Staying Free from the Pollution of the World.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/jer/2/1/p1/ss0/rl1/s_747001 

    Well, I am back to using the old Blog. Enough people have signed up now that sending an email got to take as long as writing it seemed. I am praying that this speaks to you. I will say that not all the thoughts are mine and all of them came while I was sitting in Church yesterday listening to Steve Larson and Steve Mahnke preach two completely different messages that perfectly complimented each other.

    The original thought for today was that most of us do not know the goodness of God toward us very well. If we did, we would never run and hide from Him in shame. We would run to Him in repentance as quick as we could. I will be writing about that soon but not today. However, this message will tie in.

    As you see, there is a link to Jeremiah 2 at the top of the page. I would ask you to go back and read the chapter before you go beyond this point. It is the foundation of everything else I will be writing. I am writing this because there is freedom in the Lord that we are called to walk in, freedom to live Godly lives, not freedom to submit ourselves to the bondage of sin again. It seems that the message these days from so many places is just freedom, forgiveness and love. There is a complete lack of understanding that God also has wrath and judgment. He will judge all sin. When we don't warn people of the coming judgment, we fall into judgment for their destruction.

1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. ... 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. ... 14 But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. 15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. ... 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. - Rev 2:1, 4-5, 14-16, 20-23 ESV

3 Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. ... 19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. - Rev 3:3, 19 ESV    

    As I read the words above, I was struck by a couple of things. The Churches these letters were sent to seemed to be on the right track. They often lived in places that were said to be the throne of Satan. They were encouraged for many good things and for being faithful in several ways. Then the word was a word of rebuke and reproof. The angel acknowledged the good things that they were doing and even continued to do. And yet, there was something about them that was not right, something that would lead to their downfall and the Lord was giving them the opportunity to repent while there was time. This rebuke was not because He did not love them. It is because Jesus wanted them to receive all that He died to give them and these things would keep them from their inheritance, and even worse, it would keep others from the truth of who they were in the new creation.

I have read these words many times but they hit different this time. I really saw how there were several  good and commendable things going on in these Churches before they were rebuked. They got a lot of things right. There was no doubt that many of them loved Jesus and served faithfully, yet there was something that was really wrong. For two Churches, it was an issue that is prevalent today in today's Church. I believe it is a major reason that so many are leaving and the Church seems to be powerless.

    Look at the letters to Pergamum and Thyatira. These Churches that had it all together did not call out the lies that the world promoted. The allowed the teaching of Balaam and Jezebel to pollute them. The two sins that were prominent in these teachings were to eat food offered to idols and sexual immorality. Now there is not a lot of food offered to idols today but the rise of sexual immorality since the 1960's has been astronomical. It has grown exponentially since the start of the sexual revolution. For a few years the Church took a hard stance against the growing movement in society but in the last 40 years something has changed. 

Key Early Milestones in LGBTQ+ Church Inclusion:

• 1968: The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) was founded as the first church with a specific ministry to the LGBTQ+ community.
• 1972: The United Church of Christ (UCC) became the first mainline Protestant denomination to ordain an openly gay clergy person.
• 1974–1976: The Episcopal Church saw the formation of advocacy group IntegrityUSA (1974) and passed resolutions recognizing gay persons as children of God entitled to equal protection (1976).
• Late 1970s–1980s: Specialized movements grew, such as the Presbyterians for Lesbians and Gay Concerns (now More Light Presbyterians) in 1978 and the Reconciling Congregations program for Methodists in the early 1980s. 

Key Developments by Denomination/Region:

• United Church of Christ (UCC): In 1985, the General Synod encouraged congregations to become "Open and Affirming".
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA): Began welcoming LGBTQ+ individuals in the early 1990s, allowing same-sex union blessings in 2009 and electing the first openly transgender bishop in 2021.
• Episcopal Church: In 1994, it amended its canons to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
• Methodist Churches: The United Methodist Church officially removed bans on LGBTQ+ clergy and same-sex marriage in 2024, following decades of debate, with some traditionalist groups leaving in 2022 to form the Global Methodist Church. 

        As you see, Churches started moving towards the sexual malfunction of society and embracing it. They began to call it love to embrace the identity of lost people. It became common to practice welcoming everybody rather than to call sin for what it was. Churches want to be known as loving to the point that they no longer acknowledge that some people are lost and living in rebellion to God's purpose for their lives. They no longer talked about the coming judgment that is taught by Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John. We stopped calling dead men to life. We stopped pointing out that sin always separates us from God. We have allowed people to remain lost rather than to offend them and risk driving them away. The Church is in danger today because the preaching of repentance must always the forerunner of the Gospel. People don't get saved by repentance alone, but it opens the door for salvation, just as John was a forerunner of Jesus who prepared the way for His coming with the preaching of repentance.

3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. - Luk 13:3 ESV

46 and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. - Luk 24:46-47 ESV

36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" 38 And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." - Act 2:36-39 ESV

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. - 1Jo 1:5-10 ESV

    Wow, do you see it? Jesus and the Apostles did not shy away from calling out sin and pointing people to repentance in order to be saved. They point out that we can only be saved when we acknowledge that we are lost and have lived in rebellion to Jesus. The cross was not to make us more likeable people. It was to separate us from our rebellion against a holy God. The cross is the only door to salvation and repentance is the key that opens that door for us. When we allow sin to propagate in the Church and do not call it out, when we allow society to be overrun with immorality and say nothing, we are condemning whole generations to a Christless future

    The two Churches that I mentioned specifically above were told that the Lord would come and make war with them with the sword of His mouth and He would throw those who refused to repent into a great tribulation. To me it seems that the world is on a train speeding to the edge of a precipice. The bridge has been knocked out and they are about to plunge over. We are not warning them. We are not even warning those who come into our doors often times. They are going to certain death and we want to affirm them rather than call them out of their peril. 

    The Church has lost its moral compass and been guilty of shielding the ones lost in their sin with our misguided love and compassion. We think that is it more important to affirm a wrong identity than to call people into the identity Jesus died for them to have. In doing this, we condemn them to the worst imaginable fate. We "love" them right into hell. At the same time, they call us bigots and hypocrites. Our attempts to win them with a false kindness has been our undoing and theirs too. We have lost the moral authority to have any spiritual power over the works of the devil. He is running rampant and decimating our Churches because we have given up the only message that saves and transforms.

    The message of the Gospel is clear. All men are trapped in sin and live lives in rebellion to God. It plays out differently in every person's life, We are all unique but all have a common need. We need a Savior to rescue us from our sin and transform us into new a new creation who can live in harmony with the Father through the sacrifice of Jesus. This requires us to acknowledge our sinfulness and seek His forgiveness. He empowers us to come to Him. We cannot come on our own volition because our spirits are dead. When we come to Him in repentance, He immediately justifies us before the Father. We are not home yet, but we re on the road. He has given us a new identity that we still don't know how to live out. H begins to walk us through the process of sanctification, This is a lifelong process that helps us unlearn all the wrong ways we have been taught to live and teaches us to live like Jesus. It is a process of revealing the life of God that has now become resident in us.

    I fear that too often we have interrupted the process for many people these days. The Lord has put people in our lives that are obviously hurting and in need of a healer, Savior and Lord, but we have affirmed their broken identity. They need us to speak up in love. They need to hear that Jesus is calling and has prepared an amazing life for them, but they cannot carry their old, broken identity into it. They have to be willing to let Jesus have it all and be Lord of their lives. Now none of us knows exactly what that means "Lord." Lord is kind of an outdated term that with the end of slavery kind of fell out of common use. It is kind of like Master. We do not call people master anymore. They are the same basic term. Jesus is in Charge. He sets the terms of our salvation. We come to Him as a bondservant, one who has entered into an agreement for our past  in exchange for His protection and care in our future. Jesus has the lead and we are bit players in His story. At the same time, He elevates us to sonship with the Father.

    How about it. Do we love broken people enough to tell them that they are separated from Jesus by their own choices. Yes, they were born into a sinful life, but every single one has chosen sin over Jesus too. It is not until we repent and open the door to Jesus that we can begin to experience the life He has for us. 

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. - 1Jo 1:5-10 ESV

    The good news really is good news. The Gospel is that God is delaying judgment so that all might have every opportunity to repent. But, a day is coming when this will all burn, including those who have not turned to Him as Lord and Savior. This world is temporary and we do not know the day judgment will begin to come upon it. All we can do is prepare everyone we meet to see Jesus face to face.

29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." - Act 17:29-31 ESV

    Calling all people to repentance and life is the work Jesus has called us to join Him in. Anything less is rebellion on our part and certain judgment for those we fail to warn. The good new is that those who respond to the call of repentance, find life and the Holy Spirit waiting to make them new. This is the challenge Jesus has left us to fulfill as His hands, feet and voice. The call to repent is the call to love broken people.

I am Wrong! How About You?

 "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. [Jhn 17:20-23 ESV]

These words from the prayer of Jesus have been ripping through me lately. When I read Francis Chan's book "Until Unity" a few months ago, it reinforced everything I felt like God was speaking to me about. I am praying that I can share my thoughts clearly. My goal is not to offend, though some may be offended. My heart here is to point out that Jesus desires a Church, a Bride, unified around a few simple truths, empowered by His Spirit, that has learned to encourage and support one another in our differences.

First, let us start with what is of vital importance. The basis of our unity is is found in the work and person of Jesus. Because man has been born into a sinful, fallen world and we have willfully chosen to walk in sin. We are hopelessly separate from God on our own. Jesus, eternally the Son of God, left the glory of Heaven to live as man to show an example of Godly living. He then, a sinless man, laid His life down willingly to redeem fallen man from His sinful state. He was buried and on the 3rd day, He rose from the dead and ascended to His Father. He then sent His Holy Spirit to lead us into relationship with Him. He left His written word to reaffirm all the work He has done on our behalf. His Holy Spirit and the written word are calling men to repent and to live with Jesus as the Lord of their lives. Jesus is the only way to the Father and to life. He has brought salvation to mankind through His finished work on the cross. We can now walk in right relationship with God and be part of His eternal family.

Like many of you, I have read the Scriptures through many times. Each time, I see something that I had missed before or a different passage stood out. Every time we read the Bible, if we are listening to God, it brings a new revelation. Just like for Israel in the wilderness, God brings the manna we need for the moment. Over the years, we tend to build a theological system from this manna. We believe everything in that system was truth from God. It mostly is. We have read authors and listened to sermons that confirm it. Eventually we wind up in a Church that affirms what we have learned. This is all good and right. God would have us hold fast to the truth that He shows us by the Spirit, in His word.

This does not pose a problem until we start limiting what we accept as truth our understanding, to what we have believed, or what our Churches or favorite ministries have taught. We need to guard the truth we have been given and it is right to do so. Where we are breaking down is when we start badmouthing everyone that is not in lockstep with our understanding of truth. How do we protect what we know to be true without bashing people that understand things differently?

We need to go back to the second paragraph. We must always ask if we have agreement in these fundamental truths. If we agree on these truths, we need to receive one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We may have disagreement. We may understand things differently. That is okay. There are countless reasons why this is true. God has shown different people different aspects of Himself because they have different calls, live among different people and have different ways of thinking. This does not mean we can call them heretics or wolves. There are real heretics and wolves in the world. Paul gave us several good ways to identify them starting with who they understand Jesus to be.1 Cor 12 is a good starting place to understand the variety of ways we understand things. Vs 3 tells us that "nobody can proclaim Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Spirit" or that "Jesus is accursed while speaking by the Spirit." I encourage you to dig into this chapter and pray about it.

The world is suffering. It is trapped in a hopeless situation and people everywhere are fearful. Every single aspect of life seems to be spinning out of control right now. As the Church of Jesus, we are called to bring His truth and love to hurting people, to proclaim hope to hopeless situations and to proclaim the Gospel into the darkness. Jesus said that His word wouldn't return void. Unfortunately, we have been destroying our witness by openly bickering over nuances of the faith, over secondary issues. If it isn't in the second paragraph, it is a secondary issue. We are called to love one another and to live in harmony, not to bicker over our secondary issues.

We must stop name calling. It is vitally important to the future generations that we start discussing our differences and look for areas of agreement so we can work together. We must lay down our right to be right and learn to communicate in healthy ways. We are the hope Jesus left in the world. We are the ones He called to evangelize and to make disciples. Our disagreements with one another are causing that to come to a screeching halt in some places and are keeping us from coordinating our efforts and allowing them to multiply their effectiveness. When we encourage and affirm the ministry of others, God will promote and prosper what He calls us to. When continually rebuke those who He calls to something different, we hinder what He wants to do through us.

We can learn from Paul. He was the foremost of apostles. He could have held himself up and renounced everyone that was not just like him. He did call out some that were perverting the Gospel for different reasons but he also affirmed the ministry of others that he may not have agreed with. He called himself nothing but a servant and refused to call Apollos anything less than himself. He pointed out that they were both merely servants and that Jesus was the one that was brining men to salvation. When he called out people, it was for clearly heretical teaching, that corrupted the Gospel and limited men's access to it.

In Isaiah 58, we see people trying to manipulate God and one another so they can be seen as right. To them, the most important thing is to be recognized and lauded for their rightness. God rejects them but He goes on to show who He will not reject. He even says He will cause people to come to them and see the light in them. It is those that love others and sacrifice themselves to meet the needs around them. They have come to God in humility and allowed Him to use them as He desires.  God promotes and prospers the work of those that are surrendered and their right to be right is submitted to the love of God and man. He makes them the centerpiece of what He is doing. They become the example to follow.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. [1Jo 4:7-12 ESV]

It is okay to have differences. It is okay to discuss our differences. It is not okay to attack those in the body we do not understand because they have a differing viewpoint. The world is calling out for hope and the Church is the one called to deliver that hope. Paul said to the Corinthians that he determined to know nothing among them except for Jesus and Him crucified. He certainly had a lot more to teach and say but he limited himself to what they needed, what was of primary importance and that was enough. He did not condemn Apollos for his teaching or focus. He just avoided arguing over differences or telling everyone why he was the superior apostle. It is time for us to lay aside our differences over secondary issues and focus on the simple truth of the Gospel.

God is bigger than me or you. His truth is bigger than our understanding. It is time for us to stop trying to build our kingdoms with our intellect and knowledge and to start recognizing that others have a part of the picture that we may not even understand. The kingdom belongs to God. he has revealed enough of His truth to me that I can follow Him fully but He has not revealed everything to me that you may need to follow Him as He is leading you. The Kingdom and its King are multifaceted. We are limited in our understanding. Let's ask Holy Spirit to reveal God in people and then ask Him how we can bless what He is doing in and through them. Unity is in Jesus but some of the hard work of walking it out falls on us.

The Nerve Center

 

Four years ago, the Lord started speaking to me about a ministry of encouragement to missionaries. Since that day in April 2018, the thought has never been far from my mind. I have had lots of ideas and considered several different ways to do that. As I pursued them, each time, they came up short of what I was pushing for. Just this week, in the middle of feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t seem to put it all together, the Lord spoke again. He said He had showed me an end and I tried to start at the end. The steps I have been pursuing were in the wrong order. Hopefully, in the next few paragraphs I will be able to explain the journey I have been pursuing. I am praying that a few of you are finding yourself on this same road I am travelling.

While I was in mission’s school in Reynosa, I had a vision of providing missionary retreats so missionaries could come together, share their stories, and encourage one another. The idea was not to do a conference or a provide hours of teaching crammed into each day, but rather to provide a forum where they could come together, and talk about the work they were doing, look for areas of commonality and for ways they could support and encourage one another. This would all take place in a nice setting, a beach resort, or a mountain retreat so they could bring their families and have a time of fellowship, relationship building and rest.

As I prayed about how to make this all work, the Lord directed me to a step that needed to happen before any of this could work. Churches needed to catch the vision for supporting missionaries in a new way. In this day of instant communication and easy travel to almost anywhere in the world, missionaries often feel isolated. They have traded the known for the unknown. They have left family, friends, and careers to pursue God’s purposes for people they may have never even met. On the occasion that they are able to talk with the people from their old life, they often feel that the world is leaving them behind. They have missed out on big family events. They have lost contact with most of their Church family, and they are usually living on a substantially diminished income. They need an advocate to encourage the Church to pursue them and encourage them.

From this, I came up with a plan to speak to Churches and to their missions’ committees and help them formulate a plan to intentionally involve themselves regularly in the lives of the missionaries they have sent or are financially supporting. It is a must for a missions’ success that the Churches that sent missionaries stay involved in their lives. I equate it with when a child leaves the nest. They may no longer live at home, but they still need to know that they have a family behind them to encourage and support them as they pursue their dreams. The Church needs to do this for missionaries.

I talked to a friend in Guatemala about this and he gave me some good advice on how to pursue this idea. As I went back to the U.S. and started doing what he suggested, I realized that I was premature. I have a desire, a goal that I believe God planted in me, but it is easy to jump the gun. I have continually wanted to jump to the finished product but there are in between steps that I need to take if I am going to be faithful to what God is calling me to, which is to build a network of missionary support, not to replace their missions’ organizations, but to supplement them. The missionary needs their home Church family to be involved and to encourage them as they pursue God’s call on their lives and the Church needs to be involved in outreach on a local level as well as in missions.

I have been sensing God say that the first step is to gather information to support what I am seeing and hearing from many of my friends in the mission field. It is time to collect their stories and share them. The last 2+ years of Covid have created a challenging environment for many of them. Several have even left the field to go back home and work. Many have seen their income dry up and lots of projects put on hold. The teams that used to come and support them have slowed to a trickle. For many, everything they knew pre-pandemic has changed. At the same time, they have continued to adapt and change so they can be faithful to the call God has placed on them.

Over the next few weeks, I would like to solicit stories from missionaries. I am praying for the best way to disseminate them, but I know the Church, as a whole, and not just the local Church that sent them, needs to know what missionaries are doing around the world. There are many people that would help and support ministries because they are doing something close to their heart, but they do not even know they exist. They would love to encourage, support and even work with them but first they have to be made aware of the work and the need.

God often speaks to me through pictures. The most recent picture He gave me was for the body and the role of missions in it. Jesus is the head. We are all parts of the body with our own roles to play. Every role is important but none of them work well if we do not communicate. If the body does not know the needs of one part, not only will that one part suffer, but soon, all the parts around it will suffer too. The central nervous system connects all our body and tells other parts to slow down when one part is suffering. It communicates the need of the foot to the head and every part in between.

I feel God is building a network to build, support and encourage the body. It begins with the various parts sharing their story, their call, and their needs. As one shares, another can offer up the needed support and encouragement to lighten the load of the call and to help carry the burden. Not only has Jesus sent Holy Spirit to encourage, guide and comfort us. He has called us to come together and support one another. Networking is a key part of Kingdom life. I feel He is saying that now is time to develop the network, the nervous system of the body so every part can be well supplied and strengthened.

Stay tuned for stories from missionaries in the near future.

A Relentless Pursuit

 For many years I have seen everything God created in the natural as merely a metaphor for the spiritual truth that is just beyond our grasp. He did not just create man for relationship but also to write the story of truth. Within the Trinity there exists a oneness that wanted to find expression and we are the result of that desire. In man, God created a bride for the Son. The Father created Adam and then Eve to give a picture of His desire for the Son. When He created Eve He said that it is not good for man to be alone. That is an expression of a Father's heart for the Son He loves. Marriage was created to reveal eternal spiritual truths.

The last few days I have been feeling like I had missed a big truth about this. Song of Solomon is an early expression of the Gospel. There is a woman, She longs for a man that she sees as perfect and unattainable because she sees herself as lowly and broken. Her family does not value her and her friends often seem to mock her.

One day she catches the eye of the man and He is smitten by her. He pursues her relentlessly. She will let him come close only to run away and hide. She can't see how she possibly has value enough to attract the attention of such a prefect suitor. She even dreams that she has him and then he leaves and hides from her. In her dream she searches everywhere only to come up empty.

The man continually speaks to her of her beauty and worth. He reminds her of his desire for her and all of the things he loves about her. While some of the encouragements seem strange to us today, there is no mistaking that they are words of passion for a bride. The man will not stop until he secures the love of the one he loves. He will do anything to have her.

This is the Gospel in 8 chapters. Jesus came to earth and paid a great price to have a bride for himself. He lifted us from our pit. He spoke a new identity over us and then He sacrificed His own life to redeem His beloved. He promised to never leave or forsake His bride and then He went to prepare a place for her to live and a wedding feast to celebrate love.

We are to quick to build a religious framework and fill it with theological systems to explain a love story. From beginning of time until its conclusion, we are living the story of a man pursuing His love and redeeming her. The Gospel is not just good news that we can be saved from hell. That is too small to be the Gospel. The Gospel is that Jesus came to redeem us from our broken, sinful existence, fill us with the life of God, adopt us into the Father's family, make us co-heirs with Jesus and become an eternal bride for the King. The Gospel is that we have a hope and a future beyond our wildest imagination and it is paid for by the blood of the one that is pursuing us relentlessly.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [Heb 12:1-2 ESV] 

Our right response to this pursuit is to lay down all the broken and false identities we have clothed ourselves in and become the one we were created and redeemed to become. The bride is the joy set before Jesus that these verses is talking about. It is not just His reunification with the Father. He never had to leave the throne to have that. It is the restoration of His beloved. Jesus gave Himself to buy us back because we bring Him joy.

It is a mistake to say the Bible is just about Jesus. It is the story of a God in Pursuit of His love. He relentlessly pursues because He knew that we were the joy of His heart. He lowered Himself to us so He could eternally raise us up with Him. Don't think you can belittle the bride or demean her place in the heart of Jesus and think you can call it humility. To try and minimize the role of the bride in the story is to reject the Heart of the Bridegroom. We must learn to love and cherish what He loves even when we do not see her yet in the splendor He created her for. 

Song of Solomon is a great lens through which to view the Gospel.

So Easily Distracted

 God has been speaking to me a lot lately about how easily distr..........Squirrel.............distracted I am. It may not seem like that big a deal. Everyone is trying to multitask these days and we go on rabbit trails quite easily but, with the number of times he has brought it to my attention lately it seems to be something I need to look at and maybe deal with too.

Because I do much of my reading on electronic devices, notifications popping up is a real issue. I use Blue Letter Bible on my computer because it has so many helpful tools. I read on my tablet because my Bible weighs 4,000 pounds. Because these both have active internet connections, it does not take a lot to distract from what I am doing. If I do not discipline myself and ignore the notifications as they pop up, I can be derailed quickly. It seems like they always pop up at really inopportune times also, like maybe it is a planned diversion just as Holy Spirit is about to open up something important.

I am not against electronic devices and they have made it much easier to dig deeper into passages of Scripture but I am seeing the need for self discipline in using them. There are other distractions to. The phone rings. We get bored and turn on the TV. None of these things is evil, on their own but they all are distractions. We need to take control of the things that distract us if we ever want to go to the place God is leading. We need to stay sensitive to His leading and be ready to walk away from the distraction as soon as we recognize that God may have something else for us.

So often, when I think of disobedience, I think of overt sin. Obviously the person that is caught up in alcoholism, drug abuse, deviant sexual practices, pornography, or even gossip and lying are being disobedient. But, lately God has been pointing out that when I get distracted and stop listening for His voice, I am disobedient too. I can only obey what I hear. While I can know the principles of God from the Bible, obedience requires knowing His current activity. It requires living a life in tune with the Spirit. It is really hard to do that when I am spending a day watching TV or surfing the net. 

Many years ago I read the book Practicing His Presence which is a combination of the writings of Brother Lawrence from the 1600 and Frank Laubach from 400 years later. They talk about learning to hear God's voice in the moment. Brother Lawrence said that he didn't like to go to morning vespers because they disrupted his day and he could feel as close to God in the kitchen scrubbing pots and pans as he did in the chapel. He shared how he practiced turning his thoughts to God every hour and eventually, every minute.

I have to say, I do not have a hard time hearing God when I work but all the electronic distractions are different. I am convinced they are more sinister than many of the things they carry. We reject much of the evil they bring into our homes outright but yet, we embrace the distractions. Watching a movie is not in itself wrong. On the other hand, putting ourselves in a place that we cannot hear the voice of God is. Paul called us to pray at all times. We are to keep our channel of communication with God open. If we cannot watch TV or be online while remaining sensitive to His voice, the distraction needs to go.

I want to issue a challenge to you, one that I am currently trying myself. Write down what God is speaking to you once an hour. While you are reading, watching TV, talking to others, having a quiet time with God, whatever the activity, just write down what he is saying. Record your activity at that time also. Look for a pattern. See if there are things that make it harder for you to hear His voice, Then ask Him for the discipline and self control to walk away from those things that are merely distractions.

Hearing His voice is the most important thing we can do. In Him is all wisdom. He has the words of life. Apart from receiving these from Him, we may be very religious but we are not living in relationship to the living God. I need to become distraction free and let the sound of His voice lead me at all times.

A Life of Fastination

 This morning, at 5, I felt God speak to me. He was pointing out that I had settled for a life of lessor fascinations. I can get sidetracked and distracted by so many things. I will be reading the Bible and go to https://www.blueletterbible.org/ and look up something I had a question about and before you know it, I am scrolling my Facebook wall or searching some unrelated topic on Google. I can get fascinated by the most minor, irrelevant to my life things and spend hours reading about them. It does not seem to matter. Almost any topic is fodder for my fascination.

Then I felt like He was challenging me. Why was I not equally fascinated with Him. If God is beyond my comprehension and He has all power and authority, all wisdom and truth are found in Him, how can I not spend every waking moment pondering His greatness? How can I not be consumed with thoughts of Him? It took me a while to ponder this. These are great questions. How can I spend so much time looking at things that don't matter a bit to my life at the expense of the one thing that is of ultimate importance? To be clear, I do try to give time to God and His word every day. What He was challenging me on was much more than this.

It took me a while to think and pray about this. I did not have a quick answer but when the answer hit me, it hit hard. I have settled for easy answers about God and His nature because then I can play the expert. If I limit my thoughts of God to a manageable size and timeframe, then I can be confident of the things I know. I like certainty and by placing limits, I can be certain that I am right. I can even be certain that those who disagree with me are wrong. I can pull out verses to agree with my position and dismiss those that you counter with as being out of context.

The challenge I felt was to give up certainty so I could step into something bigger, so I could step into the life of Jesus as Holy Spirit leads. Not quenching the Spirit has a lot to do with laying down all of our preconceptions so He can lead wherever He wants. He desires to challenge us in the areas we have put limitations on Him. He is tearing down the fortress I have built to defend Him so that He can teach me to allow Holy Spirit to defend Jesus, even when He is using my mouth to do it.

The problem is that I have to overcome my religious prejudices. Denominational thinking has corrupted my vision. I have learned to see God through a lens that is not His. I have rejected the things that fell outside the scope of my teaching. Doing this allowed me to master the subject matter. It also create a divide between me and other members of the body that had a different perspective. It hindered my ability to learn from them. God began to deal with this years ago when I started reading books from a lot of others that came from different backgrounds and learned from them. Today, He just blew my wrong mindset apart. He pointed out how much more there is to learn and understand. I am learning that the picture is bigger than I can see and sometimes, these others can add an important perspective that I have not seen before.

Man's thoughts about God will always fall short. Our doctrines will always be insufficient to fully explain who God is and what He does. There will always be more if we keep our hearts and minds open. God is calling us (me) to a life of fascination. He is so much more than I have allowed Him to be. He desires our fellowship with Him to be anchored in truth but that truth is more than we can fathom. We need to get out of the limits of our minds and allow ourselves the freedom to be led by the Spirit wherever He goes. We can trust that we have a Father that will protect us from falsehood. We have a Holy Spirit that is guiding us into all truth. Jesus is interceding for us. It is safe to explore with Him.

All of this does not mean that we can reject absolutes. God never changes. He is who He has always been. He does not mute part of His character to emphasize a different aspect of it. He is not balanced. He is infinite and eternal.  He is fully who He is. His love and judgment are not in conflict. He does not have to set His justice aside to show mercy. He is God and all of Him is in harmony. He is not compartmentalized. He is just more than we can grasp. Our explanations of Him are something less than the truth.

I want to challenge you today to listen to a teacher that you disagree with. Don't listen to critique. Listen to be taught. Ask Holy Spirit to teach you something new about God that you have never grasped. Allow Him alone to set off warning bells of falsehood. At the same time, allow Him to reveal truth that you have not grasped before. Don't try and judge the message or the teacher but ask Him for discernment. Let Him speak truth and reveal Himself as more. When we do this, we might just be surprised to learn that not only is God bigger than we have allowed but that a lot of people we disagree with know things that we don't. They have insight we don't.

Fascination with God begins with our recognition that we don't know everything about Him. It then recognizes the value of the insight and discernment of other parts of the body and concludes with humility. We can begin to explore the greatness and the bigness of God in new way. This exploration will draw us deeper into fascination with Him. The cycle will grow as we realize how little we actually grasp of God. Getting to know Him is an eternal project so we can't possibly be content with what we can learn of Him in our 80 years.

In Rev 4 we see the response of the elders and the angels around the throne of God. They, for all eternity live in this fascination. It is enough for them to bow in worship and proclaim His greatness for all eternity. We give Him 20, 30 or even 60 minutes a day and think we know Him. We know in part. We prophecy in part. Now we see in a mirror dimly. Then we will fully know just as we have been fully known. Let's give ourselves fully to fascination with what we cannot fully grasp and humble ourselves to admit we only know the few things we know.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 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. [1Co 13:9-12 ESV]

Follow Me (As I Follow Christ)

 

For many years, I missed the call of the Jesus on my life. I had lots of ideas and thought that I was doing a good job. I tried to do the things I thought I was supposed to but, in reality, they were just my thoughts and they didn't reveal Jesus in a very good light much of the time. They put demands on me and on others that were not from God. I would like to share some of those wrong thoughts.

I am responsible to save people. I should share the Gospel because it is good news for all men. People must get saved. I am just responsible to share the Gospel. At times, people might get saved but the outcome is not my concern. As soon as I make the outcome my reason for sharing, rather than the simple obedience to Jesus to tell others, I have stepped into Holy Spirit's role. Jesus said that if He was lifted up, He would draw all men to Himself. Just to avoid confusion, the following verse shows He was talking about His being killed on  the cross. While we are to share the truth. It is Jesus that is drawing men to Himself. Our job is just to be newsmen that report what we have seen, heard and experienced in Christ.

I am responsible too point out all the sins that separate lost people from God. People are not lost because they sin. They sin because they are separated from God and it is their natural state. Nobody goes to hell because they lied or stole, killed or gossiped. Sure, all of those things are outside of the will of God for them but that is not what separates them from Him. They do those things because they are separated from Him and those things, or at least some of them come naturally. Our desire for control and independence are what separates us from God. The author of Hebrews said that we cannot please God apart from faith. (Heb 11:6) Convicting the world of sin is Holy Spirit's job. Our job is to point people to faith in Jesus and His desire for relationship with them. Their specific sins are a secondary issue to their fallen nature.

(There are times were are to confront those in the Church about specific sin but that is as God gives us wisdom .We are not confronting from our offense. We are just letting Him speak through us the words that He has already said to those who have not heard it when He spoke to them.)

I am responsible to do a lot of things and serve people so they can see what it looks like to be a hard working follower of Jesus. I am called to serve but not for these reasons or in the way that showcases my hard work. I am to walk with Jesus as He walked with the Father. When I walk with Him, He will reveal His activity and invite me to join, just as He did the disciples 2,000 years ago. He is still at work and I am just here to be the physical manifestation of His love in ways that people can see Him. After all, our best efforts fall short of meeting the needs but He is sufficient in every way and He allows us to be there with Him as He works through us so we can experience His presence and others can see Him.

I am responsible to know everything, to be able to answer every question. If I can't, I look foolish. The reality is that nobody knows everything. God only reveals to us the things He needs for us to know. He allows us to search out other things but not so we can be affirmed by knowledge. He actually created us to need one another and he uses our lack of knowledge in some areas to make us dependent on others. Our need for one another creates a bond, a bond that he intended since the beginning when He created Adam and Eve differently. Their differences, when combined created a whole. The two shall become one flesh. Apart, they would both come up short. God said of Adam that it was not good for man to be alone and today, that is still true. I can't know everything but I was never supposed to.

If I am not supposed to save everyone. convict everyone, be a slave to everyone's needs or know everything, what am I supposed to do? I think that two commands of Jesus to His disciples answer that question for us today. First He said follow Me and I will make you fishers of men (Mt 4:19) and then He told His disciples to go and make disciples (Mt 28:19-20)

The first part of this is that we are called to become disciples. A lot of people want to reduce that to way less than it is. To many, being a disciple is just about gathering all of the information that they can. They believe that all they need is a good knowledge of Scripture but if that was true, Jesus would have made the Scribes and Priests His disciples. They would have had a head start. Instead He chose uneducated fishermen, a tax collector, and an anti Rome protestor. He did not just give them information but He gave them 3 years of His life. They saw all He did and heard all He said. They understood that He did nothing apart from the Father's plan. He lived moment by moment by entering in to the activity of His Father and did not do or say anything more. A disciple is a person that learns by living with and walking side by side with the master as He teaches.

Second, He called us to make disciples. Many have said that was just for the original 12 but both Jesus and Paul refute that. In Mt 28:20 He told the disciples to teach their disciples to do all He had commanded them. They were to make disciples of the whole earth. Paul, in 2 Tim 2 told his disciples to teach others all that they had learned from him and that those people were to continue in perpetuity. Disciples making disciples is God's plan for all believers for all time. It goes beyond all the activities we think of and creates relationship. We are to live life with people in a way that they come to understand how they are to walk out this life of faith in Jesus.

Some think it is arrogant to expect people follow them but Paul said in Phil 4:9 and 1 Cor 11:1 to follow his example. To do and teach the things they had learned from him. Paul understood that the Kingdom was like a family. In his day, a son would work with and under his father to learn the family trade. Then they would teach their sons in the some way. To be a disciple is to be an apprentice. You work alongside the master until you have mastered your trade. Once you are a master, you look for your apprentice. The kingdom is passed down from generation to generation and it is to continue this way until Jesus returns.

We are called to be disciples who make disciples. We are to live a life of submission to God and His purposes as we have been taught by those who discipled us. We have seen the example of their lives and how they brought glory to God as they walked in humility. The end result is that Jesus is seen and glorified and we get to stand back and marvel at what He was able to do with our short 50, 60, or 70 years. We are just a blip on the screen in the big picture but if we become disciples who make disciples, we can see Jesus change the picture for millions into eternity. 

By the way, unlike the picture above, we don't draw the attention to ourselves. A disciple of Jesus will always divert the attention back on Him because they know that He is the one that ultimately deserves all the attention and all the glory.