John 6:66 - At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.
It is easy for us to think that had we been one of those in that crowd hearing His words and seeing his works, we would recognize Christ as the Son of God, but I’m not always so sure. Jesus’ words in the synagogue at Capernaum were extreme, to say the least.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." (John 6:47-58)
Taken literally these words are confusing at best, morbid at worst. But Christ clarifies later when he explains in verse 63:
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
When we live in Christ, all we are comes from the Holy Spirit. The flesh is irrelevant. Nothing we do in the physical can make us more holy or closer to God. We have to accept all that the Holy Spirit offers and give ourselves to that which Christ calls us to. We must seek that which Christ would have for us, and once we find it, it is then that we must decide: Are we a disciple or are we a deserter?
Sometimes what God calls us to may seem confusing. Sometimes it may seem too hard or all but impossible. But the question remains the same. Am I a disciple or am I a deserter?
Suffice it to say, whatever God has called us to, He will equip us to do it. It doesn’t matter if we “feel” up to the task or if we think we are capable of doing what God has asked of us. Our capabilities are irrelevant when God is the one doing the asking – our feelings are even more irrelevant. God often calls us out of our weakness so that HE gets the glory. We are simply to be obedient, and God will meet us in our obedience. His Spirit will equip us to do whatever it is He has called us to in ways we may not even consider “in our flesh.” We simply need to turn our face towards God and keep our focus solely on Him. He will guide us down the path He calls us to. Chambers says:
When God gives a vision by His Spirit through his word of what He wants, and your mind and soul thrill to it, if you do not walk in the light of that vision (1 John 1:7), you will sink into servitude to a point of view which Our Lord never had. Disobedience in mind (Acts 26:19) to the heavenly vision will make you a slave to points of view that are alien to Jesus Christ.
Whatever it is that we feel called to, we must pursue it under the bright light of the Gospel. It is when we depart from God’s word, even under the best of our human intentions, that we find ourselves in trouble. We must never abandon our service to God for service to a project – even a seemingly Godly one. Countless people have been swallowed up and disillusioned by misguided service – by service that started out firmly under the leadership of God, but eventually came to be taken over by human ambition.
As much as we are called to keep our personal intentions in line, Chambers warns us against comparing or supposing upon the intentions of others. He says:
Do not look at someone else and say – Well, if he can have those views and prosper, why cannot I? You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you and not compare yourself with others or judge them, that is between them and God.
Over the last year, I’ve have prayed regularly that God would not only reveal His plan for me, but that He would keep my motivations purely focused on bringing glory to Him. But through that, I have to admit, that I have a tendency to suppose I have some insight into the motivations of others, and THAT is as unbiblical as having impure motivations myself.
When I was growing up, there was a couple in our church, we’ll call them Ted and Sheryl, who seemed to take every opportunity to announce that they were faithful tithers and gave extra to special missions. Any time there was a meeting of members – regardless of the number in attendance or purpose of the gathering, at some point it was guaranteed that Ted would stand up and “mention” the faithfulness and volume of their sacrificial giving. I always found these announcements somewhat self-serving – a bit of “blowing their own horn” to elevate their own status amongst the members and emphasize how “holy” they were. While I was raised that tithing was important – that you always gave 10% off the top, before anything else – I never remember my parents announcing this habit to anyone in a meeting. Since those years with Ted and Sheryl, I admit that anytime I hear anyone announce that they tithe (unless it is in the context of a discussion where this revelation serves to inspire or encourage), I get a little suspicious. I immediately find myself attributing negative self-serving motivations for this disclosure. But this attribution on my part is, in and of itself, just as bad as the impure motivation I’m criticizing.
I realized that I truly have no idea what was in Ted’s mind or heart during these announcements. Perhaps he sought to encourage others in the church to do as he was doing – tithers in a congregation are often, sadly, the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps he thought that if he told people what he was doing others would be inspired – or challenged – to do the same. Regardless - even if he was seeking to make himself look good to those around him - it simply shouldn’t matter to me. His motivations, and those of any others who make similar announcements are not to be fodder for my judgments. Other people's motivations are not my concern. That is between them and God. Rather I need to focus on my own issues and shortcomings. There are plenty of “logs” in my own eye that need attention, attention that can’t be given if I’m focused on the splinters in the eyes of others.
As God brings my purpose to light, my job is simply to follow that light and seek after Him, and Him alone, through His word.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
October 14, 2009 THE KEY TO THE MISSIONARY
Matthew 28: 18-20 - And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
The basis of missionary appeals is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the heathen. We are apt to look upon Our Lord as One Who assists us in our enterprises for God. Our Lord puts himself as the absolute sovereign supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say the heathen will be lost if we do not go: He simply says – “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” Go on the revelation of My sovereignty; teach and preach out of a living experience of Me.
Chambers points out a subtle but critically important point about the missionary call. Before Christ says anything else to His disciples, He says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The matter is not that we are to save the lost, but that we are to obey Christ by witnessing to them. “Saving” them is God’s bit; we are called to simply share Christ in a real way that reflects who He is and all He has called us to. Jesus is not to be relegated to the role of one who simply “assists us in our enterprises for God.” He IS the enterprise! He is the Almighty God! Some months ago our pastor brought up the “God is my Copilot” bumper stickers and pointed out how THAT mentality is the problem for many of us. We’ve relegated God to the passenger seat, while we see ourselves as the one really running the show. This mindset flies in the face of what Christ says here in verse 18: “All authority has been given to me.” Jesus didn’t say “All authority has been given to YOU and I’ll be here if you need me” – and yet, how often do we live out our Christian walk just that way?
Chambers goes on to say:
If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him for myself, and how to get alone with Him; I must take time to worship the Being Whose Name I bear.
Whether we are called to witness for Christ in the African Jungle, the Corporate Jungle or simply to the people we come in contact with each day in our communities, we must first and foremost KNOW HIM. This means time spent alone with the Savior in prayer and in worship. If we aren’t spending time alone with Him, our efforts to be an adequate and an accurate witness will be disappointing at best.
For several years I waited tables, and I am very sad to say that the shift dreaded above all others was Sunday brunch. The “after church crowd” would descend on the restaurant in droves and come 12:30 the restaurant would be packed with the faithful. It was common topic of conversation amonst the primarily unchurched serve staff that this group above all others was often difficult, demanding – and notoriously stingy with their tips. Perhaps the greatest puzzle to me at the time was how an hour of edification in the presence of the Lord could put people in such a dreadful mood. Exasperated parents corralling unruly children and the demanding middle aged man seated at the end of the table with his Bible occupying a seat next to him, barking orders as if I were unworthy of civility. Not to mention the server’s favorite: the little piece of paper that at a glance appeared to be a $20 bill, but when picked up, it was actually a tract. “You were probably disappointed when you realized that this wasn’t really money” it said “but this message is more valuable than any amount of money you can imagine” (unless there is a real $20 visibly tucked in this little gem, I guarantee you it is thrown away without a thought to the message contained inside). Most of those customers probably didn’t (and don’t) realize that their “brunch” is all of Jesus many people will ever see. And the “witness” I received during all those Sundays is part of the reason I steered clear of the church for so long.
Our LIVES are our witness. Our true witness occurs not in the church parking lot, but in the parking lot of the restaurant we eat in after church. In the department store when the clerk is overworked and overwhelmed and we have to wait in line longer than we’d like to. In the grocery store when our items don’t ring up for the sale price. In the park when we are playing with our children. At the ballgame. Even at work. As Christians we must be keenly aware of the witness we provide, because we are always providing one whether it is one that truly reflects the grace and love of our Lord or not.
To provide a true witness of our Lord, as Chambers says, we must know Him for ourselves. We must spend time alone with Him, and take the time to worship Him. Only then can we hope to reflect who He truly is.
The basis of missionary appeals is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the heathen. We are apt to look upon Our Lord as One Who assists us in our enterprises for God. Our Lord puts himself as the absolute sovereign supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say the heathen will be lost if we do not go: He simply says – “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” Go on the revelation of My sovereignty; teach and preach out of a living experience of Me.
Chambers points out a subtle but critically important point about the missionary call. Before Christ says anything else to His disciples, He says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The matter is not that we are to save the lost, but that we are to obey Christ by witnessing to them. “Saving” them is God’s bit; we are called to simply share Christ in a real way that reflects who He is and all He has called us to. Jesus is not to be relegated to the role of one who simply “assists us in our enterprises for God.” He IS the enterprise! He is the Almighty God! Some months ago our pastor brought up the “God is my Copilot” bumper stickers and pointed out how THAT mentality is the problem for many of us. We’ve relegated God to the passenger seat, while we see ourselves as the one really running the show. This mindset flies in the face of what Christ says here in verse 18: “All authority has been given to me.” Jesus didn’t say “All authority has been given to YOU and I’ll be here if you need me” – and yet, how often do we live out our Christian walk just that way?
Chambers goes on to say:
If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him for myself, and how to get alone with Him; I must take time to worship the Being Whose Name I bear.
Whether we are called to witness for Christ in the African Jungle, the Corporate Jungle or simply to the people we come in contact with each day in our communities, we must first and foremost KNOW HIM. This means time spent alone with the Savior in prayer and in worship. If we aren’t spending time alone with Him, our efforts to be an adequate and an accurate witness will be disappointing at best.
For several years I waited tables, and I am very sad to say that the shift dreaded above all others was Sunday brunch. The “after church crowd” would descend on the restaurant in droves and come 12:30 the restaurant would be packed with the faithful. It was common topic of conversation amonst the primarily unchurched serve staff that this group above all others was often difficult, demanding – and notoriously stingy with their tips. Perhaps the greatest puzzle to me at the time was how an hour of edification in the presence of the Lord could put people in such a dreadful mood. Exasperated parents corralling unruly children and the demanding middle aged man seated at the end of the table with his Bible occupying a seat next to him, barking orders as if I were unworthy of civility. Not to mention the server’s favorite: the little piece of paper that at a glance appeared to be a $20 bill, but when picked up, it was actually a tract. “You were probably disappointed when you realized that this wasn’t really money” it said “but this message is more valuable than any amount of money you can imagine” (unless there is a real $20 visibly tucked in this little gem, I guarantee you it is thrown away without a thought to the message contained inside). Most of those customers probably didn’t (and don’t) realize that their “brunch” is all of Jesus many people will ever see. And the “witness” I received during all those Sundays is part of the reason I steered clear of the church for so long.
Our LIVES are our witness. Our true witness occurs not in the church parking lot, but in the parking lot of the restaurant we eat in after church. In the department store when the clerk is overworked and overwhelmed and we have to wait in line longer than we’d like to. In the grocery store when our items don’t ring up for the sale price. In the park when we are playing with our children. At the ballgame. Even at work. As Christians we must be keenly aware of the witness we provide, because we are always providing one whether it is one that truly reflects the grace and love of our Lord or not.
To provide a true witness of our Lord, as Chambers says, we must know Him for ourselves. We must spend time alone with Him, and take the time to worship Him. Only then can we hope to reflect who He truly is.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
October 13, 2009 INDIVIDUAL DISCOURAGEMENT AND PERSONAL ENLARGEMENT
Exodus 2:11-12 - One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
Moses had compassion for his people. His passionate concern for their suffering drove him to seek a way to deliver them from it, but his act of “deliverance” (murder) was not God’s will nor was it God’s timing – it was an act of passion and not of obedience, and as a result Moses was forced to go into hiding to save his life. This “exile” of sorts lasted 40 years – and then God called him to actually do the thing he’d felt called to all along. Chambers explains:
We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing, then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call...
God gave Moses this passion for his people and a call to deliver them, but he decided to try to do it in his own strength and his own timing rather than waiting on God to lead him. Whenever we try to do God’s work in our own strength – and our own timing – the results are always disastrous. It is then that he may take us back a bit, humble us, exile us, and then, if we allow Him to do His work in us, he will revive the call.
I believe that God equips us with passions that inspire us to pursue the calling he’s placed on our hearts – some people have a passion for the lost, some for youth, some for the homeless, some the unborn – wherever we find our passions I think our calling is close by. But when we catch that glimpse of our “divine purpose” we need to take care that we are first and foremost on our knees before the Savior. The temptation may be to rush into the thing and work it as best we can in our own strength, but this is never what God calls us to do. We have to be willing to seek God before our own desires and allow HIS will to motivate us and not our personal agendas. We simply can’t effectively serve God in our own power and if we try, he will allow us to fall and send us into our own “forty-year exile.” Chambers says:
We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God. We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision – “This is what God wants me to do”; but we have not got into God’s stride.
The key is always to get “into God’s stride” and that stride is as important as the call itself. Have we tried and failed? We must pull ourselves into the presence of God, allow Him to do what He will in us and wait for Him to revive that call. He will, in His timing!
October 12, 2009 GETTING INTO GOD’S STRIDE
Genesis 5:24a - Enoch walked with God…
The test of a man’s religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting on. The worth of a man is revealed in his attitude to ordinary things when he is not before the footlights.
The truth about the state of our faith is revealed not on Sunday morning when we sit in church clean and scrubbed and on our best behavior, but rather in our living rooms on Saturday night, in traffic on Monday morning and in the office on Wednesday afternoon. If we were to honestly answer the question: “How do I live out my faith day to day?” does our answer extend beyond where we spend our Sunday mornings?
A runner runs every day, not just on race day. Every day reflects the preparation for that race – the food he eats, the sleep he gets, the training he does. The runner runs whether people are watching or not, whether it is raining or not, whether it is cold or hot. The runner knows that if he wants to be ready for the race, he’s got to do more than simply show up on race day in the right outfit.
Our faith is the same. We have to practice it every single day. Our God is an every day God and our faith should permeate even the most insignificant minutiae of our daily life. We are called to walk with Him regardless of our feelings or our circumstances - or our audience. Sometimes we begin to see our “religious life” as a performance – our “spirituality” becomes a coat we put on or take off dependent upon those around us, but when we do this we are confusing a religion with a relationship. Our “religious life” is a living, breathing relationship with the Almighty God! A God who wants to walk with us through the simplest of our day-to-day tasks, and when we learn to walk with Him through the ordinary times, we are infinitely more prepared for those extraordinary times he may call us to.
Chambers provides further insight:
[God] has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined into His ways. It was said of Jesus – “He shall not fail nor be discouraged,” because He never worked from His own individual standpoint but always from the standpoint of His Father and we have to learn to do the same.
How true this is! We DO need to recognize that many times our plans are nothing more than an inhibition to Gods plans. We often think that WE know the best way to go about something, or that WE know the best timing, the best plan, and we can soon find ourselves second-guessing the wisdom of an all-knowing infinite God – I think we’ve ALL done that. Consider how different the Messiah was from what the Jews expected Him to be. They envisioned him arriving on a fiery horse, overthrowing the Roman Government and claiming the kingdom for the Jews. But God’s plan was not to free them from a political oppression, but a spiritual one! Many did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah because they were so sure they knew what God would do, that they were unable to accept what he actually did when it differed from their expectations. How many of us are so handicapped by our preconceived notions of how God will act, that we fail to see His hand at work right in front of us?
We simply have to learn to live life from the standpoint of the Father – and live it every day.
Friday, October 9, 2009
October 9, 2009 PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER
Romans 6:13 - Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.
When we read this verse, we must be keenly aware of what it is really asking of us. The first part of the verse asks us not to allow any part of our bodies to “become an instrument of evil to serve sin.” It is our rationale and our love of symmetry that wants us to make the second part of this verse say “but allow your bodies to be an instrument of good to serve righteousness.” But that isn’t quite what it says. What it says first and foremost is “give yourselves completely to God.” The most important point here is not what good we might do for the sake of righteousness, but rather that we surrender ourselves to the Lord that he might do HIS work through us. What is the difference? It is a significant difference indeed. The former has us as nothing more than “good-deed-doers,” constantly seeking those “works” WE determine as righteous and good. The latter has us surrendered to God first, and doing only that which He would have us do for HIS glory. The former gives us too much credit for our ability to discern what needs doing. The latter gives God the power to direct us in our walk.
Chambers says beautifully what we need to take from this verse:
I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot atone for sin; I cannot redeem the world; I cannot make right what is wrong, pure what is impure, holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God. Have I faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made a perfect Atonement, am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The great need is not to do things, but to believe things (emphasis mine).
When we truly believe what Christ has done for us, the outflow of that inevitably is altered behavior, but we must focus first on this sovereign work of God and allow his work in us to impact our actions. If we simply focus on the behavior aspect without dealing with the issue of our hearts, we are following a legalistic approach to religion and we aren’t saved through legalism, but by grace.
When we read this verse, we must be keenly aware of what it is really asking of us. The first part of the verse asks us not to allow any part of our bodies to “become an instrument of evil to serve sin.” It is our rationale and our love of symmetry that wants us to make the second part of this verse say “but allow your bodies to be an instrument of good to serve righteousness.” But that isn’t quite what it says. What it says first and foremost is “give yourselves completely to God.” The most important point here is not what good we might do for the sake of righteousness, but rather that we surrender ourselves to the Lord that he might do HIS work through us. What is the difference? It is a significant difference indeed. The former has us as nothing more than “good-deed-doers,” constantly seeking those “works” WE determine as righteous and good. The latter has us surrendered to God first, and doing only that which He would have us do for HIS glory. The former gives us too much credit for our ability to discern what needs doing. The latter gives God the power to direct us in our walk.
Chambers says beautifully what we need to take from this verse:
I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot atone for sin; I cannot redeem the world; I cannot make right what is wrong, pure what is impure, holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God. Have I faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made a perfect Atonement, am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The great need is not to do things, but to believe things (emphasis mine).
When we truly believe what Christ has done for us, the outflow of that inevitably is altered behavior, but we must focus first on this sovereign work of God and allow his work in us to impact our actions. If we simply focus on the behavior aspect without dealing with the issue of our hearts, we are following a legalistic approach to religion and we aren’t saved through legalism, but by grace.
October 8, 2009 THE EXCLUSIVENESS OF CHRIST
Matthew 11:28 - Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
So simple and yet so difficult – Christ calls us simply to come. We don’t need to prepare, we don’t need to dress up, put on makeup or vacuum the dog hair off the couch. We just need to come to him, transparent and open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Yet so often we just won’t. We cling to our struggles and miseries, seemingly unwilling to let them go. Chambers says:
In every degree in which you are not real, you will dispute rather than come, you will quibble rather than come, you will go through sorrow rather than come, you will do anything rather than come the last lap of unutterable foolishness – “Just as I am.” As long as you have the tiniest bit of spiritual impertinence, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do a big thing, and all He is telling you to do is to “come.”
It is a bit like a woman in a bad relationship. She knows it is terrible, but she knows it. She knows what to expect there. She knows what it is and how it goes. To abandon it is to seek the unknown - sometimes the known misery is somehow more palatable than the unknown mystery. “What if I end up all alone?” she wonders. And in contemplating changing my life and living out my faith, sometimes I’ve wondered “What if I end up all alone?” My husband once said “I never want to be the guy who when I walk up to the group, everyone else stops talking” and admittedly, I’ve never wanted that either. There are always “reasons” we can stay the course we’ve chosen apart from Christ: fear, pride, selfishness, but the truth is that we will never find what we are looking for until we answer that call to come – simply come to Christ and he will give you rest.
“Come unto Me.” When you hear those words you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, anything at all that will put the axe at the root of the thing which is preventing you from getting through.
So what is it that holds us back from coming to Christ? It isn’t just the “unsaved” that need to answer this question. Even as believers, many times we hold back from truly submitting to Christ – we come to Him, but only so far. We try to give “just enough,” to do “just enough,” but if we seek the peace and rest Christ offers, “just enough” is everything we have and are. The Holy Spirit will show us what we are clinging to, and sometimes we want to ignore it and pretend we don’t sense what it is, but when we are honest with ourselves, we always know what it is that is holding us back, and until we are willing to “put the axe at the root of the thing” we won’t experience the fullness of our relationship with God. Chambers closes saying:
…God has stood with outstretched hands not only to take you, but for you to take Him. Think of the invincible, unconquerable, unwearying patience of Jesus – “Come unto Me.”
God never gives up on us. Jesus never turns His back and says “Too Late!” He waits for us, with outstretched arms, offering all He is for all we are. There is nothing we have that is more precious than what He is offering us – nothing we cling to in this world even comes close to what He offers us in exchange. The peace and rest of Christ awaits us if we will simply answer His call “come to Me.”
So simple and yet so difficult – Christ calls us simply to come. We don’t need to prepare, we don’t need to dress up, put on makeup or vacuum the dog hair off the couch. We just need to come to him, transparent and open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Yet so often we just won’t. We cling to our struggles and miseries, seemingly unwilling to let them go. Chambers says:
In every degree in which you are not real, you will dispute rather than come, you will quibble rather than come, you will go through sorrow rather than come, you will do anything rather than come the last lap of unutterable foolishness – “Just as I am.” As long as you have the tiniest bit of spiritual impertinence, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do a big thing, and all He is telling you to do is to “come.”
It is a bit like a woman in a bad relationship. She knows it is terrible, but she knows it. She knows what to expect there. She knows what it is and how it goes. To abandon it is to seek the unknown - sometimes the known misery is somehow more palatable than the unknown mystery. “What if I end up all alone?” she wonders. And in contemplating changing my life and living out my faith, sometimes I’ve wondered “What if I end up all alone?” My husband once said “I never want to be the guy who when I walk up to the group, everyone else stops talking” and admittedly, I’ve never wanted that either. There are always “reasons” we can stay the course we’ve chosen apart from Christ: fear, pride, selfishness, but the truth is that we will never find what we are looking for until we answer that call to come – simply come to Christ and he will give you rest.
“Come unto Me.” When you hear those words you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, anything at all that will put the axe at the root of the thing which is preventing you from getting through.
So what is it that holds us back from coming to Christ? It isn’t just the “unsaved” that need to answer this question. Even as believers, many times we hold back from truly submitting to Christ – we come to Him, but only so far. We try to give “just enough,” to do “just enough,” but if we seek the peace and rest Christ offers, “just enough” is everything we have and are. The Holy Spirit will show us what we are clinging to, and sometimes we want to ignore it and pretend we don’t sense what it is, but when we are honest with ourselves, we always know what it is that is holding us back, and until we are willing to “put the axe at the root of the thing” we won’t experience the fullness of our relationship with God. Chambers closes saying:
…God has stood with outstretched hands not only to take you, but for you to take Him. Think of the invincible, unconquerable, unwearying patience of Jesus – “Come unto Me.”
God never gives up on us. Jesus never turns His back and says “Too Late!” He waits for us, with outstretched arms, offering all He is for all we are. There is nothing we have that is more precious than what He is offering us – nothing we cling to in this world even comes close to what He offers us in exchange. The peace and rest of Christ awaits us if we will simply answer His call “come to Me.”
October 7, 2009 RECONCILIATION
2 Corinthians 5:21 - God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Chambers opens by explaining:
Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God.
His statement is a powerful one that hits at the very core of what we are without Christ. The issue is not simply that we commit sins, but that we are inherently driven to that behavior because of our sinful nature. This is why a legalistic approach to Christianity is so misguided. If we focus on a list of behaviors and think that adherence to those “rules” is the key to redemption, perhaps we don’t really understand why Christ died on the cross at all. Legalism allows us to keep God at arms length and never do the real work – the heart work – that is the foundation for our Christian walk.
Most all of us can live “right” under our own power for a limited time. We can hold our tongues for a day, be patient for an afternoon, but that doesn’t get to the core of WHY we are so driven to the behavior - and that “why” is what Chambers calls “the heredity of sin.”
Talking about “sin” – especially in these days – isn’t very popular. We prefer the relative morality that doesn’t really hurt anybody’s feelings. It’s non-confrontational, non-judgmental and perhaps most of all, undemanding. We can excuse any number of behaviors simply by pointing out our difficult circumstances or less than stellar upbringing, and there is no expectation of us to do or be any better because we are supposedly chained to those behaviors because of our past. But this is not the message of Christ! Jesus died on the cross and took on those sins and when we allow Him to do His work in us, He can free us from those chains!
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17,21)
We claim a new heredity – that of a child of God. When we accept him as our savior, we accept the redemption that Christ did for us on the cross, and that work alone is what saves us. Chambers explains:
A man cannot redeem himself; Redemption is God’s “bit,” it is absolutely finished and complete; its reference to individual men is a question of their individual action. A distinction must always be made between the revelation of Redemption and the conscious experience of salvation in a man’s life.
It is true that our behaviors SHOULD change, but we must never confuse the cause and the effect. That is, we aren’t saved because we claim a list of things we are no longer allowed to do, and another list of things we must do, NO, we change because we allow Christ to do His work on our hearts. My daily prayers are a continual submission of my heart to the Savior, so that He can do His work, and His grace and love will shine through my life.
Chambers opens by explaining:
Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God.
His statement is a powerful one that hits at the very core of what we are without Christ. The issue is not simply that we commit sins, but that we are inherently driven to that behavior because of our sinful nature. This is why a legalistic approach to Christianity is so misguided. If we focus on a list of behaviors and think that adherence to those “rules” is the key to redemption, perhaps we don’t really understand why Christ died on the cross at all. Legalism allows us to keep God at arms length and never do the real work – the heart work – that is the foundation for our Christian walk.
Most all of us can live “right” under our own power for a limited time. We can hold our tongues for a day, be patient for an afternoon, but that doesn’t get to the core of WHY we are so driven to the behavior - and that “why” is what Chambers calls “the heredity of sin.”
Talking about “sin” – especially in these days – isn’t very popular. We prefer the relative morality that doesn’t really hurt anybody’s feelings. It’s non-confrontational, non-judgmental and perhaps most of all, undemanding. We can excuse any number of behaviors simply by pointing out our difficult circumstances or less than stellar upbringing, and there is no expectation of us to do or be any better because we are supposedly chained to those behaviors because of our past. But this is not the message of Christ! Jesus died on the cross and took on those sins and when we allow Him to do His work in us, He can free us from those chains!
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17,21)
We claim a new heredity – that of a child of God. When we accept him as our savior, we accept the redemption that Christ did for us on the cross, and that work alone is what saves us. Chambers explains:
A man cannot redeem himself; Redemption is God’s “bit,” it is absolutely finished and complete; its reference to individual men is a question of their individual action. A distinction must always be made between the revelation of Redemption and the conscious experience of salvation in a man’s life.
It is true that our behaviors SHOULD change, but we must never confuse the cause and the effect. That is, we aren’t saved because we claim a list of things we are no longer allowed to do, and another list of things we must do, NO, we change because we allow Christ to do His work on our hearts. My daily prayers are a continual submission of my heart to the Savior, so that He can do His work, and His grace and love will shine through my life.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
October 6, 2009 THE BENT OF REGENERATION
Galatians 1:15-16 - "But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man.
Chambers calls Christ the “Regenerator,” “One Who can put in me His own heredity of holiness.” Chambers suggests that if Christ calls us to holiness in our own power, it is pointless and cause for despair. But, God has “revealed his Son in me” – that is, we receive Christ’s holiness, we live a holy life through Christ Himself, not through our own power. It is this regeneration in Christ that makes this holy life possible.
Paul tells us that God has called us “by his grace.” It isn’t because of anything we do. We can never earn this grace because our human frailties keep us in a condition of constantly falling short in our efforts. But when we recognize the weakness in ourselves and allow God to do his work in us, we can accomplish anything. One need only consider the massive impact Paul had on the Christian movement. It is difficult to imagine our faith as we know it without the very real impact of this completely human man. He spread the word amongst the Gentiles and wrote much of what was to become the New Testament. Did Paul know in his lifetime what a massive impact his work would have on the future of Christianity? Probably not, but making history was never Paul’s intent. Rather it was his willingness to allow God “to reveal his Son in [him]” that gave Paul’s entire life it’s purpose, and it’s impact.
That said, before God can do a work in us, we must first recognize the need for a work to be done. Chambers explains:
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a man is struck by a sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God, ‘until Christ be formed in you.’…when I reach the frontier of need and know my limitations, Jesus says – ‘Blessed are you.’ But I have to get there. God cannot put into me, a responsible moral being, the disposition that was in Jesus Christ unless I am conscious I need it.
The only limits on what God can do are those we place on Him by refusing to allow Him to do His work in us. When we allow God to bestow upon us Christ’s “heredity of holiness” there is no limit to what God can do through us. Corrie Ten Boom once said “It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.” I must get to a point where I allow God to use me and regenerate me as His child.
Chambers calls Christ the “Regenerator,” “One Who can put in me His own heredity of holiness.” Chambers suggests that if Christ calls us to holiness in our own power, it is pointless and cause for despair. But, God has “revealed his Son in me” – that is, we receive Christ’s holiness, we live a holy life through Christ Himself, not through our own power. It is this regeneration in Christ that makes this holy life possible.
Paul tells us that God has called us “by his grace.” It isn’t because of anything we do. We can never earn this grace because our human frailties keep us in a condition of constantly falling short in our efforts. But when we recognize the weakness in ourselves and allow God to do his work in us, we can accomplish anything. One need only consider the massive impact Paul had on the Christian movement. It is difficult to imagine our faith as we know it without the very real impact of this completely human man. He spread the word amongst the Gentiles and wrote much of what was to become the New Testament. Did Paul know in his lifetime what a massive impact his work would have on the future of Christianity? Probably not, but making history was never Paul’s intent. Rather it was his willingness to allow God “to reveal his Son in [him]” that gave Paul’s entire life it’s purpose, and it’s impact.
That said, before God can do a work in us, we must first recognize the need for a work to be done. Chambers explains:
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a man is struck by a sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God, ‘until Christ be formed in you.’…when I reach the frontier of need and know my limitations, Jesus says – ‘Blessed are you.’ But I have to get there. God cannot put into me, a responsible moral being, the disposition that was in Jesus Christ unless I am conscious I need it.
The only limits on what God can do are those we place on Him by refusing to allow Him to do His work in us. When we allow God to bestow upon us Christ’s “heredity of holiness” there is no limit to what God can do through us. Corrie Ten Boom once said “It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.” I must get to a point where I allow God to use me and regenerate me as His child.
October 2, 2009 THE SPHERE OF HUMILIATION
Mark 9:22b - Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.
After the transfiguration, Jesus, James, Peter and John came down the mountain to find the other disciples involved in an argument with some of the religious teachers and a crowd of onlookers growing around them. When Jesus asks what the argument is about, a man from the crowd speaks up and tells him that he’d brought his son to the disciples to have an evil spirit cast out of him, but that they were unable to do it. Jesus is exasperated with his disciples for their lack of faith, and tells the man to bring the boy to him. When asked about the boy’s condition, the father explains that he’s suffered since he was a small child and that he is often thrown into fire or water, nearly dying. The father begs Jesus “Have mercy on us and help us, if you can” to which Jesus replies:
“What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24)
Jesus immediately rebukes the evil spirit, and the boy is freed.
Peter, James and John had just had a remarkable experience. They’d seen Christ revealed as he truly was and heard the voice of God proclaim His love for Jesus. But there is no time to bask in the glow of their time on the mountain. The minute they rejoin the other disciples they are in the midst of an argument and in the presence of a demon-possessed boy. If they thought the emotional “high” of their experience would continue when they came down the mountain, they were mistaken. And it is no different for us in our spiritual “moments on the mountain.” Chambers explains:
After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they are where it is neither beautiful nor poetic nor thrilling. The height of the mountain top is measure by the drab drudgery of the valley; but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We SEE His glory on the mount, but we never LIVE for His glory there. It is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to God, that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we always at the heroic pitch because of the natural selfishness of our hearts, but God wants us at the drab commonplace pitch, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship to Him.
“We see his glory on the mount, but we never live for His glory there.” Isn’t that so true? I think of my own “spiritual highs” – the times I’ve felt powerfully moved by worship, or felt God’s hand on me during a time of prayer and then find myself jolted to reality by a crying infant and dirty diapers and a stressed out husband and not enough money and, and, and…What am I doing with those mountain top moments when I find myself in the valley of everyday life? I wish I could say that I always rise above, that I always see His purpose in those valley moments. Although I am learning to, I’ve still got a ways to go.
Chambers reminds us that “it is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to God.” When I hear the word “humiliation”, I tend to think of it in terms of profound embarrassment, though I don’t think that is what he means here at all. I believe it is more in terms of humbleness: we need to come down from our inflated sense of entitlement to recognize what and who we are without God. When we can recognize the truth of His grace and how lost we are without it, it is only THEN that we can truly live for His purpose.
There is another message Chambers shows us here – the lesson we learn from the distraught father of the demon-possessed boy. The man wanted Jesus to do something for his son, but wasn’t entirely sure that he could. He’d watched the disciples try and fail – perhaps he was afraid of getting his hopes up, afraid of the disappointment if Jesus also failed him, afraid that his son was simply doomed to live out his life as a prisoner to his affliction. When he expresses uncertainty about Christ’s power, Jesus says “Anything is possible if a person believes.” The father answers with desperate honesty “I believe but help me overcome my unbelief.” Note that Jesus didn’t chastise him for his answer. He didn’t say “well, that’s not good enough, call me back when you have rooted out all of your unbelief.” No, He honored the man’s request. He helped the man with His unbelief and saved his son. We need to approach God with this same raw honesty. We need to say to Him in times of struggle “Jesus, I believe but help me overcome my unbelief!”
It takes the valley of humiliation to root the skepticism out of us. Look back at your own experience, and you will find that until you learned Who Jesus was, you were a cunning skeptic about His power. When you were on the mount, you could believe anything, but what about the time when you were up against facts in the valley?
How true this is! It is easy to spout proverbs and biblical truths in those moments when our lives are rolling along and things are all sunshine and daisies. But when things in our world begin to fall apart a bit, it is THEN that we see who we truly depend on. Do we seek our security in our “stuff,” in our jobs, in our bank accounts, in our relationships or do we believe in Jesus for His promises? When we come to the point where we’ve learned who Jesus is on the mount, we need to remember that He doesn’t change simply because our circumstances have. The times on the mount show us who HE is, the times in the valley show us who WE are. When we allow God to be God and submit ourselves to His plan (because He does have one) it is then that He can do His work in us and for us. We don’t have to come to God with a plastic smile and a perfect faith – He knows the depths of our struggles. We must simply come to Him with honesty – “Jesus, I believe but help me overcome my unbelief.”
After the transfiguration, Jesus, James, Peter and John came down the mountain to find the other disciples involved in an argument with some of the religious teachers and a crowd of onlookers growing around them. When Jesus asks what the argument is about, a man from the crowd speaks up and tells him that he’d brought his son to the disciples to have an evil spirit cast out of him, but that they were unable to do it. Jesus is exasperated with his disciples for their lack of faith, and tells the man to bring the boy to him. When asked about the boy’s condition, the father explains that he’s suffered since he was a small child and that he is often thrown into fire or water, nearly dying. The father begs Jesus “Have mercy on us and help us, if you can” to which Jesus replies:
“What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24)
Jesus immediately rebukes the evil spirit, and the boy is freed.
Peter, James and John had just had a remarkable experience. They’d seen Christ revealed as he truly was and heard the voice of God proclaim His love for Jesus. But there is no time to bask in the glow of their time on the mountain. The minute they rejoin the other disciples they are in the midst of an argument and in the presence of a demon-possessed boy. If they thought the emotional “high” of their experience would continue when they came down the mountain, they were mistaken. And it is no different for us in our spiritual “moments on the mountain.” Chambers explains:
After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they are where it is neither beautiful nor poetic nor thrilling. The height of the mountain top is measure by the drab drudgery of the valley; but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We SEE His glory on the mount, but we never LIVE for His glory there. It is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to God, that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we always at the heroic pitch because of the natural selfishness of our hearts, but God wants us at the drab commonplace pitch, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship to Him.
“We see his glory on the mount, but we never live for His glory there.” Isn’t that so true? I think of my own “spiritual highs” – the times I’ve felt powerfully moved by worship, or felt God’s hand on me during a time of prayer and then find myself jolted to reality by a crying infant and dirty diapers and a stressed out husband and not enough money and, and, and…What am I doing with those mountain top moments when I find myself in the valley of everyday life? I wish I could say that I always rise above, that I always see His purpose in those valley moments. Although I am learning to, I’ve still got a ways to go.
Chambers reminds us that “it is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to God.” When I hear the word “humiliation”, I tend to think of it in terms of profound embarrassment, though I don’t think that is what he means here at all. I believe it is more in terms of humbleness: we need to come down from our inflated sense of entitlement to recognize what and who we are without God. When we can recognize the truth of His grace and how lost we are without it, it is only THEN that we can truly live for His purpose.
There is another message Chambers shows us here – the lesson we learn from the distraught father of the demon-possessed boy. The man wanted Jesus to do something for his son, but wasn’t entirely sure that he could. He’d watched the disciples try and fail – perhaps he was afraid of getting his hopes up, afraid of the disappointment if Jesus also failed him, afraid that his son was simply doomed to live out his life as a prisoner to his affliction. When he expresses uncertainty about Christ’s power, Jesus says “Anything is possible if a person believes.” The father answers with desperate honesty “I believe but help me overcome my unbelief.” Note that Jesus didn’t chastise him for his answer. He didn’t say “well, that’s not good enough, call me back when you have rooted out all of your unbelief.” No, He honored the man’s request. He helped the man with His unbelief and saved his son. We need to approach God with this same raw honesty. We need to say to Him in times of struggle “Jesus, I believe but help me overcome my unbelief!”
It takes the valley of humiliation to root the skepticism out of us. Look back at your own experience, and you will find that until you learned Who Jesus was, you were a cunning skeptic about His power. When you were on the mount, you could believe anything, but what about the time when you were up against facts in the valley?
How true this is! It is easy to spout proverbs and biblical truths in those moments when our lives are rolling along and things are all sunshine and daisies. But when things in our world begin to fall apart a bit, it is THEN that we see who we truly depend on. Do we seek our security in our “stuff,” in our jobs, in our bank accounts, in our relationships or do we believe in Jesus for His promises? When we come to the point where we’ve learned who Jesus is on the mount, we need to remember that He doesn’t change simply because our circumstances have. The times on the mount show us who HE is, the times in the valley show us who WE are. When we allow God to be God and submit ourselves to His plan (because He does have one) it is then that He can do His work in us and for us. We don’t have to come to God with a plastic smile and a perfect faith – He knows the depths of our struggles. We must simply come to Him with honesty – “Jesus, I believe but help me overcome my unbelief.”
Friday, October 2, 2009
October 1, 2009 THE SPHERE OF EXALTATION
Mark 9:2 - …Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone.
Only days before, Jesus had revealed to His disciples the plan for His death and subsequent resurrection. He laid out for them the true cost of discipleship and what they stood to gain – and lose – if they chose to follow Him. It is only after all of this that He takes Peter, James and John up to a high mountain where His full glory is revealed to them.
Chambers opens by saying:
We have all had times on the mount, when we have seen things from God’s standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, something is wrong. It is a great thing to be on the mount with God, but a man only gets there in order that afterwards he may get down among the devil-possessed and lift them up.
Spiritually speaking, I think many of us work for the mount as our ultimate goal, not as a springboard to the times in the valley. We think that once we “arrive” we should set up a shelter and get comfortable for the long haul, but that isn’t what Jesus did with the disciples the day of the transfiguration and that isn’t what He calls us to do today. Christ is revealed to us in spectacular ways in those times, and we are to use that revelation as an inspiration for our work in the very ordinary circumstances of life. We need to recognize the “descent” as a normal part of it, and recognize that we can’t make use of our experience on the mount until we come down from it.
My wedding day was truly, next to the day my son was born, the happiest day of my life. I distinctly remember the feeling of walking down that aisle towards my husband-to-be as the most joyful moment I’d had in my life up to that point – and I took every step with the intention of remembering those moments and the feelings I had. Thirteen years later, I do, almost as if it were yesterday. But as wonderful as those moments were for me, they weren’t what makes my marriage what it is. The strength of our marriage comes from the work and effort we put in every day, and though I cherish the memory of the day Dave and I became husband and wife, we couldn’t stay there in the church forever – we had to move on into real life and live as a married couple. A lot of people have extravagant weddings and a lousy marriage afterwards. They put all of their energy into their moment on the mountain and nothing into their time in the valley of daily life.
I don’t think our faith is all that different – we focus so much on either attaining or retaining that extraordinary spiritual experience with God, that we fail to recognize why we really have those in the first place. We can - and should be – affected by our “moments on the mount” but we shouldn’t just live for those moments. We need to be able to descend from the heights of Spiritual experience to live it in the valley of day-to-day life. If we are always focused behind us, on that great moment we had with God back in ’02, or focused ahead on recreating that moment again, we will entirely miss what God is trying to do with us in our everyday existence. It is our faith lived out in the small stuff of our daily routine that allows those around us to see the extraordinary grace of God through an ordinary life.
Only days before, Jesus had revealed to His disciples the plan for His death and subsequent resurrection. He laid out for them the true cost of discipleship and what they stood to gain – and lose – if they chose to follow Him. It is only after all of this that He takes Peter, James and John up to a high mountain where His full glory is revealed to them.
Chambers opens by saying:
We have all had times on the mount, when we have seen things from God’s standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, something is wrong. It is a great thing to be on the mount with God, but a man only gets there in order that afterwards he may get down among the devil-possessed and lift them up.
Spiritually speaking, I think many of us work for the mount as our ultimate goal, not as a springboard to the times in the valley. We think that once we “arrive” we should set up a shelter and get comfortable for the long haul, but that isn’t what Jesus did with the disciples the day of the transfiguration and that isn’t what He calls us to do today. Christ is revealed to us in spectacular ways in those times, and we are to use that revelation as an inspiration for our work in the very ordinary circumstances of life. We need to recognize the “descent” as a normal part of it, and recognize that we can’t make use of our experience on the mount until we come down from it.
My wedding day was truly, next to the day my son was born, the happiest day of my life. I distinctly remember the feeling of walking down that aisle towards my husband-to-be as the most joyful moment I’d had in my life up to that point – and I took every step with the intention of remembering those moments and the feelings I had. Thirteen years later, I do, almost as if it were yesterday. But as wonderful as those moments were for me, they weren’t what makes my marriage what it is. The strength of our marriage comes from the work and effort we put in every day, and though I cherish the memory of the day Dave and I became husband and wife, we couldn’t stay there in the church forever – we had to move on into real life and live as a married couple. A lot of people have extravagant weddings and a lousy marriage afterwards. They put all of their energy into their moment on the mountain and nothing into their time in the valley of daily life.
I don’t think our faith is all that different – we focus so much on either attaining or retaining that extraordinary spiritual experience with God, that we fail to recognize why we really have those in the first place. We can - and should be – affected by our “moments on the mount” but we shouldn’t just live for those moments. We need to be able to descend from the heights of Spiritual experience to live it in the valley of day-to-day life. If we are always focused behind us, on that great moment we had with God back in ’02, or focused ahead on recreating that moment again, we will entirely miss what God is trying to do with us in our everyday existence. It is our faith lived out in the small stuff of our daily routine that allows those around us to see the extraordinary grace of God through an ordinary life.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
September 30, 2009 THE COMMISSION OF THE CALL
Colossians 1:24 - I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church.
For years I’ve admired Paul’s strength and found myself in awe of the joy with which Paul regarded his suffering. He never cursed his captors or bemoaned the miseries of prison; he counted those as the cost of his call – a price he gladly paid to share the gospel. But I think I’ve had it wrong all these years: it isn’t Paul’s strength, but rather the power of God’s peace that deserves our attention. Paul has joy in spite of his misery not because he’s a supernatural tough-guy, but because he was willing to lay out all he was at the feet of the Savior and submit completely to the lordship of Christ. Whatever Jesus called him to, there he was, with no thought to his comfort or safety – Paul was “all in” for the kingdom. Nothing else mattered. How do I come to that point?
The following is probably one of my most favorite bits of Chambers insight – not because it’s easy (quite the opposite) but because it is so obviously true.
This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.
I love the image of our being broken bread and poured-out wine. Chambers uses it several times throughout this year-long devotional and I find it a powerful metaphor for what we are called to in Christ. While I love the metaphor, I don’t particularly love the experience. How true it is that sometimes God uses unsavory people and objectionable circumstances to shape us to His will. Our pride arises and we want to protest our situation – we want to demand that God do things a different way. But it is this pride that has to go, and if we truly want to be wine poured for God’s purpose, we have to learn the wisdom of God’s ways and be willing to be crushed by the fingers of His choosing.
We can refuse the “crushing.” We can walk away. We can say “I’m not doing that”, “I’m not going there”, “I’m not saying that”, “I’m not willing to love them.” We have the freedom to do what we like, and I’ve exercised that freedom most of my life. But I’ve come to a point now where I’m recognizing that I want more than to just “squeeze into the kingdom” – when I stand before God on judgment day, I want to know that I did what he had for me to do and nothing less. We’ve all seen the game show where the guy can keep his $1000 or trade it for whatever is behind door #3. The audience knows that behind door #3 is a million dollars, but the contestant has no idea. Fearful of the possibility of losing his $1000, he walks away – and regrets that choice for the rest of his life. For us as believers, the real stakes aren’t monetary, but something far greater. Do we want to stand before God only to discover that we missed the opportunity to fulfill the very purpose for which we were created just because we wanted to keep our measly $1000 in tact? What are we so afraid of losing that we’ll risk our eternal purpose to keep it? A lifestyle? A relationship? What is worth that?
Paul could have walked away from his call, but he allowed himself to be crushed for the gospel, and the wine produced from that crushing changed the world – literally. Paul identified fully with Christ and that identification eclipsed every other thing.
For years I’ve admired Paul’s strength and found myself in awe of the joy with which Paul regarded his suffering. He never cursed his captors or bemoaned the miseries of prison; he counted those as the cost of his call – a price he gladly paid to share the gospel. But I think I’ve had it wrong all these years: it isn’t Paul’s strength, but rather the power of God’s peace that deserves our attention. Paul has joy in spite of his misery not because he’s a supernatural tough-guy, but because he was willing to lay out all he was at the feet of the Savior and submit completely to the lordship of Christ. Whatever Jesus called him to, there he was, with no thought to his comfort or safety – Paul was “all in” for the kingdom. Nothing else mattered. How do I come to that point?
The following is probably one of my most favorite bits of Chambers insight – not because it’s easy (quite the opposite) but because it is so obviously true.
This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.
I love the image of our being broken bread and poured-out wine. Chambers uses it several times throughout this year-long devotional and I find it a powerful metaphor for what we are called to in Christ. While I love the metaphor, I don’t particularly love the experience. How true it is that sometimes God uses unsavory people and objectionable circumstances to shape us to His will. Our pride arises and we want to protest our situation – we want to demand that God do things a different way. But it is this pride that has to go, and if we truly want to be wine poured for God’s purpose, we have to learn the wisdom of God’s ways and be willing to be crushed by the fingers of His choosing.
We can refuse the “crushing.” We can walk away. We can say “I’m not doing that”, “I’m not going there”, “I’m not saying that”, “I’m not willing to love them.” We have the freedom to do what we like, and I’ve exercised that freedom most of my life. But I’ve come to a point now where I’m recognizing that I want more than to just “squeeze into the kingdom” – when I stand before God on judgment day, I want to know that I did what he had for me to do and nothing less. We’ve all seen the game show where the guy can keep his $1000 or trade it for whatever is behind door #3. The audience knows that behind door #3 is a million dollars, but the contestant has no idea. Fearful of the possibility of losing his $1000, he walks away – and regrets that choice for the rest of his life. For us as believers, the real stakes aren’t monetary, but something far greater. Do we want to stand before God only to discover that we missed the opportunity to fulfill the very purpose for which we were created just because we wanted to keep our measly $1000 in tact? What are we so afraid of losing that we’ll risk our eternal purpose to keep it? A lifestyle? A relationship? What is worth that?
Paul could have walked away from his call, but he allowed himself to be crushed for the gospel, and the wine produced from that crushing changed the world – literally. Paul identified fully with Christ and that identification eclipsed every other thing.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
September 28, 2009 THE “GO” OF UNCONDITIONAL IDENTIFICATION
Mark 10:21 - And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
A wealthy young man approaches Jesus and asks Him “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus starts with the basics; the commandments well known to all observant Jews of the day. The rich man indicates that he has followed all of them since his youth. And then Jesus tells him that he lacks only one thing: He should sell all of his belongings, give to the poor, and follow Him. But this was just too much for the rich man – he departs from Jesus disappointed and disheartened because, we are told, “he had great possessions.”
What kind of an answer did this man expect? Did he consider himself an exemplary citizen and assume that Christ would say “Yep, you’re on your way – just keep doin’ what your doin’.” I think a lot of us look at ourselves and assume that this is the case. We figure, “Hey, yeah, I’ve accepted Jesus, I’m nice, I go to church. I do pretty well with the 10 commandments. What more could I possibly need to do? I just need to keep doin’ what I’m doin’.” But even with all that, we lack one thing.
Chambers reminds us:
Our Lord never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple; He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and identification with Himself – a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship. Luke 14:26 has nothing to do with salvation or sanctification, but with unconditional identification with Jesus Christ. Very few of us know the absolute “go” of abandonment to Jesus.
Without unconditional identification with Jesus and absolute abandonment to Him we are missing what we are truly called to as Christians. WE ARE MISSING IT!!! And sadly, I think many of us are. We can look nice and shiny, we can go to church and say the right things to the right people and sound Holy when we pray, we can even be saved, but if we’ve not given ourselves over to absolute abandonment to Jesus, we are missing a huge part of why we bother with the thing at all! It’s a little like going to the movies, but not getting popcorn. You still see the movie, but you miss the best part of the experience.
Chambers continues:
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” The look of Jesus will mean a heart broken forever from allegiance to any other person or thing. Has Jesus ever looked at you? The look of Jesus transforms and transfixes. Where you are “soft” with God is where the Lord has looked at you. If you are hard and vindictive, insistent on your own way, certain that the other person is more likely to be in the wrong than you are, it is an indication that there are whole tracts of your nature that have never been transformed by His gaze.
I think it is significant that after the rich man assures Jesus that he has dutifully obeyed the Ten Commandments throughout his life, Jesus looks at him in love. Significant not because Jesus was proud of the man for his successful obedience, but rather because Jesus, as the Son of God, undoubtedly could see before him every instance where the young man had failed at the obedience he had so earnestly attested to. And yet, He loved him. He didn’t chastise him in front of everyone. He didn’t recite all the instances where the young man had failed. He loved him, and then called him to something higher. When we begin to feel a little full of ourselves because we think we are doing an awfully good job of following the rules, remember that Christ sees all of our lapses and our failures – big and small – and he looks at us in love in spite of them. When we feel that look of love from Christ, are we transformed? How can we not be?
For most of us the issue of our transformation rests solely on our willingness to give up that which stands in the way of unconditional identification with Christ. The rich man left Jesus devastated because his love of his possessions was so strong, he couldn’t give them up. The issue wasn’t that he was rich, but that he was dependant on his money, his possessions and perhaps even his position rather than Christ.
We all have something that we struggle to lay down for Christ. It can be money, things, an attitude, a mindset, a hobby, an addiction – whatever we depend upon when we should be depending on the Savior, that is what we are called to give up for Him. It is only when we’ve freed ourselves of those fetters that we can truly answer Christ’s call to “Come, follow me.”
A wealthy young man approaches Jesus and asks Him “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus starts with the basics; the commandments well known to all observant Jews of the day. The rich man indicates that he has followed all of them since his youth. And then Jesus tells him that he lacks only one thing: He should sell all of his belongings, give to the poor, and follow Him. But this was just too much for the rich man – he departs from Jesus disappointed and disheartened because, we are told, “he had great possessions.”
What kind of an answer did this man expect? Did he consider himself an exemplary citizen and assume that Christ would say “Yep, you’re on your way – just keep doin’ what your doin’.” I think a lot of us look at ourselves and assume that this is the case. We figure, “Hey, yeah, I’ve accepted Jesus, I’m nice, I go to church. I do pretty well with the 10 commandments. What more could I possibly need to do? I just need to keep doin’ what I’m doin’.” But even with all that, we lack one thing.
Chambers reminds us:
Our Lord never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple; He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and identification with Himself – a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship. Luke 14:26 has nothing to do with salvation or sanctification, but with unconditional identification with Jesus Christ. Very few of us know the absolute “go” of abandonment to Jesus.
Without unconditional identification with Jesus and absolute abandonment to Him we are missing what we are truly called to as Christians. WE ARE MISSING IT!!! And sadly, I think many of us are. We can look nice and shiny, we can go to church and say the right things to the right people and sound Holy when we pray, we can even be saved, but if we’ve not given ourselves over to absolute abandonment to Jesus, we are missing a huge part of why we bother with the thing at all! It’s a little like going to the movies, but not getting popcorn. You still see the movie, but you miss the best part of the experience.
Chambers continues:
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” The look of Jesus will mean a heart broken forever from allegiance to any other person or thing. Has Jesus ever looked at you? The look of Jesus transforms and transfixes. Where you are “soft” with God is where the Lord has looked at you. If you are hard and vindictive, insistent on your own way, certain that the other person is more likely to be in the wrong than you are, it is an indication that there are whole tracts of your nature that have never been transformed by His gaze.
I think it is significant that after the rich man assures Jesus that he has dutifully obeyed the Ten Commandments throughout his life, Jesus looks at him in love. Significant not because Jesus was proud of the man for his successful obedience, but rather because Jesus, as the Son of God, undoubtedly could see before him every instance where the young man had failed at the obedience he had so earnestly attested to. And yet, He loved him. He didn’t chastise him in front of everyone. He didn’t recite all the instances where the young man had failed. He loved him, and then called him to something higher. When we begin to feel a little full of ourselves because we think we are doing an awfully good job of following the rules, remember that Christ sees all of our lapses and our failures – big and small – and he looks at us in love in spite of them. When we feel that look of love from Christ, are we transformed? How can we not be?
For most of us the issue of our transformation rests solely on our willingness to give up that which stands in the way of unconditional identification with Christ. The rich man left Jesus devastated because his love of his possessions was so strong, he couldn’t give them up. The issue wasn’t that he was rich, but that he was dependant on his money, his possessions and perhaps even his position rather than Christ.
We all have something that we struggle to lay down for Christ. It can be money, things, an attitude, a mindset, a hobby, an addiction – whatever we depend upon when we should be depending on the Savior, that is what we are called to give up for Him. It is only when we’ve freed ourselves of those fetters that we can truly answer Christ’s call to “Come, follow me.”
Monday, September 28, 2009
September 24, 2009 THE “GO” OF PREPARATION
Matthew 5:23-24 - “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.
When I read this verse I’m immediately convicted by how absolutely essential it is that our Christian walk not be compartmentalized away from any other aspect of our life. When we stand before the Father, all aspects of our life are relevant. It isn’t like a trip where we only bring the clothes appropriate for the weather – our whole closet is on display.
When we come before the Lord in an act of worship, we need to do so with a clear conscience and a pure heart. If Sunday mornings find me a tyrant at home, yelling at my husband and griping at my child and then the drive to church is tainted by my impatience and cursing at other drivers, there are some issues I need to deal with before I raise my hand in worship or take communion. Our “Christian-ness” doesn’t start at the door of the church and end when we exit the parking lot – it is part of who we are ALL THE TIME.
For some this may be obvious, but for me it has been a struggle and it has only been recently that I’ve finally recognized that any incongruity between who I am in church, at home or at work was simply unacceptable. As I mature I am beginning to realize that I need to live my faith constantly and that church Sunday is a “recharge” for the rest of the week, not the defining factor of my faith. That is, I’m not a Christian because my car is parked in a church parking lot on Sunday mornings. I’m a Christian because I’ve accepted Christ’s gift of salvation and that must be reflected in the way I live my life the rest of the week.
Chambers explains:
The “go” of preparation is to let the word of God scrutinize. The sense of heroic sacrifice is not good enough. The thing the Holy Spirit is detecting in you is the disposition that will never work in His service. No one but God can detect that disposition in you. Have you anything to hide from God? If you have, then let God search you with His light. If there is sin, confess it, not admit it.
Let the word of God scrutinize…now that is powerful stuff – especially when we are willing to actually do it. As believers I think we have to be careful not to become caught up in relative comparison. We want to compare ourselves to that “Sunday Morning Christian” who has forgotten the sermon before they hit the sanctuary door or the nonbeliever across the street. We want to suggest that we are actually doing a pretty good job – compared to those guys. But no, we are to let the word of God scrutinize us. We are to allow the Holy Spirit to search us and root out whatever could keep us from the full expression of our faith. That said, there is simply no place for any hint of legalism in the Christian life.
There are two particular dangers that come with obsessive adherence to man-inspired “rules:”
For one, we can become lulled into a false sense of security. We begin to evaluate the state of our salvation – and that of others – based upon how well we (or they) abide by the conventions we’ve come to accept as the standards of Christian behavior. This isn’t the case at all – we are only saved by the sacrifice Christ made on the cross – nothing more and nothing less. NOTHING we “do” affects our salvation.
The second pitfall is that we miss the issues we truly need to deal with because we are so consumed with those issues God isn’t concerned about. If, for example, we pride ourselves on the fact we don’t drink, the real issue interfering with our relationship with God may be our problem of pride rather than the lure of alcohol.
Chambers closes by saying:
Never discard a conviction. If it is important enough for the Spirit of God to have brought it to your mind, it is that thing He is detecting. You were looking for a great thing to give up. God is telling you of some tiny thing; but at the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself – the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes we presume upon God’s expectations without consulting Him. We assume that His demands include some great obvious sacrifice. But that may not be the case. Sometimes what He asks of us is a change of heart or the laying down of a desire. Whatever it may be, when we are in His Word and bow before Him in prayer, we will know what he is asking of us, and it is often not what we expected it to be.
When I read this verse I’m immediately convicted by how absolutely essential it is that our Christian walk not be compartmentalized away from any other aspect of our life. When we stand before the Father, all aspects of our life are relevant. It isn’t like a trip where we only bring the clothes appropriate for the weather – our whole closet is on display.
When we come before the Lord in an act of worship, we need to do so with a clear conscience and a pure heart. If Sunday mornings find me a tyrant at home, yelling at my husband and griping at my child and then the drive to church is tainted by my impatience and cursing at other drivers, there are some issues I need to deal with before I raise my hand in worship or take communion. Our “Christian-ness” doesn’t start at the door of the church and end when we exit the parking lot – it is part of who we are ALL THE TIME.
For some this may be obvious, but for me it has been a struggle and it has only been recently that I’ve finally recognized that any incongruity between who I am in church, at home or at work was simply unacceptable. As I mature I am beginning to realize that I need to live my faith constantly and that church Sunday is a “recharge” for the rest of the week, not the defining factor of my faith. That is, I’m not a Christian because my car is parked in a church parking lot on Sunday mornings. I’m a Christian because I’ve accepted Christ’s gift of salvation and that must be reflected in the way I live my life the rest of the week.
Chambers explains:
The “go” of preparation is to let the word of God scrutinize. The sense of heroic sacrifice is not good enough. The thing the Holy Spirit is detecting in you is the disposition that will never work in His service. No one but God can detect that disposition in you. Have you anything to hide from God? If you have, then let God search you with His light. If there is sin, confess it, not admit it.
Let the word of God scrutinize…now that is powerful stuff – especially when we are willing to actually do it. As believers I think we have to be careful not to become caught up in relative comparison. We want to compare ourselves to that “Sunday Morning Christian” who has forgotten the sermon before they hit the sanctuary door or the nonbeliever across the street. We want to suggest that we are actually doing a pretty good job – compared to those guys. But no, we are to let the word of God scrutinize us. We are to allow the Holy Spirit to search us and root out whatever could keep us from the full expression of our faith. That said, there is simply no place for any hint of legalism in the Christian life.
There are two particular dangers that come with obsessive adherence to man-inspired “rules:”
For one, we can become lulled into a false sense of security. We begin to evaluate the state of our salvation – and that of others – based upon how well we (or they) abide by the conventions we’ve come to accept as the standards of Christian behavior. This isn’t the case at all – we are only saved by the sacrifice Christ made on the cross – nothing more and nothing less. NOTHING we “do” affects our salvation.
The second pitfall is that we miss the issues we truly need to deal with because we are so consumed with those issues God isn’t concerned about. If, for example, we pride ourselves on the fact we don’t drink, the real issue interfering with our relationship with God may be our problem of pride rather than the lure of alcohol.
Chambers closes by saying:
Never discard a conviction. If it is important enough for the Spirit of God to have brought it to your mind, it is that thing He is detecting. You were looking for a great thing to give up. God is telling you of some tiny thing; but at the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself – the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes we presume upon God’s expectations without consulting Him. We assume that His demands include some great obvious sacrifice. But that may not be the case. Sometimes what He asks of us is a change of heart or the laying down of a desire. Whatever it may be, when we are in His Word and bow before Him in prayer, we will know what he is asking of us, and it is often not what we expected it to be.
Friday, September 25, 2009
September 23, 2009 THE MISSIONARY’S GOAL
Luke 18:31 - And taking the twelve, he said to them, "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.”
In the natural life our ambitions alter as we develop; in the Christian life the goal is given at the beginning, the beginning and the end are the same, viz., our Lord Himself. We start with Christ and we end with Him – “until we all attain to the stature of the manhood of Christ Jesus,” not to our idea of what the Christian life should be.
What a wonderful explanation of the Christian walk Chambers gives us here – the beginning and the end ARE the same – we are at the feet of our Lord. Our lives are simply always to be about measuring up to the standard of Christ and working steadily and simply towards that goal alone. It is the goal we are given the day we submit our lives to Christ and it remains the same throughout our lives. Note that he says: “’until we all attain to the stature of the manhood of Christ Jesus,’ not to our idea of what the Christian life should be.” How often does our “idea of what the Christian life should be” interfere with our being what God has truly called us to as Christians? Consuming ourselves with a legalistic notion of our faith based upon adherence to a series of rules and demands can suck life and energy from us – life and energy better spent conforming ourselves to Christ Himself. We must remember that it was those who prided themselves on their adherence to legalism, the Pharisees, who failed to recognize the Messiah when He was in their midst. I never want to miss Christ because I’m too busy with my own definitions of what He should be.
And so what is His will for us? Chambers refers to it as our “Jerusalem.” Christ fulfilled the will of His Father when He went to Jerusalem and faced the crucifixion. Wherever God’s will culminates for us is that place and we won’t know where that is until we are willing to spend the time and energy at the feet of our Lord seeking it. Chambers makes an interesting – and a critically important – observation. He says:
Nothing ever discouraged Our Lord on His way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where He was persecuted, or lingered in other villages where He was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned Our Lord one hair’s breadth away from His purpose to go up to Jerusalem.
Sometimes Christians spend too much time looking for “signs” to determine the path they should take. They get an idea and then look to the world around them for indications that this is the right thing. Our pastor several months ago warned against this method of confirmation. For one thing, we can always find a sign to fit the answer we want to hear. If we say “Lord, I want a brand new Mercedes” we’ll see every Mercedes we pass on the street as a sign from God that we ought to have it. We’ll See back-to-back Mercedes advertisements on TV and convince ourselves that the Lord is speaking to us through broadcast television. The state of our bankbook and the practicality of such a purchase become nearly irrelevant as we find ourselves bombarded from every side with confirmations that this is truly the will of God.
That isn’t what Christ did at all.
He knew the will of His Father and was undeterred by the winds that blew to the left or the right. He did what He knew He was to do, and paid no attention to the worldly “signs” that might suggest otherwise. I think we sometimes think that if something is too difficult that it isn’t the will of God. But might it be possible that the opposite is the case? That perhaps it is difficult because it IS the will of God?
Functioning in the will of God is sometimes a difficult proposition. I want the writing on the wall that says “HERE IS YOUR PURPOSE.” That isn’t how God works. Our job is simply to come to Him and seek, to study His Word and to LISTEN. We sometimes have to be willing to be quiet and listen to His responses rather than talk to God nonstop about our own plans and ask Him to bless them. What is He calling us to? Seek and you shall find (Matthew 7:7). When we truly seek His will, He will not fail to show it to us. And when He shows us, we should pursue it with reckless abandon. Chambers says:
There will be the works of God manifested through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude and the rest will show gross ingratitude, but nothing must deflect us from going up to our Jerusalem.
We start with Christ, and we end with Him. Our measure of whether we are in God’s will or not comes in the quiet times when we are on our knees before the Father and not through the praise of men or worldly success with the work we’ve undertaken. They may go hand-in-hand, but then again they may not. We are called to be as Christ – focused only on the will of our Father and nothing less.
In the natural life our ambitions alter as we develop; in the Christian life the goal is given at the beginning, the beginning and the end are the same, viz., our Lord Himself. We start with Christ and we end with Him – “until we all attain to the stature of the manhood of Christ Jesus,” not to our idea of what the Christian life should be.
What a wonderful explanation of the Christian walk Chambers gives us here – the beginning and the end ARE the same – we are at the feet of our Lord. Our lives are simply always to be about measuring up to the standard of Christ and working steadily and simply towards that goal alone. It is the goal we are given the day we submit our lives to Christ and it remains the same throughout our lives. Note that he says: “’until we all attain to the stature of the manhood of Christ Jesus,’ not to our idea of what the Christian life should be.” How often does our “idea of what the Christian life should be” interfere with our being what God has truly called us to as Christians? Consuming ourselves with a legalistic notion of our faith based upon adherence to a series of rules and demands can suck life and energy from us – life and energy better spent conforming ourselves to Christ Himself. We must remember that it was those who prided themselves on their adherence to legalism, the Pharisees, who failed to recognize the Messiah when He was in their midst. I never want to miss Christ because I’m too busy with my own definitions of what He should be.
And so what is His will for us? Chambers refers to it as our “Jerusalem.” Christ fulfilled the will of His Father when He went to Jerusalem and faced the crucifixion. Wherever God’s will culminates for us is that place and we won’t know where that is until we are willing to spend the time and energy at the feet of our Lord seeking it. Chambers makes an interesting – and a critically important – observation. He says:
Nothing ever discouraged Our Lord on His way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where He was persecuted, or lingered in other villages where He was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned Our Lord one hair’s breadth away from His purpose to go up to Jerusalem.
Sometimes Christians spend too much time looking for “signs” to determine the path they should take. They get an idea and then look to the world around them for indications that this is the right thing. Our pastor several months ago warned against this method of confirmation. For one thing, we can always find a sign to fit the answer we want to hear. If we say “Lord, I want a brand new Mercedes” we’ll see every Mercedes we pass on the street as a sign from God that we ought to have it. We’ll See back-to-back Mercedes advertisements on TV and convince ourselves that the Lord is speaking to us through broadcast television. The state of our bankbook and the practicality of such a purchase become nearly irrelevant as we find ourselves bombarded from every side with confirmations that this is truly the will of God.
That isn’t what Christ did at all.
He knew the will of His Father and was undeterred by the winds that blew to the left or the right. He did what He knew He was to do, and paid no attention to the worldly “signs” that might suggest otherwise. I think we sometimes think that if something is too difficult that it isn’t the will of God. But might it be possible that the opposite is the case? That perhaps it is difficult because it IS the will of God?
Functioning in the will of God is sometimes a difficult proposition. I want the writing on the wall that says “HERE IS YOUR PURPOSE.” That isn’t how God works. Our job is simply to come to Him and seek, to study His Word and to LISTEN. We sometimes have to be willing to be quiet and listen to His responses rather than talk to God nonstop about our own plans and ask Him to bless them. What is He calling us to? Seek and you shall find (Matthew 7:7). When we truly seek His will, He will not fail to show it to us. And when He shows us, we should pursue it with reckless abandon. Chambers says:
There will be the works of God manifested through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude and the rest will show gross ingratitude, but nothing must deflect us from going up to our Jerusalem.
We start with Christ, and we end with Him. Our measure of whether we are in God’s will or not comes in the quiet times when we are on our knees before the Father and not through the praise of men or worldly success with the work we’ve undertaken. They may go hand-in-hand, but then again they may not. We are called to be as Christ – focused only on the will of our Father and nothing less.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
September 22, 2009 THE MISSIONARY’S MASTER
John 13:13 - Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am (KJV).
- You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am (ESV).
Typically when I quote the “verse-of-the-day” I use a translation I’m more comfortable with simply because I find that I can glean more insight from a translation that speaks to me in an English I’m more likely to use myself. But Chambers utilizes the specific wording of the KJV to make his point, so I’ve included it here. I struggle a bit with the word “master” – my mind immediately goes to the 19th century slave owner metering out cruel and unjust punishments for any perceived infraction, legitimate or not. Obviously this is not what God intends for this verse and it seems that “teacher” more accurately captures the relationship we are intended to understand, but that word doesn’t seem to capture the intensity of the relationship. Chambers clarifies this relationship perfectly:
To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less.
What a phenomenal revelation as to what role God seeks in our lives! He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves, he is closer to us than any friend we’ve ever known, he knows the innermost desires of our hearts and has the capacity to fulfill them. We have nothing to fear and nothing to worry about. God has confronted and resolved any issue we could possibly raise, real or imagined. THIS is the God we worship, and yet so many of us try to confine God to our perception of Him as a kindly (or not so kindly) man with flowing gray hair and a beard who is just standing around waiting for us to pay attention to Him when things in our lives have gone awry.
When we know God as He really is we can begin to understand His love for us and His desire for us to recognize the absolute necessity of a relationship with Him. That relationship comes with a call to obedience, though, and honestly, most of us just don’t like that word very much. The notion of being “told what to do” grates on some of us. We want to do things our own way. I’ve been the poster child for defending the chaos of my own life. For years I was absolutely determined to run the show myself, with nearly disastrous results and yet for some reason, I’d always bristle at the suggestion that perhaps I need to consider another plan – God’s plan, perhaps. Our pride tends to get in the way – the concept that we aren’t able to manage our own existence simply isn’t something we care to admit. And God lets us carry on in our own way, if that is what we really want. Chambers says:
Our Lord never enforces obedience; He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.
Oh, how this bit speaks to me!! Sometimes I’ve found myself on my knees in frustration, just wishing God would have taken the reigns and moved me in the right direction supernaturally. And other times I’ve wished He would allow me to do what I might without invading my conscience with His words. “[His] yoke is easy, [His] burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). There IS a yoke, there IS a burden, but once we take on the burden of the Lord, we find that it is easier and lighter than the burdens of our own creation and I’ve found myself wondering why I wasted so much time fighting against it.
Chambers closes with a profound thought:
[Jesus] wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.
After years of being married to a man I love dearly and deeply, I find that I do some things with him in mind without really thinking about it. When I plan meals for the week, I do so taking his favorites into consideration. When making plans, his schedule and feelings are always in the forefront of my mind. I don’t find myself consciously thinking “okay, you’re planning the grocery list. Think of your husband.” It just kind of happens. I’m not tooting my own horn for a wife of the year award (definitely not) but there are certain things that flow naturally out of the fact that I love him. This is the way it becomes with God. When we come to know the Father intimately and develop that relationship with him, our obedience to him flows naturally out of our love for Him. There will always be issues of temptation, we won’t suddenly become perfect, but we will find that many behaviors will become second nature to us simply because we have the Lord in our lives. We will call Him Master and Lord, because He is!!
- You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am (ESV).
Typically when I quote the “verse-of-the-day” I use a translation I’m more comfortable with simply because I find that I can glean more insight from a translation that speaks to me in an English I’m more likely to use myself. But Chambers utilizes the specific wording of the KJV to make his point, so I’ve included it here. I struggle a bit with the word “master” – my mind immediately goes to the 19th century slave owner metering out cruel and unjust punishments for any perceived infraction, legitimate or not. Obviously this is not what God intends for this verse and it seems that “teacher” more accurately captures the relationship we are intended to understand, but that word doesn’t seem to capture the intensity of the relationship. Chambers clarifies this relationship perfectly:
To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less.
What a phenomenal revelation as to what role God seeks in our lives! He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves, he is closer to us than any friend we’ve ever known, he knows the innermost desires of our hearts and has the capacity to fulfill them. We have nothing to fear and nothing to worry about. God has confronted and resolved any issue we could possibly raise, real or imagined. THIS is the God we worship, and yet so many of us try to confine God to our perception of Him as a kindly (or not so kindly) man with flowing gray hair and a beard who is just standing around waiting for us to pay attention to Him when things in our lives have gone awry.
When we know God as He really is we can begin to understand His love for us and His desire for us to recognize the absolute necessity of a relationship with Him. That relationship comes with a call to obedience, though, and honestly, most of us just don’t like that word very much. The notion of being “told what to do” grates on some of us. We want to do things our own way. I’ve been the poster child for defending the chaos of my own life. For years I was absolutely determined to run the show myself, with nearly disastrous results and yet for some reason, I’d always bristle at the suggestion that perhaps I need to consider another plan – God’s plan, perhaps. Our pride tends to get in the way – the concept that we aren’t able to manage our own existence simply isn’t something we care to admit. And God lets us carry on in our own way, if that is what we really want. Chambers says:
Our Lord never enforces obedience; He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.
Oh, how this bit speaks to me!! Sometimes I’ve found myself on my knees in frustration, just wishing God would have taken the reigns and moved me in the right direction supernaturally. And other times I’ve wished He would allow me to do what I might without invading my conscience with His words. “[His] yoke is easy, [His] burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). There IS a yoke, there IS a burden, but once we take on the burden of the Lord, we find that it is easier and lighter than the burdens of our own creation and I’ve found myself wondering why I wasted so much time fighting against it.
Chambers closes with a profound thought:
[Jesus] wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.
After years of being married to a man I love dearly and deeply, I find that I do some things with him in mind without really thinking about it. When I plan meals for the week, I do so taking his favorites into consideration. When making plans, his schedule and feelings are always in the forefront of my mind. I don’t find myself consciously thinking “okay, you’re planning the grocery list. Think of your husband.” It just kind of happens. I’m not tooting my own horn for a wife of the year award (definitely not) but there are certain things that flow naturally out of the fact that I love him. This is the way it becomes with God. When we come to know the Father intimately and develop that relationship with him, our obedience to him flows naturally out of our love for Him. There will always be issues of temptation, we won’t suddenly become perfect, but we will find that many behaviors will become second nature to us simply because we have the Lord in our lives. We will call Him Master and Lord, because He is!!
Monday, September 21, 2009
September 21, 2009 MISSIONARY PREDESTINATIONS
Isaiah 49: 1-5
1 Listen to me, all you in distant lands!
Pay attention, you who are far away!
The Lord called me before my birth;
from within the womb he called me by name.
2 He made my words of judgment as sharp as a sword.
He has hidden me in the shadow of his hand.
I am like a sharp arrow in his quiver.
3 He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel,
and you will bring me glory.”
4 I replied, “But my work seems so useless!
I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.
Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;
I will trust God for my reward.”
5 And now the Lord speaks—
the one who formed me in my mother’s womb to be his servant,
who commissioned me to bring Israel back to him.
The Lord has honored me,
and my God has given me strength.
Chambers uses only the fifth verse for today’s reading, but I was so moved by the first five verses, I include them all here. Isaiah emphasizes twice in just these five verses that he was created for a purpose. That God formed him in the womb with intention, that before he was even born the Lord called him to servanthood and that his work was done through the strength of the Lord himself. These verses detail the commissioning of a servant of the Lord – God’s call to a man who feels as if his work is too small and too ineffective to be of value, but He trusts God to use it as He will.
As believers, these words apply to all of us. We are formed in our mother’s womb with intention. There is no accident of our birth. We are created to be a servant of Christ and regardless of our perceptions of our effectiveness for the kingdom, when we depend upon the Lord for our strength and our direction He can – and will – use us in ways we could never have imagined.
What a phenomenal realization!! We are created WITH purpose! God has a plan for us! We aren’t like the unplanned dinner guest that shows up at the last minute and the hostess has to adjust everything at the table to squeeze them in. No! We were planned on from the beginning. The table was set with us in mind all along. THAT is powerful indeed.
Okay, so I get that – but now what? Chambers opens today’s devotional by addressing that very question:
The first thing that happens after we have realized our election to God in Christ Jesus is the destruction of our prejudices and our parochial notions and our patriotisms; we are turned into servants of God’s own purpose…Sin has switched the human race on to another track, but it has not altered God’s purpose in the tiniest degree; and when we are born again we are brought into the realization of God’s great purpose for the human race, viz., I am created for God, He made me.
To continue with our dinner analogy: Suppose you’ve planned a dinner and your bustling in the kitchen preparing a fantastic chateaubriand, sliced fingerling potatoes and green beans almandine. You’ve set the table, selected the wine and as your guests begin to arrive, dinner is on schedule and is nearly ready to be set on the table. But suddenly, one of your guests bursts into the kitchen and pulls a chicken out of the refrigerator and begins preparing THAT. You protest: “I’ve contemplated the menu and planned for this meal! I’ve selected the wine with the dish I’ve prepared in mind. I’m the hostess for heaven’s sake! GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!”
If this actually happened to any one of us, we would think the guest incredibly rude at the very least. It isn’t that there is anything wrong with chicken or that it isn’t tasty, but who amongst us would burst into a hostess’ kitchen and be so rude as to ignore the meal she has prepared and start cooking something entirely different? Yet how many of us do that exact thing to God on a regular basis – and with far greater issues at stake than just an evening meal.
We may have the best of intentions. We may think we know how best to proceed. But Chamber reminds us:
We have to maintain our soul open to the fact of God’s creative purpose, and not muddle it with our own intentions. If we do, God will have to crush our intentions on one side however much it may hurt. The purpose for which the missionary is created is that he may be God’s servant, one in whom God is glorified.
We need to keep our eyes upon the Lord and our hearts open to His purposes. We need to abandon our own agendas and allow God to place HIS agenda on our hearts. We need to accept the meal that he serves instead of wasting precious time preparing our own.
He formed us in our mother’s womb for one singular purpose: to be His servant. As Chambers says: Beware lest you forget God’s purpose for your life.
Friday, September 18, 2009
September 17, 2009 WHAT’S THE GOOD OF TEMPTATION?
1 Corinthians 10:13 - No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Temptation is inevitable. We all face it and it seems to me that sometimes the more “in-tune” I am with God and the more effort I put into knowing Him, the more I seem to be bombarded with things intended to derail me. This is to be expected, I suppose. When we are off doing our own self-centered things we are no danger to the enemy and there is no need to distract us from our cause – Chambers says: Not to be tempted would be to be beneath contempt. Satan won’t waste time on those who aren’t threatening his plan for things – they fall easily right into his grasp. But when we shed our egocentricity and submit ourselves to the Father, we are of great danger to the enemy indeed.
Chambers explains the basis for our temptation:
A man’s disposition on the inside…determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature.
I think it is very important to understand that any enticements that come our way have no power over us unless we already have a pre-disposition to that behavior in the first place. I’m going to go out on a skinny branch and say that people rarely, if ever, do things out of character for them. We may be surprised by someone’s fall in this area or that, but it is far more likely that we either ignored the signs of weakness or the individual worked very hard to hide them than the unlikely possibility that they didn’t exist at all. With that said, we have to always be on our guard because the devil knows where we are vulnerable and that is ALWAYS where he will attack. He will appeal to our ego, our sense of security, our hidden greed – wherever he finds us unprotected – or unaware – he will pounce on that spot and catch us off guard. We should also take care to never be too critical of the fall of another believer – our own failing may be just around the corner, though in a completely different arena.
The arena of our temptation changes for us as we get older – I think for me they’ve become much more subtle as I age. I am no longer faced with the “Do I go out with my roommate tonight or do I stay home and study for my calculus midterm…” type dilemmas. Now they are more along the lines of choosing to spend time with God instead of with the TV remote, not saying something negative no matter how much I feel like saying it, interrupting negative thoughts about someone, or allowing myself to be distracted during my quiet time. It’s not that I’m not tempted by “smaller” sins, just less obvious ones. The enemy’s greatest weapon is his ability to mask sin in such a way that he lures us into it before we even recognize what we are into. Chambers explains:
Temptation is a suggested short-cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim – not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation is something that completely baffles me for a while, I do not know whether the thing is right or wrong. Temptation yielded to is lust deified, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.
What do we do when it’s not clear cut? I read an advice column recently where a woman wrote in that her sister had set up somewhat sizeable college funds for the letter-writer’s young children. She came to find out that the money was being gotten in somewhat questionable ways and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. There was nothing illegal involved, so it wasn’t a matter of reporting anything to the police, but she didn’t know if she should keep the money or return it to her sister. She was conflicted because she knew that she and her husband weren’t in a financial position to raise that kind of money towards their children’s education and she didn’t want to deny them that over a moral issue. This example I think speaks to exactly what Chambers talks about. It is relatively easy to make choices when things are black and white – but here? One could justify keeping the money in many ways: there is nothing illegal about it, the money is going to a good cause. But is that the RIGHT thing to do? Is it more important to stand up for our principals? In my life I’ve discovered that I rarely regret standing up for my principals, even if it means a loss or temporary setback, and I always regret it when I don’t. Sometimes we have to spend some time in prayer before God to sort out just what the right answer is. When we give it to God, he will always make the answer clear to us, even if sometimes we don’t like the answer He gives us.
Although we can never avoid temptation entirely, we can avoid the sin. This verse gives us that hope. Paul reminds us that no matter what we are facing, we will never be pushed beyond our ability to resist the sinful path. He promises that God always provides a way of escape so that we can emerge victorious over whatever might be luring us.
Temptation is inevitable. We all face it and it seems to me that sometimes the more “in-tune” I am with God and the more effort I put into knowing Him, the more I seem to be bombarded with things intended to derail me. This is to be expected, I suppose. When we are off doing our own self-centered things we are no danger to the enemy and there is no need to distract us from our cause – Chambers says: Not to be tempted would be to be beneath contempt. Satan won’t waste time on those who aren’t threatening his plan for things – they fall easily right into his grasp. But when we shed our egocentricity and submit ourselves to the Father, we are of great danger to the enemy indeed.
Chambers explains the basis for our temptation:
A man’s disposition on the inside…determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature.
I think it is very important to understand that any enticements that come our way have no power over us unless we already have a pre-disposition to that behavior in the first place. I’m going to go out on a skinny branch and say that people rarely, if ever, do things out of character for them. We may be surprised by someone’s fall in this area or that, but it is far more likely that we either ignored the signs of weakness or the individual worked very hard to hide them than the unlikely possibility that they didn’t exist at all. With that said, we have to always be on our guard because the devil knows where we are vulnerable and that is ALWAYS where he will attack. He will appeal to our ego, our sense of security, our hidden greed – wherever he finds us unprotected – or unaware – he will pounce on that spot and catch us off guard. We should also take care to never be too critical of the fall of another believer – our own failing may be just around the corner, though in a completely different arena.
The arena of our temptation changes for us as we get older – I think for me they’ve become much more subtle as I age. I am no longer faced with the “Do I go out with my roommate tonight or do I stay home and study for my calculus midterm…” type dilemmas. Now they are more along the lines of choosing to spend time with God instead of with the TV remote, not saying something negative no matter how much I feel like saying it, interrupting negative thoughts about someone, or allowing myself to be distracted during my quiet time. It’s not that I’m not tempted by “smaller” sins, just less obvious ones. The enemy’s greatest weapon is his ability to mask sin in such a way that he lures us into it before we even recognize what we are into. Chambers explains:
Temptation is a suggested short-cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim – not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation is something that completely baffles me for a while, I do not know whether the thing is right or wrong. Temptation yielded to is lust deified, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.
What do we do when it’s not clear cut? I read an advice column recently where a woman wrote in that her sister had set up somewhat sizeable college funds for the letter-writer’s young children. She came to find out that the money was being gotten in somewhat questionable ways and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. There was nothing illegal involved, so it wasn’t a matter of reporting anything to the police, but she didn’t know if she should keep the money or return it to her sister. She was conflicted because she knew that she and her husband weren’t in a financial position to raise that kind of money towards their children’s education and she didn’t want to deny them that over a moral issue. This example I think speaks to exactly what Chambers talks about. It is relatively easy to make choices when things are black and white – but here? One could justify keeping the money in many ways: there is nothing illegal about it, the money is going to a good cause. But is that the RIGHT thing to do? Is it more important to stand up for our principals? In my life I’ve discovered that I rarely regret standing up for my principals, even if it means a loss or temporary setback, and I always regret it when I don’t. Sometimes we have to spend some time in prayer before God to sort out just what the right answer is. When we give it to God, he will always make the answer clear to us, even if sometimes we don’t like the answer He gives us.
Although we can never avoid temptation entirely, we can avoid the sin. This verse gives us that hope. Paul reminds us that no matter what we are facing, we will never be pushed beyond our ability to resist the sinful path. He promises that God always provides a way of escape so that we can emerge victorious over whatever might be luring us.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
September 16, 2009 THE DIVINE REGION OF RELIGION
Matthew 6:6 - But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
In the introduction to today’s devotional, Chambers says:
The main idea in the region of religion is – Your eyes upon God, not on men. Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door and talk to God in secret. Have no other motive than to know your Father in heaven. It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.
Once again Chambers hammers home the notion that our faith is NOT a show for other men, it is a relationship with the Almighty God. If we feel it necessary to share with everyone how long we spent in prayer on any given day, then perhaps our motivation for it is the admiration of men and not the enhancement of our relationship with the Lord. What work can God do through prayer motivated by pride? When we contemplate any act of worship, we must make it all about our God. The best way to “check” our pride is to keep it between us and our Lord.
Prayer is the all-too-often underutilized tool of the believer. We pray before meals, with our children at bedtime, and certainly in times of crisis, but do we see our time of prayer as the opportunity to truly know our Father in Heaven? And do we practice it as such? I am sad to admit that I’ve been guilty of neglect in this area.
When I began dating David, I could not spend enough time with him. I wanted to be with him every single waking minute (actually, 17 years later, I still do, but the frenzy has died down a bit). We worked together and I can’t count the number of nights we sat in the parking lot after our shifts were over and talked for hours at a time. We wanted to know everything about each other and it was through those hours of conversation that eventually, we did.
We get to know our Lord in the same way – our time of prayer is our conversation with Him and it is through this conversation that we learn who He is. I’m sad to say that if I spent the same amount of time getting to know David as I spent getting to know God, I’m not sure we’d have ever gone on a second date, much less gotten married. This time of prayer is invaluable. It is not only our lifeline to our God, it allows us to know Him intimately. Chambers reminds us: Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. Do we really GET that? God is not a genie who comes forth with our every wish when we rub the lamp in just the right way. He desires a relationship with us and it is the time we spend with him in prayer that cultivates that relationship.
“Everyone that asketh receiveth.” We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked for anything. “Ye shall ask what ye will,” said Jesus. Asking means our will is in it.
One of the reasons our private times of prayer are so valuable is because is strips away all of our inclinations to pray for our audience rather than for our God. By that, I don’t mean lifting them in prayer, I mean choosing our words and our content with the opinions of the listeners in mind. If our prayers sound lovely and holy, but they lack a Christ-centered will, then they simply aren’t effective. When we pray, we don’t have to use special words or worry that we won’t sound “spiritual” enough – that is simply pious blether. God knows us and sees us as we are. There is no need (and no point) in trying to be anything other than who we are. We must simply pray, and when we ask with a will that has been submitted to Christ, we will receive.
In the introduction to today’s devotional, Chambers says:
The main idea in the region of religion is – Your eyes upon God, not on men. Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door and talk to God in secret. Have no other motive than to know your Father in heaven. It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.
Once again Chambers hammers home the notion that our faith is NOT a show for other men, it is a relationship with the Almighty God. If we feel it necessary to share with everyone how long we spent in prayer on any given day, then perhaps our motivation for it is the admiration of men and not the enhancement of our relationship with the Lord. What work can God do through prayer motivated by pride? When we contemplate any act of worship, we must make it all about our God. The best way to “check” our pride is to keep it between us and our Lord.
Prayer is the all-too-often underutilized tool of the believer. We pray before meals, with our children at bedtime, and certainly in times of crisis, but do we see our time of prayer as the opportunity to truly know our Father in Heaven? And do we practice it as such? I am sad to admit that I’ve been guilty of neglect in this area.
When I began dating David, I could not spend enough time with him. I wanted to be with him every single waking minute (actually, 17 years later, I still do, but the frenzy has died down a bit). We worked together and I can’t count the number of nights we sat in the parking lot after our shifts were over and talked for hours at a time. We wanted to know everything about each other and it was through those hours of conversation that eventually, we did.
We get to know our Lord in the same way – our time of prayer is our conversation with Him and it is through this conversation that we learn who He is. I’m sad to say that if I spent the same amount of time getting to know David as I spent getting to know God, I’m not sure we’d have ever gone on a second date, much less gotten married. This time of prayer is invaluable. It is not only our lifeline to our God, it allows us to know Him intimately. Chambers reminds us: Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. Do we really GET that? God is not a genie who comes forth with our every wish when we rub the lamp in just the right way. He desires a relationship with us and it is the time we spend with him in prayer that cultivates that relationship.
“Everyone that asketh receiveth.” We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked for anything. “Ye shall ask what ye will,” said Jesus. Asking means our will is in it.
One of the reasons our private times of prayer are so valuable is because is strips away all of our inclinations to pray for our audience rather than for our God. By that, I don’t mean lifting them in prayer, I mean choosing our words and our content with the opinions of the listeners in mind. If our prayers sound lovely and holy, but they lack a Christ-centered will, then they simply aren’t effective. When we pray, we don’t have to use special words or worry that we won’t sound “spiritual” enough – that is simply pious blether. God knows us and sees us as we are. There is no need (and no point) in trying to be anything other than who we are. We must simply pray, and when we ask with a will that has been submitted to Christ, we will receive.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
September 15, 2009 WHAT TO RENOUNCE
2 Corinthians 4:2 - We reject all shameful deeds and underhanded methods. We don’t try to trick anyone or distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest know this.
It isn’t enough to just look the part – we have to BE the part. Christianity is not just a shirt we put on for church on Sunday, it has to permeate our skin so that it is so intrinsically connected to who we are, one cannot be distinguished from the other. We must “tell the truth before God” in all that we say and all that we do. To do that means that there can’t be anything questionable in our closets – all of those things must be rejected and removed. Chambers opens today’s message by asking us:
Have you “renounced the hidden things of dishonesty” – the things that your sense of honour will not allow to come to the light? You can easily hide them. Is there a thought in your heart about anyone which you would not like to be dragged into the light? Renounce it as soon as it springs up; renounce the whole thing until there is no hidden thing of dishonesty or craftiness about you…Maintain a continual watchfulness so that nothing of which you would be ashamed arises in your life.
Chambers tells us that we can easily hide the “ugly” things in us from the world, but we can never hide them from God. I can attend church every Sunday, volunteer my time for whatever events the church might host, even teach Sunday school, but if I’m harboring secret sins all of my efforts at “looking the part” are ruined by the truth of my condition. The Lord knows our innermost thoughts, even the ugliest ones, and if we aren’t right before Him what is the point in trying to look it for man? If our thoughts were played out loud for all to hear, would people’s opinion of us change? If so, we have some work to do. I would suggest that most all of us have some work to do.
Chambers gets right to the root of the issue – we must simply renounce those things. Do we feel envy creep in when we hear of another person’s financial windfall or good fortune? We must immediately recognize it, renounce it and thank God for the many blessings He’s bestowed upon us. Do we find ourselves smug with satisfaction when we hear that someone we dislike suffered in some way? We must renounce those thoughts and pray for them. It is all part of 2 Corinthians 10:5 – “taking every thought captive.” God isn’t interested in what type of Christian we appear to be – he see’s us for what kind of Christian we truly ARE and that runs to the very core of our existence, our thoughts and the state of our hearts.
Chambers tells us:
“Not walking in craftiness,” (2 Corinthians 4:2 KJV) that is, resorting to what will carry your point. This is a great snare…Others are doing things which to you would be walking in craftiness, but it may not be so with them: God has given you another standpoint. Never blunt the sense of your Utmost for His Highest. For you to do a certain thing would mean the incoming of craftiness for an end other than the highest, and the blunting of the motive God has given you.
There are two points here worth deliberation, I think:
First, we have to be cognizant of our tendency to justify our sinfulness. We can justify anything: We can justify greed by claiming it is done for the greater good. We can justify lying by claiming it makes our story a better “witness.” We can rationalize any number of behaviors and try to minimize their impact on our Spiritual lives, but we are only deceiving ourselves. We are called to TRUTH and nothing less. There is no justification for anything else before God.
The second point is our tendency to compare ourselves to other believers. When I was a senior in high school, I was a teacher’s assistant for an English teacher. During the hour I spent in her classroom, I graded papers and did whatever she needed doing while she taught a sophomore level class. During a midterm test, I noticed one of the students obviously cheating off of the person next to him. What he didn’t know was that there were several versions of the test and they were distributed in such a way that no one had the same test as anyone around them. When the tests were returned, he was shocked to discover that he’d failed it – and that the person he’d cheated off of had gotten an almost perfect score. As Christians, our measuring stick is simply the Savior Himself and not the person we sat next to last Sunday in church. We need to spend our time and energies on resolving our own issues and focusing squarely on seeking our “Utmost for His Highest.” Our paths as believers are not always the same – some have one test, some another. If we spend all of our time focused on another’s test we may fail our own.
Sometimes honesty is hard, and it is often hardest when it involves being honest with ourselves. We need to submit ourselves before the Father in all things, even our thoughts – especially our thoughts – so that we no longer have anything to be ashamed of. God seeks to transform us from the inside out. Our greatest call as Christians is to allow Him to do so.
Monday, September 14, 2009
September 14, 2009 IMAGINATION VS. INSPIRATION
2 Corinthians 11:3 - But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
It is always easy to suggest we’d do better in any given situation than those who’ve gone before us. In my immaturity, I often wondered at the fact that the Pharisees couldn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah, that Peter could claim that he didn’t know His Savior in the courtyard, that Jonah tried to run from God, and even that Eve would be willing to eat that apple in the garden.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to realize that we are often swayed by our circumstances and sunk by our attempts to intellectualize the ways of God. By that I don’t mean that Christianity is not for the thinking man, but rather that we often don’t have the capacity – or the foresight – to understand why God works the way he does. Our call is simply to do that which he asks us to do. Oftentimes, we see the “whys” later, sometimes we do not, but in either case we must be willing to submit our finite selves to an infinite God. Our job is simply sincere and pure devotion to Christ. I know who HE is; I don’t need to know anything else, do I?
Chambers says:
If there is something upon which God has put His pressure, obey in that matter, bring your imagination into captivity to the obedience of Christ with regard to it and everything will become clear as day-light.
Obedience is a word we just don’t like to hear. We don’t want to be told what to do – we like to think we can decide that for ourselves. But I’ve found over the years that none of my option-weighing, none of my careful deliberation, none of my human efforts to make the appropriate life choices gives me the peace of mind and confidence that the most simple act of obedience can give. Oh, that I could count the times I’ve felt God nudging me in a direction, but I managed to talk myself out of it through good ol’ common sense. How many opportunities have I missed because I consider myself so sensible?
Have you ever tried to capture the beauty of a landscape with a photograph? I’ve gotten some nice pictures over the years, but I always find myself a little disappointed in the results. No matter how well the picture comes out, it just doesn’t capture the scale of the mountains, the vastness of the canyons, the expanse of the sky. The shot captures only one little piece of the picture I saw with my eyes – everything outside the frame of that shot, above, below, to the left and to the right, remains unseen by anyone looking at the snapshots I’ve taken. And no one glancing at those pictures knows what happened right before or after a shot was captured, unless, of course, I tell them.
I think our lives are a bit like those snapshots, and God is the great photographer. We see only what is in the snapshot of our own life. We don’t see the whole landscape as he sees it. We don’t know what is to the left of us, or to the right of us. We don’t know what is above or below the frame of our personal “photograph”. We don’t necessarily know what came before us and we certainly don’t know what is to come after. But God does and he has placed us exactly where we fit best into the landscape of existence. His will for our lives extends beyond the boundaries of our little photograph - he considers the entire landscape. He has carefully placed us exactly where we belong, and our lives and the lives of those around us create a beautiful panorama that you can’t get with just one snapshot.
Chambers closes saying:
Spiritual muddle is only made plain by obedience. Immediately we obey, we discern. This is humiliating, because when we are muddled we know the reason is in the temper of our mind. When the natural power of vision is devoted to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the power of perceiving God’s will and the whole life is kept in simplicity.
We try to overcomplicate things. We try to make them difficult. We want to do God’s will, but all too often we make our obedience conditional upon our understanding the why’s and how’s. We need to simplify. We need to know our God and live our lives in “sincere and pure devotion to Christ”. When we know HIM, we will know that what He asks of us is sometimes beyond our understanding, but right nonetheless. Discernment comes AFTER our obedience, and not before!
It is always easy to suggest we’d do better in any given situation than those who’ve gone before us. In my immaturity, I often wondered at the fact that the Pharisees couldn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah, that Peter could claim that he didn’t know His Savior in the courtyard, that Jonah tried to run from God, and even that Eve would be willing to eat that apple in the garden.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to realize that we are often swayed by our circumstances and sunk by our attempts to intellectualize the ways of God. By that I don’t mean that Christianity is not for the thinking man, but rather that we often don’t have the capacity – or the foresight – to understand why God works the way he does. Our call is simply to do that which he asks us to do. Oftentimes, we see the “whys” later, sometimes we do not, but in either case we must be willing to submit our finite selves to an infinite God. Our job is simply sincere and pure devotion to Christ. I know who HE is; I don’t need to know anything else, do I?
Chambers says:
If there is something upon which God has put His pressure, obey in that matter, bring your imagination into captivity to the obedience of Christ with regard to it and everything will become clear as day-light.
Obedience is a word we just don’t like to hear. We don’t want to be told what to do – we like to think we can decide that for ourselves. But I’ve found over the years that none of my option-weighing, none of my careful deliberation, none of my human efforts to make the appropriate life choices gives me the peace of mind and confidence that the most simple act of obedience can give. Oh, that I could count the times I’ve felt God nudging me in a direction, but I managed to talk myself out of it through good ol’ common sense. How many opportunities have I missed because I consider myself so sensible?
Have you ever tried to capture the beauty of a landscape with a photograph? I’ve gotten some nice pictures over the years, but I always find myself a little disappointed in the results. No matter how well the picture comes out, it just doesn’t capture the scale of the mountains, the vastness of the canyons, the expanse of the sky. The shot captures only one little piece of the picture I saw with my eyes – everything outside the frame of that shot, above, below, to the left and to the right, remains unseen by anyone looking at the snapshots I’ve taken. And no one glancing at those pictures knows what happened right before or after a shot was captured, unless, of course, I tell them.
I think our lives are a bit like those snapshots, and God is the great photographer. We see only what is in the snapshot of our own life. We don’t see the whole landscape as he sees it. We don’t know what is to the left of us, or to the right of us. We don’t know what is above or below the frame of our personal “photograph”. We don’t necessarily know what came before us and we certainly don’t know what is to come after. But God does and he has placed us exactly where we fit best into the landscape of existence. His will for our lives extends beyond the boundaries of our little photograph - he considers the entire landscape. He has carefully placed us exactly where we belong, and our lives and the lives of those around us create a beautiful panorama that you can’t get with just one snapshot.
Chambers closes saying:
Spiritual muddle is only made plain by obedience. Immediately we obey, we discern. This is humiliating, because when we are muddled we know the reason is in the temper of our mind. When the natural power of vision is devoted to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the power of perceiving God’s will and the whole life is kept in simplicity.
We try to overcomplicate things. We try to make them difficult. We want to do God’s will, but all too often we make our obedience conditional upon our understanding the why’s and how’s. We need to simplify. We need to know our God and live our lives in “sincere and pure devotion to Christ”. When we know HIM, we will know that what He asks of us is sometimes beyond our understanding, but right nonetheless. Discernment comes AFTER our obedience, and not before!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
September 9, 2009 DO IT YOURSELF
2 Corinthians 10:5b - …and take every thought captive to obey Christ
As I read the second half of this verse, I’m struck by the magnitude of the words here. Take every though captive – every thought. Not most thoughts, or just our Sunday morning thoughts, but EVERY thought. That is a huge command when we take the time to consider it’s implications. What would our lives look like if we truly took every thought that popped into our heads and filtered it through the will of the Savior? We may not always be able to control what thoughts arise at any given moment, but we always have a choice as to what we will do with them once they do. Give them over to Christ in obedience. Every time. It’s a tall order, to be sure, but it is what we are called to do.
Chambers reminds us:
In Our Lord’s life every project was disciplined to the will of His Father. There was not a movement of an impulse of his own will as distinct from His Father’s – “The Son can do nothing of Himself.” ( John 5:19 )
Sometimes as believers we can become prisoners of our personal agendas. We may want to do this thing or that in service to the Father but unless we’ve first submitted to God and sought His will for it, we may be headed in a direction that is diametrically opposed to His plan.
Chambers continues:
True earnestness is found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him that is born of undisciplined human nature. It is inconceivable, but true nevertheless that saints are not bringing every project into captivity, but are doing work for God at the instigation of their own human nature which has not been spiritualized by determined discipline.
Although Chambers doesn’t touch on this aspect, I think one of the greatest dangers in serving out of our humanity is that we cannot be assured that our motivations are pure. We must be on guard that our acts of service are in service to God and not to our egos. If I could sing, would I be on the worship team to praise God, or would I see it as a stage for my talent and an opportunity to receive the praise and accolades of men? When I write, my greatest prayer is that God reveal His truth to me and through the words I write, regardless of whether they ever have an audience. I never want to write something – no matter how “spiritual” it may sound – if my intention is to impress others with my ability to string words together. The temptation with service – whatever it may be - is always to use it as a vehicle to receive the praise of men. When our service is done out of impure motives, it is of limited use to God, if it is of use at all.
There is nothing easy about Paul’s words here. It is difficult to constantly pull in the reigns and lay down our thoughts, our plans and our dreams before the throne of Christ. I think it becomes more and more natural the more we do it, but I believe seeking God’s will – sometimes in spite of ourselves – always has to be a conscious choice. Chambers closes today’s devotional with a wonderful summation:
We are apt to forget that a man is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation; he is committed to Jesus Christ’s view of God, of the world, of sin and of the devil, and this will mean that he must recognize the responsibility of being transformed by the renewing of his mind.
My prayer today is that I see my life, my world and my purpose through the eyes of Jesus!
As I read the second half of this verse, I’m struck by the magnitude of the words here. Take every though captive – every thought. Not most thoughts, or just our Sunday morning thoughts, but EVERY thought. That is a huge command when we take the time to consider it’s implications. What would our lives look like if we truly took every thought that popped into our heads and filtered it through the will of the Savior? We may not always be able to control what thoughts arise at any given moment, but we always have a choice as to what we will do with them once they do. Give them over to Christ in obedience. Every time. It’s a tall order, to be sure, but it is what we are called to do.
Chambers reminds us:
In Our Lord’s life every project was disciplined to the will of His Father. There was not a movement of an impulse of his own will as distinct from His Father’s – “The Son can do nothing of Himself.” ( John 5:19 )
Sometimes as believers we can become prisoners of our personal agendas. We may want to do this thing or that in service to the Father but unless we’ve first submitted to God and sought His will for it, we may be headed in a direction that is diametrically opposed to His plan.
Chambers continues:
True earnestness is found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him that is born of undisciplined human nature. It is inconceivable, but true nevertheless that saints are not bringing every project into captivity, but are doing work for God at the instigation of their own human nature which has not been spiritualized by determined discipline.
Although Chambers doesn’t touch on this aspect, I think one of the greatest dangers in serving out of our humanity is that we cannot be assured that our motivations are pure. We must be on guard that our acts of service are in service to God and not to our egos. If I could sing, would I be on the worship team to praise God, or would I see it as a stage for my talent and an opportunity to receive the praise and accolades of men? When I write, my greatest prayer is that God reveal His truth to me and through the words I write, regardless of whether they ever have an audience. I never want to write something – no matter how “spiritual” it may sound – if my intention is to impress others with my ability to string words together. The temptation with service – whatever it may be - is always to use it as a vehicle to receive the praise of men. When our service is done out of impure motives, it is of limited use to God, if it is of use at all.
There is nothing easy about Paul’s words here. It is difficult to constantly pull in the reigns and lay down our thoughts, our plans and our dreams before the throne of Christ. I think it becomes more and more natural the more we do it, but I believe seeking God’s will – sometimes in spite of ourselves – always has to be a conscious choice. Chambers closes today’s devotional with a wonderful summation:
We are apt to forget that a man is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation; he is committed to Jesus Christ’s view of God, of the world, of sin and of the devil, and this will mean that he must recognize the responsibility of being transformed by the renewing of his mind.
My prayer today is that I see my life, my world and my purpose through the eyes of Jesus!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
September 8, 2009 DO IT YOURSELF
2 Corinthians 10:5a - We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God…
We can claim the name of Christ, but unless we go to the effort to truly know God, our claim is nothing more than pretense. If I am going to bother with the thing at all, then I want to do it the way God intended it. Paul’s words to the Corinthians weren’t soft and wishy-washy. He didn’t say “do the best you can” – No, he said “do it!”
Chambers tells us: Determinedly Demolish Some Things. Deliverance from sin is not deliverance from human nature. When we decide to name the name of Christ, there are certain things that we will be asked to lay down because they are a hindrance to our walk with God and we have to do so with conscious intention. Those things can be different for different people and they may not be sinful in and of themselves. You may find crossword puzzles terrific entertainment, and there certainly is nothing intrinsically sinful in them, but if I find myself spending hours upon hours lost in a sea of words across and down, then I need to recognize that my time is better spent elsewhere and perhaps I need to avoid them altogether. It isn’t a matter of following a list of “do’s and don’ts” but rather a matter of being so sensitive to God’s will that we know where our boundaries are.
We are saved by Christ’s blood on the cross and His sacrifice removes the stain of sin on our lives. But we still must deal with our human condition, even after we are saved. God has given us free will and it is not removed when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. As Christians we are faced with moral choices every day, and we will still struggle with temptations, but God has equipped us for the fight:
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Corinthians 10:4)
When we find ourselves struggling with an issue, whatever it may be, we are promised that we can depend upon the power of God to help us gain victory over those issues. What a powerful promise! We aren’t expected to stand alone and powerless in the face of temptation. We can – and should – call upon God to walk us through. He promises us:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
It is now simply a matter of making a conscious decision to use the divine weapons of warfare and call upon our God, which for me is often half of the battle.
Chambers explains:
It is only when God has altered our disposition and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin: Jesus Christ deals with sin in Redemption. The conflict is along the line of turning our natural life into a spiritual life, and this is never done easily, nor does God intend it to be done easily.
How do we turn our natural life into a spiritual one? We have to constantly lay it down at the feet of our Savior. We have to constantly make choices in light of our faith in Christ. We can't simply wait for it to happen, or hope that eventually we'll supernaturally find ourselves closer to God. We have to seek His kingdom with intention. We have to demolish those things which impede our walk with God, and put our efforts and energies into knowing Him.
We can claim the name of Christ, but unless we go to the effort to truly know God, our claim is nothing more than pretense. If I am going to bother with the thing at all, then I want to do it the way God intended it. Paul’s words to the Corinthians weren’t soft and wishy-washy. He didn’t say “do the best you can” – No, he said “do it!”
Chambers tells us: Determinedly Demolish Some Things. Deliverance from sin is not deliverance from human nature. When we decide to name the name of Christ, there are certain things that we will be asked to lay down because they are a hindrance to our walk with God and we have to do so with conscious intention. Those things can be different for different people and they may not be sinful in and of themselves. You may find crossword puzzles terrific entertainment, and there certainly is nothing intrinsically sinful in them, but if I find myself spending hours upon hours lost in a sea of words across and down, then I need to recognize that my time is better spent elsewhere and perhaps I need to avoid them altogether. It isn’t a matter of following a list of “do’s and don’ts” but rather a matter of being so sensitive to God’s will that we know where our boundaries are.
We are saved by Christ’s blood on the cross and His sacrifice removes the stain of sin on our lives. But we still must deal with our human condition, even after we are saved. God has given us free will and it is not removed when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. As Christians we are faced with moral choices every day, and we will still struggle with temptations, but God has equipped us for the fight:
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Corinthians 10:4)
When we find ourselves struggling with an issue, whatever it may be, we are promised that we can depend upon the power of God to help us gain victory over those issues. What a powerful promise! We aren’t expected to stand alone and powerless in the face of temptation. We can – and should – call upon God to walk us through. He promises us:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
It is now simply a matter of making a conscious decision to use the divine weapons of warfare and call upon our God, which for me is often half of the battle.
Chambers explains:
It is only when God has altered our disposition and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin: Jesus Christ deals with sin in Redemption. The conflict is along the line of turning our natural life into a spiritual life, and this is never done easily, nor does God intend it to be done easily.
How do we turn our natural life into a spiritual one? We have to constantly lay it down at the feet of our Savior. We have to constantly make choices in light of our faith in Christ. We can't simply wait for it to happen, or hope that eventually we'll supernaturally find ourselves closer to God. We have to seek His kingdom with intention. We have to demolish those things which impede our walk with God, and put our efforts and energies into knowing Him.
Monday, September 7, 2009
September 7, 2009 SPRINGS OF BENIGNITY
John 4:14 - But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.
As believers, how many of us can say that we’ve truly accepted this water that Christ offers in John 4? I fear that many of us are guilty of walking through the motions and traditions of Christianity without ever accepting this life-changing drink. Church pews are full of people who believe that their salvation is assured based on the habit of their attendance on Sunday morning but the message preached during that hour is lost before they even exit the parking lot.
Chambers opens today’s devotional saying:
“be being filled” (Ephesians 5:18) and the sweetness of vital relationship to Jesus will flow out of the saint as lavishly as it is imparted to him…Keep right at the Source, and – you will be blessed personally? No, out of you will flow rivers of living water, irrepressible life.
Irrepressible life. Is this what my walk of faith looks like? Would those who know me say that my walk with Christ is such that the irrepressible life of Jesus flows forth from my very being? I’m sad to say that the answer to that is “no”, my walk doesn’t look like that – not yet.
Christ promises that when we drink of the water he gives, that it becomes a “fresh, bubbling spring within.” When we consider the imagery Jesus uses there, it speaks volumes about what our lives as Christians should look like. A spring flows constantly, it’s water typically clean, sweet and refreshing. It cannot be contained. You can’t plug it – if you tried the pressure will simply force the water out elsewhere. What fantastic possibilites Christ offers here! That my life could be a source of refreshment to those I come in contact with? What more could I hope for than to be a vessel through which Christ’s love and grace is evident – not so that people would see me, but that they would see HIM in spite of me.
Chambers explains:
We are to be centers through which Jesus can flow as rivers of living water in blessing to everyone. Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus…It is not a blessing passed on, not an experience stated, but a river continually flowing. Keep at the Source, guard well your blief in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow for other lives, no dryness and no deadness.
It is all about our relationship with Christ and safeguarding it in such a way that nothing can come between us and our Savior. When we focus our lives on Him and seek to be a vessel through which He is revealed, there is no end to the possibilities of God’s power through us. We aren’t limited by our abilities, our talents, our charisma – all of those are irrelevant to God. Rather, it is our commitment – and our submission - to our Savior that allows His grace to shine through us. Grace and Love that transcends our abilities, our talents, and even our circumstances. We must never underestimate what God can do when we allow Him to do that which He will!
As believers, how many of us can say that we’ve truly accepted this water that Christ offers in John 4? I fear that many of us are guilty of walking through the motions and traditions of Christianity without ever accepting this life-changing drink. Church pews are full of people who believe that their salvation is assured based on the habit of their attendance on Sunday morning but the message preached during that hour is lost before they even exit the parking lot.
Chambers opens today’s devotional saying:
“be being filled” (Ephesians 5:18) and the sweetness of vital relationship to Jesus will flow out of the saint as lavishly as it is imparted to him…Keep right at the Source, and – you will be blessed personally? No, out of you will flow rivers of living water, irrepressible life.
Irrepressible life. Is this what my walk of faith looks like? Would those who know me say that my walk with Christ is such that the irrepressible life of Jesus flows forth from my very being? I’m sad to say that the answer to that is “no”, my walk doesn’t look like that – not yet.
Christ promises that when we drink of the water he gives, that it becomes a “fresh, bubbling spring within.” When we consider the imagery Jesus uses there, it speaks volumes about what our lives as Christians should look like. A spring flows constantly, it’s water typically clean, sweet and refreshing. It cannot be contained. You can’t plug it – if you tried the pressure will simply force the water out elsewhere. What fantastic possibilites Christ offers here! That my life could be a source of refreshment to those I come in contact with? What more could I hope for than to be a vessel through which Christ’s love and grace is evident – not so that people would see me, but that they would see HIM in spite of me.
Chambers explains:
We are to be centers through which Jesus can flow as rivers of living water in blessing to everyone. Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus…It is not a blessing passed on, not an experience stated, but a river continually flowing. Keep at the Source, guard well your blief in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow for other lives, no dryness and no deadness.
It is all about our relationship with Christ and safeguarding it in such a way that nothing can come between us and our Savior. When we focus our lives on Him and seek to be a vessel through which He is revealed, there is no end to the possibilities of God’s power through us. We aren’t limited by our abilities, our talents, our charisma – all of those are irrelevant to God. Rather, it is our commitment – and our submission - to our Savior that allows His grace to shine through us. Grace and Love that transcends our abilities, our talents, and even our circumstances. We must never underestimate what God can do when we allow Him to do that which He will!
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