Large With Strength

"When I called, you answered me; you made me bold with strength in my soul." -Psalm 138:3, NASB.

I opened the Scriptures this morning to this verse. Immediately I felt drawn -- no, not drawn -- pierced by something in it. What is it, exactly, that has speared me? Something about strength in the soul. Something about God answering and making something in me. I pull out the Message Bible to see if Eugene Peterson's paraphrase might capture it for me. "The moment I called out, you stepped in; you made my life large with strength." Large with strength. You made my life large with strength. Yes, this is it. I hear His voice through the Scripture. This is God's word for me, spoken intimately and from His heart to say, "This is what I am doing in your life, my son, my dear friend." I'm trying to decide which is more incredible for me: this secret that He let me in on or the fact that He is this desirous for my communion with Him. I love both.

This is what God is up to: enlarging our hearts and the rule and domain of Christ within us (where the Kingdom lies), that He might dwell more fully and presently there. In The Sacred Romance, John Eldredge writes, "As our soul grows in the love of God and journeys forth toward him, our heart’s capacities also grow and expand: 'Thou shalt enlarge my heart' (Ps. 119:32 KJV)." And Isaiah cries out: "Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes" (54:2).

That my "tent" (the sanctuary of the Spirit of God) may be enlarged, I pray along with George MacDonald:

O Christ, my life, possess me utterly.
Take me and make a little Christ of me.
If I am anything but thy Father's son,
'Tis something not yet from the darkness won.
Oh, give me light to live with open eyes.
Oh, give me life to hope above all skies.
Give me thy spirit to haunt the Father with my cries.

-from Diary of an Old Soul

Holy Shift

Something has shifted in my heart this morning, an important shift, toward hope. It was brought on by several things that ultimately brought me again to the realization that I am in process, that I've only barely begun. There is so much more for me -- more of everything God wants to do, came to do. I'm not done yet -- and God is not done with me! The full presence and reality of Christ is still being formed in me. "Until Christ is formed in you" is I think how the Scriptures have it (Galatians 4:19).

The heaviness of the fall evident in peoples' lives -- people I know and love as well as my own-- can be an unbearable weight at times. The despair had thickened like a dense fog settling in, hopelessness like thorns underfoot. But it's lifting today. Oh, praise God. Jesus has reversed the curse and the effects of it, truly He has, by His work in redemption, in His obedience even unto His own death. In His resurrection. In His authority. And He is in me. In Him, we have victory! It's really true!

And so now it is trust that counts, that and obedience. To really put my confidence in the entire person and God of Christ -- Creator, Redeemer, Master, Teacher, Captain, Healer, Counselor, Loving and Living One, all of that -- to really put confident trust in the full and entire identity of Jesus, then I am saved from the thorny snag of hopelenssness and the blinding disorientation of despair. Jesus crafts a crown from the thorns, destroying in ultimate finality the effects of sin and the fall against me, against us all. The fog lifts, a fresh wind clears the air today. As The Message has it,

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is
resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have
to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in
operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has
magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal
tyranny at the hands of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

At lunch I was drawn to sit alone in a quiet corner of a local McDonald's with my iPod, to actively engage in solitude with God, to worship and to journal. A song by Jeremy Camp was playing, called This Man. The lyrics capture the invitation I am offered through the work of Jesus for me: "And the veil was torn so we could have this open door. And all these things have finally been complete." All these things of reconciliation to God (2 Corinthians 5:18), of disarming of the foul powers (Colossians 2:15), and of restoring us back to His image (Colossians 3:10). We now have only to "embrace what God does for you" (see Romans 12:1-2, especially in The Message).

Covered in Dust

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

-Psalm 91:1

The Jews have a blessing they give to one another that says something to the effect of "May you get dusty by walking with your Rabbi." The thought is that you would walk so closely behind your teacher that you would get covered in the dust left by his steps. I think this is the place we are called to still, and I think this is what we as lovers and prophets of God are to do: to walk so closely with Jesus that we are hidden in His shadow. It sounds like a pretty intimate adventure with Him.

That seems to be what He is continually inviting me into when I wake. He turns and asks, "What is it you want?"

What is it I want? Is he serious? Are you ready for this, Teacher? Here goes... I am fractured; I want repaired. I am a ruin of what I was meant to be; I restored back into it. I am ash; I want to be all flame again. I am impotent of love and ignorant of life. I have lost the story, forgotten my role, made my bed in the depths of hell and opened my sheets to demons that have raped and plundered and stolen. I want found and healed, my wounds dressed by leaves from the tree of life. I want sheltered. I want to remember my true name – Sought After (Isaiah 62:12). The Pursued. The Found. The Son Who Returned Home. And I want more than this. I want character of heart – nobility and honor and dignity and strength. I want the new to be greater than the old could ever hope to become. I want to be dressed in white, purified as if I had never been a whore. No, more. Purified so that my having been a whore is not a shame or a burden, but what brings great glory to the Holy One who chose me, sought me out, ransomed me, and brought me to his side. I want to know this God like I have known no one in my life. I want to work alongside him as a comrade-in-arms, a friend, a fellow warrior in battle, a lover and a be-loved. I want his friends to be my friends. I want all of this. I want restored.

All of this swirls in my tired head, wearied of all hoping and striving toward this end. And then I see this One who asks the question, this One who seems to know all of this in me, and looking into His eyes as they pierce me I am brought to my knees in the agonizing hope that He might be the answer to all this biting and burning desire. I grasp for an answer, but my response is a stuttering and stammering and stupid reply, "Uh, wh- whe- where are you staying, Teacher?" If only I could be with Him, just be near to Him. I must.

He only smiles, his heart swelling with joy that He has caught my whole attention and with anticipation of what He has yet to show me. His reply is the invitation into Mystery and a life "that is the business of life," as George MacDonald put it. He says only, "Come, and I will show you." (See John 1:35-39).

And I am covered in his dust.

Fathered

A week ago a friend and I canoed a portion of the Buffalo in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. One of the few remaining rivers in the lower 48 without dams, it snakes its way through the wilderness, buffeted on its sides by massive vertical limestone bluffs. Riding atop its waters is like something out of an epic tale – The Mission, maybe, or Lord of the Rings, with its strong currents, its green-and-blue glass-water pools, its quick turns and deep forests flanking its beaches. It’s a compelling beauty.

Usually.

We chose to go on this particular day because the waters were up, and the trip promised to be more demanding of us. We would barter leisure for the adventure of stronger currents and swifter waters – an opportunity for us to roll up our sleeves and be challenged a bit against the claim the Buffalo has on this land. Sometimes we need to be overtaken by beauty, to let it reach us and fill us with wonder and awe. And there are other times when we need to struggle and subdue physically as a way, perhaps, to wrestle with and prevail over something within. Passivity. Comfort. Safety. Ennui. Indifference. Dispassion.

We had checked the weather before we left. It would not be a hot day, or a sunny one, but overcast. A front was moving in, but was still far enough away that we felt like we could beat the thunderstorm coming on its heels.

We were wrong.

Very wrong.

In fact, we were barely a mile into our 9-mile excursion when the rain came. It was at first almost nice, refreshing. But within the hour the heavens opened and we found ourselves in a monsoon, at times so thick we could barely see in front of us. The blast of thunder reverberated and replied against the bluffs and cliffs. Other canoers had beached and were waiting it out under canopies and cliffs, but we continued on. Paddling hard, strategizing our way on the rougher waters as well as we could in limited visibility, we finished the course in just over two hours, cold and soaked to the bone, battered by the wind and rain, racked with aching and tired muscles, and feeling very much alive. We couldn’t have been happier with our journey. Something in us felt… stronger. I think you could say we felt honored, even, to have had the chance to battle with the wilds of the river and weather. And to be defeated by it.

And I knew that this is so much what God is up to in our lives. This is what He had planned for us that day, to be tested and called out of our safety and comfort into the wilds of His passion and life. To come alive as men.

Robert W. Service in his poem Law of the Yukon gave voice to the Canadian wilderness, to its demand of those who would brave its earth and rock.

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat…
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat…

The same could be said of the Father’s intention for his sons and, dare I say it, for his daughters. When Job speaks of this in 23:10, he says “when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” In other words, God will prove him true. It was what God was about in Job’s life, and it is what He is doing in our own: giving us the dignity and honor of a place with Him. He knows who we are, and who we are to become, and He is ruthless in bringing that out in us. We will, indeed, come forth as gold.

It was over soda the evening of the trip that I asked another friend, “What would you do if men that you loved and respected showed up at your door one day and said, ‘Get your clothes packed and come with us. We have something planned for you,’ and then they just turned and waited for you. You had no idea where you were going, but you trusted these men. You went with them to find out that they had planned something very specific for your training and for your initiation. You didn’t pay for it; it wasn’t like going to a retreat where others were receiving the same thing. It was for you, personally. You knew for certain that their only motive was one of belief and anticipation and gut-level courage; believe in who you are and are to become, anticipation to see it fulfilled, and the guts to pursue your heart and speak into your life with theirs to make it happen. What would you do with that?”

Because, you see, that is a picture of fathering, of invitation into manhood, of a fellowship born not only out of “nurturing” friendships as brothers, but also look-you-in-the-eyes recognition of your truer name and identity by those in some way gifted with the wisdom and sacrificial love to help take you there, by fathers.

We live so much in a fatherless culture, and so this sounds foreign to our ears, strange even.* The mystery of initiation is something the systems of this world, in cooperation with and under the influence of the Evil One, has all but destroyed. But it is needed… at any age. 10. 14. 25. 36. 49. 62. 77. 88. We need to be fathered like this, and we need to know what this means. How, if we do not experience fathering, can we know who a father is to be, and if we do not know who a father is to be – our Father – then how are we to know who we are to be as sons and daughters? The entire rich tradition of father-son language and expression in the entire Bible becomes, then, cute, cuddly, nice, a happy illustration in a Sunday sermon. It remains only a metaphor, but never becomes reality.

Nothing that Jesus ever said was or is to remain a metaphor. “Heal the lame,” he preached – and then He did it. “I am the Son of God,” he proclaimed – and he was born of his Father’s life into a woman. “Seek me, and I will show you great and unsearchable things that you do not know.” And then He does. In Him, all things exist, as rock-hard reality (Romans 11:36).

I think the Father is up to this more than we may realize in our lives, this very intentional and pseudo-self-destroying, poser-shattering pursuit, this look-you-in-the-eye engagement in which He refuses to treat us as anything less than His sons and daughters – children that are less and less still suckling the breast and more and more tearing the meat off the bone; who less and less crawl and wriggle and more and more stand tall, walk upright, and run without growing weary; who less and less cry and demand and pout but more and more gather our growing strength to work alongside our Father and enjoy with Him the fruits of our labor. Men and women girt for combat and grit to the core. We are growing to inherit this Kingdom, where all is ordered by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and where life to the full – the lush greens of the field, our lungs bursting with free air and the fresh fruits bursting from the vine, and the laughter and joy of shared intimacy and the adventure of it all beyond our wildest imaginings – is ours not by right but by spoils, by victory, and the winning of this life by battle has made it all the more glorious because now we know beyond any and all shadow of doubt how great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God (1 John 3:1).

And I think that as we grow up in Him we are to turn toward one another and offer the same invitation – not an invitation to simply repeat a prayer or to walk the aisle and confess your sin through shameful tears, but an invitation to become the men and women we have been destined to become, won for us through Jesus. Beyond repentance into genuine, steady growth by the disciplines of a loving Father (Proverbs 3:12) and by others maturing in their journeys to the point that they can offer to the less mature something of wisdom and counsel and, believing enough in the treasure that Jesus came to rescue and free, recognize the weight of love and desire and delight the Father has for His sons and daughters (Proverbs 6:20) and go after others’ hearts in this way – seek them out, pursue them, give themselves for others as Jesus does and lead them into.

I think the Father is raising us up into that – fathering us and teaching us to naturally father others. We are not alone, for certainly He is our teacher in it all. And He is also our example. This is what it means to love, because He loved us this way (1 John 4:19). And this is how we know what it is to be brothers as well as fathers, brothers who stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the journey and back-to-back in the battle (Hebrews 2:17).

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless,” says James, is “to look after orphans and widows” (1:27), those left after fathers and husbands have gone. Those remaining after fathers and husbands have been taken out through war and disease and the cancers of this world. My friends, that describes us all. We are all in need of real men who can lead us to become fathers and husbands again. If we are to practice the “pure religion” that God recognizes as right and if we are to grow to become men and women ourselves, friends of God for whom He can entrust the keys of the Kingdom, we need to be led there.

It is for hope of this that we remain authentic with and true before God (1 John 3:3).

In The Man Watching, Russian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names…
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us…
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

That day on the river God was out to decisively defeat us, and we came away “proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand,” as Rilke goes on to say.

The Father is raising us as sons. “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons... Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ‘Make level paths for your feet,’ so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” -Hebrews 12:7, 12-13

---

*In “Healing the Masculine Soul,” Gordon Dalbey tells the story of a common initiation rite for a boy living in Nigeria. To our mostly Western ears it sounds uncivilized, something our advanced culture has moved beyond. But notice the efforts of nearly every religious group to in some way offer what was missed through initiation (the process of growing up). Learning from a father what it means to be a father has been replaced by books full of parenting tips. How we “do” the spiritual life, too, has largely been cataloged and chronicled as a set of steps and procedures, mainly because we have so few who can lead us by experience, example, and wisdom. We have few fathers. Biblical stories will only make sense if we see them as one generation passing down something crucial to the next, an older to a younger, even (and especially) God to his friends, to those He wants to relate to face-to-face (gasp, heretical!).

Here is the account from Dalbey:

“In the rural village where the son lived, the father, who often has several wives, lives by himself in his own hut, while his wives each have their own hut nearby. A boy lives with his mother until he reaches the proper age, usually about eleven. Then, one evening the village elders and the boy’s father appear outside the mother’s hut, together with a drummer and a man wearing a large mask over his head. The word for ‘mask’ is the same as that for ‘spirit”; so as the masked man steps out first from among the men both to call the boy out and to usher him from the mother to the men, the spiritual dimension of manhood is understood from the outset as primary and essential.

At the signal of a sharp drumbeat, the mask/spirit approaches the mother’s door, dancing and shouting, “Come out! Come out! After several retreats and then thrusting forth to announce his presence and intention, the mask/spirit rushes the mother’s door and beats upon it loudly: Bam! Bam! Bam! “Come out! Son of our people, come out!”

Eventually – perhaps after two or three such “approaches” by the mask/spirit – the mother opens the door tentatively, shielding her son behind her. At this the elders and the father join in the chant: “Come out, son of our people, come out!” Significantly, the mask/spirit does not enter the mother’s hut to seize the boy, but rather waits for him to step out on his own from behind his mother. Louder the elders chant, sharper the drum beats sound, more feverishly the mask/spirit dances, and more firmly the mother protests – until finally, she steps aside. It is the moment of truth for every boy in the village.

Standing there before the threshold of his mothers’ house, he hesitates. Beside and behind him holds all that is tender and reassuring and known and secure. Before him, and within him, cries out all that is mysterious and sharp, and true. “Come out!” the men shout. Hesitantly, wanting but not daring to look at his mother, the boy steps forth from the dark womb of his mother’s hut into the outside – born again, this time the child of the father. At once the mask/spirit seizes his wrist and rushes him over to the father and the elders – lest in his fear he have second thoughts – where he is joined with the other boys called out for that year’s initiation. Behind him, a wail of mourning breaks forth from his mother; the men around him burst into a victory shout. The drummer picks up the sharp and decisive beat, and the group moves on to the next boy’s hut. Once gathered, the group of boys is led out of the village to a special place in the forest, where they are instructed for the next two weeks. Manly skills from thatch roof construction to hunting are taught first. Then the boy enters into a period of fasting for several days, thus turning the focus from physical satisfaction to spiritual discipline. During this time, the boy is circumcised and while he is healing, taught clan history. Upon returning from the wilderness ordeal, the boy is regarded as a young man; when he enters the village, his mother is not permitted to greet him. He proceeds directly to his own house, separate from his mother’s; that evening he receives from his father a gun, a piece of farmland, and a hoe – his stake with which to establish his manhood in the clan” (p 51-52)

Lost the Story, Part II

Enemy-occupied territory---that is what the world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
-C.S. Lewis

It is this story that Christianity is about that is most assaulted and diminished. And regaining the Story is not an easy endeavor.

The plastic Aslan shield I found (See Lost the Story, Part I) had the effect of shaking me awake a bit to see how much of Reality I have lost over the last few weeks through routine and duty. God had me find it in order to raise that longing in me for a battle to be engaged in and for a King to fight for and for a people to help rescue, but there’s more He’s up to. The poet Henry David Thoreau warned us that “We must reawaken and learn to remain awake, not by mechanical aid, but by the infinite expectation of the dawn.” In other words, by believing beyond belief that we live now (and will live ever more fully) in a Story of great proportions. (It is argued that Thoreau never became a believer, but it is hard to dissect his deep thirst for life with the offer from the Life-Giver. Perhaps he never accepted the offer. Perhaps there’s more to that story we don’t know. But that’s for another time.) Apparently, there’s more God is up to even this week to reawaken me.

De and I went last night to a bookstore with some dear friends. I started looking through Philip Yancey’s new book, Prayer, per my friend’s advice. It is another piece of the discipleship-calling I hear Jesus inviting me into. He might as well have said, “Come, follow me.” Here’s what Yancey wrote:

When I started exploring the subject of Christian payer, I first went to libraries and read accounts of some of the great pray-ers in history. George Muller began each day with several hours of prayer, imploring God to meet the practical needs of his orphanage. Bishop Lancelot Andrewes allotted five hours per day to prayer and Charles Simeon rose at 4:00 a.m. to begin his four-hour regimen. Nuns in an order known as “The Sleepless Ones” still pray in shifts through every hour of the day and night. Susannah Wesley, a busy mother with no privacy, would sit in a rocking chair with an apron over her head praying for John and Charles and the rest of her brood. Martin Luther, who devoted two to three hours daily to prayer, said we should do it as naturally as a shoemaker makes a shoe and a tailor makes a coat. Jonathan Edwards wrote of the “sweet hours” on the banks of the Hudson River, “rapt and
swallowed up in God.”

I interviewed ordinary people about prayer… Is prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often do you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes – well, maybe seven. Do you find prayer satisfying? Not really. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Occasionally, not often…

Pretty to-the-point, huh? Here’s the thing. I didn’t feel guilty or condemned or running around in my brain grasping and trying to figure out how to pray more. I’m not even sure this is what Jesus meant in bringing me to that portion of the book. What happened, though, was a certain kind of drawing. Something inside clicked. I said to myself, “I want that.” I want a deeper intimacy through prayer, a life lived more fully by abiding more deeply and immediately in Christ.

The disciplines are an important part of life with and in God. I know that has been largely lost in the Western church, but there is a move to bring them back to their rightful place as aids to help us live the life Christ has won for us. Dallas Willard brings to light the fact that Jesus never commissioned us to make Christians of all nations, but rather disciples, those who would do what they saw Jesus doing. And, well, Jesus spent quite a lot of time praying and communing with the Father, among other things. John Piper described prayer as “the walkie-talkie on the battlefield of the world. It calls in for the accurate location of the target of the Word. It calls in to ask for the protection of air cover. It calls in to ask for fire power to blast open a way for the tanks of the Word of God. It calls in the miracle of healing for the wounded soldiers. It calls in supplies for the forces. And it calls in the needed reinforcements.” That, of course, only makes sense if you are living in a Story where battle plays a major role. C.S. Lewis understood that, calling this world “Enemy-occupied territory.”

So last night I have it in my heart to rise a little earlier than usual this morning, and I set my alarm to help me up. But this is where the phrase “Enemy-occupied territory” is stripped of all cliché and all romantic allusions. I struggle – I mean, really struggle—to get out of bed, knowing I need this like I need food or breath and yet unable to force my muscles to push against the weight of gravity and heaviness. I lay there for awhile and kid myself into believing I can pray without getting up. Naturally, I fell back asleep. Forty-five minutes later I finally roll myself out of bed and head for another room, where I am hammered again by evil spirits that are troubling me (like in Luke 6:18), and I cannot even concentrate because of doomsday thoughts swirling in my tired head. Finally, after half an hour of trying to break through, I give up and head to the shower.

Now, I’m not saying that I am a loser for not being a “spiritual giant” like George Muller or Charles Wesley. It’s not my goal here to become a spiritual Charles Atlas or anything of the like. It’s that I genuinely desire to drink from the life-giving water that is God, and it is opposed.

It is hard to fight through all that is set against our life in God. If you don’t believe we are at war and that your heart is the target of our Enemy, just try spending unending hours in quiet adoration or passionate pleading or joyful communion with God. It happens, it can, it does. It’s won for us – that’s how we are called to come to the Lord God (Hebrews 4:16). But it does not come often without a fight. It becomes readily apparent why we must suit up in spiritual armor.

It was not until I was driving in to work this morning that something finally broke through. The lines of communication with God were unjammed somehow – maybe an angel came or my attempts at exercising the authority of Christ triumphed – and I felt as if I could breathe again, and lift my head beyond the ground just beneath my feet. I had the opportunity to take some time during lunch to drive around and pray. And I will set my heart to rise again tomorrow morning and “enter boldly into the throneroom of grace” and remain there throughout the day enjoying God and being enjoyed by Him. Because I must if I am to come alive to Him and to the Story of Reality.

Lost the Story, Part I

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.
-G.K. Chesterton

It’s been a difficult weekend, with so much of our deeper life and movements in the Kingdom of God opposed and thwarted. Homework this weekend has been soul-killing in its intensity and its propensity to steal time for other things, like sleeping and spending time with De. And I have not fought well for my time with God in the disciplines needed for my training in living well in this Kingdom, in my growing up into God: study, prayer, journaling, fasting, silence and solitude, service, and the like.

And I think I know why it’s been especially difficult to follow Him into those places of connection. The epiphany came while taking some time away from homework to take a walk with my niece and nephew who were spending the weekend with us. Being the imaginative kids they are, it’s hard for them to stay on the street when walking. And being the imaginative kid-at-heart I am, it’s hard for me to keep them on the street. We found a cement culvert that had collected all sorts of paraphernalia during the last storm. Walking among the mess, I saw a broken shield on the ground. It was in three pieces, and I only found two, but it was evident that it had been some kid’s play shield, made of plastic. The most striking feature of it, though, was the image embossed on its crest. It was a lion’s head, with full mane, and its face a mixture of kindness and ferocity, as if were this lion to come alive and step outside its plastic barrier you wouldn’t be able to decide if you should run from it or hold your breath in anticipation and hope that he would speak to you. It was clear who this lion was. Even the kids knew. It was Aslan. My nephew exclaimed, “This was Peter’s shield!”

My pulse quickened. It’s an odd thing to become alerted and aroused at the site of a plastic bit of trash, I know, but you should have seen it. It looked almost real, and only its flimsy thinness gave away the illusion. I longed for it to be real, to be heavy with iron and steal and leather. A real shield. For a real battle. In a real story.

And then I realized why my devotions are so hard to pursue lately. They are not necessary training, mission-specific orders, a place to have battle wounds healed, the interior tent where the Commander awaits our meeting, a time away from the front lines to regroup and recharge and reassess. They are a disconnected set of duties that have little to do with my life because I have lost the story of the Kingdom advancing upon the dark forces of the Enemy by the violent-hearted for the rescue of God’s precious ones. For were I to have my eyes opened, my ears attuned, my heart laid waste by that reality, I would be a fool to miss one weapon or one moment or one command the Lord of Hosts, the Commander of this Invasion, would give me, and I would set my face like flint to seeking Him for my life and, by way of it, for the lives of others He has it in his heart to rescue.

Restoring the Broken

My Father… cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.
–Jesus, John 15:2

The average temperatures this winter in Missouri are 20-25 degrees below the average for this time of year. Not a big deal in itself, and not all that uncommon. We have moderately cold winters here every four or five years, where you wake up and the frozen layer of frost outside betrays the single-digit temperatures that ran throughout the night. Most of us complain about it throughout the months, though, used to having at least several days in a row where the rivers and lakes can thaw. Certainly the birds clambering for food from our feeder in the back yard are wondering now whose idea it was to stop short of Texas on their flight southward.

But this winter has been a mix of really cold and really wet, which, as you can imagine, begs a lot of ice and snow. Three weeks ago we had a three-round bout of ice, sleet, and snow pounding us in alternate blows, and they left their mark. Thousands of homes were without electricity, some even still, the roads were layered for several days with ice like glass, and trees snapped under the weight.

Driving to work this morning I pass through rural areas where it looks almost as if a giant played hop-scotch through the forests, the trees split and their tops dangling or fallen to the ground like crushed toothpicks. Clean up will go on for months, or possibly years.

I realized how much like my heart this winter has been, as if in peering out into the woodlands full of torn and broken branches I’m looking into a kind of reflection, the freezing winds stealing my breath and the heavy veneer of ice suffocating and slowing the beats of my heart into a slow and arctic rhythm.

Which explains why instead of being encouraged (read: given courage) in my walk with God by those who are ahead of my on the journey, those full of the life and character of Jesus, I am discouraged (read: courage stolen). It is because I see their fruit and desire it, but then try to make it on my own. There are holy and passionate men of God in Scripture, for example, that I read of – David and Paul and John the Beloved – and I immediately think, Yes! I want to be that way! But then I lose heart somewhere in the “long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene Peterson has it, thinking that these men brought about their holy and full-of-life and life-giving character on their own.

I was lost in all of this on the drive when Jesus broke in and cut through (Hebrews 4:12) with ancient words that He spoke to his disciples, speaking them to some deep place in me, “I am the vine; you are the branch. Remain in me, and if you do, then you will bear fruit. Simply abide, that’s all. Come, rest yourself in me dwell here” (from John 15).

The words that Jesus spoke in John 15:2 concerning the Father cutting off every branch that bears no fruit used to scare me, thinking He meant that if I did not work up some good fruit before He came along, I’d be cut down and thrown into the fire. This is not what He says. There are dead branches in us, places within our inner being that have been separate from Him. The Arborist prunes them, cuts them back, destroys the dead branches that we might live and grow up in Him, producing the fruit of right living simply by living with and in Him. He is telling us here that we cannot do this on our own, and as I have tried I have been left with broken and crushed limbs. But He has come, not only to bring us into a place where I can have full life (by just abiding with Him!), but also to remove the dead places (“circumcision of the heart” – Romans 2:29) and prune back living places so that we can have even more life. This is the glory of God (John 15:8).

The winter here isn’t over yet. Many, in fact, believe the worst is yet to come for us. The trees that will survive the season and come into the spring bursting and blooming with life will be those that have been carefully pruned back, those whose dead branches have been removed so as not to add to the weight of ice and threaten to snap the tree in two, those whose roots go deep into firm and good earth. This work is what the Gardener is up to in we who believe.

The Best for Now

You have saved the best till now.
-John 2:10, italics mine

The final project from singer/songwriter Rich Mullin’s prolific career, The Jesus Record, came about because he felt compelled to spend time thinking on the life and words of Jesus. Though there is much to think of in this journey with God, and much he did think of – grief and sorrow, battle, friendship, growing up and growing old and even growing young – this one thing he felt compelled and drawn to: Jesus’ life and His initiation and invitation and ransom through it.

I find that really instructive, and so that’s what I, too, and compelled to do. It was another saint who said that we should “fix our eyes on Jesus.”

So, here’s what I am seeing recently. When I look at people around Jesus, those who interacted with him in the gospels, I see basically two types: those who eventually fell in love with him and gave their lives to following him, and those whose hatred toward him and the kingdom he came to announce became murderous. There was hardly any middle ground. In fact, Jesus himself said as much – “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).

Out of the four main socio-religious groups of the time – the Essenes, the Herodians and their friends the Saduccees, the Zealots, and finally the Pharisees – Jesus didn’t fit in. He couldn’t be categorized and so he wasn’t so easily dismissed. It’s interesting to note that those who hated Jesus were those whose fury came from their inability to own him, who couldn’t use him for their own agenda. Rich’s words are true here, that “the world can’t stand what it can’t own and it can’t own you ‘cause you did not have a home.”

Jesus came, of course, to bring his kingdom to us, to announce it so that we may be invited in. To open up for us a new way, a new reality, a new world order. His kingdom opens up for us the possibility of a new heart and with it a new and intimate relationship with ourselves, with each other, and, of course first with God. In Jesus, God stooped down to look us in the eyes and say, “I want you to be mine now. Join me. Become my friend.” [Incidentally, the Hebrew for “unfailing love” in Psalm 6:4 (“…O Lord… save me because of your unfailing love”) denotes befriending.] A better picture is God lifting us up to where He is, to a "high and holy place" - Isaiah 57:15. It is a new order outside of ourselves but coming from within, from hearts full of life (Proverbs 4:23).

While all of this is baffling and more than a little shocking in its implications, perhaps the most scandalous notion of all was the kingdom’s availability and presence. All good Jews in Jesus’ day knew something about a kingdom coming. This language wasn’t unfamiliar to Jesus’ hearers. For centuries, prophets have been describing and foretelling this kingdom. Many of the prophets before Jesus spoke on behalf of the poor and oppressed, the rejected and outcast. With prophetic tradition, Jesus spoke of the inward sincerity of the heart and authenticity – again, nothing too unfamiliar (though mostly forgotten) to his hearers. And, of course, just like the prophets before him, Jesus spoke of the coming judgment – that evil would be exposed and named for what it was. Finally, Jesus emphasized the coming of a new order of things, a time in which “in that reality, the poor and rejected will be embraced and valued and brought back to the community. In that new era, what will count is what is in the heart – not merely what is projected, pretended, or professed. In that new realm, evil in all its forms will be exposed, named, and dealt with. In that new kingdom, justice, integrity, and peace will overcome” (Brian McLaren, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” p. 23).

Most of the Jews should have known this much already, but only in the sense that it was far out in the distant future. That’s why for many – Nicodemus perhaps being one of them – Jesus’ arrival (and with him, the kingdom) was such a shock. It exposed their unbelief. When John the Baptist announced, “Repent!” (Matthew 3:2), not much of a raucous was raised. But he finished his pronouncement with, “for the kingdom of heaven is near.” What a fool he must have sounded like! Who would really expect the kingdom to be at hand, really? That came as a contradiction to what everyone thought and expected. No one expected the kingdom of God to happen now. “It could only happen then,” writes Brian McLaren, “after the Romans were ejected or eliminated, which in turn couldn’t happen (for the Zealots) until later, after the Jews were militarily mobilized and led by a great military liberator (or messiah), which couldn’t happen (for the Pharisees) until later, after the prostitutes and drunks and other undesirables were either reformed or otherwise eliminated. Put together, these conditions were so hard to imagine actually occurring anytime soon that they were considered (by the comfortably adjusted Herodians and their similarly comfortable friends, the Saduccees) completely improbable, no, practically impossible. The Kingdom of God? Maybe in some distant someday. At hand, here and now? No way!”

Yet it was just a few days later when Jesus strolled right in front of John and John yelled out, “This is the one I meant…!” The kingdom of God, indeed, is near – standing right before him. Standing right before us.

We get to live on this side of that amazing invasion by the King into enemy territory to bring about this new kingdom. And yet, we often do with it the very same thing those contemporaries of Jesus did. The kingdom of God can only happen then, after… fill in the blank. I go to college. Get married. Buy a home. Have children. Accomplish something big in my career. Get more money. Find a community. Be healed or feel better. Beat depression. The list goes on.

We miss Jesus in our midst because of this, and in the process miss everything that he won for us by the kingdom come – his reign and rule, living in the freedom and fullness of a new heart, offering love and invitation and truth to others. Essentially, we are not really living at all unless, and until, we live in and out of the kingdom of God now here, established in and from us by the King and by our Intimate One.

Father God, it’s true. I have bought into the lie that I have to wait until things change or get better before I can really live in the kingdom. I have squandered the most startling and amazing gift ever given that is fully mine to have, fought for and won for me by Jesus – life, life to the full and free and all that it implies: heart intimacy with you and with others, full expression of your character, glory and honor to you, and the beauty and dire need of your kingdom being established here throughout my own home and community. I have missed it. Why… and how in the world…? Forgive me, Lord. Jesus, come again in the fullness of your Spirit and establish me again into your kingdom as a citizen of it and may your kingdom in turn be established here, in, through, and from my heart, my household, and my domain. I give all of myself back to you: body, heart, soul, mind, spirit, strength. I am yours. Reign here. Move here. Speak here. Bring your presence and blessing here. Open my eyes and ears. You have saved the best for now, indeed. I am taken. I love you. I love you. Amen.

From the Silence, Speak

I forgot the wisdom
of the poem is silent wisdom,
the space between letter
and letter.

-from I Forgot by Arnon Levy

Max Picard in The World of Silence says of the Hebrew language that its architecture is vertical. “Each word sinks down vertically column-wise into the sentence. In languages today we have lost the static quality of the ancient tongues. The sentences become dynamic.” His next statement is a piercing metaphor for most of our lives today, “Every word and every sentence speeds on quickly to the next. Each word comes more from the preceding word than from the silence, and moves on more to the next word in front of it than to the silence…”

The same could be said of our lives. The same could also be said too often of those who speak for or to us, our pastors, our talk-show hosts, our news anchors, our politicians.

In the recent elections, how do we know who is who? Who stands where? How do we know when all we hear in the media is what this one says about that and what this one thinks about that one. Everyone speaks, and everyone speaks loudly, clamoring for attention and votes, and so no one is heard. It is like the clanking and clattering of dishes shattering on the floor of a restaurant by an overwhelmed waiter spilling his server tray that deafens friends, even if temporarily, to the conversation they went there to seek. Why is it that a quiet beachfront picnic or an evening over candlelight is more romantic for two in love than a night out at a carnival or a club? It is because there is silence, and in that silence each can hear the heartbeat of the other.

No wonder God often speaks in a whisper, and that in the deafening crowd of the streets no one will hear Him (Matthew 12:19).

Henry David Thoreau said it well. The more we are deafened by the drone and buzz of the noise around us, “we go more constantly and desperately to the post office [or to check our email],” but “the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while…. Read not The Times,” he finishes, “read The Eternities!” Dallas Willard summarizes Thoreau’s thoughts by stating that “conversation degenerates into mere gossip and those we meet can only talk of what they heard from someone else.” While I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with Eleanor Roosevelt’s thought that “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people,” it is true that the mind and the heart itself withers by the constant sounds around and eventually almost entirely disappears, swallowed up by the life, or what we perceive as life, happening in a maddening speed around us.

James warned us to be slow to speak (James 1:19), and I think this is why. It must be from the silence and what we encounter there that words are formed in us – the tragedy of that silence and the weight of it, and the comedy that ensues when we actually hear from God, and the jaw-dropping, heart-stopping reality of what it is He actually tells us.

The Israeli poet Yona Wallach wrote to “Let the words work on you… they'll enter you, they'll come inside… let the words act on you, do with you as they wish.” We would do well to remember that is was out of the Word that Jesus came to dwell among us (John 1:1), a Word that the world didn’t recognize (John 1:10).

And how could it? The days of Jesus were tumultuous ones, no less so than in our present Western, modernistic society. It was only those willing to be done with the grasping to be heard and actually walk with Jesus who would later have the authority to speak, whose words would echo and reverberate from the empty hearts of millions that would follow in the centuries to come. No wonder the Psalmist tells us to “be still and know that I am God” (46:10), using for the word “still” one that means to sink down, to leave alone, to withdraw.

Last week God brought me to Mort Walker trail, a path that meanders through some woodlands in a conservation area not far from where I work. While there, I wrote this in my journal:

I am seeking the presence of the Father more immediate and intimate than I normally experience day-to-day within the noise and busyness of life. It’s in the silence that I am given “ears to hear,” as I have asked Jesus to give me, and the solitude beckons me into the secret place with Him. It always has.

I feel like He had this prepared for me like a secret picnic, a “table prepared for me in the presence of my enemies.” And here, in the deepest gratitude, surrounded by groaning creation as a reminder of what is to come – the feast of the wedding day – I eat. I dine. I linger here with the Wild Lover who wants me not to have him but to be haved by Him, who desires not that I possess but that I be possessed – with Him, with His life – and insobeing remain in Him and He in me.

If I am to speak, then it will be from that place and from that place alone. For it is the place of love, and the Source and Fount of my life.

The Long Stretch

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
-Romans 5:5

'I saw the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will live in hope,
because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the paths of
life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.
-Acts 2:25-28

I've been looking at the differences between longing (or desire) and hope and faith. I've come to think that longing is something that I will live with now in my new heart, that like an imprint it's there in my heart - like treated lumber as a frame for a house. It's just in there and I must learn to live with it. But it's not enough. Longing or desire is only that unless I do something with it. It's like hunger pains. It doesn't mean anything unless it leads me to Food. Hope is the expectation that you will find that Food and be filled. Faith is enduring in that hope, despite persecution and temptation to take the play off-broadway, in the face of a shortcut or a substitute to sedate the heart or slake the thirst.

I'm somewhere between the longing and the hope. I have plenty of longing, so much that it nearly takes me out. I think this was Jeremiah's condition of the word of the Lord being like a "fire in his bones." But longing by itself leads only to disappointment, then desperation, and then inevitably to despair. Only by allowing hope to grow within will that longing produce in us what Jesus wants: our hearts. That hope brings us deeper into Christ and further along on our journey.

I don't have enough hope that I will one day have what I long for, and that in this life it is my inheritance to have that very thing (deeper, richer, and more abundant life in God). This longing for life is the source of all of my heart's discontent, but the hope for it is the source of all my heart's joy. Hope is essential. "Hope is to the soul like breathing is to the body," says philosopher-theologian Gabriel Marcel. And so this is what I'm taking to Jesus, that I will be filled to the full with "all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13).

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, our labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
-1 Thessalonians 1:3

Modus Operandi

I recently read a really great book on living in the love of God called “So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore?” In it, a man named John approaches proselytizers on a street corner screaming at passers-by that they will be going to hell. He nears one of the accusers, and, full of sadness, says to him, "You really have no idea what motivates you, do you?"

It struck me as odd, this comment. Not because I’m not also put off by the accusers’ remarks, or by their apparent misunderstanding of the Scriptures or even the heart of God, but by the use of the word “motivation.” Reading through the story, you come to understand John as a man of God, a man who knows Him very intimately.

Thinking through it some, I think in that question John really cut to the heart of the matter, the same as Jesus often does in His approach to us. He is always interested more in what is in our hearts, the “why’s” and “what’s” and “what’s up’s” than he is in our actions, those “how’s” and “where’s” and “when’s.”

I recently had a conversation with a friend where I read a Fredrick Buechner quote to him. In the quote, Buechner essentially states that when we are thinking of a vocation for our lives, we should listen to the voice of our own gladness. My friend insisted that it is better to listen to the voice of Jesus and not our own gladness. I argued that I think this is what Buechner meant by his statement, that Jesus will often speak to us through the desires written long ago in our hearts, that the calling on our lives will be where we feel the most passion and energy. Going back and forth, my friend could still only see the actions that Jesus calls us to, and not the motivation behind them. Possibly the most important question of our time is “What is it, exactly that Jesus wants for us, not from us?”

If only the man known as the “expert of the law” had been able to see that question when he came to Jesus asking what was necessary to “inherit eternal life.” Jesus, probing his heart, asked him in return, “What’s written in the law? How do you read it?” (Jesus could very well have asked him, “You’re the “expert of the law,” right? Your identity is in knowing everything about God so that you can lord that knowledge over others, all the while stealing their God-given place of intimacy with me. So, you tell me. How do you read the law?”) The man replied as he was taught, with the Scripture to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”

And then comes the most confusing verse in all of Scripture. Jesus says to the man, “Yeah, that’s right. Do that, and you’ll have life.”

What? Do that? Do that? How does a man just “do” that, as if it were a task you could check off at the end of the day? For any of us who understand love even a little bit, it is not something you do, it is something that flows. That statement to us who have tasted love is equivalent of saying, “Yes, water is necessary to sustain life in our bodies. Do water and you will live.” It is nonsensical. How do you “do water”?

In the same way, how do you “do love”?

And that was Jesus’ point. You can’t. You don’t “do love.” You live it. You live with it. You feed it. You abide in it. You enjoy it. You let it grow. And love is not the point. Our place with God restored is the point. He is the vine, and we are the branches of that vine.

Immersed in a society that is task-oriented and consumer-driven, most of our ears have been deafened to the call of the heart, much like the expert in the law. We hear “love the Lord your God” as a call to action, not a call to intimacy. We’ve all heard the famous Mountain Dew commercials that declare “Do the Dew,” when, in fact, all you can “do” with Mountain Dew is to drink it. It actually “does” its thing in you – either to hydrate you or to give you a rush of caffeine.

The tragedy of that encounter in Scripture is that the man left thinking he could just add “love the Lord your God with everything you are” as another item on his checklist as something to do to inherit, or earn or get, real life.

Can you imagine if a twig laying on the ground was thinking to himself, “Hmmm. I wonder how I can get nutrients. How can I grow?” He lays there baking and drying out in the hot sun. The trunk of the tree says to him, “You are a branch of mine. What do you think you must do to have life?” “I think,” replies the twig, “that I’ll go down my checklist. First, I’ll try to bury myself in the dirt…” and on he goes. The tree knows, of course, that the only way this branch will live again is to be grafted back into the tree so that the life-giving sap of the tree flows into him.

There is much action in the Kingdom of God. In fact, living the life of God is the most active and adventurous thing we do, but only as an overflow of the life of the heart. He loved us first, and our love is a response to His.

And then, we have life. It begins there, in intimacy with God, and it grows and it extends from it.

Picture Elijah. This fella was a prophet of God, which means that he was friends with God and that God entrusted to him his heart and words to bring a nation back into fellowship and intimacy with Himself. And what kind of life did he get to live? Well, let’s just say he didn’t spend his life in La-Z-Boy flipping through channels. At one point, God called him to Mount Carmel, where he was about to have a showdown with one of Israel’s enemies. 1 Kings 18 describes that encounter.

But even Elijah drew his life and breath from the intimate time he spent with God. Just after the encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah fled in fear and weariness toward a cave. God tenderly ministers to Elijah, twice bringing him food and water. He travels to Mt. Horeb to hide and rest in a cave. God comes to him and listens to his laments. Elijah is worn out from simply “doing” and needs restoration. God sends a great wind to the mountain, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. But God was in none of these. Then, Elijah hears a “gentle whisper,” and it is here in the whisper that he finds God. There, in that tender embrace from God, Elijah’s life is restored. He is not doing. He is, in fact, fainting into the embrace of his God.

In the ‘80s BMX movie Rad, Cru is trying to learn to perform a backflip on his bike. Bruised and worn out from slamming on his back again and again, Christian finally tells him, “You’re letting your body move your head. Let your head lead, and your body will follow naturally.” On the next attempt, Cru lands his flip perfectly.

We’ve all heard the phrases, “Use your head,” or “Get your head in the game.” That’s another way of saying, “Put your heart into this. Let this be your entire focus of energy and passion.” But what if you can’t? What if you cannot put your heart into the game? Can you still play well?

In the Kingdom, the answer is no. The heart is central. The heart is first.

That is why, I think, Hebrews tell us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus. We will follow with action and intention what motivates us in the heart. If our faces are set like flint on the life of Jesus and the love of God, and if we are experiencing them daily as we abide in Jesus, then the effects of love will shine through. Our motivation will be love. Love, and the life of God, will be our modus operandi.

It was the summer of 2003. I and a small band had traveled across the globe to a small village in southern Sudan where we would be shooting some footage for a film we were making on the life of persecuted Christians. Unable to sleep early one morning, I flipped through the Bible and landed on a verse that had before given me a lot of encouragement, Jeremiah 29:11, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Angry for reasons that I could not explain, I left the hot, cramped hut and walked outside. Due to the absence of electricity, I found myself enshrouded in a nighttime darkness I had never encountered before. There, under a billion brilliant stars in a sky that stretched wider than the continent, I lamented to God in despair, “I can’t! I can’t find you, then, because I can’t seek you with all my heart! I don’t do anything with all my heart!”

I didn’t expect a response, but I got one anyway. It was a single word, one that has ricocheted and reverberated in my soul ever since, and one that pierced me with its finality and invitation. It was simply the word, “Exactly.”

And possibly for the first time that night on the other side of the world, I got it. I understand what the cross had really done for me. I am grafted back in. My primary role now is to simply abide there with Christ, and to let His life and love flow into and through me. That will call for much action on my part, without doubt. Except now, that action can be a result of a newfound energy of the soul and desire of the heart. A new modus operandi.

"Life Sucks"

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

“Life sucks, then you die.” My eye caught the bumper sticker on my way to work the other day. I read it again, and then I glanced at the passengers inside the car. I couldn’t tell by looking what had brought them to such a state of heart. “Really?” I thought. “That’s it, then? That’s the final statement of reality on life. It’s simply a drag, then it’s over?”

It’s along the same lines, really, with the phrase I’ve heard a million times growing up in the Midwest, “All you have to do in life is pay taxes and die.” It’s said with a little smirk, and always just following a conversation on all of the duties and tasks that you have to accomplish in any given day. You just spent hours running back and forth between the license bureau and the tag agency to make sure your vehicle is road-legal. You hurry back from working eight hours to rustle up a quick dinner for hungry children before you have to get them ready for bed and prepare their lunches for the next day, only to find just a couple of precious hours left in the day to do a couple of loads of laundry and feed the dog. The doctor has diagnosed yourself or someone close to you with a serious illness, and you have some life-altering choices to make concerning everyone around you. Heavy decisions. Drudgery duties. A line like “all you have to do in life is pay taxes and die” feels at a time like that a lot like consolation, something you say to make yourself believe that these other things aren’t that important in the end, that all of life will be over anyway one day, so why worry so much.

So much of our days are a tug-of-war between worry and resignation, and we manically maneuver back and forth on that tight-rope walk fearful of losing our footing and desperate to balance everything.

And too often the church hasn’t offered much else to that dilemma. Still the most commonly preached message is that we need to shape up or be shipped out, and that if we can just get it all right morally (more to balance, you see), then maybe one day when we die we can find a little rest. In other words, “Pay your taxes (taxing duties) to God or to the church or to those that matter, and then you get to die.” The message is called salvation, but it has nothing to do with salvation, really. Biblical scholar Dallas Willard says that really the word salvation in the Bible could be replaced simply with the word life. Try it out. Give it a whirl. Look up some Scriptures like Psalm 13:5 (“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”) and Psalm 27:1 (“The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?”) or 2 Corinthians 6:2 (“For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.”) and replace salvation with life. Is that what those messages we so often hear really offer? Life to the full? Does your heart rejoice when you hear about how much more you need to get right, that not only your life depends upon it, but your eternity? Does it seem as if that message paints the Lord God as a “stronghold of my life,” one who sustains and builds up and brings life to your bones? Does it sound like that message of “salvation” is one of help from God?

Because here’s what I read: “How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him.” That’s from Ephesians 1. Do you hear the passion? “High places of blessing.” Whoa. Really? Okay, my ears are pricked. What’s that about? Paul is exultant. I mean, he is practically jumping up and down in his sandals. Why? What’s got him so hooked, so excited? He goes on to say, “Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love…” And he continues, “…to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” (Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message)

Look at the key words here. Blessed. Focus of his love. Whole and holy. Adopt. Family. Celebration. Lavish gift-giving. Beloved.

This ain’t your grandma’s salvation religion. We’re talking something wholly better and greater than we have ever yet dared possible.

In his daring book "So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore," Jake Colsen tells the story of working in a large, profitable church but feeling incredibly empty and dead inside. He encounters a man, John, who seems to know Jesus very personally, intimately. The conversation between them goes like this:

“You know what this whole thing is about, Jake?” John sat back on the bench,
crossed his arms over his chest and looked out across the playground. “It’s
about life—God’s real life filling your own. The life of God is not some theological abstraction. It is fullness…freedom… joy and peace of living in him that endures in the face of your worst circumstances. That life was in the Son and he came to share it with anyone who would put his or her trust in him."

“It’s not about working hard, big ministries or new buildings. It’s about life that you
can see, taste and touch; something you can frolic in every day that you live. I know my words fail to describe it adequately, but you know what I’m talking about. You’ve had moments like that, haven’t you?”

Personal and Free?

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
-Galatians 2:21, The Message

A living relationship with God that is personal and free. A living relationship, personal and free.

We have a lot going on in the church today, a lot of ideas of what it is to live the Christian life. But here, succinctly and directly Paul states the unequivocal, central purpose for everything we proclaim as believers – why Jesus came, what we are to do with it, where we are to go from here. Everything else we may do as believers falls second to that: evangelism, church attendance or lack of it, baptism, walking in our calling, feeding the hungry, Bible study – all of it. These are all fine things, and some very necessary, but they are second to a living relationship with God. That is central. A relationship with God often results in or overflows into these other things. But these are not first.

If I were to ask you, “What is the central reason you are here on earth?” what would you say? Or, maybe, “What does God want from you?” What would your response be? Think on that for a bit.

Don’t rush too quickly to the answers you’ve been given. Let yourself dream a bit. What do you hope the answer to that question would be?

Continuing the Conversation

These are the golden sessions, when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze, and our drinks at our elbows, when the whole world – and something beyond the world – opens itself to our minds as we talk, and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are free men and equals, as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time, an affection, mellowed by the years unfolds us. Life, natural life, has no better gift than friendship. Who could have deserved it?
-C.S. Lewis

In an effort to capture that sense of wonder in peering into that something beyond the world that Lewis refers to here, and in a desire to continue the conversation begun so long ago in the depths of eternity past and that we are invited to participate in now, I want to share a bit of where I find myself to be this day.

Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths… -Psalm 25:4

I am living right now in one of the most painful and one of the most dangerous times of my life because I know what my calling is – that is to say, I have some familiarity with that great mystery of my heart's presence and place in the Great Drama that is unfolding even now… I know what I am made to do and how I am to walk with God and even where, in a sense, it will be or at least what it will look some time from now to be walking with God. But, I am not currently living in my calling, at least not fully. I mean, I am living in this mystery, but there is so much more to it, and for possibly the first time in my walk with God, I see some of the more that is out there.

This discrepancy between the life I am living and the life I am called to, or at least the life that is offered, is the source of much discontent. It raises some concerns and certainly some questions. Am I not walking there because I am not yet ready? Because I am not walking with God well? Have I made a bad decision or series of decisions that is keeping me from that? Have I gotten lost somehow?

You have made known to me the path of life… -Psalm 16:11

These questions, and of course the confusion from the Evil One and his slew of Lying Tongues as they pounce on that like some wild hyenas on a carcass to shred and tear with their own interpretations and deceit, most accurate describe where I find my heart this morning.

Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps. –Psalm 85:13

In a sense, I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge peering in through the glass on the outside of the dance hall looking into his life prompted by the ghost of Christmas past, with the crucial difference that I am not looking into my past, but into a sort of future, a kind of what-could-be if I walk with God well, a peering further along on this path of life, and it is really exciting, and that the prompting is not coming from a ghost of Christmas but from the Spirit himself that gave us Christmas, the Spirit of God.

God has intrigued me.

Fullness of Life and Discipleship

The following is taken from Seize the Day with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Charles Ringma, © 2000 Charles Ringma

Proverbs 28:14

I am sure we honour God more if we gratefully accept the life he gives us with all its blessing, loving it and drinking it to the full, grieving deeply and sincerely when we have belittled or thrown away any of the precious things of life.
-Letters and Papers From Prison

Discipleship does not mean that we live a life of deprivation, but rather a life of appreciation, thankfulness, and sharing. It is only the person who has drunk deeply at the well of life who can voluntarily lay aside things for the sake of others. But even then, one needs to return again and again to be filled, stimulated, and encouraged. Discipleship is not throwing blessings away in order to be able to identify with the poor and needy. It is drawing others in to share in the blessings that God gives.