Responsive to Him?

At my age there is a real possibility of becoming ‘set in my ways.’  The ways I 'do life,' the foods I like, the patterns I follow, are comfortable, like a pair of old shoes. And that’s just fine. A real problem arises if I confuse what is ‘comfortable’ for me with what is ‘right’ for everybody. I want to remain a learner, a person who can adapt to new things, new ways, new ideas. Most of all, I want an experience with God that is alive, that has not abandoned the passion of my first love for Jesus.

Matthew records an encounter that Jesus in which some people asked why the disciples were not following some of the ‘old’ ways. Take a look. "Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:14-17, NIV)

Devout Jews of the time sought to please God by fasting and other practices of self-denial. In themselves, such acts of devotion are not bad and they can serve a good purpose; helping a person to focus on God, to listen for the voice of the Spirit intently. However, Jesus tells those inquirers that God is doing a new thing in the world and that they needed to be responsive to Him. The message of the Kingdom Come was bigger than fasts and feasts. The ‘new wine’ of the Spirit was going to poured into people whose hearts were soft and tender before the Lord so that the message of God’s reconciliation of humanity to Himself through Christ Jesus could go out to the whole earth. That Gospel could not be bottled up in the ‘old wineskins’ of Judaism, could not be expressed through rigid observance of the Law of Moses.

Using simple illustrations, He spoke of the importance of being responsive to what God is doing beyond what is comfortable, familiar, even traditional.  Was Jesus erasing our connection to the Old Testament or to practices of the Spiritual disciplines? Not at all! He says that when ‘the bridegroom is taken,’ in other words when He has gone back to Heaven having established the Kingdom by His death and Resurrection, His disciples would fast, too.  But, they would practice their devotion outside of the old patterns of the Law, without the need for further sacrifice for sin.

His word remains an important lesson for you and me! Each generation risks becoming rigid, exalting their own traditions to the place of sacred law. If we do, we will miss out on what God is doing, refusing to be responsive. A word of clarification here is critical. Jesus is not praising fads, novelty, or ‘relevance.’  Those things become a trap spiritually, too. Seeking some new thing because we are bored, wanting some excitement to relieve the tedium of daily life, can lead us to throw out good and desirable things in the name of revival and/or renewal. Jesus calls us to listen to the Holy Spirit. That asks for mature discernment, for a readiness to spend time listening before we announce God’s ‘next best thing’ to the world.

Has your faith become rigid, your spiritual life without a tender desire for God? He makes us new, even those of us who are old!

The word from the Word is Paul’s prayer for God’s people. Make his words your prayer, too. I do for you, for me. "Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for Christians everywhere, I have never stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called. I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people." (Ephesians 1:15-18, NLT)

___________

Abba, I humbly bow in Your Presence.

My prayer is that my mind will be clear, my heart will be tender.

Keep me from loving the safe, the familiar, the ‘tried and true’ so much

that I will not hear the Spirit’s invitation.

I pray for a discerning heart that can separate the merely novel

from the work of the Spirit in bringing the Kingdom to this time.

Teach me, renew my love. Preserve me from a living death

so that I will please and honor You for all my days.

In the Holy Name of Jesus.  Amen

Close the Gap

Who is the real you? Yesterday the political world focused on some past words of one of the candidates. In a video clip that played widely, he made statements that were cringe-worthy about crime and race, his words seeming to reveal some inner thoughts that do not match his public rhetoric. Watching the furor over this, I felt humility because I know there are times when my feelings in the moment drag me towards actions that are inconsistent with my beliefs. For example, I accept Jesus’ call to live lovingly and to forgive. However, were you to mention a few names of people who have done hurtful things to me, my first thought is not to be loving or forgiving. That gap between what I believe and how I act needs confession, grace, and change!

We all have similar gaps, don’t we? For some, they are great chasms of hypocrisy resembling the Grand Canyon. For others, they are there, but smaller, like cracks in the sidewalk. Regardless, they must be acknowledged and confessed. If we allow hypocrisy to go unchallenged in our heart, it will grow. We must never attempt to conceal the gap – big or small – with religious talk. Jesus reserved His most scathing remarks for religious leaders who used pious talk to conceal sin-filled hearts! He told them - "You strain out a small fly but swallow a camel. You Pharisees and teachers are show-offs, and you’re in for trouble! You wash the outside of your cups and dishes, while inside there is nothing but greed and selfishness." (Matthew 23:24-25, CEV)

Hypocrisy offends God. It short-circuits our experience of God’s grace. He desires to forgive us and His Spirit will change us from the inside out but not if we are self-deceived, unwilling to get honest with Him. Simplicity, a singleness of heart and mind that is Christ-centered, makes us beautiful, stable, and people who know inner peace. James reminds us that "a double minded man - unstable in all his ways." (James 1:8, KJV) The wisdom of the Word says "The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity" (Proverbs 11:3, NIV)

Do you practice the discipline of Simplicity – aiming to be no more and no less than the person God desires?  Is your life – each part – surrendered to Him so that the Spirit can work to make you the same - inside and out -  your thoughts, words, and actions aligned. Oh yes, we are all works in progress. The greatest self-deception is that which insists we have ‘arrived’ spiritually, that we have achieved a kind of perfection. No, I haven’t nor have you.

There is a lesson in grace to be found in the life of King David. He was a flawed man, one who sinned grievously. Yet, God loved him. Why? Because when his sin was pointed out to him, when his hypocrisy was challenged, he cried out: "You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil. You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair. I’ve been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born. … God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life." (Psalm 51:4-5,10, The Message) Confession heals us when it is deep, true, and desires change.

Are you living a double life? How about that gap between what you profess and what you possess? Are you allowing the Spirit to lead you to close it, humbly following His lead, listening to His voice? Are you in close fellowship with other Christians who love you to wholeness? 

Choose to practice the discipline of simplicity – saying only what is true, avoiding exaggeration, refusing to hide behind an image.

Here is a word from the Word.  "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." (James 4:8-10, NIV)  Guilt and shame is not His desire for you. There is restoration and reconciliation, so kneel before the One who “became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.”

Take a couple of minutes to listen to the prayer-song below. Fernando Ortega sings words that inspire, that invite the change that brings us peace.

_________________

Jesus, You Are My Life

You are my life,

O precious Christ!

You are to me

The pearl of greatest price.

My love for You will never die.

Jesus You are my life!

I come to You.

I run to You.

There's no greater joy

Than knowing You.

O holy fire, Love's purest light!

Burn all desires ‘till

You are my one delight.

My love for You will never die.

Jesus You are my life!

O conquering King,

Conquer my heart!

And make of me a pleasing gift to God.

My love for You will never die.

Jesus You are my life!

Jesus You are my life!

Jesus You Are My Life

Steve Fry

© 1994 Maranatha Praise, Inc. (Admin. by Maranatha! Music)

Word Music, LLC (a div. of Word Music Group, Inc.)

CCLI License # 810055

Not him!

I am not an athlete and so in teen years when athletic prowess is so important, I had no skills necessary for the games in high school phys ed class. When the appointed captains picked teams I always felt humiliated. I stood there listening to name after name called, mine being one of the last. Then I was assigned some insignificant position from which I was basically an observer. I did not get to ‘play the game’ or experience the glory of the homerun or touchdown. It’s been a half century and that feeling of being the one excluded can still return.

Many of you can identify with the feeling of rejection or devaluation in others ways. You were told you were not smart enough to get the job. You figured out that Dad loved your sister more than you. That person you fell in love with chose not to love you in return. We all want to ‘belong,’ to be included. And, most of us find closed doors in front of us from time to time. There are no closed doors to the Kingdom of God! Oh I am not naïve enough to think that all churches are accepting, or that all Christians love everybody, but God does! 

In my ongoing reading of Matthew, there is a story about Jesus at the beginning of His ministry and He’s choosing a team. Those disciples were invited to be with Him, learning His ways, hearing His words. In just 3 years He would send them with the Good News to the ends of the earth. Who was worthy of the calling? Who did He choose?  It was not the Jerusalem ‘insiders’ nor was it the ‘scholars.’  It was not those with a network of connections to positions of influence. He chose ordinary men, even some that society considered outcasts!   

Here is one of those stories. "As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-14, NIV)

Matthew was an outsider in the worst sense of the word. He was labeled by the town because he cooperated with the occupation army of Romans as a tax collector. Shunned for their work, tax collectors avoided the synagogue which was the center of Jewish life. Thus they were also labeled, ‘sinners.’ Jesus saw past the job title and the social label into the heart of the man and there he saw a desire for God. And, He called him – “Follow me!” It was scandalous. How could the Rabbi, a teacher about the things of God, invite a person so compromised in character (in the opinion of most) to become His friend and associate? 

Those who were thought to be closest to God because of their scrupulous observance of the Law of Moses were confounded. “Why does your Teacher eat with these ‘low-lifes,’ these nobodies, these people who are not worthy of our God?”  Jesus overheard the conversation and defined His mission for them. He was the Advocate of the broken, the Healer of the spiritual sick, the Giver of mercy to those who had failed. And, He still is.  By the way, Jesus never told ‘sinners’ to keep on living the same way they were when He found them. 

He accepted people and led them to change and transformation. Oh how I pray He would give Christians today the sensitive and loving ability to do the same.  We tend to fail at one extreme or the others. Either we determine that only the ‘select’ are good enough for God and our fellowship, our spiritual pride making us ugly and exclusive; or we make grace cheap and we are unable to ‘speak the truth in love’ and thus, to invite people to become like Jesus, to wrestle with those parts of life that need to be restored to the will of their Father.

The inarguable fact is this - Nobody is beyond the reach of God’s grace.  

A second  truth is that everybody can be transformed by the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

He loved me and is changing me, day by day, into Christ’s likeness. How about you?

Have you been told you were the wrong … gender, color, age … not smart enough … too scarred by your past … to be included in God’s love, to be invited into His Kingdom? Those are lies. Reject them and listen to the Spirit of God who says, “You are invited.”  Respond with faith and God will put you on His team, equipping you for spiritual service, preparing you for an awards banquet where He will overlook nothing, forget no one.

Here is a word from the Word. I pray it will invite ‘outsiders’ in and remind all of us to open the doors to Christ to ALL. "Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes, or powerful, or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose those who are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important, so that no one can ever boast in the presence of God. God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He is the one who made us acceptable to God. He made us pure and holy, and he gave himself to purchase our freedom." (1 Corinthians 1:26-30, NLT)

______

Who You Say I Am
(Are you living in this amazing grace?)

Who am I that the highest King

Would welcome me

I was lost but He brought me in

Oh His love for me

Oh His love for me

Who the Son sets free

Oh is free indeed

I'm a child of God

Yes I am

Free at last

He has ransomed me

His grace runs deep

While I was a slave to sin

Jesus died for me

Yes He died for me

In my Father's house

There's a place for me

I'm a child of God

Yes I am

I am chosen not forsaken

I am who You say I am

You are for me not against me

I am who You say I am

(Oh) (Yes) I am who You say I am

Ben Fielding | Reuben Morgan

© 2017 Hillsong Music Publishing Australia (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

CCLI License # 810055