Tag Archives: Christian

Disruptive Faith

How God Disrupted My Life

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”…”Safe?” said Mr Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 

“Ha!  You Christians think you’re so perfect, but you can’t even change your stupid sign.” 

This was the thought that ran through my mind as I sped passed the church.  It was just off the highway I drove every day to and from work. You know the type — a billboard with a Christian slogan or scripture verse.  I supposed it was the Church attempting to attract people to visit.

Normally, it changed weekly, but I was making fun of them because it had been seven weeks since they had changed it.   I now can think of a dozen reasons it might make sense to leave a scripture on a billboard for an extended time.  At that moment, I guess I assumed it was a dereliction of their duty – a failure.

This childish glee continued for another week as I yoyoed between work and home while the sign remained unchanged.  Then I became bored with that mental game and started another.

As I began to actually comprehend the text, I fixated on the first four words – “And be not conformed”, I doubled down in a new condemnation: “What do you guys know about non-conformity anyway?  You’re all about conformity.  I’m a true non-conformist.  You’re just about the status quo, you conforming little sheep.”

I had always been an outcast and unaccepted – at least in my mind.   I did not attend a single school for two years in a row until high school, so I learned to go it alone and not get too attached.   In high school, I found I did not fit in with any of the cliques.  I spent most of my time with the drama group who seemed like a diverse mix from the island of misfit toys to me.  Even here, I felt like an outsider. 

I found some weird type of safety in seeing my identity as a non-conformist – even to the non-conformist.  Certainly, this church was not about non-conformity.

I played this game for a week longer picking on the conforming goodie-two-shoes that could not even faithfully change their ridiculous sign.  But I read it each time I went by. Back and forth, day and night, its words seeping in.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed
by the renewing of your mind. 

Romans 12:2a

This amusement became tedious as well and was replaced by this daring declaration, “I bet that’s not even in the Bible!”

I am confident that anybody will likely catch why this is a bold, if not comically arrogant, thought.  I mean, this was a church billboard and I was not a Christian at the time – certainly not a Bible reader.   

I was not unaware of Jesus and God.  I was raised Catholic – casually – meaning mass on Christmas and Easter and when we visited my grandparents.

If you have not experienced a Catholic mass, you may not know that the faithful do not use a Bible since the Church conveniently provides the scripture necessary in a missalette. This little printed pamphlet contains an outline of the service. It tells you when to pray, what the Priest will say, what you will say in response, and when to sit or kneel. It also includes readings from the Old and New Testament printed with very formal references to the scripture such as: “A reading from the letter of Paul to the Romans.”

Despite my limited exposure, I did have moments growing up where I felt a connection and heart calling to God.   I also thought these readings were correspondence that some missionaries at our church had written and had no idea they were in the Bible.

I was pretty sure we had a Bible at the house, even though we never used it.  Sure enough, I found it on a top shelf in our living room and after cleaning the mountain of dust off it, I dove in to prove this passage about non-conformity was in error.

I discovered all these tabs on the edge of the book pages and ascertained they were abbreviations of the sections in the Bible. So far, so good.  I was shocked when I opened to the beginning of Romans and saw the words, “The Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans”. 

“Wait!  That’s the guy from all those letters at mass!  That’s from the Bible!”

Mind a bit blown, I made my way to Romans Chapter 12, Verse 2 – deciphering the structure for the first time.  Confirming that the verse was mostly as advertised on the church billboard, I decided I needed to understand the entire context.  Maybe that would make it different somehow.  Romans 12:1-2 told me:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

I found these little symbols in the text – T and R.  Continuing my improvised study of Biblical structure, I found references that led me somehow to the book of Matthew.  

Once there, I was confronted with something new.  Some words were red and some were black. Reading a few of each, I quickly saw that the red letters were the words of Jesus and I was very intrigued by what I read. 

Before I knew it, I had read this entire Gospel and I found myself in love with Jesus and frustrated, if not a bit angry, that my Christian friends and church people had not been able to share with me what I clearly saw now.  

To be honest, I had never really had a Christian treat me poorly. Yet, somehow, I had in my mind that they thought of themselves as perfect and they (and I) knew I was a hot mess and not accepted by them – even though I had never really been shunned or treated badly.

In the Bible, I found Jesus going, not to the religious people, but to the hot-mess, non-conforming, outcasts like me!   I could hardly believe it.  But the pattern was clear over and over again.  I realized the Pharisees and Sadducees were the religious holier-than-thou elite and Jesus was constantly trying to help them get over themselves and their rules so they could love people.

What was not to love about Jesus?

I did not have anyone there with me to teach me the sinner’s prayer or tell me my next step – but I did not need that.  God had disrupted my seemingly non-conforming, tragically truly conforming life and showed me the only real non-conformist, Jesus Christ, His son who laid down His life for others instead of claiming His right to it – because he loved us that much.

What is Real Non-Conformity?

I have spent about 37 years with Romans 12:1-2 since that night and God still shows me amazing new things from these two verses.  That is crazy-awesome-miraculous.

It is still sad to me when this verse is used to heap judgement upon people – Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world with the pattern being drinking, sex, cussing or whatever other infraction being condemned by the speaker.  The pattern of this world is self, separate from God, and the Pharisees as well as those they condemned as sinners were stuck in this pattern. The modern equivalent is no different.

The transformation that comes from renewing your mind is the one that Jesus enabled for us – by us viewing instead, His mercies that enable us to be a living sacrifice because we too give up our life to let Christ live His through us. 

Even after we become a Christian, Satan accuses us constantly that we are not good enough – as if we were still separate from Christ. But Christ already disrupted Satan’s power when He claimed us and came to live in us as one with us – as our very life. 

That is what disruptive faith is – the faith of Christ to overcome both sin and death in us, which he has already done.   This is why we must continually renew our minds to see the mercy and grace Christ already provided – Christ in us, the hope of glory – and continually let this revelation transform our lives.

Why Does This Matter?

People are often amazed when I share how I came to know Christ through a billboard rather than another person.  I am sure others had talked to me before about Christ, but it never seemed they had introduced Him to me.  I think that is true for most of us, even if we come to Christ when another shares the gospel with us. Usually, there were previous experiences too but this one is the one in which Christ reveals Himself to us – even if facilitated by another.   Saint Paul tells us it requires God’s revelation:

But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.

Galatians 1:15-16a

When we see Christ as one with us, it is not our environment, behavior, capabilities or even beliefs that change – It is our identity.  We are now one with Him, inseparable.  This is true regardless of our environment, situation, or circumstances.  This is true despite our behavior whether good or bad.  We are not operating under the law of good and bad – but under the reality of Christ’s grace and life in us as one.

When we are one with Him, we love Him and His life in us begins to transform us as we journey with Him. Like Paul, God reveals His son in us for a purpose God reveals His son in us SO THAT we might live out a unique calling with Him in our life. 

Seeing His presence in us is how we come to know how we are uniquely called to live and love others. It empowers us to co-create with Him the same types of environments of love and grace He created when he walked the earth.

We are not here to only work and live and consume and experience our culture.  Christ has disrupted all that.  He has replaced life with life abundant.  We are here to partner with Christ in the restoration of all things – to create His culture – on earth as it is in heaven.  

If you have invited Him in, Christ lives in you and through you and is disruptively revealing Himself to you, SO THAT you can disruptively partner together.   Your calling, His mission through you is at stake. 

  • Do you see Him? 
  • How will you partner with Him? 
  • Will you accept His disruptive calling and live life abundantly?

Beginning or End – Amazing Insight Today

The journey with Christ, on day one, rises forward from the point where all other religions, philosophies, affections and pursuits aspire to attain at their final peak.

I was blown away by this idea while listening to a podcast this morning featuring Pastor Bobby Pruitt from Hill Country Bible Church Hutto.  The religions of the world provide men with a complicated map to Nirvana that only the most faithful and moral can even hope to attain, in some cases, even after many life times.  Philosophies fare even worst at their final destination as they rarely recognize God or the need for transcendence. All earthly affections struggle to achieve unity and unconditional, sacrificial love and none ever attains it. And all the ladders of success rising above the mountains like our own personal towers of Babel confound and haunt us with their beautiful view of all we can survey as far as our eyes can see – for we are left to wonder, “Is this all there is?”

None of these in their highest imagined zenith, much less the real ledge far below that might realistically be attained in the short morning walk that measures the brief life of a man, comes close to attaining what Christ brings to those who love him on day one of their life together.  And that is only the commencement – the beginning.  The Bible say Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.   It says the lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth and it says that only he will be able to open the scrolls that will complete history on this earth.  So all the starts begin after his provision for us and after his creation of us.  And all ends do not touch his.  All of mans effort to find perfection fall short – but Christ is not asking us to obtain this elusive and impossible perfection, he gives us his perfection by joining his life to our own – as a wedding gift.  We only have to say, I do.

Becoming Well Read – Update

Currently reading Middlemarch by George Eliot – but I’m on chapter nine of 86 so it will be awhile before I blog about this book.  In the meantime, I have completed, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni  and will blog about it this weekend.

Other exploration this weekend – I will be attending a workshop titled Listening – The 4th “R” – Uncovering the Forgotten Business Tool.  This is being conducted by Mike O’Krent who I’ve known with for some time and by Jacqueline Rixen.  I’m excited to be able to attend.

Mike O’Krent, founder of LifeStories Alive, LLC, makes personal history videos for families that value their heritage. Mike interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. During that incredible experience, he learned valuable listening skills and discovered the importance of recording the life stories of our loved ones. http://www.lifestoriesalive.com/about.html

Jacqueline Rixen  is an Austin attorney who uses listening every day to help her clients accomplish their legal goals.  She has over 20 years experience as a lawyer and many more years as a listener. http://www.rixenlaw.com

People There’s a Train a Coming

train2Living in Hutto, one can’t help but experience the joy of trains – to the point that joy ceases to be the experience.  Since the town is divided by railroad tracks, encountering trains is pretty much a daily occurrence.  The audio tracks, pun intended, play their rap every quarter hour for those who live close enough.  Paul Simon recorded a song with the refrain, “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it’s true”.  I’m not quite sure what he meant by everybody thinks it’s true but I can assure you that whatever he meant, it is not true that everybody loves the sound of a train, even in the distance.

It was this very thought that tunneled into my mind along with the train that accompanied it at about two this morning as I was having trouble sleeping.  We are fortunate to be far enough away as to not notice the sound most of the time but lying awake in the quiet sleeping house is not one of those times. 

train1I begin to think about what nuisance these trains were as the sound of the train invaded my consciousness. There is no station here in Hutto.  They are not delivering or picking up cargo or passengers.  There is no partnership with the city.  Trains push through town bringing traffic to a halt and interrupting life with noise, yet they give nothing to the town. If you know anything about the railroad, you will know that they have huge power to do whatever they want – they are not under city, county or state jurisdiction.   There are many crossing improvements that the railroad could make for this town of 20,000 that has the same number of crossings that it did when it only had 600.  While the tide of trains through town is regular and frequent, improvements are slow to roll into town if they come at all.

Then I got to thinking that people are like this in many ways.  Unless the people we encounter become passengers on our train, provide cargo we care about or are meeting us at one of our scheduled stops, we are usually just rolling through.  In our busyness, we are moving too fast to stop, we have our schedule to keep, and I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.  I think we all understand this reality and we don’t think about it much.  

Perhaps this phenomenon is a necessity of life, which by nature has a point of origin and a point of destination and the rails in between cannot help but be travelled each and every day.  Occasionally we lament just like Steve Goodman did – “Half way home, we’ll be there by morning.… And all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream.…this train’s got the disappearing railroad blues”.  We come to these places in the night and wonder about the switches in the tracks we didn’t take, knowing we are half way home and watching the rail fade away seemingly faster with each hour heading down to the sea and the morning light.  Perhaps, we don’t think about it much because we just can’t bear it and we’re maybe a little scared of that final termination point. So we clear our minds and drop into the tunnel of sleep that emerges into bright daylight, the stoking up of engines, and a new day’s journey where the noise and heat of the rails overcome those quiet evening thoughts.

We certainly cannot be God and know each and every passenger, visit every town, haul all cargo. We must choose.  In some sense, we don’t even really do that.  We are more like passengers riding this rail for the first time knowing very little about where the rail will take us or what the odyssey will bring.  Yet most of us act as if we are in complete control and like we own the railroad. We’d be wise to talk to those who had gone before us and even more so to the conductor who is always singing his song for us again hoping we will refrain from our assumed control of his job and would instead enjoy the ride and the interactions that come to us.

Perhaps our difficulty stems from our preoccupation with trying to run the railroad of our life when we are really only passengers.  Jesus clearly had a purpose and was focused on it yet every interaction along the path was savored and given attention.  He said things like – I only do what my Father tells me to do. So, if he found that God had put him alone at a well with a Samaritan woman – he demonstrated God’s love to her. If the Pharisees setup a trap for him by exploiting an adulterous woman, he loved them both enough to rescue them from the error of their ways without condemning either of them for their treachery. If a Centurion’s daughter needed healing, he would heal her while encouraging this “heathen” that he was actually a man of faith and simultaneously helping the assumed faithful realize their need for His faith.

If anyone’s track of life was well predicted, it was our Lord’s.  There are over 300 prophecies concerning Jesus that he fulfilled.  He was clearly aware of these too for he told men such as John the Baptist to perform actions they thought unnecessary for Jesus – because “it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness”.  Jesus knew God’s vision for His life and was totally focused on it yet able to say in the same prayer both, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”, and, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.”  Purpose and people always went hand-in-hand with him.

Perhaps, if we will rest from “working on the railroad…all the live-long day”, we could realize that these interactions with other passengers is our primary work.  We aren’t meant to “work on the railroad…just to pass the time away.  We are passengers with a purpose on a specific track, on a specific run, on a specific train.  We can rest in our work when we let God do his, when we avoid lamenting about those tracks and trains we can’t ride and when we instead embrace in love those he has given us as we ride the rail of our life.  Jesus was known for the way his love impacted other people and the life he lost, trusting God to raise him up.  If we will be his disciples, we will have to give up our life to make time for Jesus to impact the lives of other people through us. Faith is trusting God that is we lose our life, he will resurrect us.  This is what it is to deny ourselves daily, pick up our cross and follow Jesus.

As I wrote this, the rumble and ruckus of another train builds as it comes from the distance soon to diminish in the dark of the night on the other side of our town.  The whistle blows to warn passengers it is crossing our path and for us, these are the only interactions.  But for those riding the train, I hope there is much more as the expedition continues. 

Lord, help me to rest in the joy of being a passenger on the train you have put me on.  Keep me from wasting too much time staring out the window into the darkness or the whizzing-by world of wishful thinking. Help me trust you who knows the tracks and the course and the power of the engines of my life – that you have all that worked out and I can add nothing to it.  Help me to enjoy the freedom you’ve given me in your rest in Jesus – to enjoy the companionship of the fellow passengers you’ve given me on this unique voyage of my life.  Help me bring you glory in the awesome work of my life, living in Christ and loving and encouraging those you’ve given to me.  Dear friends, get ready, there’s a train a coming, You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board. Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.

People There's a Train a Coming

train2Living in Hutto, one can’t help but experience the joy of trains – to the point that joy ceases to be the experience.  Since the town is divided by railroad tracks, encountering trains is pretty much a daily occurrence.  The audio tracks, pun intended, play their rap every quarter hour for those who live close enough.  Paul Simon recorded a song with the refrain, “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it’s true”.  I’m not quite sure what he meant by everybody thinks it’s true but I can assure you that whatever he meant, it is not true that everybody loves the sound of a train, even in the distance.

It was this very thought that tunneled into my mind along with the train that accompanied it at about two this morning as I was having trouble sleeping.  We are fortunate to be far enough away as to not notice the sound most of the time but lying awake in the quiet sleeping house is not one of those times. 

train1I begin to think about what nuisance these trains were as the sound of the train invaded my consciousness. There is no station here in Hutto.  They are not delivering or picking up cargo or passengers.  There is no partnership with the city.  Trains push through town bringing traffic to a halt and interrupting life with noise, yet they give nothing to the town. If you know anything about the railroad, you will know that they have huge power to do whatever they want – they are not under city, county or state jurisdiction.   There are many crossing improvements that the railroad could make for this town of 20,000 that has the same number of crossings that it did when it only had 600.  While the tide of trains through town is regular and frequent, improvements are slow to roll into town if they come at all.

Then I got to thinking that people are like this in many ways.  Unless the people we encounter become passengers on our train, provide cargo we care about or are meeting us at one of our scheduled stops, we are usually just rolling through.  In our busyness, we are moving too fast to stop, we have our schedule to keep, and I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.  I think we all understand this reality and we don’t think about it much.  

Perhaps this phenomenon is a necessity of life, which by nature has a point of origin and a point of destination and the rails in between cannot help but be travelled each and every day.  Occasionally we lament just like Steve Goodman did – “Half way home, we’ll be there by morning.… And all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream.…this train’s got the disappearing railroad blues”.  We come to these places in the night and wonder about the switches in the tracks we didn’t take, knowing we are half way home and watching the rail fade away seemingly faster with each hour heading down to the sea and the morning light.  Perhaps, we don’t think about it much because we just can’t bear it and we’re maybe a little scared of that final termination point. So we clear our minds and drop into the tunnel of sleep that emerges into bright daylight, the stoking up of engines, and a new day’s journey where the noise and heat of the rails overcome those quiet evening thoughts.

We certainly cannot be God and know each and every passenger, visit every town, haul all cargo. We must choose.  In some sense, we don’t even really do that.  We are more like passengers riding this rail for the first time knowing very little about where the rail will take us or what the odyssey will bring.  Yet most of us act as if we are in complete control and like we own the railroad. We’d be wise to talk to those who had gone before us and even more so to the conductor who is always singing his song for us again hoping we will refrain from our assumed control of his job and would instead enjoy the ride and the interactions that come to us.

Perhaps our difficulty stems from our preoccupation with trying to run the railroad of our life when we are really only passengers.  Jesus clearly had a purpose and was focused on it yet every interaction along the path was savored and given attention.  He said things like – I only do what my Father tells me to do. So, if he found that God had put him alone at a well with a Samaritan woman – he demonstrated God’s love to her. If the Pharisees setup a trap for him by exploiting an adulterous woman, he loved them both enough to rescue them from the error of their ways without condemning either of them for their treachery. If a Centurion’s daughter needed healing, he would heal her while encouraging this “heathen” that he was actually a man of faith and simultaneously helping the assumed faithful realize their need for His faith.

If anyone’s track of life was well predicted, it was our Lord’s.  There are over 300 prophecies concerning Jesus that he fulfilled.  He was clearly aware of these too for he told men such as John the Baptist to perform actions they thought unnecessary for Jesus – because “it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness”.  Jesus knew God’s vision for His life and was totally focused on it yet able to say in the same prayer both, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”, and, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.”  Purpose and people always went hand-in-hand with him.

Perhaps, if we will rest from “working on the railroad…all the live-long day”, we could realize that these interactions with other passengers is our primary work.  We aren’t meant to “work on the railroad…just to pass the time away.  We are passengers with a purpose on a specific track, on a specific run, on a specific train.  We can rest in our work when we let God do his, when we avoid lamenting about those tracks and trains we can’t ride and when we instead embrace in love those he has given us as we ride the rail of our life.  Jesus was known for the way his love impacted other people and the life he lost, trusting God to raise him up.  If we will be his disciples, we will have to give up our life to make time for Jesus to impact the lives of other people through us. Faith is trusting God that is we lose our life, he will resurrect us.  This is what it is to deny ourselves daily, pick up our cross and follow Jesus.

As I wrote this, the rumble and ruckus of another train builds as it comes from the distance soon to diminish in the dark of the night on the other side of our town.  The whistle blows to warn passengers it is crossing our path and for us, these are the only interactions.  But for those riding the train, I hope there is much more as the expedition continues. 

Lord, help me to rest in the joy of being a passenger on the train you have put me on.  Keep me from wasting too much time staring out the window into the darkness or the whizzing-by world of wishful thinking. Help me trust you who knows the tracks and the course and the power of the engines of my life – that you have all that worked out and I can add nothing to it.  Help me to enjoy the freedom you’ve given me in your rest in Jesus – to enjoy the companionship of the fellow passengers you’ve given me on this unique voyage of my life.  Help me bring you glory in the awesome work of my life, living in Christ and loving and encouraging those you’ve given to me.  Dear friends, get ready, there’s a train a coming, You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board. Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.

Leaving Jesus Alone

“You believe at last!” Jesus answered. But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”   -John 16:31-33

I believe in the Lord – not just that he exist – but that he died bearing all the sins of the world past, present and future.  I believe that by believing that and asking his death to count for my sins and asking his resurrected life to become my own, that Jesus becomes the Lord and my very life rather than Satan or myself.  This is my faith.  This I believe.

Yet, like my brothers, the disciples, how often do I leave Jesus alone and go back to my old home and old haunts. I paint pictures of Egypt and leave out what it lacks (see Sara Grove’s song).   “The time is coming and has come”, Jesus says-and so it goes with me.  I am scattered by these fears and pains and I run.  As Sara adds, it not about losing faith or trust – it just about being comfortable.  That old home is so known and comfortable even though it is meaningless and futile.  It can no longer fulfill me but it is so easy to escape to.

In 2000, I took a 10 day journey through the back country of Philmont Scout Reservation with my oldest son, Justin, and a group of Boy Scouts and adult leaders.  We had to carry everything we needed for the entire journey on our backs.  Our trek led us away from base camp to the furthest point away before bringing us back.  For us the furthest point away was climbing to the second highest mountain in Philmont, Mt. Philips, and staying the night.  The climb was well above the water line so we would have no access to water from the base camp the day we started until after the descent the next day.

As a result, we split gear from one of the adults, my friend, Gary, and he carried half his gear plus 5 gallons of water on his back.  It was a very difficult thing for him as he slowly paced up the mountain because he had had knee issues before.   He slowly kept going at an even pace even when the scouts would sprint faster ahead then rest from exhaustion.  It was like the tortoise and the hare all the way up. The air was so thin at the top of the mountain that you would wake up from sleep feeling as if you were suffocating.  It was a difficult part of our trek.

Gary and I found a great analogy to our half-hearted walk with Christ in that place. Being at the half way point, any accident we would have encountered – it would take just as long to press forward as to go back.  There was no escaping the difficulty of the journey.  Gary kept pressing on because there was no option.  But in our Christian adventure, we can walk in the spirit one minute, but when we feel overwhelmed by that, we can turn our minds and hearts from him the next and simply return to the comfort of the couch, the TV and the tangible.

We may leave Jesus alone, but he is not alone – his Father is with him.  We may feel we are alone and long for home, but we are not – our Father is with us.  We need to learn to weep in those moments as men longing for our real home as Rich Mullins shares in his wonderful song, If I Stand.   Sara gets to this idea too – “The place I had wasn’t perfect But I had found a way to live It wasn’t milk or honey But then neither is this”.  We think that part of our longing for comfort is the desire to get back to what we know – but when we examine it, we find “the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I”ve learned” and that our real longing is to fully know him who we can only see dimly now. 

Recognizing that we are our weeping is a longing for our heavenly home is helpful.  It isn’t so much that we want those old, familiar death clothes, that we want to return.  It is that we long to see Him face-to-face.  Proverbs 13:12 clarifies this, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  Don’t we really long for the tree of life?   Philippians 3:20 says, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”.  Also, we are longing to be free from sin and this longing that pulls us back and on that day, our flesh and the world and God’s adversaries will no longer plague us.  It is helpful to identify our longing, not for the comfort of what was behind but for the glory that is before us so we can set our minds in that direction.  Phil 4:8 “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.”  Galatians 5:5

Perhaps the most fascinating thing Jesus says to the disciples in this passage is, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.”  If we were telling our friends that they were going to abandon us in our time of need, it would be likely that they would feel shame, incredulousness, or maybe fear.  Our master has caught us in our selfishness and accused us of betrayal.  But Jesus tells them that he is sharing this with them that they may have peace.  He says that peace is in Him.  

When we get scared or overwhelmed and we look back to Egypt and to our comfortable living room couch and we scatter and leave Jesus alone, we may find a temporary comfort but we do not find what we are longing for.  And we also find, amidst our comfort-seeking distractions, a voice of guilt and accusation.   This voice that says, “See! That adventure toward Jesus is really not for you.  You were wise to save yourself from that discomfort.”   But the truth is we’ve buried our head in our comforts but that does not make our troubles go away.  Jesus told the disciples to remember that, “in me you may have peace”, and he then tells them, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”.

We turn back to our comforts, we find that they do not fit us anymore and we find our adversaries ready to plague us.   Shortly, we find that we long for peace more than comfort and we race back into the arms of our Savior, the source of peace and life.  We are discovering our dependence on him.  We cannot make our world work or find what we need – but Jesus, and Jesus alone, has overcome the world.

In another place in the Gospel of John (6:67-69), many disciples of Jesus decide to leave him and Jesus asks the twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” and Peter answers him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The Wastefulness and Faithfulness of God

I came across a quote today by one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis:

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Lucifer] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.

Wow!  I hope we are not the same but I suspect we often are.  We are so caught up in ourselves that we miss everything going on around us – the infinite amount of gifts God bestows upon us.  While we are rarely aware of it, every single unconscious breath is a gift.  While we usually don’t notice, our brain is continually deciphering between 50,000 distinct cataloged smells.  While we barely think about it, the human hand performs thousands of intricate movements without us directly telling it to do so and with no conscious thought.

And surrounding these fabulous luxuries and all the others inherent in our bodies are all the gifts of creation at our disposal – an endless adventure of the senses and the spirit which we mostly ignore while we’re camped out in the AC in front of the TV watching ET or some other mind-numbing, life-sucking fictional/barbiturate IV.  Not saying that this is all bad but the excessiveness of it and the distraction of it away from that which really matters and the many other life-giving pursuits is fabulously ungrateful and mindless in response to what we’ve been given.  Clearly, we live in a culture where we live mostly lives of privilege, and think of most of our privileges as rights.

But I’m not really writing about us or Lucifer.  What I’m enthralled about is that despite Lucifer and his deception, despite our fallen state, and despite the world and its foolish misappropriation of creations gifts — God has provided it with an extravagance that is overwhelming when we get past our selves long enough to consider it.  What an amazing, loving Father!!!

On the surface, it is hard to say that God is wasteful.  It seems wrong.  But there is a certain sense where this seems obvious too.  That he would give up His son Jesus for the chance of the hearts of those who called themselves his enemies is an economy hard for us to comprehend.

I once shared a story about a man who chose between saving the life of his son who knew Christ or that of a friend of the son who did not.  It was an emotional story about how a Godly man might choose to go after the lost even at great personal cost.  The person I shared it with rejected the story commenting about how he could not get over the foolishness of such an economy. 

Perhaps this is why there are references in the Bible to the wisdom of God seems foolish to men 1 Cor 1:18 – though in reality, the foolishness of God is wiser than our wisdom 1 Cor 1:25 and the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God 1 Cor 3:19.

But even if God considers it necessary and worthwhile to send His son to die for us to redeem us and to overcome death (which can seem so foolishly wasteful to us), was it necessary to give us a billion stars at night, and massive oceans repeatedly pounding waves on the shore, hummingbirds, thousands of different types of flowers and plants and animals, the ability to imagine and create, endless different variations in the appearance of sunrise, sunset and the moon?  Do we really need to be able to distinguish 50,000 different smells? 

He has lavished us with so much more abundance than we can ever use of even be aware of.  We could easily fill several life times just trying to learn all that we could be thankful to Him for and still be less than 1% aware.  All of mankind’s story on earth and all of his learning, yet we still is seeing him in a dim and dark mirror.  It is hard to not see his abundance as wasteful from this perspective.

Yet with all this before us – we still miss God.  Another quote of Lewis from The Weight of Glory spells out the reality:

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire, not too strong, but too weak
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Perhaps God does need all these methods — all this wastefulness — just to get through to those he loves.  It is like the way a young man is "wasteful" in wooing the woman he loves, pouring out all sorts of praise and gifts upon her.  Perhaps, God’s "wastefulness" only seems that way to us because we don’t like His girlfriend so much – the way a parent or friends of the young man will council him, "she’s not worth it".  Of course, if the young man loves the girl, none of these brutish admonishments mean anything.   So this too should be an encouraging gift to us – God clearly loves us because we ourselves can argue "we are not worth it" and yet, Christ is fully committed to his bride.

In reading A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, and looking at God’s attributes and considering specifically the attribute of "faithfulness", we can see that all God’s attributes are true at all time – this is what His attribute of faithfulness means.  So God is faithful to us at all times, even when we are not faithful to him.  And this is not because of who we are, but because of who He is. And He is faithful!  But he is not just faithful to us – that might be easy since we are so happy with mud pies.  He is faithful to Himself.  Since that level of faithfulness is infinitely above what we need, His faithfulness to us is more than secure – it is part of who He is, for his sake, for his glory Is 48:11

God’s wastefulness is only wastefulness in the economy of men who are too foolish to see that the wastefulness is all part of God’s glory and he is showing it to us “24/7/365/a life time” because that’s who He is. Because of who He is, he longs to know us and bless us, simply because He loves us – even if we do not love him.   If we’re appalled by that wastefulness, there is but one solution, accept Him!  Then, in view of all these mercies, gifts, and lavish, abundant wastefulness of the lover-king toward his beloved, give him all of yourself daily and forever since you know that without doing so, your life would be truly wasted.

Lately, I’ve been reading Pray All Ways by Edward M. Hayes who shares dozens of ways to have a rich fellowship with our Father through every aspect of our lives – a way to recognize and give ourselves to him in all the day-to-day gifts He gives us.  I highly recommend it as well as The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer.    Also, a beautiful representation of the love of God toward us – in the context to the difficulties and tragedies of life can be found in The Shack by Paul Young – here is a cool blog and video with the author:

·         http://catalystroadtrip.com/2008/03/27/the-wastefulness-of-grace-paul-young-ernie-johnson/

That book ends with a great quote with I will end this post with it:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

        – Elizabeth Barrett Browning