The Fulfillment of the Law

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

- Matthew 5:17

Recently some comments I received to a previous post got me to thinking more deeply about the Law and our relationship to the Law as Believers.  The Law I am writing about is capitalized, as it is in this passage from Matthew, because it refers specifically to the first five books of the Bible, and also to the Mosaic law given to Israel.  For the most part my references in this post to the Law will be general references to the rules and laws given to Israel by God.

The Law is a difficult guide for living.  Not only are there a lot of rules, many of which are burdensome and downright odd, but the Law is a thing taken in its entirety, so that regardless of whether some parts are "greater," all of it has to be kept in order for a man to be righteous.

Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19-20)

Jesus seems to be saying two things here, but since God does not contradict himself, let's figure out what the one thing he's saying is.  First of all he says that we have to keep the whole Law, even the little stuff.  So when the law says not to wear garments woven from both wool and linen, you'd better obey.  The second thing he says is that you can't keep the whole law.  Did you catch that?  "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees."  You see, the scribes and Pharisees were expert in the details of the law, and consequently they upheld it to the letter in their own lives.  Paul was himself a Pharisee, and he says (under inspiration of the Holy Spirit) that be was blameless under the law; he kept all of the commandments (Philippians 3:6).  And Jesus tells us that, unless we are more righteous than the likes of Paul, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

These apparently contradictory statements are resolved in the man who said them.  As Jesus says, he is not abolishing the law but fulfilling it.  Where the law, in its entirety and kept perfectly, conferred righteousness, now Jesus is given as our righteousness.  As the sacrifice for all sin for all time, Jesus becomes the righteousness of God's Law, and we have only to accept him as our own to be completely righteous before the Lord.  The Law, however, does not pass away.  That is, we are not off the hook for our behavior just because we are saved by Jesus Christ.  While I don't think God cares if we wear linen/wool shirts, He does care about how we behave.  He is still just and holy and abhors sin, and He knows that it brings disruption and chaos into our lives.  But He isn't mad at us, and He doesn't keep a record of our wrongs.  The Law is just that: a record of our wrongs, a record of what we can screw up.  By fulfilling the Law Jesus gives us the gift of freedom from the burden of trying to do everything right.

There is more that can be said, and mine is not a final word of any kind, but take away this at least: "For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

 

Mercy, not Sacrifice

There is a verse of scripture that I can't get out of my head.  Ever.  It rolls around in my mind and makes contact with my spirit on a regular basis.  It's something Jesus said to some religious people.  These are typically my favorite things that Jesus says, because it has become my life's work of sorts to strive against religiosity.  Here's what he said that I can't get over:

"I desire mercy and not sacrifice..." - Matthew 12:7

The context in Matthew 12 is that Jesus and his disciples are walking through grain fields on the Sabbath.  His disciples were hungry, so they plucked some of the heads of grain and ate them.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said it was unlawful.  The Pharisees taught that you could do nothing on the Sabbath that might be considered work.  So you would prepare your meals the day before, and finish your other chores as well, so that you could spend the Sabbath doing nothing.  Resting.  This was the command of God, to rest on the Sabbath.

Here we encounter what is typical of a religious person, and before I go further I'd like to define religious.  By religious I mean someone who sets the rituals of life, the outward signs of piety and religion, above the more important aspects of a godly life, such as love, compassion, intimacy with God, and so on.  A religious person may very well believe that their ritual and activity are evidence of their love or intimacy with God, but this is rarely, if ever, the case.  Religiousness is self-focused - what I can do - whereas true religion is focused on others, particularly on the Lord.

So the religious people accuse the disciples of doing what is unlawful.  You can imagine a similar accusation in your own life.  Someone asks you why you celebrate Christmas, since it's a pagan holiday, or why you don't celebrate since it's a Christian one.  Or why you use birth control.  Or why homeschool.  Or why you don't homeschool.  Or why you don't go to church, or why your church plays rock music instead of hymns, or why you drink alcohol, or why you don't take communion every week, or why you don't have a Quiet Time, or why you read the wrong translation of the Bible.  And so on and so on.  This happens to us all the time.  We are constantly running into Pharisees who have etched out their own interpretation of righteousness and are ready to accuse us of falling short.

Jesus has a response that is incredible.  He asks them if they remember the story of David when he and his men were hungry when they came to Ahimelech when David was on the run from Saul.  David asked the priest Ahimelech for some bread, but the only bread the priest had was the Bread of the Presence, which was holy and only to be eaten by the priests.  David and his men take this bread and go on.  Jesus then tells them "something greater than the temple is here" and delivers the smackdown:

"And if you had known what this means, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," you would not have condemned the guiltless." - Matthew 12:7

You can practically feel the tension when you read this, even if you yourself don't understand what "I desire mercy and not sacrifice" means.  Which I'll admit I didn't.  I knew when I first read this that the phrase was significant, but I just didn't quite get it.  Jesus is quoting from Hosea 6:6, which reads:

"For I desire steadfast love (mercy) and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offering." (ESV)

Since Hosea was one of the prophets of Israel, you can bet that the Pharisees were familiar with this phrase.  But they didn't understand it either, even if they thought they did, as Jesus points out.  So Jesus is saying to them in essence, "If you understood God's word, you would be doing right.  Since you don't, you're doing wrong."  They knew the word of God, but only as far as it informed their religious perspective.

This verse from Hosea sheds all the light we need on this small phrase of Jesus.  It means that God desires knowledge of Him over bunt offerings.  He desires the intangible relationship over the tangible activity.  He desires our devotion over our ritual.  He desires the thing we know He wants, which is our hearts.

Sacrifice in this phrase is representative of the religious approach, and mercy the Godly one.  When God gave Israel the laws of His covenant, it wasn't really about the laws at all, it was always about the covenant.  God never intended for His people to become like the Pharisees, who did what was lawful because they felt they had to, and because it made them feel important and righteous.  God wanted his people to desire to be intimate with Him, and be willing to abide by the laws in order to get and stay in a place of intimacy, of "knowledge of God."

We of course are in a new covenant, the one that Jesus paid for, and so are not bound by the Law.  But the knowledge of God can escape us as surely as it escaped the Pharisees.  The truth of the matter is that God desires mercy, and not sacrifice, all of the time.  He has always desired it.  The Bible says in Ephesians 1 that God chose us, humanity, through the person of Jesus, to be holy and blameless before Him, and that this happened before the foundation of the world.  God always knew that Jesus would be the sacrifice that brought us back, but it was not the sacrifice He desired, it was the mercy behind it.  God always knew that His creation would fall away from him, but so great is His love that mercy never escaped Him.

You see, our sacrifices do not satisfy the Lord, and they never have.  Religious ritual does not satisfy God.  Right living does not satisfy Him.  Good intentions do not satisfy Him.  But mercy does.  So does a contrite heart.  So does humility.  God is after sincerity above all else, above discipline or leadership or (gasp!) evangelism.  Above all of the things that we do that we could put our name on, God wants our sincere love.  He wants our hearts, absolutely nothing less.  If God desires sacrifice, it is this: living sacrifice.  He wants us to lay our lives on His alter and just love Him because He is good.

1 Corinthians 13

My fellow Believers,

Remember always that we are called to love.  And not just a little bit, either: we are called to love beyond even our innate ability to love.  We are called to love the unlovable.  The obnoxious, the ignorant, the dirty and rejected.  We're called to love the attractive, the intelligent, the rich and the reasonable.  We're called to love our friends.  More importantly, we're called to love our enemies.

We have to love.  Don't be a resounding gong.  Don't be a clanging cymbal.  Don't be content to gain nothing, or to be nothing.  Be what the One inside of you is.  Don't just show love, have love, or share love; but be love.  Learn how to be love.  Jesus did it and so can we.  So can you.

We have to love, we are called to love.  We are called to be patient and kind.  We are called to be humble.  We are called to rejoice with the truth.  We are called to protect, to trust, to hope, to persevere - always.

Remember that we are not called to envy.  We are not called to boast.  We are not called to be proud.  We are not called to dishonor others, or to seek only for ourselves.  We are not called to easy anger, or to keep records of wrongs.  We are not called to delight in evil. 

We are called to the impossible - for us.  For us it is impossible to love our enemies and bless those who curse us.  For us it is hard to be humble.  We often rejoice in falsehoods, fail to protect or trust, cease hoping, give up.  We envy too much, boast to often, and rally around our pride.  We dishonor others regularly.  Too regularly we rejoice in evil and keep long records of wrongs.  We are self-seeking above all.  We are called to what we cannot do in the flesh, but we are not called to love from who we are; we are called to love from who He is.  We are called to love because God is love and he can do nothing else but love, love, love.

We are called to love.  Please, please don't forget it, please please give yourself up to the call.

In love,

A fellow Believer

Desparation

"Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me." - Psalm 142:6 (NIV)

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
-Henry David Thoreau

In desperate need is not such a bad place to be, because we humans have a tendency to turn our back on God when all is well.  When all my joints are working, and my wife and I are happy, and the kids are healthy, and the bills are paid, and the job is humming along, and the terrorists are silent in their caves somewhere; when all is apparently right with the world, my apparent need for the power of God is greatly diminished.  I say "apparent" because of course my need is constant.  But there is something about being in desperate need of God.  When we are desperate, we'll believe in the grandest possibility.  When we are desperate, we're ready for a miracle.

I don't think it should surprise us that we in America generally don't see much of the "miraculous" works of God.  When you read the gospels and see all the people Jesus healed, the waves and wind he stopped, and the baskets of food he multiplied, you start looking around at your own life and wondering why those amazing things aren't happening.  After all, Jesus said himself that we would do greater works than him.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." - John 14:12

But here we sit (most of us), witnessing very little that could be described as "greater" than what Jesus did.

It occurred to me that God provides power commensurate with the need.  In Psalm 142, David is in desperate straights; he is in hiding.  He obviously needs and wants the Lord to rescue him, and his prayer is both general and specific.  The Psalm is generally a prayer for rescue, but specifically David needs to be rescued from his pursuers.  He prays for God's power to meet his timely need.  The same could be said of how God moves among peoples, among nations, among generations.  In the day of Jesus, people were hard up.  There were few options for the sick or lame but to die or languish or make due.  And a lot of people, particularly in large cities, had little or nothing to eat.  Life was tough around the turn of the age.  There were no Wal-Marts or corner medical clinics, antibiotics or refrigeration.  And so the power of God met the needs of the moment.  Jesus healed serious ailments and diseases, things that would never have gone away otherwise.  He multiplied food for the crowds of otherwise starving people.

And think back on the powerful miracles of the Bible.  When the Israelites needed a way to escape Pharaoh, the Lord parted the Red Sea.  When Joshua needed to conquer Jericho, God came through with a ludicrous plan that brought down the walls.  When the disciples of the recently ascended Messiah needed to preach the Gospel among a multi-national group, the Lord gave them many different tongues.  God's power amazingly comes to fill the needs of those who are desperate for Him.

So what are we desperate for?  What are those of us in these United States desperate for?  We are well-fed and well-attended medically; our subsistence needs are broadly met so that we are far beyond mere survival.  As the Thoreau quote suggests, I think we're emotionally desperate.  With our basic needs fulfilled, even to excess, we find ourselves wanting for purpose and relationships.  The traditional things that filled humanity's time from the outset of history - farming, family, villages and community, interdependence and local culture, hard physical labor and hardship - these things have been replaced by a luxurious, disparate, alienating cultural existence in which the individual is often overlooked and finally lost.  What we need most, what I see time and again in the lives of those I encounter, is healing for our hearts.  I don't say this to suggest that we don't need physical healing, or miracles, or any of the other gifts of the Spirit; I say this to point to what is probably the biggest contemporary need, and what God is addressing in powerful ways.  We need friends.  We need to be loved, and to love.  We need purpose, and to have our hearts mended and made whole.

Rest assured that God can meet you in your most desperate place, and He will if you are willing.  Rock Bottom is a great place to be if you need a rescue.  God scours Rock Bottom for the upheld hands, and His arm is not too short to save.  His love for you and I, and the power that He will pour into our needs, is just as big when are hearts are broken as when our bodies are.  It's just a different kind of healing.

Identity

The scriptures are loaded with verses about identity, and for the believer identity is the most important thing to grasp.  We are, according to the Bible, new creations, born again, a royal priesthood, adopted heirs of God, and so on.  The gist of the Gospel is that Jesus came to restore our identity as children of God, and that if we believe in him and his sacrifice we will be made whole, new, Christlike.

There is (thankfully) a growing sense of the importance of identity within the Church.  I am hearing more preachers refer to identity as an important aspect of spiritual development.  It makes sense that this is the case, because how far were we ever going to get if we didn't first figure out who we are?  Instead of forcing the old theology of self-improvement onto the backs of the unworthy - the "sinner saved by grace" perspective - we're waking up to the fact that we are righteous in God's eyes.

When we recognize that as believers we are righteous, our perspective changes.  Instead of dirty old me trying to get clean, I realize that I am clean and I need to just stop getting dirty.  Instead of putting the onus on myself to improve, I give the glory to Jesus for making me perfect in spirit.  You see, the problem is that for too long we have believed that shame leads to repentance, when the Word of God tells us differently.  "The goodness of God leads you to repentance," Paul says in Romans 2:4, not shame or guilt.  For too long we have believed that the Holy Spirit comes to convict us of our sins when the opposite is true.  The enemy Satan comes to convict us of our sinfulness.  The Holy Spirit of God comes to convict us of our righteousness.

This then is the struggle with identity, the push and pull of the flesh and the spirit.  "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" is what Jesus said concerning temptation.  The spirit in us which has been made perfect is willing to recognize our righteousness; the flesh that is not perfected is weak in this regard and is always ready to brood on its own sinful nature.  And to which are we called to live?

"There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." - Romans 8:1

We are called to our identity in Christ, the perfection of our spirit; yet it does us little good to realize our identity in Christ on the one hand, and hold onto our old identity on the other.  This is what many of us do: we grab hold of this truth of who we are in Jesus and set it alongside the half-truths and lies we hold about who we are, and we go along our merry way dragging all of it behind us.  Think about what this does to someone; it's schizophrenic.  We proclaim our new identity in Christ ("I'm a saint saved from sin."), but hold tightly to our old identity in the flesh ("I'm a sinner saved by grace.").  If you walk around like this long enough, you and everyone you know will be confused about who you are.

It is a struggle to walk in your identity in Jesus.  You may be a new creation, but you have a long memory; getting over the old is not as easy as quoting scripture.  But can I just say that this struggle should be primary in your life?  If you are going to war for anything you've been promised by the Lord, go to war for your identity, because everything else will follow that.

Greener Grass

At the collision of two cliches maybe I can find a little wisdom.  The first cliche is "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."  The second is the prodigal son.

The story of the prodigal son Luke 15 is the story of a young man looking for greener grass.  It is obvious that he has had it with his life because he demands something unheard of, culturally speaking for that age, by demanding his inheritance before his father is even dead.  As soon as he can after he's gotten the money, he goes on a journey and "squanders his property in reckless living."  He has a good time.  He lives it up.  He takes the trip that so many of us have either taken or dream of taking: the trip in search of greener grass.

This urge within us to find something better than we have is at its root a problem.  If we think the grass is greener somewhere else, than we are simply discontented with where we are.  While I don't know that gazing at green grass is always bad, I feel certain that it is rarely good.  Contentment is a very Godly place, because it is necessarily a place of peace.  It is also a place of faith, because in order to be content you must also recognize that God has you taken care of where you are.  If this is the case, discontentment is a place of doubt and unrest, not a place the Lord has for us.

This is a thing that is next to impossible for us to come to terms with, that we should be content wherever we are.  And it comes back to the fact that our circumstances do not determine our peace, or our joy, or our success.  Peace and joy are a product of the Spirit; we find them in full when we walk in the fullness of the Spirit.  Success is obedience to God, and so we can find success anywhere.  But to say all of this is not to say that we are always where the Lord wants us to be.  However, I suspect we are rarely discontented because we are not where the Lord wants us to be; we are usually discontented because we are not where we would like to be.

The prodigal son is discontented because he wants to live recklessly.  So his father, who is a good father, let's him give reckless living a shot.  Did you ever consider in this story that the father may have had some idea what was in his son's heart?  How could he not?  I imagine that the son had grumbled or moped in the past, or mentioned how he would like to travel away to some other greener place.  The father give his son the opportunity to decide for himself what he would do, and at great expense to the father, not only monetarily (the inheritance) but also emotionally, personally.  Spiritually.  It is no doubt painful for the father to watch his son walking over the hill.  The father sees how green the grass is near at hand, and how withered it is outside the fence.  There is wisdom in giving heed to what is near at hand.

We have a good Father, one who is willing to give us everything knowing that we will squander it.  And if you are anything like me, you have squandered a good deal of what you've been given and still find yourself gazing at faraway green fields.  And if that's the case, I encourage you (and I encourage myself) to look nearer at hand, closer to home.  The grass can be green on both sides of the fence; yes!  Did you know that?  And did you know that God is on both sides, too?  Just look for peace where you are, and when you get somewhere else later on, look for peace there, too.

  

How Walls Come Down

The story of the fall of Jericho to me is emblematic of how peculiar a thing it is to follow the Lord.  Jericho was a walled city, a fortified city.  To the Israelites, having wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, I think it must have looked more or less indestructible.  However, God had told Joshua that He had given the land and the city into their hands, so they moved forward to fight.

God also told them how to take the city, and His plan is bizarre.  The army is to march around the city, and the priests with them, bearing the Ark of the Lord and blowing trumpets continually.  Days 1-6 they go around once, saying nothing, and then they go back to camp.  On day 7 they are to march around seven times, and then shout after the trumpets are sounded the last time.  When they do this, they are told, the walls will fall down.

I don't know about you, but if I'd been a member of the army listening to Joshua tell me the plan, I probably would have been skeptical.  And on day one, after having marched silently around the city, armed for war, while the priests blew their trumpets, only to go back to camp and eat dinner and go to bed,  I would have felt like an idiot.  The same on day two.  By day six I would have been antsy as hell.  And on day seven, I can guarantee I would have been nervous, mostly about whether or not it was actually going to work.

So say you're like me.  Say God has told you to do something and you're doubtful, or you're skeptical, or your nervous, but you do it anyway.  Guess what?  The walls will still come down, because the power is not in you, or in the size of your faith, the power is in your obedience.  This is success then: obedience.  This is what makes walls fall down - big walls mind you, big hulking solid walls built over the course of years.  They fall down not because you strategized and practiced and have come to a place where you can level them.  They fall because God knocks them down.  He specializes in knocking down walls.

So many times we are not called to do the thing that seems so obvious in the course of battle.  We would expect that we could build an army and figure out how to win, and then go to God and ask Him to bless it and give us victory.  But that's backwards.  Sometimes God does tell us grab a sword.  Sometimes He says to beat the sword into a plowshare.  Sometimes he tells us to do something seemingly ridiculous, something that in no way appears to lead to the goal of victory.  They're all good.  If God is saying it, it's good, and we'll know victory if we're just obedient.

I think it's important to remember that, if we are in fact at war (spiritually), then everything we do is a part of a battle.  This is not meant to intimidate anyone, or hype up the charismatics, but rather I say it to remind us that everything we do has a place in the Kingdom.  My job has a place in the Kingdom of God, and I'm not in ministry, I'm in the energy industry.  My hobbies making beer and gardening have a place in the Kingdom.  My tendency to joke around with cashiers and the folks at the counter at the coffee shop, that has a place in the Kingdom.  So does the music I like, the books I read, and the blogs I write.  It's peculiar, but these things matter.

So don't be afraid of or embarrassed about what God asks you to do, just be obedient, and watch as the landscape of your life changes.  You'll find it easier to get from point A to point B, and then C and D and so on, without so many walls to walk around.

Authority in Jesus' Name

There is a passage in Luke that I've always thought was weird and inapplicable, but now I know better.  We own a house in the country in the rolling hills and breaks due north of Amarillo.  Like all of rural west Texas, this area is dry, windy, sunny, and full of critters.  Although there are tarantulas, black widows, skunks and the occasional coyote, my two least favorite are rattlesnakes and scorpions.

Snakes and scorpions are the bane of the existence of any dweller in a temperate and arid landscape.  When we moved to our rural home, with three young children and no real safe outdoor space, we were worried about snakes and scorpions.  So instead of worrying about it we prayed that God would keep us safe from snakes and scorpions, and at the very lease that we would see them if they were around so that we could kill them before they harmed us.

When Jesus sent out the 72 disciples in Luke 10, they came back ecstatic about what they were able to accomplish in his name.  "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" they said.  And Jesus' response is kind of odd, which is typical for Jesus.

And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.  Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.  Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." - Luke 10:18-20 (ESV)

Whenever I have heard a preacher come to this passage of scripture, typically the words of Jesus here are described as symbolic.  And I understand why preachers are afraid of treating this passage as if it's literal.  For one thing, there are stupid people out there who will take a passage like this and build their religion around it.  I have heard of snake handlers and other lunatics who think it's somehow Godly to tempt death with a viper in your hands.  But I also think that we're afraid of treating this verse literally because, well, if I do get bitten by a snake, I don't want that to bring the truth of the words of Jesus into question.

In the two and a half years that we lived in our rural house we saw some scorpions and we saw some snakes.  In fact, I saw three rattlesnakes total - two diamondbacks and one prairie rattler - and I was able to kill all three without issue, without my kids around, and without fear.  Two of those snakes were within six or seven feet of me when I spotted them.  One night I remember there was a scorpion sitting on the threshold of our girls' room, and we were walking over it for a minute before we spotted it and killed it.  No one was stung.

Our rural house is now rented to a family, and recently they complained of having scorpions in the house.  They didn't complain of being stung, which I think is significant, but they have seen scorpions inside.  And I'm praying now over that house still, and over this family.  Because I know what the scripture says - it says that I will have authority over snakes and scorpions.  I'm not going to tempt death because of that, but I will speak the name of Jesus and walk in his authority.  And I will appreciate that this authority is very literal.

What we come back to

"Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly." - Proverbs 26:11 (ESV)

Everybody has something that they come back to.  In the world of church vocabulary we call these people Backsliders, or we say the Devil "has a foothold."  With some people what they go back to is obvious: alcohol, sex, drugs, suicidal acts.  These folks receive a lot of pity and a lot of shaken heads and wagged fingers.  It sucks to be the one whose vomit is so apparent when the fact is that we're all going back to our vomit.  But if your vomit is fear, or anxiety, or self-loathing it's just not as obvious.  I've seen dogs go back to their vomit, and chances are that if you're a dog owner you've seen it too.  It's gross.  Your dog hacks something up and then he eats it.  Like I said, it's gross.  Sometimes they don't eat it right away.  Sometimes they kind of eat it surreptitiously so that you don't see since they know it pisses you off because it's gross.  And sometimes they dig right in until everything they hacked up is right back in.

I think these visuals are important.  The proverb itself is rather disgusting; a striking visual way to highlight a serious moral problem.  But without harping on the substance of what the proverb addresses, I'd rather point out that you have some vomit in your life.  We all do.  The fact of the matter is you're going to throw up and you're going to, at least once in a while, go back to that putrid pile of waste and pick through it for whatever it is you want.  More than likely you'll do it in shame and disgust.  More than likely you won't enjoy the experience.  But more than likely you'll do it.  You'll walk in fear again, or go back to the bottle, or call up your ex hoping she'll let you in her bed.  More than likely you'll do it; but you don't have to.

Here is the good news, which is what "gospel" means: God still loves you.  He sees you returning to the vomit and he loves you.  In fact, He knew that you would go back to it and He still loves you.  In greater fact, He knew all of the shortcomings and failures and vomit-eating awfulness of humanity and He still sent His son Jesus to save us all.  Happy ending.

Unqualified Evangalists

   Jesus was not a resume reader.  If you know your scriptures you will know that he didn't pick the best of the best, the most qualified, the preachers and teachers.  His closest comrades and loudest spokesmen were not theologians or Talmud experts or Levites.  The fisherman on whom he built his church was a zealot and a temperamental fellow.  One of his disciples betrayed him.  Jesus did not appear to practice what we deem as appropriate and important discernment of character.
   Jesus did not thoroughly vet each candidate.  In Luke 10 he sends out 72 disciples to preach the good news of the Kingdom in towns throughout the land.  Not only do they go unequipped, they are directed by Jesus to go unequipped.  Jesus did not outfit people with things they didn't need.  He sent out disciples with no money, food, or even sandals.  They went out with much more important things like truth.
   Jesus is not in the business of finding the most qualified man or woman for the job.  This is what is meant in 1 Samuel 16:7 when God says, "man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."  We look for qualifications that we can see, quantify and test, and we are not very good at testing hearts.  But Jesus is very good at testing hearts.  He chose the lowly and uneducated, the despised and dirty, the outcasts of decent religious circles.  Jesus does not need highly qualified evangelists because he doesn't need someone mucking up the Gospel with their own junk and ideas.  He needs only a willing heart, someone who will take the only true Gospel with them wherever they go and give it away without qualification.  Because the Gospel is free, simple, and it's for everyone.

The Secret of the Kingdom

Jesus says often, in conjunction with a parable, "He who has ears, let him hear."  In case you didn't realize it, this means you.

In Mark 4:3-8, Jesus tells the parable of the sower.

"Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.  Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil.  And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.  Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold."

That's it; that is the parable.  Unsurprisingly, people are unsure of what it means.  Mark 4:10 says, "And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parable."  So a contingent of people has stayed after the crowds have gone and are asking Jesus what he meant.  Jesus goes on to tell them the meaning of the parable, but first he tells them this:

"To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that "they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven."  - Mark 4:11-12

What in the world is he talking about?  There are so many things wrong with this statement I'm not sure where to begin.  Is he saying that only the disciples have been given the secret to the Kingdom?  No, because there are others besides the disciples there, namely "those around him with the twelve."  And who exactly is "outside," and what are they "outside" of?  The kingdom?  Why would Jesus want them not to perceive and understand, since that is how they will "turn and be forgiven?"

I don't understand everything about this passage, but I know this: there's nothing wrong about it, because Jesus is the one saying these things.  Here is something else I know: those "outside" are outside by choice.  Jesus is telling us, just as he is telling those with him in this story, at this place, that those of us who have stuck around to spend time with him are the ones on the inside.  If we have chosen Jesus, we have received revelation of the Kingdom.

It's interesting because, even though these folks who have hung around with Jesus after the crowds have left are asking him what the parable meant, he implies that they already know what it means.  He tells them that they have been given the secret, while those outside have not, and then he goes on to explain the parable.  But if they had the secret, why would they ask what he meant?  And why would he go on to explain it?

I think that the answer is that the Kingdom has been given to us, but that doesn't mean it's not still a mystery.  I know that I'm a part of the Kingdom and that the Kingdom is mine, but I don't completely understand it.  There are times when I encounter something - a song, a poem, a comment from a friend- and realize that the Kingdom is in it and I didn't even suspect it was possible.  That is the secret of the Kingdom, the mystery: that it is bigger and less quantifiable than we ever thought or will ever realize.  Even though its ours and we've been let in, we won't grasp the breadth and depth of it because it isn't of our making, but that doesn't mean we can't get snapshots of its magnificence here and there.

God's Kingdom is beyond comprehension because He is beyond comprehension; to me that is the lesson in this passage.  Jesus is saying: you get it but you don't; it's yours but it isn't.  To me this is the mystery of God in a nutshell, that it's just within and just beyond comprehension.  If you can't live with mystery you will not be happy in the Kingdom of God, because living with mystery requires faith; it requires us to live without all the answers, knowing that God will work it all out and that He is who He says He is.

This ties in beautifully with the parable of the sower, which reveals the fate of various recipients of the Word.

"The sower sows the word.     "And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.     "And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy.  And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.     "And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.     "But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold."

The fate of each of "the ones" has everything to do with how they receive the word, and so has everything to do with faith.  If you aren't in a place to ward off Satan, or you can't endure tribulation or persecution, or you can't deal with the cares of the world or resist the desires of your flesh, the word of God gets stolen from you.  In each case faith in the Lord is the difference.  The good soil is not an accident of placement, it is ground made fertile by faith, and faith made strong by getting comfortable with mystery, with the knowledge that God knows everything and so it's best to trust in Him.   So the secret of the Kingdom is that it's a secret.  If you go looking for the secret of the Kingdom as a thing you can discover, quantify and replicate, you won't find it.  But if you go looking with the intention of finding out who God is, if you stay behind with Jesus after the crowds of looky-loos have left, you'll find out what the secret is, you'll learn what the parables mean and, most importantly, you'll get to know who Jesus is.

What You Put Your Hope In

It's common knowledge among The Churchgoing that the thing you should put your hope in is the Lord.  I have heard the stories and the scriptures, the testimonies and the tragedies, and I know that at the end of the day there is nothing worth my hope but God Himself.  But I'll be damned if I don't go ahead and put my hope in a lot of other things each and every day.

These days my hope is often in an idea I have for a business.  A friend and I have been putting meat on the bones of this idea for over a month now, and in that short period of time I'll bet I've put my hope in three different versions of the idea.  I am classically the kid building sandcastles.  And not small, dismissible constructions either.  We're talking intricate assemblies of sand built to impress.

Hear me though when I say that sandcastle building is a worthwhile activity.  Jesus said that we shouldn't build our houses on foundations of sand because they will wash away.  I completely agree, which is why I try not to build sandcastles to live in.  I look at my little dreams and aspirations that I've built (and am building) on shifting foundations as models of what could be.  If they endure, then I should probably build a bigger one.  If they go out with the tide then hopefully I've learned something.

In effect I'm talking about daydreaming; about imagining what you could do if you had the wherewithal and grace to go do it.  Daydreaming is step one to getting anything accomplished.  However, just like sandcastles, you can't put your hope in daydreams.  My daydream is to open a brewpub in my hometown, but my hope is in God no matter how the daydream shakes out.

Two dangers lie in placing your hope anywhere but in the Lord.  The first is that you'll get what you've hoped for and, in the meantime, miss out on God.  The second danger is that you'll get your heart broken. 

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick" is what the scripture says in Proverbs 13:12, and the image here is more literally of hope "drawn out."  That is: drawn thin, dragged along, stretched taut until the hope in no way resembles what it once was.  Let me assure you that what Solomon is referring to here is misplaced hope.  If your hope is in the Lord, it will never be deferred.  As the Psalmist says, "For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust."  You never get heartsick if your hope is in God because He is trustworthy.  It's safe to put your hope in God because He is our hope; He is both the source and the object of hope.

But you could very well arrive at the same heartsick place if your hope is misplaced and is not deferred.  This is the place of the triumph of the flesh and the bankruptcy of the spirit, where we get what we want but miss out on what God has to give.  And in many ways this is a more dangerous place to be, mostly because you'll be convinced that you did it yourself.  It's easier to get to God from a low place than from a high one.  In fact, the best way to get a fresh glimpse of God is from Rock Bottom.

What you put your hope in will determine what you allow yourself to become.  Rest assured that if you put your hope in man, or in your own hands, or in the next big idea, that you'll come out heartsick on the other side.  But as a reminder of the good things God has for us if we put our hope in Him, here is the other half of Proverbs 13:12.

"But a desire fulfilled is a tree of life."

Seeing is Believing

   Truth is powerful, and the scriptures tell us as much.  Speaking truth is powerful; the scriptures tell us this, too.  I believe in "speaking life" by speaking the truths about God and who He is, and that spiritually this is powerful and edifying.  However, I also know that you can hear about who God is and what He does only so much.  To really know the He is who He says He is, and that He does what He says He does, you have to experience it.  It's one thing to hear it said that God is trustworthy, but you will never know it until you've had to trust Him in something.  It's all well and good to know that the Bible says He heals, but you simply won't believe it until He has healed you.

   This is the open invitation of God: get to know Me.  God doesn't want us to stop at hearing Truth, He wants us to walk with Him and experience it.  The difference is relationship.  You could hear all about what a great person someone is, but until you know them and have a relationship it's all hearsay.  It's not different with God because HE IS ALIVE and HE IS REAL.  God is not a concept to be mulled over, or a philosophy to be adopted, He is a living spirit, made physical in Jesus, and He will be as intimate a relation as a lover if you will draw close to Him.

   The irony is that with God seeing is believing, and He is invisible since He is spirit.  It's true that He was made incarnate in Jesus Christ, but, as the scripture makes clear, we who live after Jesus ascended to not get to see physically see him.

Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

   When I say "seeing is believing," I'm not refuting what Jesus says, that belief in him is possible without seeing.  Rather I am saying that "seeing" God do what He has said He will do imparts to us true knowledge (i.e. belief) in who He is.  When we step out in faith and find out that God is really there and really will take care of us, we see His promises realized.  We see His character made manifest and our faith is consequently built up.

   You do not intimately discover the reality of God without risk.  There are many stories of great risk and great faith in the Bible which show us that this is true.  Think of Gideon attacking Israel's enemies with only torches and trumpets.  Or David standing in the shadow of Goliath.  Remember the Israelites walking between walls of waters, or Abraham with his knife raised to strike his only and promised son.  These people had great faith, but just like you and I they weren't positive God would come through until the moment He came through.  And it's not God's fault if we don't think He will come through, it's ours.  It's the fault of our Flesh, that part of us that always wants to be God and make everything work.

   This is also the open invitation of God: let Me work things together for your good.  As a friend of mine recently said, we are the ones getting in our way.  Get out of your own way and let God do what He has said He will do, then you will know that He really can be trusted.

Daydreaming

Daydreaming gets a bad rap.  I'm thinking of a kid in school staring glazy-eyed out of the window, and how so many parents and teachers and leaders see in this picture only inattention.  I'm thinking of time spent on the porch on a spring afternoon, dreaming of what you could do, not what you should be doing, and how so many busybodies would interpret this as laziness or a poor use of time.  And I'm thinking of my own life, and all the little moments I take in any given day to imagine myself doing some of the things I've always wanted to do, and ignoring so much of what I have to do instead.

I think daydreaming gets a bad rap because it isn't productive; or at least, not in the sense of accomplishing physical labor.  But can daydreaming really be all that bad?  Like anything in life it's about balance.  If you spent your whole day staring into space dreaming, you would actually have wasted a whole day.  But even then, so what?  Some days are perfect for wasting.  The point is, you can't daydream your life away, but if you never daydream it's going to be a less fulfilling life anyway.

It's my personal opinion that God likes daydreaming.  It's my personal opinion that this is why he made us able to do it.  Our imaginations are amazing.  In many ways our minds - the ways they work, their capacities for problem solving and memory, and so on - are a direct reflection of how we were made "in God's image."  God is creative, intelligent, analytical, imaginative, and yes, a daydreamer.  Would He have made us capable of daydreaming if He didn't have some capacity for it already?  I think the answer is no.

But here is what we demand of ourselves: realism.  We can stomach a little idealism now and again, but realism is much more important.  Hard work.  Bootstraps.  Energy.  Rational thinking.  And realism.  We can stomach a good deed now and again, or a highfalutin motive, but don't think for a minute that we will put up with daydreaming.

What is funny is that so much of who we become is borne out of daydreaming, even if we don't realize it.  You see, you have a hard time becoming something if you never pictured yourself becoming it.  When you picture yourself doing something specific - like scaling a particular peak, walking across the stage at graduation, opening your own business -  it crystalizes inside of you: in your will, in your mind, in your emotions.  In your soul.  Daydreaming will not be all that it takes to get where you want to go, oh no.  You'll have to deal with all of that realism too.  But daydreaming will be your first step.  If you don't imagine what you could become, how will you know what you want to become?

God's Anointed, Humiliated

In 1 Samuel we read the story of the first king of Israel and, more importantly, the second.  Saul, who is chosen as the first king, turns out to be a bad one.  Almost from the get-go he shows himself to be more concerned with his own will than that of God.  He is quick to forget his anointing, and thus quick to forget what God is capable of, and so tries to win the battles of Israel on his own terms.  Seeing this, God decides it's time to anoint another king, a good one, and that man is David.

Saul's problem is selfishness, and his conduct after Israel's battle with the Philistines, in which David kills Goliath, typifies his character.  If you'll remember, in that battle David slays Goliath, and then the Israelites rout the Philistines.  It's a great victory, and on the return trip home women of Israel come out to meet the army dancing and singing,

Saul has killed his thousands,
and David his ten thousands

Saul's reaction is to immediately distrust David, and it is interesting to note that Saul does not know what we know.  He does not know that David has been anointed and will be king.  He doesn't know that the Spirit of the Lord has left him and resides on David.  But he doesn't have to know this to hate David, because he sees David as a threat to his own glory.  It doesn't matter to Saul that David serves him, because he doesn't recognize his fortune in having David in his service.  He sees only the threat, not the blessing.

In many ways Saul represents our own flesh.  With David on his side, mighty warrior that he proves to be, Saul should be a proud and satisfied king.  But as it is he would rather risk failure by driving David off than risk victory without personal glory.  This is what we so often do.  Many times we would rather fail than be humiliated; that is, we would rather struggle to the end and fail then fail without a fight, because we could put our name on the struggle and at least go out in a blaze of glory.

But God wants us to be humiliated once in a while.  As you might guess, the words humiliate and humble share a common Latin root.  The Latin root word humus means "ground, earth, or soil".  In the sense of being humiliated or humbled, we are really being taken back to what we are in the flesh: dust.  God formed man from the dust (our flesh) and breathed life in to man (our spirit), and the human condition is this attempt on the part of the flesh to achieve the splendor of the spirit.  And since God is spirit, our flesh is really after the achievement of Godlike status.  So we necessarily (and often) need to return our flesh to it's root, the dust.  We need to be humbled or humiliated, and if we will not accept the former we will experience the latter.

Being humiliated is always more painful than being humbled.  The difference is a matter of choice, and subsequently a measure of our resistance to being brought low.  Humiliation happens against our will; we do not choose humiliation, it's forced on us, and we are forced down.  Into the dust.  But humbling comes more gently, because when we are humbled we are shown--perhaps in circumstances exactly like those that could be humiliating--that we are less than we made ourselves out to be, and so we accept that we are dust.  You see, humiliation is our being pushed into the dust, waylaid, and humbling is us bending down to the dust, prostrating ourselves.

Here is what I realized as I was reading about David and Saul, about Saul's angry pursuit of David and David's long and circuitous flight from Saul.  David was God's anointed.  From even before he met Saul, David was the anointed king of Israel, but it took years for him to experience the fullness of that position.  But in the process of fleeing for his life from Saul, David was being built up--in character, in reputation, in faith and trust in the Lord.  The anointing did not preclude trouble.  The anointing was not a guarantee of circumstances, it was a guarantee of identity.

We are anointed, we who are believers in Jesus Christ, and similarly we are kings (and queens)--sons and daughters of the King of Kings.  And regardless of how things are going in our lives, we are anointed and we carry the title and identity of kingship (or queenship).  And because we are still living, breathing human beings, we have this flesh that we carry around, and so we must remember that we are dust.  But we don't have to be humiliated.  We do, however, have to be humble.

David, in the course of his life, experiences both humiliation and humblings.  But even after his humiliations; even after his failures and sins and spiritual wanderings; even after he is thrown into the dust and trampled, he calls on God and is raised up again.  The anointed of God will be called a man (or woman) after God's own heart.

Keep Yourself There

If you've ever heard anyone say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I," you either rolled your eyes or nodded your head.  What we mean when we say such a thing is that we are not in the gutter because God is gracious.  Never mind that His grace is sufficient for the one in the gutter; we say it intending to thank God for the good things that we have.

First of all it's important to know that grace is not dependent on anything going on in your life, that is: your circumstances.  It is dependent on your heart.  You can be down and out - in the gutter - and be flush with the grace of God.  You can also be high on the hog and be utterly spent of grace.  It comes down to a matter of will, of choice.  You get to choose to walk in God's grace.

In Hebrews 4:16 we are given a simple instruction for how to choose it: walk in and get it.

"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

That last phrase is interesting, "in time of need".  I would submit to you that you probably never have a time when you don't need the grace of God, and so the takeaway is that you shouldn't leave the throne.  Stay there.  Camp out.  Keep yourself in the presence of God.

And that's it, that is how you make it through life the best possible way, you keep yourself in the presence of God.  Every other sermon you hear, book you read, song you sing, Epiphany you receive; anything you will ever learn about God is subordinate to this simple instruction: keep yourself in the presence of God.  And note that we are to walk up to the throne with confidence.  Confidence?  What confidence?  The confidence that we are called sons and daughters of God, adopted into His family by the blood of Jesus.  And so there are two things that you need.

1) the blood of Jesus
2) a camping spot at the foot of the throne

But really - really - there is only one thing you need, as Jesus pointed out.

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.  And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.  But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me."  But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

Give Us a King

When the elders of Israel demand a king, God hears them and he obliges.  But He warns them through Samuel what it will cost them.

"These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots.  And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.  He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.  He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants.  He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work.  He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.  And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day."

And as any rational group of human beings would, they said:

"No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles."

They rejected the King of Kings for the sake of conforming to the standards of the nations of the world.  This is what we do individually all the time; we forsake the leadership of God for what the world tells us will work, and when we come up empty handed we say, Where were you, God?  But God has given us our warnings.  This very scripture is one of them.

It makes no sense to give up so much just to have someone you can heap the blame on, but can you think of anything better?  God is mysterious, invisible, and far too immense for us to understand.  But if we establish various kings over our lives, we can point to them when we fail.  Jobs, plans, family, friends, pastors, spouses; these are the kings we establish, the kings we push out in front of us when the enemy is coming, and these are the kings that fail us time and again.

There is one King who never fails.  He will give you the other kings because He loves you; but you and He both will lament that poor choice.

What We See...or Don't See

You would think that, in his day, Jesus would have been a hard one to miss.  When I read the Gospels and think about Jesus performing all of those amazing miracles, and fulfilling all of those age-old prophecies, I wonder, How did so many people miss that he was the one?  Never mind that this question is just as significant for our day.  Jesus is just as present and relevant now as he ever was, and still many of us just miss him.

I was particularly thinking about when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the colt.  Jesus had a hand in most (or all?) of the prophecies that he fulfilled.  There are many scriptures in the Gospels that say that Jesus did such-and-such so that the prophecy could be fulfilled.  It is interesting to read this and know that the disciple writing that particular book knew this.  I doubt that, for example, when Jesus told the disciples to go into the city and get the donkey and her colt, that he also said, "So that the prophecy from Zecheriah can be fulfilled."  Jesus knew he was fulfilling the prophecy, and perhaps even some of the disciples realized it.  Certainly Matthew realized it when he wrote his book.  And so it stands to reason that the Pharisees and other educated Jews of the day would have recognized the prophetic nature of Jesus's entrance in to Jerusalem.

Why is it then that they refused to believe in him?  It seems likely that any Jew who was educated in the scriptures would have been keen to see signs of the Messiah.  It seems likely that any intimation of the fulfillment of messianic prophecy would have set the learned Hebrew men buzzing with anticipation.  But the Gospels don't show the educated class the least bit excited about Jesus.  Almost from the outset they can't stand him.  I suspect that they thought he might be the Messiah, but since he threatened their way of life - since he proved to be a threat to their conception of righteousness and authority - they resolved to be done with him.  And, incidentally, they were a part of fulfilling more messianic prophecies.

But this willingness to overlook who Jesus is and what he's come to say and do, this continues.  We do it a lot.  For years I dressed Jesus up in my own image.  I put words in his mouth and dusted him off and told him to follow me around for a while.  I freely interpreted the Gospels so that he conformed to my idea of who Jesus is.  In short, I missed him.  Jesus began his ministry and the disciples said, Yes, the Messiah has come to win us our dignity and be king!  But Jesus said, No, I've come to die.  And even though the power was in his death (and resurrection), you can't blame them for begrudging this seemingly hopeless end to things.

This happens to us, too.  Jesus comes and we say, Fix me!  Make my life easier!  And Jesus says, I came so that you could die to yourself.  Dying is never easy.  It wasn't easy for Jesus, but he did it for the joy that was set before him; not the joy in the act, because there is no joy in dying, but for the joy of what was to come: his glorification, the completion of the Father's plan, the great rescue of all humanity.  Dying isn't easy for us either, but we have Jesus to show us how it's done, and with only a fraction of the pain he endured.

But we won't see what Jesus came to do if we're only looking for what we want him to do.  To some extent this probably happened to Judas Iscariot.  He couldn't reconcile what he had hoped Jesus would be with what Jesus actually was.  His is an extreme case because he betrayed Jesus.  Most of us don't betray Jesus, we just ignore him.  Or we do what I did and we dress him up in our own expectations, but still we don't see what he's come to do.  When I finally let Jesus do what he wanted to do in my life, everything changed.  I stopped looking in mirrors and started looking at the world around me; but especially I started looking to the Father, and I began learning more about myself than I ever knew.  This is the wonderful thing about God, that he will not only show you who He is, but in the process He will show you who you are.

This is truly seeing; this is real vision.  It reminds me of the two blind men in Matthew 20, one chapter before Jesus's triumphal entry.  They stand on the roadside crying out to Jesus, "Son of David, have mercy on us!"  And the crowd rebukes them.  Jesus asks the obvious and almost callous question: "What do you want me to do for you?"

They said to him, "Lord, let our eyes be opened!"  And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.

The Kind of Friend We Have

This week at my church Messiah's House, we celebrated Resurrection Week, and Jake Hamilton and his band came to play music, lead worship, and, in Jake's case, to prophesy.  On Tuesday night as we entered the church we each were handed or took for ourselves green half-sheets of paper.  Each had a scriptural name of God written on it, with an exemplary Bible verse written beneath.  Names were diverse, and included things like "Father", "High Priest", "Rose of Sharon", and so on.  On Tuesday Jake prophesied over individual people based on the name of God that they drew.  The intent of this exercise was to inspire us to encounter the characteristics of God represented by and in His various names.

I received the name "Friend", and on its face I thought I understood the name.  Jesus said to his disciples (and says to us), "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." (John 15:15)  The implication is that we are intimates with Jesus, not outsiders.  We are invited into the private space of the master, and we participate in what he is doing.

The verse associated with the name "Friend" on my card was Matthew 11:19, which reads:

"The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds." (ESV)

For context, Jesus is speaking to the crowds just after some disciples of John the Baptist have come to ask him, on John's behalf while he is in prison, whether Jesus is in fact the Messiah.  Jesus says yes and more or less rebukes John for being offended that Jesus is not in the same boat as him, i.e. imprisoned for his preaching.  Then Jesus speaks to the crowds about John: how he is a great prophet, and how he was not accepted.  He says, "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, 'He has a demon.'"  and the next verse is my verse, Matthew 11:19.  Jesus seems to be saying in these two verses, "Well, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't."  He is not saying that, but he kind of is.  Jesus knew that, for the religious, for the hard-hearted, for the unteachable, it didn't matter what he or any other prophet did, they simply would not be accepted.

What this meant for the nature of God as "Friend" I was unsure, so I got into the concordance.  I looked at some of the important words in verse 19; wisdom, justified, and deeds particularly interested me.  But of course since "Friend" was my name, I looked up that word as well.  The Greek word used in this verse, and also incidentally in John 15:15, is philos (fie-lohs), which means just what we would expect: friend, associate, familiar companion.  And then there is this additional definition:

One of the bridegroom's friends who on his behalf asked the hand of the bride and rendered him various services in closing the marriage and celebrating the nuptials

I think my jaw may have literally dropped at this definition.  Without too much effort one can read into this the spiritual significance of being a friend of God.  We are called to be the intimates of God; so intimate, in fact, that we are sent to the bride to ask for her hand on God's behalf, and arrange the marriage event in all its solemnity and celebration.  This is both a calling and a privilege for believers, that we will be the friends who usher in the marriage of the bridegroom to his bride with such deep involvement.  Our position is divine.  We are the ones He trusts to go after His bride on His behalf.

But we will never know this until we know Him.  To consider what kind of friendship is required for such a favor to be asked, you have to consider what an important task this would be.  If you were the bridegroom, you wouldn't ask just anyone to go and ask for your (future) bride's hand in marriage on your behalf.  You wouldn't trust just anyone to organize the wedding and the celebration.  You would only entrust this most important of tasks to your most intimate friend, the one who knows your heart and in whose hands you know you can entrust it.  And this is what God is looking for; this is what Jesus says that we are.  This is exactly what I want to be, a friend of God, because I've had no greater friend than Him.

No Regrets

I want to say a quick word about regrets.  Here is the thing we need to admit about regret: it's just guilt under a different name.  And those of us who are in Christ are guiltless before God.  Feeling guilty should be as alien to us as feeling hopeless.  There is no reason to feel guilty if you aren't guilty, unless you just plain don't appreciate your guiltlessness, your freedom.  Guilt equals bondage, plain and simple.  It was for freedom that we were set free.

Since guilt has a stigma amongst many believers - because of its associations with shame and worry; because of the burden that it places on us; the way it is used by others to manipulate our lives - we prefer other words, surrogates for guilt.  Regret is a big one, a special kind of guilt because it was done long ago and we really and truly can't do anything about it.  Regret is the worst kind of guilt because what you regret you can't redeem.  But the Lord can.

This is my word against regret of any kind: it is to deny that God can redeem you.  Stop regretting what you've done and start letting Him redeem the time, redeem the relationships, redeem your heart.  Let Him go back in time and take care of it, because He stands outside of time.  God does not have temporal limitations.  He can quite literally reach into our past and redeem it.  So let him.

Contradictions

At my church we have "Resurrection Week" each year the week following Easter Sunday.  I love Resurrection Week.  I love the Resurrection of Jesus and everything that it means for humanity, and especially what it means for me personally.  I love Jesus.  And I love going to church when you wouldn't normally go because you tend to expect more out of those times, and you tend to bring more of yourself to give away: in praise, in friendship, in love.

Jake Hamilton is here in our small church this year.  This man and his band can command much larger venues than Messiah's House in Amarillo, TX and are, for all intents and purposes, rock stars.  Jake is also a prophet and a zealot.  He brings to an event like Resurrection Week all of the power and baggage that any prophet or zealot would bring.  He brings deep truth, fervor, prophecy, and contradictions.  And he can't help himself.  As long as he is in pursuit of God he will carry these things with him and they will spill out wherever he plants his feet for even the shortest space of time.

None of us who are passionate about God can help it that we bring our contradictions along .  I personally have a hard time containing my excitement about the Lord, or my anticipation about what He will do, when I'm in a body of believers.  I am less fervent outside of a group of believers, which is characteristic (I suppose) of someone that is not a prophet nor a zealot.  The Lord often delivers deep truth and prophecy through me, when I am willing to be the bearer.  And always - always - I carry around my contradictions.

Isn't this just what and who we are: a people of contradictions?  Paul recognized as much.  In the book of Romans he lays out lots of contradictions, like when he says "we rejoice in our sufferings."  Huh?  That's bass-ackwards; no one rejoices in their sufferings.  Ah, but the people after God's heart do because "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."  To get to hope, to get to an assurance of God's promises in our hearts, we have to suffer so that we can learn that God is always good, that He is always for us, that He is always reliable, and that we can always make it through the sufferings, which are inevitable.  But oh, we still don't want to suffer.

There is a contradiction that beds itself in the notion (and command) of being "set apart."  We believers know that we are to be holy and different, not conforming to the world, and so we should "look" different.  We should be different.  Maybe even have different musical standards, different entertainment standards, maybe even different "set apart" places to live...wait.  Weren't we called to "go into all the nations and preach the Gospel"?  How can we take Jesus into the world if we start closing ourselves off from the world?  But how do we take Jesus into the world without becoming a part of the world?  How do we resolve these contradictions?

The pursuit of being "set apart" is a poor pursuit if we fail to stop at the boundaries.  Surely Jesus himself was set apart, and yet he found himself at many an undesirable dinner table.  Jesus blazed the trail of being set apart, and I believe he also laid the boundaries of that activity.  While setting himself apart he might have said, Here's where I'll stop; right here before 'alienation', and I'll stay on this side, 'love'.  And so we find that, as in most things in life, pursuing God is about balance.  If we leave the world entirely, to whom will we preach?  And if we stay in the world completely, how will they know we're any different from them?

Also like most things in life, being set apart will not be an issue if we do this above all else: go after God.  The Christian experience in America (and probably other parts of the world; I don't know because I live in America) is rife with ways to better our spiritual lives.  Our cultural obsession with self-help carries readily over into our spiritual lives.  But the thing is, your spiritual life will find its proper course if you will pursue this one thing: God.  If you will make knowing him and spending time with Him - developing a relationship, basically - your paramount concern, everything else will fit.  We would be pleasantly surprised at how easy it could be to be "set apart" if we would only go after God.  Instead of trying to figure out how we should do it, we need to get to know Him and let Him do it.

There is a lot to be said for zeal, and there is a lot to be said against it.  Peter the apostle had great zeal.  Time and again he proved his passion for Jesus and for the mission of God.  He also time and again proved how a zealot will cross the line without blinking.  Jesus had to rebuke Peter on several occasions - like when Peter cut off the centurion's ear at Jesus' arrest.  In that instance we see the balance of the love of God butting up against the zeal of a believer.  The zealot draws his sword to defend God, but God does not need defending; rather, the world needs healing.  Peter had a hard time figuring this out, and yet this zealot was the rock on which Jesus built his church.

You see, God's is the original big tent party.  No one is excluded from the Father's plans, if only they'll take Him up on the invitation.  There is a sort of contradiction in this: that the God of the universe, perfect and holy as He is, would take just anybody in.  It doesn't jive with what we do, what we see happening around us.  If we were God we might be a bit more exclusive.  We wouldn't use a murderer with a speech impediment to free our people.  We wouldn't have the savior of mankind birthed in a stable.  And we wouldn't let just anybody in, because in our minds some people are past hope.  But fortunately we are not God.  And thank God we are not.

Here is the good news: He is God, the one and only, and He resolves our contradictions and shortcomings and baggage in this: He redeems us.  He loves us.  He has given absolutely everything He can to get us back.  This is why I love Easter, this is why I love the Resurrection.  The Resurrection is the point in human history - what's more, in the history of the universe - when it was finally done and we could come back to Him.  Come back to Him in His garden and finally have what it was intended we should have: a relationship with the true and living God.

Joy Unseen

     Almost three years ago, in June of 2010, I was hit by a truck while riding my bike home.  I don't know what happened because I was unconscious until I was in the ambulance.  My bike was destroyed.  I had a gash in my head and road rash on my shoulder and back.  I was in the emergency room for about three hours, and when I left I had seven staples in my head and an undiagnosed broken collar bone; it was a few days later when I learned that it was broken.
     This was a terrible situation, and it's my sincere belief that God saved my life that day.  Saved me from what could have been or should have been death.  And I believe I must have realized this at the time, because what I remember most about that night is that I was filled with joy.  Strange to think it, stranger still to say it, but the most vivid thing I remember about being in the ER with a busted head and shoulder is how my heart was full with the joy of the Lord.
      If there's one thing that a lot of Christians aren't experiencing in their lives it's joy.  Joy is a funny thing.  We tend to think of it as synonymous with happiness, or as a heightened sense of happiness, but joy and happiness are two different things.  Joy comes from God.  It is a spiritual state, just as peace is a spiritual state.  It's a thing we get from God that has no direct connection to our physical circumstances.  This is why I was able to be joyful while bleeding from the head in the ER.  It's why I had joy over the next couple of months as my insurance company worked out a settlement and my wife and I tried to stay sane between doctor's appointments and medical bills.  I wasn't happy about the pain, the expense, the stress.  But I had joy in spite of it all.
     Like most everything in this walk we call the Christian Life, joy requires the sustained practice that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4:18, that of fixing our eyes on the Lord.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

  We have joy in our life when we're focused on the right things.  Ironically the right thing to focus on is "that which is unseen," which must mean that, though unseen, we can still fixate on them.  It's tricky.  When I was in the hospital, there were many things to fix my eyes on: the nurses and doctors, the MRI machine, the cuts and bruises and breaks on my body.  But for some reason the unseen caught my attention and I looked there instead.  It was so much more rewarding to look at God and His goodness in the middle of my light and momentary trouble, rather than to stare at that very trouble and wonder, Now what?      If as the scripture says "The joy of the Lord is my strength," then without His joy I'm going to be weak.  Such has been the case in my life.  Regardless of circumstances, good or bad, I have found that this is always true: when I lean on the Lord and walk in His joy, I make it.  I get through the stressful times, the uncertain times, the times when money is tight or the arguments are plentiful.  I have the strength to continue in life because I have a strength that is not my own.  In fact, it is precisely in some of my darkest times that I can look back and see that I experienced the most consistent joy.  I had joy in spite of the circumstances because I always had God in the midst of the circumstances.      We are especially prone to forget this, but all we need in this life is to consistently fix our eyes on the Lord.

For the love of glory

   The following notion is a cliche, and that is a sad thing: lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  I say that this is a cliche not just because it is a widely heard proverb, but because it also means very little to us.  If you were to ask me what it means, I could probably come up with an answer, and it would be a very churched answer, couched in the vocabulary of American Christianity (which is itself quite cliched).  That any precept, teaching, or truth of God should become a cliche is not an indictment of God, but an indictment of us.  Cliches fall on deaf ears; they have been robbed of their power to be heard, and we have robbed them of that power.
   Here is the same cliche in different terms.

"[F]or they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God." (John 12:43)

   This was said by Jesus in reference to leaders in the Jewish community at that time.  These particular leaders believed what Jesus preached, but they were so concerned that they might lose their powerful positions in the synagogues that they said nothing.  Funny how so often the most powerful action a man takes is inaction.
   How true is this precept in our lives.  That is not a question; this precept is true, as true of many of us as it was of these Jewish leaders.  And while this scripture could easily fall on deaf ears, echoing as it does the cliche that we are used to, the cliche that we would rather ignore because it indicts our activities, it should strike us in it's significance.  Here were men who were religious leaders of the chosen race of the one true and living God, seeing the messiah that all of Israel had so yearned for, and believing that he was in fact the messiah of prophecy, but they would not admit they believed.  They kept silent so that they could keep their positions in the synagogues.  They willingly ignored the fulfillment of a promise for the sake of a position.  They traded the eternal for the temporal.
   There is more than cliche in these scriptures if we can tune our ears to it.  God is reminding us of something that, because we do it all the time, we are blind to it.  We are constantly pursuing the glory that comes from man with a fervor we would not dedicate to pursuing God's glory.  We are constantly laying up treasure on earth; constantly tucking our hearts away amid our stuff.  These truths are cliche to us because this is our way of life.  Of course I love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God!  Stop telling me what I already know!
   But we must not know it.  If we did know these truths, if these truths had roots within us, we would change.  If we really knew that we were trading God's glory for man's, many believers would react with disgust.  How many?  My initial estimate: not many.  And I think the reason is because very few believers know what the glory of God is.  Very few understand what is really to gain when we go after God.
   One explanation for this phenomenon - that few believers really know what glory God has for them - I can give from personal experience.  Many Christians have been taught that salvation is the end state.  We've been taught that the best thing God has to give us is salvation from our sins, and while this is inarguably the most important thing that Jesus has done, it ignores what he said to the disciples.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)

   Salvation is only the beginning of the Christian life.  As the scripture tells us, we are moving "from glory to glory," not moving to glory and then staying there.  And we're not just moving toward any old glory, but towards God's glory.  Since Jesus has gone to be with the father, that's where we're headed, too.  And not in some distant sense, only after we die, but right here and right now and tomorrow and the day after that.  From the moment that we accept the free gift of God in Jesus, we have the opportunity to come into the fullness of glory that Jesus promises.  In fact, this is exactly what we should desire.
   This may be a hard thing for some believers to grasp: that we should desire glory.  In ignorance we have embraced humiliation and thought it was humility.  But there is glory to be gotten, and it's glory that we've been promised.  Walking in the glory of God requires humility, but it also requires passion: a passion for Jesus and the things of God.  And the glory of God is for His glory, not ours.  What the scripture shows us in the words of Jesus is that we are going to long for some kind of glory, either of men or of God.  We'll not hesitate to say that God's glory is better, but our lives usually reveal that we believe the opposite.  To the question of which we should pursue, God's glory is the obvious right answer, but life is not lived by answers, it's lived by actions.
   So this is what the love of glory comes down to: the choice between that which comes from man and that which comes from God.  There is no third choice.  And there is no abstention, because we will choose one or the other.  In the end we have the same cliche, as some will hear it.  But I hope that it will be less a cliche than it has been when we truly consider it, and consider what may happen if we choose the glory of God.

A Call to Arms

   Christianity is under assault, and this is a call to arms.  But be not deceived: this assault is not new.  Jesus told his disciples of his time that they would suffer persecution.  In fact, the theme of much of Paul's writings is that persecution should be both anticipated and welcomed.  "To me," he said, "to live is Christ, and to die is gain."  If death was gain to Paul, then life must have been difficult.  That is not a fair summary of his words, but it's one interpretation.
   This call to arms isn't like others you've heard.  Many times we hear calls from indignant Christians to do things of little value: boycott something offensive, write to your congressman, gather around the flagpole to pray.  These things take effort and make a show, but they do not move heaven.
   What can move a mountain?  Little faith; key word: little.  What can move the heart of God?  Belief, humility, the admittance of truth.  When the father saw that the disciples could not heal his son, Jesus assured him his son could be healed - if he believed.  And so the father said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"  This kind of statement moves heaven.  It is the spoken heart of one who believes.
   When the Cannanite woman came to Jesus looking for healing for her daughter, she could not be turned away.  She cried out so much that the disciples were annoyed.  And Jesus tested her faith.  "I cam only to the lost sheep of Israel," he said.  "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."  But even at this slight she wouldn't relent.  "Yes lord," she said, "yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."  Her daughter was healed instantly.  She spoke the deep, true belief in her heart and moved heaven for her daughter.
   This is the call to arms: believe.  God is looking for believers.  He doesn't need an army of pamphleteers, or a hundred programs for the categories of lost.  He does not require the best buildings in the right locations.  God does not need proper funding.  Our God is on His throne and all of His power sits at His right hand at the same time as it sits in each of us who beleive, and yet...we are weak.  The kingdom suffers violence.  Well, violent men take it by force.  Men, women, and children of violence; violent passion.
   This is the call to arms: find passion for the Lord.  Jesus came to earth to bear the wrath of God for all mankind, and yet it is difficult for us to give him this small thing: our lives.  When we beleivers decide that nothing is worth more than Jesus, then we'll get violent and we'll take the kingdom into our hands.  We'll lay claim to the authority that's in the name of Jesus Christ.  We'll heal hearts and bodies, we'll work miracles on the tableau of nature, we'll rock the foundations of evil across the world.  And we'll spread the word of God.  People will fall for the Lord when they see how passionate we are for His goodness.
   Christianity is under assault, just as it's been since Jesus began to preach the gospel.  And the call to arms still goes out.  Remember what Jesus said: "In this world you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world."

A Deep Heart

   The heart is where we do life.  That's the best way I've heard the heart described, and it is an echo of Proverbs 4:23: "Above all, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life".  The heart is the source of life, and as the same preacher who gave me that description of the heart said repeatedly, "You're life is going how your heart is going."
   How your heart is going...that's a good turn of phrase.  How is your heart going?  Many times you could probably say right away how it's going, especially if it's not going well.  A Broken Heart is probably one of the more common phrases ever coined for the heart, and this I guess because it happens so often.  We are pretty much born with broken hearts; that is the legacy of the Fall of Adam & Eve.  Thank God the second Adam came to mend that heart.
   But even a Believer will deal with heart problems.  Jesus came to make our spirits perfect, not our hearts.  The trick to living a Godly life is to get the heart in line with the spirit.  Obviously this doesn't always happen, and so many times our answer to how our heart is going is a pitiful one.  Most of the time, though, we don't really know how our heart is going.  David didn't, and that's why he said,

"Search me, O God, and know my heart!  Try me and know my thoughts!  And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting!" (Psalm 139:23-24)

David wasn't really sure what was in his heart, but he didn't want anything there that would get between him and God.  He wanted God to reveal his heart to him so that he could deal with it and continue "in the way of everlasting".
   This is a difficulty of the heart, that it is the source of the direction of our life, but yet many times we're not even sure what's in there.  And when you don't know what's in your heart, you're going to understand the circumstances of your life even less.  This is a problem, because often we go looking to solve the problems of our lives, and wind up dealing with symptoms (problems in life) rather than dealing with the causes (problems in the heart).
   We're not the only ones trying to get something from our own hearts, though.  If the heart is where we live life from, then the heart is necessarily important to people in our lives.  People are going to be looking for something in our hearts, as surely as we're going to be looking for something in theirs.  We're constantly looking for love, encouragement, empathy, joy, peace, answers, or anything we either want or expect to find.  And when we go looking in the hearts of others, we're either going to find something good, something bad, or nothing at all.  If we find nothing, it will never be because there is nothing there.  Rather, we will find nothing in a hard heart, because a hard heart will be unwilling to give us anything.
   We need to have healed, whole, and deep hearts as much for ourselves as for others.  Call it a mystery of God, but for some reason He finds it fit to use us in the lives of others, and if our hearts aren't deep, we're of little use.  If we don't have deep hearts, then people will come to us to drink and walk away thirsty.  In fact, if we don't have deep hearts we may very well find that people stop coming to us at all.
   But if we do have deep hearts, much will be given and much will be required.  We'll have people at our doorstep looking to receive what the Father has put in us.  Lives around us will be changed because our life will be going a good way.  When we let the Lord in, let him set up a home in our hearts, clean and uncluttered and pure, we become that vessel of love, encouragement, empathy, joy, peace, and answers that people are looking for.  We do the Lord's good work when we have a deep heart.