Category Archives: readiness

What Moses Also Saw

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When you promise yourself you won’t repeat (whatever wrong thing you struggle with) and then blow it – yet again – how many times will God forgive you and give you another chance?  If you are sincere, it will seem unlimited.  But is there any hope for you?  Will you ever break free of that cycle of despair?  

There is.  God showed Moses how He would ultimately fix us.  He showed Moses that He would bless the His Chosen People abundantly in the Promised Land, so long as they remained faithful to Him.  He showed Moses how they would mess that up and be banished.  This would happen again and again.  But the cool thing is how God also showed Moses what He would do to fix that cycle of hope followed by failure.  For them.  And for you.

“The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” ( Deuteronomy 30:6)

Circumcision is a perfect metaphor, if you think about the tough exterior that forms around our sinful hearts.  The first time we deliberately sin it bothers us.  The next time?  Not so much.  And God’s plan is to remove that callous and make us responsive to His ways. He will do it so we can live!  How will He do it?  God gave another glimpse to Ezekiel:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.  (Ezkiel 36:26-27)

When God causes His Spirit to be born into a calloused heart, He lives there softening and removing that tough, unresponsive exterior. This “reborn” heart becomes responsive to God. 

Jesus promised to give new life to anyone who trusts Him, through the birth of God’s Spirit in their hearts.  Their sins are forgiven, their souls are cleansed and they receive God’s Spirit.  Ultimately, the cycle of failure is broken.  They are set free.  

Mo and Zeke saw it coming.

Check His ID

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They were short-handed that night, so my boss ask me to check IDs at the club where I was running the sound. It was in that capacity that I refused to let a man in without an ID who later turned out to be the owner of the club. He got over it, but at first he was pretty upset.Two of the saddest verses in the New Testament say this:

He (Jesus) was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to

 that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

 (John 1:10-11)

Imagine Frank Lloyd Wright being turned away from a house that he had designed and built. I’m trying to imagine how much patience it took for Jesus to put up with being turned away by people who had no idea He had designed and built all of reality.  But it was those people who missed out.  Big time.  

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” (John 1:12)

The only thing that matters about this now is whether  you can identify Jesus and let Him in.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.  (Revelation 3:20)

Know More

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God doesn’t talk out loud to me, probably because I’m so deaf.  But when He has something to tell me, I know what it is.  After retiring from a pastorate, I asked, “What’s next, Lord?”  His answer was abrupt: “It’s time for you to get to know Jesus.”  I’d spent 22 years teaching others about Jesus, but now, God told me to get to know Him.  Humbling, that.  But recently, Randy Alcorn observed that Paul, after serving Christ for 30 years wrote in Philippians 3, he wanted to get “to know Him…” (Bible Study Magazine – September/October 2016).

There’s a big difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Him.   A demon knew all about Jesus called Him, “Jesus, the Son of the Most High God.” But he didn’t know Him (Mark 5:7).  Jesus said not everyone who calls Him “Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Why not?  Jesus said, “… I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.”

So, when God “took me to school”  I was  grateful.  I’ve learned there is always more to knowing Jesus.  As Paul came to that realization, he wrote:

Indeed, I count everything [all his former training and credentials] as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…    (Philippians 3:8)

And,

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  (Philippians 3:12)

For more about how, see the previous two posts, below…

Knowing and Growing

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A child paints a face with simplicity, using a circle, black spots for eyes and one color for skin.  If that child matures and becomes an artist, she can more accurately portray that same face, using careful observation and a complex mixture of paints and pigments.  Peter describes a similar process as he writes about how to mature in our knowledge of Jesus (see “Knowing,” posted below).  The process involves a careful observation of the character of Jesus, followed by attempts to portray those same traits on the canvas our lives.  As we learn to do so more accurately and naturally, knowing Jesus becomes more fruitful.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  (2Peter 1:5 -8)

Instead of viewing that somewhat intimidating passage as an impossible to-do list, think of it as a pallet of colors that you will gradually learn to mix together to achieve a pleasing result.

Practice Makes Perfect

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Dad installed a chinup bar in a doorway and used it everyday.  He challenged me to a contest when I was visiting.  I was amazed at his stamina but still beat him – hey, I was 30 years younger.  But now, at the age he was, there’s no way I could measure up to what he did then.  Unless I practiced.  The training regimen of olympic athletes is scary intense.  They punish themselves with every greater challenges til they know they can push through them.

In a similar way, we are encouraged to accept the various trials of life as opportunities to train our faith and develop our capacity to patiently push through.  

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  (James 1:2-4)

To test a diving board, you jump on it, tentatively at first but then with greater and greater force.  If you can’t break it then you know it will hold you.  You trust it  Same thing with faith; you jump on it to know if it will hold.  You test faith with trials.  As you learn your faith will hold, you become more able to endure life’s trials with steadfastness.  You become “perfect and complete,” in the sense that you are “good to go” in the faith department.  The faith is not in your own toughness but in Jesus’ ability to hold you safe, no matter what.  Like this:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-39)

More is More

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In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the people who had seen the extraterrestrial vehicles in the sky, gathered on the hill in wonder and amazement, hoping to see more.  You should experience that attitude when you attend a church: people who have glimpsed a beautiful and powerful mystery and want more.  Sadly, many churches seem to know all the answers, to have everything tied up in neat bundles.  They have lost their taste for mystery.  Stay away!  Those so-called churches are dangerous; they have died.  A pastor who considers himself to be an expert has not encountered God.

When Paul encountered Jesus, it blew his mind so thoroughly he couldn’t see for days.  Before that, he was an expert.  After that, he wrote,

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12

Let Go and Jump

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Here’s a riddle:

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.   (Matthew 16:25)

Jesus spoke that riddle as an explanation for an equally tough statement:

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  (Matthew 16:24)

But what may seem unreasonable and harsh, is actually an invitation to wild adventure.  The thing about adventure, however, is it is unavailable to those afraid to leave the house.  You can’t experience adventure by watching it on TV.  You must leave the trappings of security behind and dare to trust your guide.

A monk named Brother Charles understood this best and wrote this prayer:

My God, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.  Whatever you may do, I thank you; I am ready for all, I accept all.  Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures – I wish no more than this, O Lord.  Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my God.

I get the image of a tandem skydive, holding on to Jesus.  You gotta jump…

What Joy Looks Like

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Whenever I get a chance to spend time with Sam (not his real name), I come away filled with excitement and a kind of deep joy.  This morning was no exception.  He travels the world, visiting and encouraging small outposts of Jesus’ followers in some of the most unlikely places.  Like Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt.  He was bursting with enthusiasm and told me, “All over the world, people are coming to know Jesus in amazing numbers.  More than that, Christians of all different denominations and backgrounds, many of whom have been stuck in centuries of dead tradition, are waking up with renewed life and working together in creative ways to spread the good news.”  And then, with the same gleam in his eye, he said, “And everywhere this new life in Christ is cropping up, the opposition is really ramping up.  It is an exciting time!”

Sam is not exaggerating.  We are good friends and I know him well.  I’ve traveled with him on some pretty wild adventures.  When he says the new life of the kingdom of Jesus is popping out all over, you can take that to the bank. And, when he talks about opposition that naturally follows, he does so with the same credibility.  You might think the opposition, much of it extremely violent – churches being torched, Christians hauled off the bus and shot in the head because they cannot quote the Koran – would discourage him.  But he justs gets more excited.

Reminds me of Paul’s attitude when he wrote:

…I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.  (1 Corinthians 16:8b-9)

Sam understands something Paul knew: The greatest opportunities for introducing people to Jesus frequently lie in the midst of your greatest opposition.  He knows his enemies are not any of the people who attack him, but rather the spiritual forces in league with Satan who have them in their grip.  The more someone fights against him, the more he knows that person needs a Savior.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

In the previous post, I wrote about Jesus giving us Real Joy.  If you met Sam, you would  see what that joy looks like.  It isn’t dependent upon how successful or tough his circumstances seem to be, but emanates from the thrill of walking and working with a powerful Savior.  And it is infectious!

Thirsty?

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The thirstiest place I ever visited was Israel. Talk about hot and dry….  Chug a whole bottle of water and feel dehydrated a few minutes later.  Especially out in rural areas, like where Jesus said some pretty intriguing things about thirst to a woman who had come to a well to fill her water jugs. He had asked her for a drink and she balked, because Jews didn’t ordinarily have anything to do with her kind, much less drink from the same cup.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

When she missed the point,

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”. (excerpts from John 4:8-14)

Obviously, Jesus was talking about a deeper kind of thirst, spiritual thirst. What makes you spiritually thirsty? For me, it was when life seemed pointless and aimless. Even working for myself in a job that seemed somewhat glamorous, I was frustrated by doing the same things over and over, day after day, without accomplishing much of anything except a paycheck. Other times felt thirsty to me when I came face to face with my own moral failings. Death of friends and family made me thirsty.

Notice that Jesus referred to His “water” as a “gift of God.”  You cannot earn it or pay for it; it is a gift, one that God Himself gives.  It is important to note that Jesus was saying this to a woman who was a social outcast among a people considered too defiled for Jews to associate with.  And yet she is (and also by implication, you are) offered the gift.  The gift is “living water,” which means it continuously flows, clear and pure.  It comes from an inexhaustible supply.  This “water” quenches spiritual thirst forever, and gives “eternal life!”   

If you have ever experienced spiritual thirst, if that kind of water sounds good to you, notice carefully how Jesus told the woman she could receive it.  He said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”   It’s a matter of knowing you are thirsty, understanding that God has what you need, knowing Who Jesus is, asking Him and accepting it as a gift.  No expert in theology, nevertheless this woman knew real thirst and knew how wonderful an offer she had been given.  She accepted it right then and there.  

How about you;  are you thirsty?

Hearing is not Believing

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It puzzles me when people play adventure video games by looking up the answers and cheats online, instead of figuring them out.  If someone tells them the answer, they can’t enjoy the experience of discovering it.

Bear that concept in mind and consider this: At His trial, Jesus’ accusers said,

“If you are the Christ, tell us.” But he said to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe, (Luke 22:67)

When Jesus said “If I tell you you will not believe,” perhaps He was not accusing them but helping them. Coming to faith in Jesus is not simply hearing about Him from someone telling us. Believing is something we do. Believing is more than merely knowing the right answers. It cannot be done to us or for us; it is a personal adjustment. And without that personal change, the life-giving relationship with Jesus is impossible. Perhaps ,Jesus could have told them the answer but did not, in order to give them the opportunity to come to a personal belief in that answer.

He said to Peter, “You are blessed because you didn’t hear this from someone else but received it from the Holy Spirit.” The process of leading people to faith must leave room for them to discover the truth in a personal way and believe without being spoon-fed all the answers.