In Love With Jesus?

A long time ago, in high school chorus, I sang - "Love is a many-splendored thing, ... love is nature's way of giving, a reason to be living; the golden crown that makes a man a king!"  As a 16 year old kid, the real meaning of many-splendored loved was incomprehensible to me.  I know something of it now, with 38 years of marriage.  Yes, I am ‘in love!’  It is a multi-faceted experience involving passion, devotion, sacrifice, discipline, and daily maintenance. The tease of desire chips away at fidelity if there is no discipline of the eyes and heart. The friction of the stuff of ordinary life will bring irritation unless the love of God’s Spirit is invited into our lives, each day.  Thankfully, I am not ‘in love’ with Bev like I was in 1974. It was a superficial attraction then. Today we are one in heart. I love her deeply; our lives interwoven by shared faith, shared family, and blended spiritual gifts.

Are you 'in love' with Christ Jesus?

I don't mean to imply that we need a teen-age crush on Jesus. That’s silly! But, we do need to feel passion for our God. Christianity without passion just isn't Biblical! The grandest love story of all time is the story of God's love for us, written in the life and death of Jesus.  Just as I cannot explain what I feel for my wife with bullet point logic, so we cannot reduce the love of our Abba to a neat paragraph of theological jargon. Jesus did it with a story. He told of a wayward, willful son who came home to the arms of the Waiting Father after wasting his fortune and ruining his life! The young man expected condemnation and a life separate from Dad.  What did he find? Love!  "And while he was still a long distance away, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him." That is compelling stuff! It defies logic, cannot be explained. It’s just love.

When we bring our scientific mind to our faith and we make the Gospel a thing of systematic theologies with points built into a structure of reason, it is like describing falling in love by talking about hormones. Of course, God’s love for us can be described just as love can be partially explained by talking about sexual attraction, but…  there is more than just reason. There is mystery!  The Bible is is "God's Love story!" Genesis 3 tells us that God came walking in the Garden, just to be with His created beings, a Divine Lover. The most common imagery that the Hebrews used to describe their relationship to God was marriage, and it became the language of the Church who is the 'Bride of Christ.' The ancient prophets railed on the people who went after other gods calling their perfidy - spiritual adultery.

The Bible speaks of our covenant with God, not a contract! He loves us, draws us and we love Him in return. The love is not calculated, nor is it based on some equation of return. It is abandonment of ourselves to Him.
Ah, friend, do you love Him?  If we love Him, we will stop playing “let’s make a deal” with God.  Our faith will go way beyond - "I believe some facts and You give me the key to Heaven." We must love Him for life today, not just for Heaven in eternity.

Let this 'love letter' inspire you today. Read of God’s many-splendored love for you and bring your heart home to Him.  "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." (Ephesians 1:3-6, NIV) So,  "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge,” Why? So, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."  (Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV)  You will become so full of His Presence as to make Him and you indistinguishable, like a married couple who are one, each given to the other irrevocably.

___________________________

I'm calling out to You,

There must something more;

Some deeper place to find,

Some secret place to hide,

Where I've not gone before!

Where my soul is satisfied,

and my sin is put to death;

and I can hear Your voice,

and Your purpose is my choice,

as natural as a breath.

The Love I knew before;

When You first touched my life,

I need You to restore,

I want You to revive!

Could You place in my heart,

A passion for Jesus,

A hunger that seizes,

my passion for You?

My one desire,

my greatest possession,

My only confession,

my passion for You!

Passion for Jesus

Author: Brian Houston

You have to experience it!

You just have to experience it to understand!

The “Superman” ride at Six Flags defies description.  Sure, I could tell you about getting into the frame, ‘flying’ face down at 60 miles per hour along a twisting track of steel, but to really appreciate it, you just have to get on the ride. You can watch. You can listen to the screams. You can feel the wind created by the machine. But, until you commit yourself to actually experiencing it you cannot really know how it feels.

There is an experiential dimension to Christianity that we must not ignore.  In the discipleship of new believers, we discuss a triad - “faith, fact, and feelings.”  Sometimes the experiential component is diminished, as it is unimportant. Oh, but it is!  Being a Christian includes a rich experience of the Living God. Though our feelings are subjective and therefore can be unreliable. They are effected by fatigue, illness, and pain, for example.  However, we must not discard them. Emotions are part of what it means to be “Christian.”  The Gospel of Christ is not just a truth to believe.  He is a Person we know. The Holy Spirit of God is to live in us, producing an experience that includes peace and joy, among other things.

Much of Christianity feeds the head. Heavy tomes present dense arguments about sound doctrine. I am thankful for those who work at helping us to clarify the Scripture’s presentation of God and His nature. Worship gatherings are often focused on readings and sermons. The heart is ignored.  We need to recapture the heart of worship.  The Psalms (the worship handbook of the Bible) engage the emotions as part of our faith.  In the 30^th Psalm, David speaks of the sadness of feeling alone, but then praises God for restoration of JOY! "O Lord, when you favored me, you made my mountain stand firm; but when you hid your face, I was dismayed. … Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me; O Lord, be my help.” You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever." (Psalm 30:7-12, NIV)  This Psalm throbs with emotion. "These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar." (Psalm 42:4-6, NIV)

The disciples of Jesus experienced real emotions. They felt awe when they saw His miracles. When He told them of His impending death, they were afraid and confused. After the crucifixion, they were broken by grief. Then, the Resurrection infused them with profound and joyful hope. On the Day of Pentecost, when they experienced the Holy Spirit’s outpouring, they spilled out of the Upper Room with such a display that bystanders said, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.” (Acts 2:13, The Message) They were carried away in the Spirit.  Yes, the Truth freed them from sin, but the joy of the Presence of God carried them to the ends of the earth to tell others of the love of God.

Have you scrubbed emotions from your Christianity?

Recover them!  Let Christ Jesus save you, both head and heart.  Invite Him to heal your broken heart, to let you dance again. Give yourself permission to feel the Presence of God, to sing, to laugh, to weep, to mourn over sin.  Intimacy with God must not be the missing quality of your Christian life.  You just have to experience Him to know.

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I Want The Joy

I want the joy of the Lord to come down!

I want the joy of the Lord to fall now!

I want the joy of the Lord in my life.

I want the joy of the Lord to lift me!

I want the joy of the Lord to change me!

I want the joy of the Lord in my life.

It's time I started dancing,

Over all these graves.

It's time I gave You, oh my Lord,

The highest praise.

It's time to lift my voice

Oh and beg for this blessing to fall.

Rita Springer

© 2002 River Oaks Music Company (a div. of EMI Christian Music Publishing)

CCLI License # 810055

Your Credit Score

Bev and I took advantage of the historically low interest rates and refinanced our home last year. The mortgage representative that took our application called me the next day with the good news. “Jerry,” he said, “you will have no problem getting your new loan and at the best rate we offer. Your credit score is very high.” That was good news, but not unexpected.  Why? I do not take loans I cannot pay, have been blessed with a steady income, and meet my financial obligations in a timely manner.   

Your credit score ranges from 300 to 850.  It is calculated by evaluating many types of information from our financial history.  A person without a lot of money can have a high score.  A wealthy person can have a low score.   The FICO score not just about the resources someone has, it is about the stewardship of those resources. The key factor is accountability, meeting a standard of performance. 

Christians love to talk about God’s grace, made available to all people because of His great love. And, it is true!  Our God relates to us primarily as our caring and benevolent Abba. But, He is not indulgent. As our good Father, He wants us to grow up, to become responsible, to be productive, and to honor His name. There is a standard of performance and He will hold us accountable. That fact is sobering, as it ought to be.  I like to think of it this way, “What is my heavenly credit score?  How responsibly am I managing the resources He has invested in me?”

The Bible tells us that "we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”  There it is. Life will reach fullness only in eternity, our true home in the Presence of God.  With that in mind, “ we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.”  Why?  “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." (2 Corinthians 5:6-10, NIV)   If you think that passage is talking about whether we end up in Heaven or Hell, your theology is deficient.  Salvation and reward are two entirely different issues.

We are set right with God, saved, granted the life of the Spirit, and given an eternal home through Christ’s offering at the Cross.  We insult the very grace of God if we delude ourselves into thinking we will ‘go to Heaven’ if we are good enough! We are not, never could be. The Bible’s stark evaluation says, “there is none righteous, not one!”  Christ’s holiness is a gift to us, unearned, undeserved, provided through love so profound that it defies our comprehension. "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! … Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:1-2, NIV)   Yes, through Christ, I am, and you can be, a member of His family.

So, what will we do with that gift? Will we receive the gift of grace and build on it?  Every Christian will stand before the Lord, whose gaze sees past the carefully constructed images, who is not fooled by excuses, who knows exactly what we are capable of doing; and we will give an accounting as to how we met His standard of performance.  

Prayerfully read this truth today.  It need not strike terror in us.  Our Lord is a fair judge, a just judge.  He asks no more of us than we can produce and expects no less of us than that of which we are capable. He will hold us accountable for the way we live.  For the faithful that is a truth full of promise, for they will receive the rich rewards that may have eluded them while they lived on this earth. "No one can lay any other foundation than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. Now anyone who builds on that foundation may use gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But there is going to come a time of testing at the judgment day to see what kind of work each builder has done. Everyone’s work will be put through the fire to see whether or not it keeps its value. If the work survives the fire, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builders themselves will be saved, but like someone escaping through a wall of flames." (1 Corinthians 3:10-15, NLT)

So, what’s your heavenly credit score? How are you managing the resources that God, the Holy Spirit, has put in your care?

Construction Delays

Driving up I-95 on the long trip home from our Florida vacation, we found ourselves delayed a couple of times.  The flow of traffic slowed to a crawl making me wonder if there was an accident or a breakdown ahead.  What we found after a few miles were men working to  build better roads! Yes, we were delayed by construction.  What a parable for my life, and perhaps, for yours.

We are rolling along, going through the regular routines of life and then we stall. Nothing flows, everything is an effort.  I am frustrated by that pace, when one day’s work resists completion, spilling into the next. I wonder why I can’t put on the cruise control and get back to ‘life.’  

 It may be that God, the Holy Spirit, has us ‘under construction.’  I have been in that place recently.  Some new patterns of thinking, relating, understanding my world are being put into place.  I know that it will be better when He is finished, but I confess that the process is about as enjoyable as sitting in traffic on an interstate highway!

On I-95, slowing from 75 MPH to about 5 MPH made me irritable, at first. I just wanted to get to NJ, to unpack my bags and settle down. But, the roadway isn’t made just for me!  Engineers are building a new road that will meet the needs of many people for many years. They looked at the supports of bridges built 50 years ago and realized they were corroded, needing replacing. So, they made a choice to tear up the road, even though they knew it would be an inconvenience for those of us who travel.   

Our lives are not just about us, either.  God sees attitudes, habits, and patterns that once served His plans but now they have become old, stale, or even corrupted by sin!  And, He loves us enough to begin construction, reshaping us so that we will be effective in His work.  He sees accumulated sin, corruption hidden from our eyes but plain to His, and He purposes to ‘make all things new!’

God’s people in ancient Judah found their way of life destroyed, everything ripped up.  Was it all over? Would life ever be ‘right’ again?  Here’s how the Lord answered their questions. “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise." (Isaiah 43:18-21, NIV)

Trust Him! Let Him work!  In faith, anticipate the new that will allow you to ‘proclaim His praise,’ all the more joyfully for years to come. “God said, “Look, I am sending my messenger before you, and he will prepare your way. He is a voice shouting in the wilderness: ‘Prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming! Make a straight road for him!’ ” (Mark 1:2-3, NLT)

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The Potter's Hand

Beautiful Lord,

Wonderful Saviour,

I know for sure,

All of my days

Are held in Your hand,

Crafted into Your perfect plan.

You gently call me

Into Your presence,

Guiding me by

Your Holy Spirit,

Teach me, dear Lord,

To live all of my life

Through Your eyes.

I'm captured by Your holy calling!

Set me apart, I know You're drawing

Me to Yourself!

Lead me, Lord, I pray.

Take me! Mould me!

Use me! Fill me!

I give my life

To the Potter's hand.

Call me! Guide me!

Lead me, walk beside me!

I give my life

To the Potter's hand.

Darlene Zschech

© 1997 Wondrous Worship (Admin. by Music Services, Inc.)

CCLI License # 810055