Kinda' makes you wonder why we even need a second plan.

Anyway, to sign on to this plan, you simply acknowledge Christ as the Savior of the world and as your savior, personally; and that about takes care of your part. God then takes care of everything else from the day you make that acknowledgment until Judgment Day.

So, from the day we sign on, according to the Forgiveness Plan, He not only forgives our sins, but pretty much ignores our bad choices, our base behavior, our off color thought life, our misshapen character, our bad habits, our broken value system, our hit and miss conscience, our insensitivity's to His will, our "too busy for you, God" schedule, our "life on my own terms" attitude, etc., etc., etc. And He can do all of that, simply because Jesus died on the Cross to bring about our forgiveness.

Obviously, this redemptive plan is a really good deal for humanity, and a really bad deal for God. Under the Forgiveness Plan, after a quick statement of faith in the Savior, we don't really have to do anything if we don't want to, and God is left to put up with the daily anxiety, stress, and contradiction of our self determined lifestyle. So, God bites his lip all day, while we just kind of "express" ourselves upon His world in our own way.

I don't know about you, but I'm taking that deal while it's on the table. Forget that other plan. Who needs another plan, when you've got one this good? How could it get any better than this. Just give me the Cross, and "keep the change..."

*****

OK. God called. He's not happy with that deal. Wouldn't you know it.

I wondered who was pushing that second deal. Turns out - it was Him. Come to find out, He has no intention of quietly standing by and "biting His lip," or His tongue, while we "express" ourselves upon His world as just more of the same brokenness.

I know! I told Him. But He insists that His intention was never just to forgive us, but to begin fixing us, and right away. Guys, I'm just gonna' tell you, He was not a "happy Camper" in this conversation. His words, "Do you think I'm a fool! Is that the best you think I could do when it comes to redeeming humanity! Would you take that deal if you were in my place?!

"You better wise up, young man! And you better spread the word of the real "deal;" or there will be a lot more than words when next I talk to you."

Shoo, No wonder they call Him the Heavenly "Father." He sounded a lot like my earthly father sounded on more than one occasion.

Anyway. We better look at the "second deal," 'cause I don't think the first one is gonna' "fly" with God. So, here goes...

*****

The second, OK, yeah, the "authentic," redemptive plan emphasizes, not just forgiveness, but also renewal for the believer. So, to satisfy our love for catchy and descriptive titles, let's call this plan the "Forgiveness & Renewal Plan." Kinda' sounds like car insurance, doesn't it.

Anyway, The Forgiveness & Renewal Plan certainly includes the forgiveness that the Cross affords, but this plan doesn't stop there. This true plan of redemption has a requirement and a mechanism to fix us. It's called... wait for it... wait for it... OK, you already guessed it - The Resurrection Of Christ.

It works like this: After Jesus died on the cross, He came back to life on the 3rd day, making Him the Living Savior. That part, the living part, is very important. As the living Savior, Jesus then did something that no one had any idea He was going to do, before He did it. It is this mysterious move which makes the New Testament, well, New, and which brings the possibility of our personal renewal to life. ( Colossians1:24-27 )

Jesus dispatched the Holy Spirit, the God Essence in spirit form, with a very specific mission. That mission was to bring to us, as believers, the essence of this now living Jesus. (John 14:15-24) In other words, the Holy Spirit becomes the Conduit that literally connects us to the very life essence of the Savior, whose divine energy then begins to empower a personal newness within us. (John 15:4-5)

So again, here is how the dots connect. Jesus is alive! As a living Savior, He is able, by the Holy Spirit, to transfer His essential self into the believer. It is a spiritual merger that connects us to His divine nature. (2 Peter 1:2-4) As a result of this literal merger with Christ, the believer is energized by the divine energy to experience a profound newness. (Romans 8:2-6)

The primary expression of this newness occurs in our character. As you might expect, our character starts to become patterned after that of Christ. We start to develop the traits of His character in our character. (Galatians 5:19-25) In this way, we are transformed into, as the Bible puts it, a new creature in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Thus, under the Forgiveness & Renewal Plan of redemption, it becomes imperative that we get beyond just the forgiveness of the Cross, and experience this personal spiritual merger with the living Christ which initiates God's rebuilding process within us. (Romans 8:8-14) And I can tell you, God is definitely expecting newness as the end result of His salvation effort. (Galatians 5:15 / Matthew 3: 10-12) If I were you, I wouldn't plan to show up on that last day as the same old you - only forgiven. (Rev. 20: 11-12) That would not be good for your future.

What would be much better and safer is to carefully and diligently seek your own personal spiritual baptism into Christ, so that He can enable a new and godly character in you. (Luke 11:5-13) That is the place of true safety of soul. (Ephesians 5:5-10) This stand alone event in the redemptive process, an individual merger with the invisible Savior, is not only personally confirming, but absolutely essential to the newness in Christ which God requires under the authentic redemptive plan. (Romans 8:14-17)

I know. I know. I told Him, "Lord, this is a whole lot harder than that first deal." But, He was completely unsympathetic. He said, "You're right. It requires more investment from you, more energy; but I'm supplying most of it anyway. All you have to do is cooperate. It's called "faith," son.

I said, "Lord, can't you just fix me all at once when I get to Heaven?" And He said, "I could, but your broken now; and you're spewing that brokenness all over the place. It's hurting you, and those around you, and frankly, it's hurting Me. Why wait. I can make you new right now. Everything we need is available in Jesus - right now."

Then I said, "Lor.." But He interrupted without apology. "Enough talk!" He said. "If you cannot sense the wonder and value of what I am offering, then perhaps I should simply leave you to the consequences of your own choices."

At that moment, I realized - the choices really are very few and very simple - but the choosing. Now there is the real weight of the matter.

So Seldom Pure

2010-04-11T22:54:00.001-05:00

Life is so seldom purely good. It seems that evil most always finds a way to taint our moments. But sometimes not. Sometimes there are those priceless moments when life is purely good. The following is part of my personal list ...

Life was always purely good at my grandmother's breakfast table when I was young. When I stayed overnight at her house, I would awaken in her front bedroom to the smell of coffee; and from there on, it was always the same. Down the hallway to that bright kitchen and her big ole' loving hug. Paw was already at the table; and he would pour a little of the coffee that I was not supposed to have (too young) in his saucer, blow on it to cool it, and then slide it over to me with a grin.

By now, you could cut the smell of bacon with a knife as it fried in the skillet with the eggs. And the biscuits, baked from scratch, were the highlight of the menu. Paw and I would cut 'em in two, butter 'em heavy, and sprinkle sugar on 'em 'till you couldn't see the butter anymore. I always did mine exactly like Paw did his. I always did most everything like Paw did his.

The brightness of that happy kitchen, filled with morning sunlight, is as vivid in my memory as if it were yesterday. Every time I ever sat at that breakfast table, I knew only pure goodness expressed as laughter and love.

As time moved along, and I grew older, I came to understand that such moments and places are rare. But I did manage to discover another. It was my neighborhood of a simpler time. It was called Rose Hill. And it was straight out of "To Kill A Mockingbird" even down to my "Boo Radley" neighbor.
It was about a 20's model neighborhood, so it was 30 or so years old by the time I came along, and some parts were a good bit older than that. It was laid out in neat city blocks with old growth shade trees and cracking sidewalks. It was filled with responsible working people who all knew each other, or at least knew of each other, and were very respectful as neighbors.

My school was one block from my house. And on the way, I would stop, going and coming, at Ms. Gray's small store, in the middle of the block, for one brand or another of pure sugar. That store was the happy event of every school day, and most days that weren't, for that matter.

This part of town was made out of old charm. Most all of the yards were neat, and there was constant tension between deep shade and bright sunshine. And everywhere there were bushes, and big lush shrubs, and overgrown alleys and all of it screamed, "I've been here a while."

I was a kid in that neighborhood, the way a kid is supposed to be a kid. Between Indian attacks and cavalry charges, my cousin, Frank, and I played a thousand games of baseball there. I had countless bike races and wrecks. Fun came easy, and in a wide variety of forms there.

The summers on Rose Hill were hot, humid, and magical with smells of honeysuckle, and roses, and gardenias, and the escape of frying and baking smells through open kitchen windows. And amid those aromas, I spent long summer days doing the most important nothings that ever were done - all with my two best friends, Jack Jackson and Johnny Camp. (Now an engineer and a judge, respectively, and also reeking, these days, of "I've been here a while.")

Rose Hill died with the people who lived there in my childhood. Oh, the streets are still there, and most of the houses. But they aren't so neat or respectable any more. But I remember my neighborhood, back in the day. And it was purely good to my childish eyes.

But, as I have gotten older, as with most people I think, the barnacles of cynicism have attached. And it seems they make it even harder to ferret out the pure moments and places. But still, I find that it is not impossible. I have discovered two more wonderfully distilled realities in my mature adulthood. The first is the joy of sitting across the table from my wife in a favored restaurant and talking - just talking - while the problems are made to wait in the parking lot.

We go to a restaurant to eat, of course, but what we truly relish the "seclusion in the crowd." I love the stolen afternoon over nachos, or the Friday evening "end of week catch up conversation" at the Mexican place. I love the bright mornings at "Big Mac" with a biscuit and coffee and her on my day off. I love talking with her over lunch on a rainy day. I guess I love her - and the food and the talk just let it come out. And those moments are purely good.

And the last purely good thing that I will mention on my list (like you couldn't see this coming) is my friendship with the unseen Jesus. He is the living ideal of pure goodness.

His daily presence brings an unassailable hope to me every single day of my life. I think His presence is so reassuring because I need to know that our ideals can not only survive, but prevail even in this tainted world. And Jesus is the living confirmation of that. He is the one purely good reality in life that is never touched by this world's smudges, and who never goes away. In my book, the only thing better than purely good, is purely good - all the time.

It's true, life is seldom purely good. But sometimes - it absolutely is. And when it is, maybe you might be tempted to start your own list of the purely good in your life. Go ahead. Those things are worth keeping up with. (I know, prepositions on the end are not purely good. They are not even "kinda' good.")

The Rubber Reality

2010-03-29T13:53:00.001-05:00

One of the biggest blessings and one of the greatest difficulties of the Christian experience is the "Rubber Reality." "What is the Rubber Reality?" you ask. Well, in a word, it is that reality that comes from not being quite sure of just what faith may need to achieve. Said another way, it is the reality that occurs when the smallness of humanity meets the "bigness" of God.

For example, when the children of Israel came up against the Red Sea during the Exodus, the normal concrete reality would say, "Oops, this is an impossible situation. We cannot cross." But the rubber reality of faith would say, "Maybe, God wants to do something here, even though it is impossible," as He did.

Again, when you go to a wedding in Cana of Galilee and they run out of wine, the concrete reality would simply say, "We're out of wine." Yet, the rubber reality that faith creates says, "Maybe this is a circumstance that God wants to use" - as He did.

Finally, when, as Lazarus, a loved one dies, one would normally think that you have just bumped into the most concrete of all realities - death. But, in fact, faith can sometimes make even the facts of that reality to be elastic - as was the case with Lazarus.

Thus, there is the concrete reality of unbelief, easy to negotiate and understand, but barren and deadly. And there is the rubber reality of faith - very disconcerting at times, but full of God and very life-giving.

So the rubber reality is this more uncertain existence where, because of our faith, we are not quite sure of the interpretation of the facts - at least at first. It is a reality in which we are left wondering what God is up to, or what He might be intending to do. It is a reality where everything, all facts and conclusions, remain elastic while we search for His intent. Obviously, not an easy version of reality to navigate.

That's why so many want to put God in their little "logic boxes." It makes Him very predictable, and saves them the stress of the rubber reality, which scares them and gets in the way of their preferred interpretations. Normal logic is always subject to challenge in the reality that faith creates; and people know that.

I have also known thousands who wanted to define and predict God's actions with little simplistic cliché's: "God will never ask us to..." or "God will always..." It is basically the same escape mechanism. But in the rubber reality, to our chagrin, our cliché's don't work very well either.

So, what is this faith reality all about. Very simply, it is about discovery. It is about creating a circumstance through which we actually have to risk ourselves to an exploration of God's purposes, and thus, ultimately, come to better know the God behind His purposes.

This all makes perfect sense when we remember that, at the end of the day, redemption is really about relationship. It is not about logic boxes and cliché's. It is not about a simplistic God that we can marginalize and manipulate with our little thoughts and sayings. It is not about a compartmentalized encounter where we remain completely in charge.

Real redemption is about truly knowing God and being known of Him. In the Greek, there is a word, "Ginosco," which means "a deep and intimate knowing." This is the word that Jesus used in Matthew, chapter 7, where He predicts that He will say to those at the judgment, who are mistaken about their salvation, "Depart from me, you that work iniquity, I never knew [ginosco] you." [Brackets added] The idea is that they failed the judgment because they failed the relationship.

The rubber reality is about a living relationship. And that is why God employs it. It's true that this less predictable reality sometimes brings us miracles. It is equally true that it sometimes brings us perplexity and frustration. But the good new is - it always brings us God.

As we are forced to pick our way through this unfamiliar reality of God's larger and more mysterious purposes, his divine providence, His "higher" ways, we come to know him on a more mature level. Somewhere along the way, as we work through the twists and turns of this elastic road that faith follows, we stop being spiritual children, and we start to understand God - the way He really is. We stop knowing only what we have been told; and we start knowing what we have discovered - first hand. And all of a sudden, God is no longer the distant God, but the God close up. And so, through this faith reality, a living relationship and a true familiarity is created with this complex God of ours.

When you think about it, love and relationship, as basic ideas, are uncomplicated. But both of these ideas, before they are finished with us, will always require us to become more invested and more sophisticated in our awareness. Whether we are talking about husbands and wives, parents and children, or God and the faithful, love and relationship will always call us to new elevations. The first time my wife cried after we were married, I started to realize that I had to understand her at new levels or risk consequence to our relationship. That same dynamic exists in every important relationship.

So, God's way of fanning the flames of this relational growth process is simply to ask us to enter this stretchy reality of faith where he can pose questions that do not have immediate answers. Where circumstances are not always what they seem. Where facts and projections are not so clear cut, because we must search out his perspective rather than merely our own. It is a place where all that we know and are, will be pitted against all that God is.

The Rubber Reality - only the truly faithful walk there. And while that reality sometimes makes temporary fools of us, tries our patience, and underscores our limitations - it is the real pathway to God. And when we have successfully navigated this elastic road under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will see clearly, its value. We will truly know God; and we will truly be known of Him.

The believer has no greater security than this: an intimate friendship with God that has found its way beyond delusion to absolute reality. But before our relational reality with Him can become absolute - it must become "rubber."

"Pop Preachers" Gotta' Love 'em

2010-03-10T09:12:00.004-06:00

As I begin to write this commentary, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are coming to a close. It is the conclusion of a very long involvement for most of the athletes who have been competing. For them, the process actually began long before the games started.

It goes something like this. The initial invitation to "try out" for the Olympic Games is extended to all athletes who are interested. The Olympic opportunity is open to anyone; but the invitation comes with no guarantees; and the athletes know this, going in. They clearly understand that the final selection of athletes to actually attend the games will be based only on performance. If they want to go, they gotta' be good. And so, they seek to excel. And if they do, they get an all expense paid trip to "The Big Game."

Typically, we understand the necessity and appropriateness of this selective process regarding Olympic athletes. For them, it all makes perfect sense. But what sometimes escapes us is that, in the most significant ways, redemption is a like process.

If we look at redemption through the "lens" of the Olympics, we get a very accurate picture of how salvation really works. In fact, it is a much more accurate view than the "whoo doo" (OK - I made that word up), pick-and-choose mess that "pop preaching" and "pop preachers" have left us with, over the last century. Their "pop gospel" is really no more than a shallow "cliché " that dangerously over simplifies the real redemptive requirement.

So, let's just walk through the process and notice the similarities of the Olympic and Divine operations. First, the idea of "going out" for the team. Anybody can do it regarding the Olympics. And anybody can do it regarding Heaven. We are all afforded the opportunity to try for the prize. Thus, 2nd Peter 3:9. "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

In the authentic redemptive process, the "try out" for Heaven is the opportunity that Christ affords us through His Cross. And, contrary to the pop preacher, that opportunity comes with no guarantees, exactly as in the Olympics. We must merit divine selection by successfully answering the divine performance requirements. Just like the athletes, if we want to go to the "big game," we gotta' measure up.

Matthew 3:1. is good confirmation of this reality. Matthew writes, "In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!'... (v.5) Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.
"But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, 'Brood of vipers! Who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.'"

So, no guarantees, no free passes - even in Christ. Ultimately, the deal is - you gotta' qualify to go. And according to John, that qualification involves being personally fruitful. Jesus, Himself, confirms this in John, 15:1 and following. There He says, "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

So, the plain truth - the pop preachers got it wrong. In their overly simplified gospel, to go out for the team is the same as making the team. It is just kind of an automatic deal with them. But, in fact, embracing Christ affords us the opportunity to succeed in the redemptive process. It does not provide us an automatic success. The truth is, we are absolutely on the hook to bear fruit - or be "cut."

What kind of fruit? Well, it's what the Apostle Paul calls "The Fruit of the Spirit." It is, in plain terms, a "character fruit," which is produced as a result of our Spiritual Baptism into the living Spirit Christ. Paul speaks of this character fruit in Galatians 5:22 where he says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

I know. The pop preacher didn't mention this. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure he even knows about this. He tends to stick with just the Cross, forgiveness, and the Dying Christ - that's the simple part. I don't think he is even aware of these more sophisticated spiritual realities that stem from the Resurrection and the Living Christ. It seems foreign to him that the Living Christ might play any transformative role in the here-and-now. He just does not seem to "get" that the Living Christ empowers fruit bearing in the believer. Well, that's what pop preachers are good for - leavin' out important stuff.

So Christ, by His Cross, affords all of us the opportunity to pursue salvation. But, as with the Olympians, it is a serious pursuit. And it is our choice to go for it or not. But if we choose to pursue the prize, Heaven, we then enter a phase of redemption where the choice becomes entirely Christ's.

In this phase, as in the Olympics, all that matters is the performance requirement. And Christ will make his choice as to who will "go" and who will "stay home" based only in that real requirement. That is why He would say on one occasion, (John 15:16), "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained [fixed or established] you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain..." [Definition bracket added] We make the first choice, but He makes the last, based entirely in His performance requirement.

So, let's update. Once Christ affords us the opportunity of salvation by His Cross, He goes even further. As a direct result of His Resurrection, the Living Christ is then able to empower us to meet the performance requirement - fruit bearing - through the Baptism of the Spirit. This stand alone event is literally our integration into His divine nature; whose energies then enable the believer to produce this godly character fruit. Peter puts it this way (2 Peter 1:3) "...by which, have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature..."

And then finally, after enabling us to meet the performance requirement, Christ ultimately chooses us for Heaven, based in the real character fruit that we have born in His essence. Sweet success! And it's all Christ!

I know - all of this is a little more complicated than the pop preacher may have lead you to believe. But that is because his overriding desire is to keep it simple and stay popular. However, if you listen to Jesus, He makes it very clear that we are involved in a serious and stringent selection process. And not unlike the Olympics, it is absolutely based in a very real performance criteria. In Matthew 20:16 Jesus says, "So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen."

Here, then, is the succinct version. God is in a selecting process for His Heaven. And though the opportunity to attempt Heaven is open to all in Christ; yet, to attempt it is one thing, - to make it - quite another. For us to choose God is one thing. For God to choose us is quite another.

So, here is the reality that scares the pop preacher half to death. At the end, God will only find those qualified for His Heaven who have experienced the Spiritual merger with the Living Christ. The reason? Because it is only they who have tapped into His divine faith and energy to effect a profound transformation of the heart, yielding the true character fruit of the Christ essence within.

Not as simplistic as the pop preacher said? Maybe not. But you might want to consider the source.

Here is the "bottom line:" It is imperative that we get beyond the simplistic ideas of pop preaching and seek the baptism of the Spirit. To do so is to seriously and passionately pursue a personal integration with the risen Spirit Christ. And it is to stop presuming the Spiritual Baptism to be an automatic and a mostly imperceptible part of the "redemptive package." It is neither of those things.

This mysterious New Testament appointment is a dramatic, stand alone event, just as it was in the beginning (Luke, chapter 2), that awaits every believer. It is to be sought after and experienced, as a unique and indispensable necessity to our ultimate spiritual success (Romans 8:7-9). So, the idea is to pursue, find, and embrace this divine empowerment with the passion of a "spiritual Olympian." Why? Because a life literally lived in the vitality of the resurrected Christ is ultimately our only real "ticket" to "The Big Game."

*****

Oh, and don't worry. I'm sending a memo to the pop preachers. It reads, "Yes guys, there is a personal performance requirement for salvation. But don't panic. Jesus has it covered. I'll meet you at the empty tomb, and we'll go over the details. Love Larry."

Choose Your Ride

2010-02-15T11:57:00.001-06:00

OK. So here's the simple view of how it breaks down in America when it comes to the Protestant religious ride. There are many dealerships; but there are essentially only two brands of vehicles. Most everybody drives one of these two vehicles as their chosen means of transportation to Heaven. The first is the Salvation Chevy. It is unquestionably the top seller of the two redemptive vehicles.

The engine that powers the Chevy is the Forgiveness Engine. It is a single fuel engine which draws its energy solely from the power of the Cross. And this engine is powerful. It is the stand out feature of the Salvation Chevy. And, if you just sign on for the basic Chevy package, the engine is about all you get as a standard feature, but the good news - it comes with a no-questions-asked, lifetime warranty.

However, there is a Performance Package Option that you can also choose for your Chevy - at some additional cost. You can choose to add the Lifestyle Upgrade, the Spiritual Sensitivity Package, the Premium Visibility Option, and Daily On Star. But, these options do come with a price. They will set you back a bit in terms of time, energy, and resource investment.

But remember, these are options on the Chevy. They are strictly up to you. And according to Chevy's color glossy brochure, whether you choose them, or whether you don't, you will still have that wonderful, unbelievably powerful Forgiveness Engine and the iron clad, Lifetime Warranty that comes with it.

The other ride that you might choose for your trip to Heaven is the Ford Redemption. Ford, a distant number two in sales in America, has taken a more daring approach. The Ford uses a hybrid engine that is composed of two components: Forgiveness and Personal Renewal. This engine is a multi-fuel engine, and draws its power from both the Cross and the Resurrection.

Admittedly this engine is more temperamental than the Chevy engine. But its performance is truly phenomenal. It is absolutely a life changing experience to ride this engine to the far edges of the performance "envelope." Far Driver Magazine put it this way "It presses you back in your seat and takes you breathlessly through the sound barrier of spiritual apathy. And when you come out the other side, you are truly changed."

The Ford marketing plan is different too. It has quite a few more standard features, and fewer options. In the Ford plan, for example, all of the Chevy performance options are included as part of the basic package - not options. Ford's motto, "Performance Matters."

So, there you have it - the two main religious rides in America. Both, attractive vehicles. And both brands have a unique marketing plan. All that remains is the choice. And that is entirely yours. But choose carefully. The ride to Heaven is usually a long and always a supremely important trip.

Sometimes, great insight comes as basic truth in an unexpected form.

Accounts

2010-02-15T11:50:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, because life comes at us so fast and moves on the same way, we cannot manage to adequately take care of all of the issues of our present. So later, in our minds, we go back. We revisit and work through the issues as part of our past; and we do our best to reconcile those intellectual, emotional, and relational accounts. Among all of the creatures, only humanity has the ability to do this.

As I look back over my life from the high vantage point of 61 years, I have some issues, some regrets. And some of those run very deeply. And, almost without exception, my significant regrets revolve around people I have hurt and wronged.

Some of those issues, Christ, in one stroke of forgiveness, reconciled for me at my conversion. Some few, far too few really, I have had the opportunity for which to actually make amends. Many others, I have, with the years, been able to "square" in my mind with careful thought, and prayer, and repentance, and time. But there is one regret that still haunts my days - not every day - but the quiet, reflective days, when I tend to assess life with a little more frankness and honesty. Days like this one.

The issue that still troubles me most is my "boyishness." By boyishness, I mean, not only my struggles with maturity, but, in general, the complexities of my gender "wiring." To be born a boy and to grow into a man is to have some things predetermined about who you are, and how you will behave, at least in general terms.

It means you will be more aggressive. Thus, you will push some limits. You will be mission oriented. You will be more prone to take risks. You will exert more pressure on those around you. You will seek the "top." You will be enamored with accomplishment. You will tend to embrace confrontation and competition. You will tend to dream dreams that are much bigger than you can usually and reasonably expect to achieve. You will push harder and demand more and demand faster and demand and demand and demand. It may not be politically correct to say such things, but reality speaks louder than even political correctness. And these are generally the ways of boys and men.

I would never apologize for this idea, or reality, of manhood and this God given male "wiring." And I would never apologize for my gender expressing itself upon society in a thoroughly male way. God made us to fill a role and do things that only this wiring of ours can achieve. But my regrets regard the failures and misconduct of my manhood.

When I married my wife she was eighteen years old and I was twenty. But in real terms, though I was two years older than her, she was, by my estimate now, 4 years my senior. That was true, because in the real terms of maturity, she was at least 20 and I was still 16. And I spent the first 30 years or so of our marriage trying to close that maturity gap between us. And in some areas, I still have yet to do so.

And especially when our children were born, I actually lost ground. In those years she leaped even further ahead of me, seemingly with each child. She became a mother, and with that role, increasingly smarter, more balanced, more selfless and loving; while I languished in the lostness of my lingering boyhood - still dreaming of toys and games and great adventures.

Across the years that we raised our children, she became a model of true love, of protecting love, of mature love - often sacrificing herself to the process of caring for her family. Perhaps I did grow up a little in those years, but not nearly enough and not nearly fast enough - thus leaving upon her delicate shoulders the weight of more responsibility than she should have had to carry.

Too often, I allowed her to take the lead in the tedium of life and to care of far too many "menial" (by my prideful estimate) details. When I should have protected her from the abrasions of life, big and small, I left her gentle spirit much too exposed to the world’s harm.

And my children were touched by these same failures. Sometimes there was simply too much distraction, and not enough Dad. I should have been more their protector and more often their playmate.

So, for many too many years I remained a boy. And even as I matured, I pushed too hard toward my personal aspirations, and understood too little of my broader stewardship as a man. I often invested myself minimally, and yet, demanded too much in return. I involved my self in noble goals, but I took too little note of the larger cost of my schemes. I had a sense of purpose, but it was not tempered nearly enough with a sense of "first responsibility" and "basic responsibilities." As men so often do, I knew where I wanted to go, but I paid too little attention to the ground under my feet.

I think that most people who have known me across my life would probably say that I was and am now a good husband and father. I think my wife and children would also make that same charitable statement. But, truly - it is not as true as it should be. It is not as true as I wish it were. I have only barely squeaked past the basic requirements of love, if you correctly understand true love to be: more what you do, than what you feel.

I am glad that God has given us the capacity to revisit our past and reconcile our intellectual, emotional, and relational issues. I am glad we can, at least in some measure, "square" our mistakes and failures by making amends, getting forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, learning our lessons, growing, and doing better. But in my role as a husband and a father, I will always wish that I had done it better - from the beginning. I know many who have. And, while I have made some peace with my own failures, my advice to young men is always this: "never have to."

It is a far better plan and a far better reflection upon your gender if you will simply let the "boy" go when it is time - if you will not ask your wife or your children to pay the cost of your aspirations - and, if you will never stop being a protector to be an achiever. Otherwise all that you achieve - as a man - will be marred by regrets.

God did not design you to be a man who creates a wide wake of regrets. He designed you to be a good man - a man that leads the way forward with a highly developed and well balanced sense of responsibility - from the very beginning.

What A Difference A Thousand Years Can Make

2010-02-01T12:46:00.002-06:00

The Bible tells us of the last period in world history when Jesus will establish a 1000 year political reign over the earth. It will be His benevolent monarchy that brings peace and prosperity to the whole planet. In my own "wonderings," I have often wondered why Christ would even bother. What's the point.

But, in fact, I have come to believe there really is "a point." It is to vindicate three things: His identity, His truth, and His redemptive vision for humanity. It will be a time when Christ will prove empirically that all of His overtures to mankind were true, correct, and good.

Think about it. Even at this very moment, we remain an eyelash away from crumbling into world chaos, or even worse, self annihilation. We as a species have never been able to put any significant or safe distance between ourselves and the recurrence of overwhelming darkness. And that condition has only been made worse by our technologies, which have brought into play, not only the possibility of accelerated social breakdown, but even extinction by our own hand.

Consider some of the more important things that have made us chronically self destructive, for example, Dark Extremism. From the Crusades, to the Spanish Inquisition, to Hitler, to Stalin, to contemporary Elitist Ideologues, to Islamic terrorist, these servants of darkness repeatedly force the world to the consequences of their extremes. And far to often, the cost is our blood and our children. The "death penalty" is a common attachment to dark fanaticism.

And beyond that, there is the universal flaw in humanity. It is the "Me Complex." The idea is basically, "Everything starts and ends with 'me;' so, the benefit must always flow in my direction." That philosophical flaw ingrains itself in individuals and nations alike to ever empower the darkness.
I recently read a disturbing story of how the French, as usual, have for years been draining the vitality out of Haiti. And yet their efforts toward, and their contributions to, Haitian relief now are embarrassingly small. From the French, to the African war lords of Somalia, to the presidents of Iran and Venezuela, there is no want of a "big screen" picture of the universal flaw that plagues our world and keeps us constantly near the border of overwhelming darkness.

And finally, there are the "Masking Counterfeits." To be sure, the truth is in our world. But often, we cannot sort it from the masking lies. There is a true way to a true God and a truly superlative personal destiny. But for each of those things, there are a thousand masking counterfeits. And so religion becomes confusing, the very existence of God - much less His true identity - comes into question, and our personal purpose and direction become unclear.

I think it is accurate to say that most of humanity, at this late historical hour, has simply given up any careful effort at trying to discover the true path of life. Rather now, as a whole, we just mostly pick and choose among the pleasant lies as they would seem to benefit the present moment. And as a result, overwhelming darkness has, for many, become more a "creeping daily plague" than a "pouncing lion." But it is darkness, nevertheless. And it is overwhelming, nevertheless.

***

Jesus has, for a long time now, offered to the world the remedy for all of these things: Dark Extremism, The "Me Complex," and the "Masking Counterfeits." It is simply His living lordship in our daily lives. Those who truly hear and respond to the inner voice of this unseen Savior have already come to see the extremes of darkness for what they are. They are learning daily how to move past the "Me Complex" toward a true charity that is expressed in actions and based in His holiness. And they have already, with real intent, taken up again the quest for godly truth - not simply as an intellectual pursuit - but as the means of personal newness.

So, true believers are already engaged in moving safely and permanently away from the overwhelming darkness. But that mostly happens in a personal and inner dimension. However, in a short time now, we will move to another dimension of the revelation of Christ. We will move to a more public dimension of His verification where the revelation of the Savior will become a political / historical awareness. And it will last 1000 years.

He will bring social peace and prosperity to the generations of that period. In so doing he will prove His love, His wisdom, and His absolute power over the physical world. He will also, in so doing, confirm all of His claims to and upon this world. And Christ will be completely verified as the unique and singular hope of mankind.

And near the end of that time, I hope there is some saintly evangelist or prophet who has an absolutely irresistible impulse. I hope he, consumed by the holy "Wind," will stand to his feet upon some high and very public pinnacle of the world, cup his hands to his mount, and thunder - to the Devil, to the demons, and to all human arrogance - "I TOLD YOU SO!!!"

That would be a point sweetly made.

When Christmas Calls

2009-12-07T16:25:00.002-06:00

On that first "silent night" so long ago, two worlds gently touched. The unseen spiritual world bumped ever so dramatically against the one that we live in; and God reached out and laid a gift at our feet. The gift was a Child. And the Child had great purpose attached to His life. And He fulfilled that purpose with perfect devotion. I wonder, could we, one more time, consider the beauty of that gift that was a Child...

Sometimes when we gaze upon the beauty and innocence and wonder of the Christ Child we simply see Him as that, the precious Babe of promise. Nothing wrong with that, obviously. But, it deepens our appreciation for the worth of the promise that lives in Him when we consider the depth of His condescension.

Just think about it. Jesus came to this world from an existence in which He was absolutely limitless. For example, time could impose no limit on him. A thousand years was as one day, and a day, as a thousand years. He existed before time; and He shall remain after it. He existed in eternity yesterday as tomorrow. To Him both were, and are, but the present, so that He would once say, "Before Abraham was, I am." Humanity has always been absolutely restricted to a life lived only in the present. But before the "Baby" came to our world, He never knew such menial restrictions.

Nor could limitations of space be imposed upon Him as the pre-incarnate God. He was everywhere in all places at once. He existed in all existence. Not in the pantheistic sense, but in the sense of His omniscience and power. He was everywhere in all of the universe, and yet, was distinct from it as its Creator. This Child, before he was a child, was in the universe while at the same time encompassing it. He filled all space and occupied none.

Before this Baby became a baby and put on a covering of human flesh, He was absolute in power. He knew no restrictions, no obstacles, and no restraints to His will. What He determined, he could effortlessly do. He was God Almighty.

Because that was true, His existence was without pain or injury. He was immersed in the joy of absolute freedom. He lived an existence entirely in the light of unbridled goodness. He knew nothing of the anguish of weakness. He knew nothing of tears born out of oppression. He knew nothing of hunger or thirst. Before He became the Child of Christmas, He knew only the creative joys of unlimited power.

But, when the Father's redemptive call came, all of that changed. In order to become the Savior of the world, He had to lay down his Godly privilege and become like us. And so He did. He veiled Himself in the flesh of a little child and entered the world of his cherished creature to bring a message of hope, and love and redemption. And from the moment of His miraculous and humiliating birth, this once unlimited God began to experience the pain of all things human.

How unfamiliar and difficult that first breath of air must have been to a God who only a moment before had no need of air. But that was surely nothing compared to what was coming.

He who had, only yesterday, spanned the universe without effort or loss of time, now would spend years just to traverse the lengths of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. He who created our sun, and a trillion more like it, and flung them all into the Heavens with but a word, must now endure its disabling heat, and feel the sweat born of laboring under it. He must, every day, inhale the dust of the world that He created. He must endure the pain that He created the world without. He must taste the anguish of heart that He never intended humanity to know.

This Baby, who only a moment ago had governed the universe according to His whim, must now taste the deep bitterness of disappointment and frustration and failure. And though He had walked with the perfect Adam, He must presently experience the wounds that His now depraved creation would inflict upon Him.

This Baby, who, as God, knew no needs of any kind, must now know the throes of hunger, feel the need for sleep, and experience the weakness of exhaustion. And, this One who had cast an angry and defiant Satan from Heaven, must now face him as a mere man. And finally, how horrible it must have been for the Essence of Life to lie down in the dark void of death, and that, in response to the needs of those who killed Him.

So obviously, it is one thing to simply gaze upon the beauty of this wondrous Gift from God; and it is quite another to appreciate the depth of His condescension. To become the Promise of Christmas, and embrace the responsibility of reconciling two worlds, Jesus had to step from a throne of unlimited power to a lowly manger, in but the space of a moment.

Christmas is romanticized in many ways from jingling bells to roasting chestnuts, to white landscapes. But here is the true romance of it all. It is the romance of a reconciliation - a reconnection to our benevolent Creator .

The simple truth is that our world is full of people who are estranged from the loving God who created their soul. But Christmas calls us back. This Child of the manger, through the nobility of His sacrifice, speaks to us in deep and primitive rhythms of the promise of forgiveness and newness and the opportunity to start again.

It is true that many resist those deep reverberations of the heart. We choose instead to devote ourselves to the empty pursuits of this world. Or we diffuse the beautiful light of His call into the complicated and overwhelming fragmentations of our life. Or we allow the treachery of those other voices in our head to talk away the value and hope of a true personal encounter with God.

Nevertheless, He calls. Every Christmas the Baby calls to us again. He calls to us from His innocence. He calls to us from His harmlessness. And ultimately, He calls to us from His power. This God - turned Child - calls to us from the beauty of all that He has done and all that He is. He calls to us in the soft and lovely under tones of Christmas - "Be reconciled to Me; take my hand, and walk with Me."

It is true, of course. We can resist His call. But the bigger question is, "Why would we?" Why would we not rather completely give ourselves to Him who is so willing to so completely give Himself to us?

Surely, when Christmas calls to us again this year, it is a far better thing to say to those worldly distractions and to those cynical voices in our head, "Stop, I have to take this. It is God's love calling." May the true call of Christmas reach the level of - irresistible - in your heart this year.

In The Face Of A Child

2009-11-30T14:24:00.002-06:00

Do you ever wonder where your faith is taking you, besides Heaven I mean? Do you ever wonder about its present meaning? Do you wonder about its circumstantial meaning, how it really matters in the ebb and flow of your every day life?

The Redemptive Drama is obviously a long and convoluted one. It began long before that beautiful, innocent Baby with the shinning face appeared in the manger. It really began with Adam and Eve. Eventually, the story starts to follow the trail of the roots and then the national history of Israel. It meanders down through the divine object lessons of the Old Testament, and through the times of the prophets. Then it comes to that breathless 400 year pause in the narrative while mankind waited for God to speak again - until finally, He did. He gave us that beautiful Baby, in whose face was shinning both our own hope and the perfect revelation of God, Himself.

And ever since that first Christmas, the redemptive story has continued to play out. It has run its course through the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. It has followed the path of Church history from the burgeoning early Church, through the marriage of the Church to Rome. From there, it ambles through the times of apostasy to the Reformation where a new Church was born from the old to add yet a "second scene" to the redemptive play. Until eventually, we have come to this present day, when the climax to this divine drama draws very near.

But no wonder it is sometimes hard to hold on to the "primary thread" of the story. No wonder we find it difficult to maintain an everyday awareness of what it all means. It is all so very BIG and historically far flung.

However, while the fullness of the story may be somewhat complex, that primary thread, the central idea of the redemptive drama, really is not. In fact, it is spectacularly simple. Jesus did a wonderful job of revealing it in John, chapter 5, where he said...

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

"You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."
The fruit to which Jesus refers here is what might be called "character fruit." Paul give us some examples of this kind of fruit in Galatians, chapter 5, where he says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

The idea that Paul exposes in this passage is that, as Christ, in Spirit form, begins to express Himself within the character of the believer, these are the kinds of fruits (character traits) that will be produced within the believer. These are the fruits of the redemptive transformation, they are the substance and "produce" of the "new creature" in Christ.

Jesus and Paul are both speaking to us of not only the means, but also the outcome of the redemptive process. The means, of course, is the Living Christ as He indwells the believer. The outcome is a new character that is modeled after and empowered by that of the Savior.

So, Jesus reveals here the interpretive clue that makes the whole of the redemptive plot to ultimately make sense. Throughout all of the twists and turns of the ages, the ultimate purpose in the redemptive plot remains a simple one. It is Human Renewal.

Restoration of the inner man is the primary thread that continually runs through the "bigness" of it all, as well as through our own small day to day circumstance. Renewal is the ultimate intent of God's rescue. Redemption was, and is, always all about the human transformation, the magnificent transition from utter brokenness to a beautiful, new, inner fruitfulness in those who fully respond to God's love through Christ.

Through every age, that was always the Father's ultimate aim. Through all of the ups and down's of our own little daily life, that is the high plane toward which God is nudging us: the high plane of personal newness. We are returning, in Christ, to the capacities of a creature - made in God's image. The high peak of this long convoluted redemptive journey was always for the fallen creature simply to become new again in the ways that really matter.

So, in the shinning face of that beautiful Child of the manger, men first gazed upon their breath taking hope. But it was a hope, not just of forgiveness, but also the hope of a profound and very personalized newness of heart. Redemption in its farthest reaches certainly does become about many things. But the ever present, central thread that gives meaning to it all is humanity's opportunity for a true newness in the power of the Living Christ. What a truly divine, "Merry Christmas!!!" to all of us who have sensed the depth and desperation of our brokenness.

Larry On Everything

2009-11-23T21:54:00.005-06:00

The Things I Celebrate...

Yesterday at church, we sang a contemporary chorus that used these words to describe Jesus: "The fairest of ten thousand." I know these words are also contained in the old hymns and in the Psalms, themselves. They are very familiar to me by now.

But yesterday, they hit me with new impact. The literal idea is that if you gathered 10,000 people together in one big group to discover the most attractive person in the group, the most graceful, the wisest, the most charismatic; it would be Jesus.

I celebrate the truth of that reality. I know that at the end of all of this, Jesus must "choose" me. But, for now I have, with passion, chosen Him. And I count it my honor and privilege and blessing to actually know, as my Lord and as my best friend, "the fairest of ten thousand." He truly is that; and I, above all else, celebrate this privileged relationship.

I also celebrate the young people whom I see rising above the impact of these wayward times to maintain an emphasis on "character success" over material success. And I celebrate the parents who have the courage and wisdom to help them in that endeavor.

I celebrate the life of my son, Andy which was almost lost last year in Afghanistan. But it was not. And while he remains in the throes of the struggle to discover the full expression of who he will eventually be, I love who he is now. And I am so grateful, and I do so celebrate God's kind gift of the times yet to be lived in the deep joys of my son's companionship.

I celebrate Sarah and Daniel and Deborah, and their spouses and children. I cherish all of them not one bit less than Andy. They are absolutely the people I want close around me. They, along with my wife, Donna compose the only substantive thing in my life that truly matters, and will still matter at the end. They must be celebrated, or my heart would burst.

I celebrate the burgeoning revival of American patriotism in these days. I went through the 1960's with their horrible pessimism, a "bottomed out" national morale, and the liberal, "fifth column" media that just kept feeding the failure.

But now, even in these dark political times, it's different. The "fifth column," liberal, "lame stream" media is still there, but we now have an "alternative media" in Fox News and Talk Radio and the Internet. And instead of being demoralized by the dark forces at work in the halls of power, we have an alert and patriotic populus that is being energize and mobilized by the new media to oppose those forces. That is as it should be in America. And I celebrate it.

I celebrate the prosperity and strength of this nation and its capacity to constantly renew those things. When I have traveled internationally, one thing I have seen. The rest of the world needs us to be a continuing material, political, social, and spiritual success. They need us to continue to confirm to them, as they struggle, that, "It can be done!" We are their primary proof that a better life really is possibly in this harsh world. The jealous detractors of America's light would love to snuff it out. But I celebrate our role as a political, material, social, and spiritual "hope giver."

And finally, among a multitude of other things that could be mentioned here, I celebrate God's grand scheme to redeem mankind through Christ. I sense that the redemptive time frame is almost finished. And when this season of redemption is over, I ,with so many others who have responded to Christ's love, will enter an entirely new level of existence.

In that new dimension of life, we will be a much more empowered being with an enlarged level of consciousness and a freedom of existence that is here and now entirely unknown. So, I celebrate the simple hope that Christ has given me, the hope of an unending existence that is completely meaningful and fulfilling.

The Things That Concern Me...

I am concerned for the emptiness in our American culture. The prevailing product of our contemporary culture is emptiness of heart, of character, of conscience. We have entered a time of "furious nothingness." We are epitomized by the drug subculture that lives on "speed." Nothing matters but the next "hit." So, for that addict the potential and meaning of his humanity dies long before his body.

So stands our culture. We give the truly important human issues either absolutely minimal or no attention at all. From our manners to our morality we are withering away as a people. All that matters is that we keep moving forward toward our next material "hit," some mostly elusive temporal success whose real benefit is actually pretty small and very short-lived. But, we have to have that "fix." So, we just stay in a "dead" (literally) run, while the beautiful and essential character of our humanity dies a little more with each day, and thus, with each generation. I am deeply concerned about the world my children will live in.

There are really just two institutions that have the potential to stem this tide of social suicide: The family unit, and the Church. And neither of them will be very successful alone. To really be successful at stopping this systemic meltdown they must be paired. Yet, the truth is, in these difficult times, it requires all of their energy just to survive at all, much less to effect the renewing impact of a resolved and united front. So, it deeply concerns me that both the American family unit and the Church are mostly failing in their primary institutional mission: passing a true human prosperity forward.

In the main, the Church has been diverted to the cause of relevance, over that of personal and social redemption. So, the pulpits of the contemporary Church, in massive numbers, are "dumbed down" to the level of popular tolerance. And the thrust of the Church has been transformed from confronting the dark side of humanity to what is more - a peaceful coexistence. And this, for the sake of numbers, which are the mistaken measure of relevance to the modern Church.

The outflow of all of this has been that society no longer views the message or the ministry of the Church as an elevating alternative approach to life, but as simply an attractive support program to their material, social, and relational aspirations. So, while it may be true that the Church manages to stay numerically relevant by these tactics, it is also true that because of them, it has become too impotent to effect renewing change, to pass true human prosperity forward. That breaks my heart every single day of my life.

The family unit, as the other part of this renewing duo, is also obviously struggling. The sanctity of marriage has been so cheapened. And of late, even the essential nature of marriage is in question. Add to these disconcerting challenges the fragmentation of interests in the modern family which sends mom to one job, dad to another, and the kids into the increasingly demanding and divisive world of public education, and the family unit truly becomes weak.

So, in the modern family, it is more like we live parallel lives than truly integrated and intimate lives. The outflow is that we don't really know and feel connected to each other in the commonality of our interests and daily experiences and even our values. Thus, the typical modern family has gone from being a true unit that is bound together at the deepest levels of our humanity to this loosely bound and highly fragmented grouping. Therefore, what is supposed to be the primary support group, spends more time arguing than agreeing, more time watching TV than laughing and talking together, more time wrestling against each other than working together toward a common goal.

So it is simple really. The reason the home cannot pass on the renewing means of true human prosperity, our faith, our values, our wisdom, is because we don't have time to do it. We mostly just come together to sleep in the same place, especially as our children get older, and then we go out again to our separate worlds. Obviously not a good formula for marriages or parenting or growing up. But it is the common American family formula. And it deeply saddens and frightens me.

I could give a lot of advice here to the Church that I have loved for well over thirty years now. I could easily advise parents and children about a corrective course. But that is really not necessary. The remedies in both cases are mostly self-evident. What is more needed than corrective advice is conviction, courage, and resolve. And I desperately hope we find them in sufficient numbers and soon. I really want the suffering, both personal and national, to stop. But it will not; until we do what we know to do.>

The Ugly Gospel

2009-11-16T13:18:00.003-06:00

November 16, 2009

The Gospel that saved my own soul, and that of so many others, was and is in many ways an "Ugly" Gospel. In other words, it shoved some stuff into my reality that I simply didn't appreciate or want there, initially. The stuff wasn't pretty. And it just didn't fit well in the scenes of my spiritual ideals.

I much preferred the Beautiful Gospel - the Gospel of that magnificent Cross abd that incomprehensible Resurrection. I am well aware that there is a Beautiful Gospel of forgiveness, and grace, and compassion, and mercy. But, I simply have never been able to separate this Beautiful Gospel from the realities of the Ugly Gospel.

For example, when I first encountered Christ through the Beautiful Gospel, the Ugly Gospel insisted on telling me that I was broken. What a hard pill to swallow. Nevertheless, it demanded that I admit to my own dark heart, and to the mess that I had made of my life. I didn't like that. But I could not actually deny that it was all true.

It was also this Ugly Gospel that told me that I could no longer direct my own life, sometimes even in the details. And I'm not the only one who has encountered this brazen and unapologetic insistence. All who encounter Christ encounter this same "unreasonable" demand.

What human being would ever want to give up their personal sovereignty? Who would ever be willing to surrender their hopes, their dreams, and their personal destiny to someone else? Well, wait. I guess - I would. And so would many others like me.

We are those who have simply realized our own limitations. We have seen our vulnerabilities. We understand the treacheries, the vicious randomness, and the unwieldiness of life. We are those who want a new destiny that works not only for now, but for later. We are those who have recognized our own frailty and our need of a security that is based in someone bigger than ourselves.

So, we have come to embrace this non-negotiable tenet of the Ugly Gospel that says we must completely humble ourselves before God by surrendering our personal sovereignty. But what most of us were not prepared for was the wonderful, elevating effect of this decision. Come to find out, the way up is down. The way to rise is to bow. What a wonderful surprise to find victory through surrender. It all seemed kind of ugly at first - but now - not so much.

Finally, this Ugly Gospel demanded that I must make a personal investment - and DAILY! of all things. I was perfectly happy with the gospel that said, "It's all on Jesus, there is nothing for you to do." But oh no, this Ugly Gospel just had to keep popping up with this serious personal investment idea. "Why?!" I thought. And then one day I got an answer...

"Because a vital relationship grows out of shared days, not occasional desperate moments. And your salvation is based only in a vital relationship with Me." Well, it wasn't really what I wanted to hear. But, as usual the Ugly Gospel didn't give me much choice. One thing about the homly Gospel, it can really torture your ears with the ring of truth.

So, here we go down the road of real investment. Obviously, this makes for an experience that is a good bit more complicated than the easier versions. But I have to say, What a hoot! after all.

To share with my Savior, the days of struggle, of laughter, of scrapping over the issues, of crying together, of sorting through the complexities of life has become my greatest pleasure.

And now, after a million conversations, tender moments, and deep insights; after a few momentary disagreements, and countless rescues of all sorts, lo and behold it's true! Relationship does grow out of many intimate days. And the reality of salvation grows out of that "process."

Oh I know. The idea of salvation as a process rather than just a momentary decision is a little hard to take for some. I guess that's part of the Ugly Gospel too. It demands that God be completely free to integrate Himself into all that you are - every day, and that you invest yourself in that long process.

But, be that as it may, by now, you probably see my dilemma. My Ugly Gospel is all mixed up with my Beautiful Gospel. So now, I can no longer tell the difference between the two. What is a boy to do?

Autobiography

2009-11-02T12:56:00.002-06:00

How do we keep the affairs of this life in check? How do we hold to the godly priority which the Apostle Paul gives us in Romans, chapter 2, where he says, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

How can we insure that our immersion in this physical / material world will not rob us of the "pilgrimage" attitude that the Hebrew writer speaks of regarding people of faith when he says, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland."

How can we be sure that the divine imperative of Matthew 6:33, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness..." will not fade under the long abrasions of a busy life which demands so much?

Well, there are ways. There are some that you would probably expect me to mention: staying in the Word, the good habit of going to "the Garden," and remaining involve in the Church. But beyond those, I think one of the most effective ways to stay motivated in Christ is occasionally to remind ourselves of what is really at stake in this life and the seriousness of the appointment that lies ahead for each one of us.

Most of us realize that what is at stake in the ultimate outcome of our own personal story is our eternal soul. Obviously, a pretty serious exposure. So, we must not "mess this up." We must not mess it up with stupidity, with ignorance, with laziness, or with bad theology.

We must not insulate ourselves. We must not kid ourselves. We must not delude ourselves with a bunch of half-baked, cobbled together, "sounds good" religious clichés. And we must not be distracted by the siren song of the material attractions that are all around us. So, it is strengthening to refocus occasionally on the importance of how our personal story will end and to remind ourselves that we are really only here to write that ending.

So, regarding these things, here is what we know. We know (at least some in our species do) that God has given us a revelation of redemptive truth in Jesus Christ. He has taken a long time and extended great care to show us the correct redemptive path. But, we also know that the true path has become shrouded in confusion.

For various silly reasons and motives we interpret the redemptive truth differently. Add to that the adversary's half truths and outright lies that have been inserted into the mix of human thought, and honestly, it's no wonder so many have trouble finding their way.

Nevertheless, a large part of the responsibility for sorting out this informational mess remains "on us." It is up to us to decide our way through the fog of ambiguous religion, and worldly philosophies, and our own demanding "druthers." The decision to reject or embrace an idea, to choose a devotion in life, or to set priorities is ultimately ours. While the Holy Spirit constantly whispers guiding truth to each of us, in the final analysis, it is our responsibility to choose His truth as genuine from among all of the counterfeit information that is out there and respond accordingly.

If, indeed, we fail in this "vetting task," if we sort it all out poorly so that we get it wrong somehow, it will result in an absolute disaster at the end. In fact, no disaster can possibly be more absolute than the wreck of a human soul.

In that case, we will be plunged into an abyss of unimaginable suffering. And worse yet, that suffering will never end. The crushing atmosphere of complete hopelessness will surround us. And we will forever, forever become one of the nameless, faceless millions in a churning, screaming sea of failed humanity, all victims of their own "bad call" in this life.

There are a lot of distractions in this life that would take our time and energies away from what is truly important. There is a lot of bad information that passes itself off as truth to steer us in the wrong direction. And, there are a lot of people who don't much care either way. But I suspect, in that final, irreversible hour they will care.

And I suspect that in the final confirmation when we stand on that "forever brink," the burning questions will not revolve around money or hobbies or jobs or other material issues and pursuits. Rather, there will be questions of personal investment, questions of quality and degree, and questions of personal direction and choices. But, in that last terrifying hour of the divine appointment, there will no longer be any power to improve our answers, and thus, our end.

In this life, we are really engaged in only one endeavor that truly matters. It is to effect, by our choices and actions, a successful conclusion to our personal story. True, that ending lies beyond death in the long reaches of eternity, but we are, in fact, writing it now. And it will either be a happy and fulfilling outcome based in a correct personal response to God's authentic truth; or, it will be a sad, mostly unknown ending.

So, it is important never to move very far from the awareness that you are writing your own story and that it is forever. Please, sort life carefully. And never forget, it's really all about the ending.

Governance

2009-11-02T12:53:00.000-06:00

October 25, 2009

Governing ourselves, seems to be our biggest challenge, whether on a personal scale or a larger one. How do we do it? How can we ever be successful at it? Perhaps if we make more rules? Maybe if we make the punishment for wrongdoing more harsh? Perhaps if we were ruled by a king, or a despot, or better yet, a benevolent emperor? Perhaps if we divide the power among the people in a democracy? Perhaps if we establish a republic and govern ourselves by the rule of law? Perhaps if we hire more police officers? Or maybe if we work harder on personal discipline or if we were better educated?

Oh wait. Actually, I think we've pretty much tried all of that. And yet, still, humanity struggles to control itself on every stage. We simply cannot consistently and perpetually do the right thing. Corruption and misbehavior seem always to creep into what ever we do if we do it long enough. In fact, every attempt at human government, whether personal or corporate, has only amplified the existence of the fatal flaw that plagues us all: chronic waywardness. We are indeed stained with the indelible stain of incorrigibility, even in the face of our own best intentions

So we find ourselves cheating on our diet, or our taxes, or our spouse. We find ourselves breaking the laws that we enact to protect ourselves. We engage in the dangerous and the self destructive, even though we know better. We cross the personal "lines" that we mentally establish for our own good. We renege on our most well intentioned promises. We transgress even our own conscience. And all of these things, we have done across the entirety of the human existence and across the entire spectrum of humanity. There simply is no denying it - left to ourselves, we lack the power to be consistently good and to always do the right thing.

The Apostle Paul makes this point very well in Romans, chapter 7, where he says, "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do."

So, where is the human hope. Real hope necessarily anticipates enduring goodness, not the lack of it. And that truth did not escape the gaze of a loving and graceful God when He was formulating His redemptive plan. In fact, it seems He drew up the redemptive plan with that need in the foreground of His mind. His whole uncomplicated intention is to bring consistent goodness to the human heart. And His single "instrument" for doing so is the living Christ.

At last, in the power of the resurrected Savior, there really is the possibility of a durable goodness within the human being. Paul speaks, in Colossians, chapter 1, of this divine mystery being revealed in these New Testament times. He says, "...the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

In recent times we have tended to make redemption mostly about forgiveness. It is not. It is only first about forgiveness. But ultimately, God's redemption is about, well, redemption. It is about newness in the believer - the single most dramatic aspect of which is the creation of a "good-heart" government that really works. And this change to the human condition, effected only through the Pentecostal merger with Christ, changes everything.

But to experience this change personally, we must get beyond the mind set that reduces God's redemptive work to only a moment of forgiveness in an alter. There is a much larger design to be understood. Beyond that first moment of forgiveness lies a beautiful Pentecostal moment when the believer, for the first time, experiences the literal touch of the living Savior.

It is this Pentecostal moment that is the real target event of the New Testament. In the conversion moment, we are forgiven, but we are still immersed in our own brokenness. Our heart may now be more humble before God, but it is also still wayward. And so we move, according to His divine plan, from the conversion moment toward the Pentecostal moment, when the believer is given access to the divine essence. He or she is literally merged with the resurrected Christ; and their heart is instantly and profoundly changed by his divine energies.

And from that point forward, the vitality of Christ continues to effect an enlarging degree of change in the believer's heart and thus in his or her real circumstance. Real newness in Christ is not a function of trying harder or working to "cleaning up our act." It is the result of literally being spiritually immersed in Christ. Our hope lies not in better religion, but in the living Savior living expressively in us.

If we would know God intimately, we must experience this Pentecostal renewal. If we would be always governed by a good heart, our single hope is the Pentecostal merger that God has prescribed for every believer in His redemptive blue print.

As a minister in these modern times, I have come to understand, regarding the Church, that the greater challenge these days is to elevate the view of the Church beyond the conversion moment to the true pinnacle of the Christian experience - the baptism of the Spirit which brings us literally into the vitality of Christ. While the idea of a personal Pentecost may remain in our theology books, yet in the modern Church we are increasingly losing our experiential grip on that reality. We are missing this ultimate point of the New Testament - an actual integration with the living Christ.

Indeed, modern, and I'm sure, well intentioned (though not well balanced) preaching etc. has largely reduced the Gospel to simply the Cross. But it is not just the Cross. It is the Cross and the Resurrection. It is not just about the Dying Christ and forgiveness. It is ultimately about the Living Christ and His shared vitality with the believer. This is the final means by which the profound redemptive changes that God requires are effected within the believer. That is why Christ would say in John, chapter 15, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

That first moment when we feel the "cleanness" of God's forgiveness wash over us is a wonderful thing. But there is another moment after that on which everything depends. It is that Pentecostal moment when we literally touch the living Christ and He touches us with the essence of the divine nature. That moment too is indispensable to our redemption and to our newness.

Do not stop at the Cross, Church. Chase after the living Christ until you have touched of His essence and are touched by it. In that touch resides the fullness of your renewal and your ultimate hope.

Classic Evil

2009-09-27T20:48:00.000-05:00

There is a reason why the adversary continues to use the same old tired, tattered, and torn tactics against a gullible and/or uninformed humanity. It is because they continue to work well. The simple truth is - we just never seem to "get it." So, generation after generation we "get it" in the neck.

His treachery is not hard to spot, really. It has been around since Adam and Eve. And it is very well exposed in the book of Genesis. When we read, with godly enlightenment, the account of the adversary's subversion of the first couple in chapter 3 (NKJ), we can easily see what we should be on guard against. Consider what the verses say there...

Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more cunning [subtle] than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, `You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?'' (Brackets added)

There are actually four of his favorite tactics revealed in this first verse alone. The first is Subtlety. The adversary's approach is never, never, never straight forward. Always there is a hidden agenda that he begins to pursue from an oblique direction. Have you ever met an alcoholic or a drug addict that started out to be one, to ruin his or her life through substance abuse. Probably not. Rather the dark voice simply promised them a "good time" or "relief from the pain" or some other angular enticement from which to begin to move slowly toward his real agenda - the destruction of another human life and soul.

The adversary knows that the gullible will always go for an easy lie over a hard truth. He knows that we are prone not to question personal benefit. So typically, that is the point where his subtlety originates. He usually offers the easy, the fun, the gratifying, the immediate, without ever showing the real or extended cost. He always shows the "bait." He never shows the "hook." That is the substance of subtlety; and it still works well on humanity, even today.

The second tactic revealed in this verse is the Characterization of God as "intrusive" to the human existence. The taunting tone in the verse is that of someone greatly offended. It’s more like, "Surely God didn't say that you could not eat of all of the trees in the Garden!" The idea is to make God appear restrictive rather than protective, which was the real circumstance. So God was made to seem evil instead of good because He imposed restriction. That tactic, to plant the idea that "God is somehow holding us back" has always been very effective and still works quite well on a clueless humanity today.

The third tactic revealed in this verse is Dialog. He simply got Eve to discuss something that was really self evident. The adversary has known from the beginning that "truth can be talked literally to death." So he merely gets us to discuss, for example, the godly instructions. It goes something like this. "Well, now let’s talk about this for a minute. Is homosexuality really wrong? Is morality really all that necessary to the well being of society. Couldn't we have a better society if we were not so inhibited by these archaic ideas. Let’s at least open a dialog on the subject. That is only reasonable." Thus, he robs a susceptible individual or society of moral direction and fortitude by simply talking away clarity. So good principles simply die the slow death of "stupid and superfluous dialog."

Finally, the fourth tactic of the adversary that is revealed in this verse is what we would call "Spin" today. It is to color the truth in a way that suites your cause while only "slightly" damaging the truth, itself. The characterization of God that we discussed earlier was a part of that spin, but it went further. The benevolent restriction that God gave the first couple was colored in such a way that it appeared to be a bad thing instead of a good thing. The adversary did not technically misquote the idea, he just used wording and an inflection that colored it to suit his subversive purposes. Hello spin.

Verses 2-3. And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; "but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, `You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die' ''

So the woman, now caught up in the superfluous dialog, continues the conversation. She starts to clarify the truth for the adversary, believing that she can correct his misconception with good information. How naive we sometimes are when it comes to spiritual treachery. She had no clue what the real "game" was here, as is the case with most of humanity when it comes to the adversary’s destructive plotting.

Verses 4 -5. And the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil'

The adversary knows that to achieve his hidden agenda he must remove the idea of consequence. In doing so he reveals his fifth classic tactic of subversion. It is to "Confront, established truth as ridiculous." So here, in a brazen confrontation of the truth, he completely reverses what Eve has been told. He says, in effect, without presenting any real basis for his statement, "It just isn't so. You will not die if you do as I say." I guess the idea is that - if you say it with enough confidence, they'll believe it. And so often we do indeed.

Also in these verses we see revealed the two remaining, classic tactics of the adversary. The sixth tactic of the adversary revolves around the implantation of two connected ideas. The first is that "You are your own best hope." In effect that is what he is saying to Eve here: "You will be like God." That is, "You don't have to depend on the Creator God, you can be your own god, the master of your own destiny."

Thus enters the second idea. "Knowledge is the key to that end." He says, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." The truth that he does not tell Eve is that the knowledge that he is encouraging her to trust in is not an objective knowledge that is rooted in God’s all knowing wisdom. It is an entirely subjective knowledge. In other words, it will center completely around "what is good for her." And the knowledge that Adam gains from that same forbidden fruit will entirely revolve around "what is good for him." And on and on it will go throughout the ranks of humanity. Welcome to the source of all human conflict - a subjective knowledge of good and evil.

Finally, the last classic tactic that we notice is one that is much more familiar. It is simply Lying. The adversary is characterized in the Bible as a "liar" and the "father of lies." He tells Eve here that she can be like God. The indication is that she can be equal to God in knowledge. That is simply a complete fabrication. She does not have the mental capacity to retain what God knows. No human being does or ever will. We are, after all, finite and limited. God is not.

So, by direct statement the adversary lied to Eve. Sometimes he lies by omission. Sometime he lies by using partial truths. But lying is his classic behavior; and he is good at it. So much so, that literally countless souls have perished on the rocks of the siren call of his pleasant lies.

Verse 6-8 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Finally, we note the outcome of the great treachery when it’s finished. "...And Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God..." It is a lonely and guilty isolation from a loving God. Adam and Eve turned their back on God’s love and, instead, chose a deluded course of self determination. It was a foolish choice based in lies and subtle deception with no substantial promise at all. But sadly, humanity still does that. And even when Christ exposes the deception and offers a way back, still, in each succeeding generation, humanity succumbs to the subversion. Perhaps the best thing we can do for our children is read to them the "program" for life’s drama: "God ...The Good Guy. Satan ...The Bad Guy." Knowing that, everything else is easier to keep straight.

The God In Your Ear

2009-09-12T23:16:00.001-05:00

For: September 13, 2009

In the book of Isaiah, chapter 30, we find these words:

"Therefore the Lord will wait, that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him.

"For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.

"And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers.

"Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left."

Thursday night I attended a local Gideon’s International Dinner. The Gideon speaker related that early in his adult life he had asked God to make a soul winner of him. Then he went on to relate several moving stories that illustrated how God had, many times since, over the years, guided his steps and the larger circumstance to place him in just the right position at just the right time to lead someone to Christ.

His stories took my mind back to my senior year at Wesley College (1984) in Jackson Mississippi. It was a year of great personal struggle - and because of that, one of the best years of my life, without question. My own weakness and need drove me to my knees constantly. As a result, I found a level of access to God that I did not know existed prior to this time.

For example, on one occasion I was between classes and a dear friend, Richard, asked me to pray with him for his lost brother. It was so easy to weep with passion for the lost in those days, and I was happy to do so for Richard’s brother.

I had a favorite and private prayer place under some giant Oak trees behind Victory Church. Victory was a wonderful little church that we attended while I was in school. It was just down the street from the school, so Richard and I headed out.

We enjoyed a good season of prayer together. We were actually a little late for the next class before we finished. So we left in a bit of a rush to get back to school. But as we rounded the corner of the church, I saw a van parked in the driveway with two black men in it. It was obvious that they worked for the cable company. They were in the process of actually laying cable. But when I saw them, they were on their lunch break. They had both front doors of their older work type van open; and they were leaned back in their respective seats with their legs propped up. They were both eating a sandwich.

As we passed the van, I heard God say (right out of the blue), "I want you to speak to those men." Instantly a mental argument began. Richard, in my passenger seat, never heard a word. But God and I were having a fast and furious conversation. "Lord, I'm already late for class. Lord, I don't know those men. Lord, blah, blah, blah."

When I finished with all of my mental excuses, He just repeated, "I want you to speak to those men." You know, sometimes you just know - it’s time to shut up and step up. This was one of those times.

I asked Richard to let my instructor know (who just happened to be the president of the college that day) that I had an urgent errand, but that I would be in class shortly. I let Richard out at the school and headed back to the church. On the way (no more than 2 minutes) my mind was pretty focused (desperately focused) on what I was supposed to say to these two strangers. Nothing came.

I stopped my car just behind the van and walked up to the open door on the passenger side. I met the inquisitive eyes of both men at the same time. We exchanged a greeting that my racing mind paid absolutely no attention to. And there I stood with both men waiting for me to state my business. And still - there was nothing.

So I said, "Well, guys, I am just going to ‘come clean’ When I past you a while ago, God said, ‘I want you to speak to those men,’ but the fact is - He didn't tell me what to say." At that moment, both of their eyes got as big as saucers ( a small exaggeration for emphasis). The man on my side of the van leaned his head back slowly and closed his eyes. His face contorted. It was as though I had hit him with an emotional brick. When he opened his eyes they were full of tears. He said very seriously, "Preacher, (he must have just assumed that I was one) you don't have to say anything else. God has been dealing with me for a while about ‘gettin’ back in church, and I will be there Sunday."

After a short pondering pause, the other man said with a broad smile, "Sir, I'm not sure I'll be in church Sunday, but I promise you I'm "gonna" think about this for a while. I didn't know God worked like this."

After his comments, I eventually let my breath out, said my goodbye’s, got back in my car, and went to class, a happy man. One more time, God had chosen to let me see Him insert Himself into the human reality. I find that nothing so energizes God’s people as encountering these clear providential intrusions into our life circumstance.

These are the times that the Gideon spoke of. They are such a boost to all of us when they occur. There is just no substitute for living in cahoots with the God of the divine conspiracy.

This is how the Church is suppose to live. This is how our days were meant to be: touched by providential encounters and divine rearrangements and heart warming endings. These are the times of Emmanuel, "the God close up," the exciting, interacting, thrilling God.

When He impacts a day in this way it instantly goes from being barren and dull to exhilarating. When He allows us to see, to experience, the dramatic flare of the Living God as He moves among men, how could we not be excited.

The Gideon made me remember that we must never settle for a distant God or a sedate spiritual status quo. We should live expectantly, anticipating that God will "show up." Our days must be touched with divine romance.

And they will be if we but retain the ancient key: Separation. Going aside with Him, often and for long periods is the unfailing means to assure His extraordinary presence in our daily reality and in our endeavors. Vibrant prayer = vibrant encounters. Anemic prayer = an anemic daily reality.

If you want to have God, you "gotta" have "game." The scourge of spiritual vitality is the 15 minute devotion. You can put God in a "15 minute box." And if you do, I promise you, He will stay there - though not happily.

But, if you want to experience an exciting God that graces your day with extraordinary things and changes your reality in the most wonderful ways, it’s always a matter of serious seclusion with Him. And for that great amount of time well spent, you can know the sweetest sound in all the earth: the familiar voice of the Real God whispering in your ear at the providential crossroads - "This is the way."

Circles

2009-09-07T10:59:00.001-05:00

For: September 7, 2009

The Apostle John said, "My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. " Active, truthful love is always more what you do than what you feel. It is never dependent on feeling to survive or express itself. And in Christ, this kind of genuine love first comes to life within us as a general sense of moral responsibility for the well being of others.

The most down to earth concept of sin that I know is simply selfishness, for which love is the perfect remedy. Basic to the new character that we are given in Christ is the reality of a love that acts in truth - to be considerate of others - in the family, in the work place, at school, and on all of the other commons of life.

Circles

How long prevails the darkness Lord

That snares our dreams

and rears the head of the ugliest things.

We weep and fight and struggle and kill

To have, and to horde,

Only to find that we weep the more.

We crush the dreams of others

To mortar the tower of our own

And still it does not rise.

On any scale, the circle of one

Is always far too small.

Enduring joy only lives in the broader circle of all.

And though we emerge from the human sea,

One, alone, to scoff at the rest,

Yet time, and wisdom, and the judgment of God will put us to the test.

And finally, far too late we'll see,

That all along, we were but trapped,

In the darkness that was Me.

P. Davis

Invisible

2009-08-24T13:22:00.003-05:00

The simple truth is - God is invisible. A lot of people have a problem with that, but I just don't. Invisible is OK with me. Invisible is simply how God looks. I guess I'm just used to it by now. It makes Him no less real. It make Him no less loving. It makes Him no less attractive. In fact, it may make Him more attractive by virtue of the mysteriousness of invisibility. But, whatever the case, we cannot see Him.

It is also true that we cannot touch God. Nor can we smell God. Nor can we taste Him. Nor can we hear God with our physical sense. So, out of the five physical senses, exactly 0 of them really enable us to encounter and discover the reality of God in a usual day.

This has not always been true of course. The Savior, as God, allowed us to glimpse God with all of our physical senses. There was that brief and glorious moment when man could see God, when we could touch Him, when we could hear and smell and even taste him if we wanted to.

But even then, with all of the physical senses in play, we found it impossible to really grasp God. Even in those days there was still so much of Him that we could not wrap our sensory awareness around.
Bottom line: We will never be able to discover this invisible God with our physical senses. He is just too big, too sophisticated, and too unknowable to the material equipment. On our best day, God will still be incomprehensible to humanity’s physical probes.

Now some human beings seem to think that He ought to apologize for that. Their attitude seems to be, "How dare God be bigger than my sensory comprehension?" But I don't really think an apology will be forthcoming. I think God is pretty confident about who He is and the way He is.

And I guess I'm pretty confident about who He is too. I've already encountered, explored, and comprehended the part of God that I care about most: His heart. I don't need to know (I'm not even sure I could stand to know) all that there is to know about God, at least not all at once.

But I will admit this, invisible or not, comprehensible or not, I get up every day looking forward to the chase, to the on going process of discovery. I find it to be a real "hoot" to pursue God, to run after Him, someone that I cannot see or hear or smell, and yet, at the end of some glorious days to actually discover a little more of Him - in spite of the total inadequacy of my physical senses to aid me in the quest.

The fact is - discovering God is just not about the physical senses. It is about the heart and the mind and the will. It is about a desperation to know. It is about sacrificing to know. It is about being completely in love with His perfection. It is about an attraction that defies the physical resources, and yet draws us to places that they could never take us anyway.

To the humanist this is no doubt an offensive idea. But then they are not really "in the hunt." If they were, there would be no humanist or atheists or agnostics. For none of them could resist the prize either. They too would entirely succumb to the charms of a loving God who makes Himself all the more attractive by keeping his distance.
I am convinced that there will always be an arrogant humanity, people who are their own god, or choose to fashion a god according to their own strict specifications. Too bad. The real God is a lot more fun and exciting. And to chase after him is the grandest pursuit of all. I feel for them, the self contained; and I pray for them. But I really have little time to morn their pride, for I am in the chase myself, and I love it.

That is true because I have discovered that though I cannot see God with my eye, still I can see Him. He looks like love and holiness and grace. When I cannot hear God with my ear, still I can hear Him. He sounds like love and wisdom and the song of righteousness. When I cannot feel God with my hands, still I can feel Him. He feels like warmth and confidence. And He feels close - really close. When I cannot smell God with my nose, still I can smell Him. He smells like the sweetness of an eternal spring morning. And when I cannot taste Him with my tongue, still I can taste Him. He taste like yesterday and today and tomorrow all rolled into one. He tastes like the richness of life.

I'm sorry for those who demand that God present Himself to their physical senses for their inspection and approval. He did it once, but I think he thinks, "Once is enough." I don't really think He is very inclined to do it again. Besides, He’s not really a big fan of human demands and arrogance.

But, for those who embrace such an approach, perhaps I could suggest that you might consider presenting yourself to Him for inspection and approval. I think you might find better success at encountering this invisible God in that way. He is a really big fan of faith in that form. And it is only to faith that He ever reveals Himself.

Well, that is the best I can offer for now. I'm off myself to the chase. There is an "unseeable" God out there, and I've made it my mission in life to see as much of Him as I can. Good hunting people.

To Know God

Lord I cannot see the end of You.
Your bounds are much to far.
Your bigger than the universe,
Farther than the stars.

And while I'm sure I'll never see,
Still I gaze a better part,
For I, my high and holy God,
Have seen your precious heart.

And I surmise that should I see
The end of what You are,
It would be but a reflection,
Of this familiar part

Pilgrim Davis
02/85

` Comments Always Welcome

Wearing Christ

2009-08-15T17:44:00.005-05:00

Implicit to the Baptism of the Spirit is the idea that the believer is actually merged with Christ. In some wonderful, mostly unexplainable way, God integrates us with what Peter, the Apostle, calls the "divine nature." Through this merger we are somehow spiritually enveloped in the Invisible Christ.

At that moment, everything changes, and not in a vague ethereal way, but in the real terms of everyday life. We begin to experience a new existence as we "wear Christ" into our daily lives. Thus, Paul would say to the Galatians, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ."

But what does it mean to "wear Christ" in this life? What exactly does that look like? Well, in all honesty, most days, it "ain’t" pretty. The process is usually a kind of rough and tumble deal that includeds a multitude of daily failures. But somehow, even including the kaos of every day life, Christ empowers success in the devout believer. He manages to grow us up, to bring us to an attractive spiritual maturity.

So, whatever the "snap shot" assessments that may be made of believers involved in this transforming process, it should be remembered that this transformation is better understood as a movie. And you just can't judge a movie by looking at one or two frames here and there.

And, while it's true that the bulk of our day to day "life show" may be clearly "two thumbs down," still, the finale is well worth the wait. So here is at least a bit of what Christ empowers in those who keep the first admonition.

He empowers faith through suffering. (Let’s get the scary part out of the way first.) That is why He said, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me." But know this. This is a suffering with the most noble purpose, and yielding the greatest benefits and blessings.

This suffering is not the empty suffering of excesses, or foolish pursuits, or bad choices that are all too normal for this world. Rather, this is the suffering encountered in service to truth. This is the suffering that comes in the defense of "rightness." This is the suffering that flows out of protecting the sacred and opposing evil.

If you bear the scars of such suffering because you choose to wear Christ into this life, just know that it is better to bleed than to quit. And though you may have been hurt deeply, or for a long season; yet Christ will make your scars a precious badge of faith, well worth the price of your tears. But suffering is part of what it means to wear Christ.

"Putting on Christ" also looks like humility. Overly zealous, self centered, mission oriented "power drivers" who serve only their own interests and visions are a dime a dozen in this world. But I dare say, they will be nonexistent in Heaven. Jesus does not enable conceited "hotdogs." He does, however, target such attitudes for destruction. And He leaves in their place an enduring humility.

Show me someone who has truly worn Christ for a while, and though they may be very vibrant, energetic, focused, and dynamic, they will be humble of heart. They will know the worth of the people around them, and they will be constantly sensitive to and bowed before the whim of their God.

Humility is the correct attitude for every day, every setting, every circumstance. And Christ empowers humility in those who wear Him every day.

Beyond that, Jesus also empowers Fruitfulness in those who wear Him daily. The book of Galatians gives us a glimpse of the character fruit that Christ enables in the believer. It says this in Galatians 5:22 and following, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."

It is impossible to wear Christ and be unchanged for the better in character. Thus, in His own words from John, chapter 15, Jesus says, "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

Fruitfulness: an expanded, and beautiful, and God pleasing character, is the mark of our spiritual maturity. Much character fruit equals true success in Christ. When we wear Christ, after a while, it kinda' begins to look like a godly maturity.

Wearing Christ also brings us to very vital private relationship with God, the Father. Paul said, in His writings, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Loving the Father, up close and personal, is empowered by our life in Christ. So, our intimacy with the Father, in Christ, moves beyond just the worship hour on Sunday morning. It moves beyond Sunday, itself. It moves beyond difficulty and human frailty to cause us to run to the Father simply to spend time with Him, to hear His voice in our heart, to discover His truth, His direction, His help, His blessing. We run to the Father, because we are in Christ, and so it is merely our natural inclination.

And finally, wearing Christ looks like love. It is His vitality that enables us to love with an expanded, godly capacity - and not just in the feeling, but in the doing. Godly love is always much more about what you do than what you feel.

So, as we put on Christ, we find ourselves actively seeking ways to empower people instead of simply ignoring them, or worse, tearing them down. Love becomes a deeply held moral responsibility for the well being of others, and not just those we know and have affection for, but even those we don’t.

So, what does it mean to wear Christ in this world. Exactly what does that look like? It looks like a life long movie with some real twists to me. Lord, bring em! Amen.