Following Jesus Son of God …

Forgot to include this in previous post concerning our focus too late on making amends or getting things right at the end of our lives. How much do we hear either a joke or an evangelist about standing before Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Here is the beginning of a song – “Time Never Ends” – that illustrates my point. Some wrongly believe that when it’s time to die; it’s time to make amends. But if we don’t have things right with God before we die, there will be no pearly gates question and answer session, no second chance.

Time Never Ends Lyrics: Hart, Weir, Haynes Music: Hart, Weir, Haynes

This is the revised version played by The Dead in 2004:

Stepping through the midnight sun

To a life that never endsSnowflakes fall, winter comes

Time to make amends

God of wind, God of time

I give my heart to theeTake me to a better place

Let my soul fly freeLet my soul fly free

Sorry, dude, too late.And I don’t mean that sarcastically.Very sadly many are counting on a pearly gates meeting that will never happen.

Beyond Pretend: The Grass Really Is Greener on the Other Side

My new book title. Think about how much of our lives is pretend, shadows, layers, etc. But living our faith really is better, even if we lose our lives, and what does that mean exactly by the way?

How about a tease? So many people focus on the pearly gates but the narrow gate in Matthew 7 is where it happens. Miss the narrow gate and there is no pearly gates discussion.

The people who Christ addressed who missed the narrow gate but thought they made the pearly gates were not the atheists, not the card carrying ACLU gang, but they were God-professing, church going, Scripture quoting, miracle claiming religious folk.

So I urge us to ask ourselves as God asked Adam and Eve when the first “hiding from the presence of God” began – Where are you?

Right now my three sections are: Where am I? Who controls my world? What am I going to do about it?
I have been sorting through my thoughts for months now and asking God what he wanted me to do. In anticipation of my vacation coming up this week I began praying specifically that God would give me a focus, a direction if he wanted me to put things together in book form.

And voila, it seems he has really answered the prayer. Similar when I was putting together “Living by the Words of God” and asked God for organizational and biblical focus. Same deal, one solid direction to throw my effort into.

I have been off work this week; Monday is coming however. I am very thankful to have a job that pays the bills. But I have thoroughly enjoyed my time off.

I have been working on “Beyond Pretend” and learning my new music hardware and software. I hope to share some groovy stuff with you before long.

Lesson Three:  Allow rebellion and fear dictate your direction.

Listen to your heart, your gut feeling, your inner you.  True you will have to disregard the facts that you have yet to escape your depravity, and that your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked and that your ways and thoughts are below God’s ways and thoughts as the earth is below heaven.

But all that aside, look inside for spiritual direction, dummy!   And they did.

They cried (11.1), they grumbled, they  picked up rocks to “take out” their perceived obstacles.

Numbers 14:9-11 ESV  Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.”  (10)  Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel.  (11)  And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?

When things really look bad, don’t believe God.  Do what you “know” is right!

Now my prayer.  Oh, Lord God, how many times have I depended on my own strength?  How many times have I run away from your will?  How many times have I been too rebellious and fearful to believe you?  I confess my sin and ask your forgiveness.  And, Father, help me to live by faith not by sight.  Help your Church, Lord, to live by faith not by sight.  Help us to listen and believe and follow you, Mighty God, Lord Jesus.  Help us to not resist you, Holy Spirit.  Amen.  And amen!

Lesson Two: When things look overwhelming, run back to your comfort zone.

This particular fear induces memory problems. When we run back to our comfort zone, we forget about heaven and the glory of God.

“Run, Christian, run.”
Run back to the way things were. Hmm! Now wait a minute here. Isn’t that why we left in the first place, things weren’t so great and we wanted more? You know, upward and onward, reaching the lost, reaching out to one another, making a difference to the glory of God.

“Back under the porch, boys. Their big dogs are bigger and meaner than our big dogs.”

Was it just a lot of woofing or were we truly intent on following God?

(Numbers 14:4 ESV) And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”

The great news about all of this: All of these lessons, although this group failed miserably, shows us what the spiritual terrain is like when we choose to follow God. We should know what to expect after studying their misadventures.

(Ecclesiastes 7:10 NIV) Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions.

Lesson One: Evaluate our success in following God based on our own resources.

It seems that at least part of the book of Numbers could be used for a “how not to” book on following God.

That’s what occurred to me anyway as I read through this this morning.

Now lest you think I am all puffed up and full of myself (which is probably true more often than I realize, but I digress as that is another discussion) and that I think that I am impervious to these shortcomings, let me say that my prayer is that by learning from this example I can win in some of these areas.

So I have decided to trust God and learn how to better follow God by learning from the “how not to” lessons contained herein. Whew!

Are you following any of that, dude?

In other words, we can’t judge them because we all face the same challenges.  We have all folded in the heat of battle and turned from faith to sight and disappointed our God.

(Numbers 13:31 ESV) Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.”

Can’t do it, God! We have checked our resources and after evaluating our strengths and weaknesses, we see that we cannot do what you are asking. We hope you understand.

They had forgotten that God had brought them this far. They had forgotten all the previous miracles and daily provision. Their perspective was dominated by giants.

They were more impressed by the giants than by God. Oops!

1 Corinthians 10:1-12 MSG Remember our history, friends, and be warned. All our ancestors were led by the providential Cloud and taken miraculously through the Sea. (2) They went through the waters, in a baptism like ours, as Moses led them from enslaving death to salvation life. (3) They all ate (4) and drank identical food and drink, meals provided daily by God. They drank from the Rock, God’s fountain for them that stayed with them wherever they were. And the Rock was Christ. (5) But just experiencing God’s wonder and grace didn’t seem to mean much–most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased. (6) The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. (7) And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did–“First the people partied, then they threw a dance.” (8) We must not be sexually promiscuous–they paid for that, remember, with twenty-three thousand deaths in one day! (9) We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. (10) We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them. (11) These are all warning markers—DANGER!–in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel–they at the beginning, we at the end–and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. (12) Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.

zotero.org

FREE research software, open-source, very powerful.

Designed for heavy duty web research but can use for anything, e.g. shopping for your next computer, fridge, car, etc.

Really is a great program.

Micah 6.8
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Before we criticize another religion and boast about having the truth. . .

Maybe we should see if we really believe the basic tenets of the faith we are so proud of.

Are we just, fair to those around us?  Do we love kindness and mercy?  Do I walk humbly with my God?

Before we get ourselves all tangled up with our profession of faith, maybe we should examine our daily confession of faith, the “this is what I believe because this is what I live.”

Please, pause and think about it.  We believe all the grand and glorious truths of God’s holy book, but we don’t step on the simple path of faith in our daily routine.

Matthew 22.34-40
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

How many times in church does our “concern” or problem or issue (read agenda for all of these) demand preeminence over everything, even the basic tenets of honoring and loving God.

Love your neighbor as yourself.  The scholars, the religious best-of-the-best tested Christ with this question:  “Which is the great commandment in the Law?”  Without hesitation Jesus went to the simple stuff, love God, love your neighbor as yourself, if you want to understand your “Bibles” see them through this teaching.

They didn’t get it then, and often we don’t get it now.

I can remember an elder at one of my churches ready to take me apart because of his wife’s nagging over a VBS play.  When I tried to draw his attention to his horrible attitude outweighing any VBS preparation, he was indignant.  I was accused of being defensive.

We criticize people of other religions for not having the truth, and yet we do not believe the basic truths of God enough to actually practice them when and where it counts.

For many Christians the gap between the body of truth they profess and what they actually believe is so great that they don’t know what they believe.

And don’t give me doctrinal statements.  Intellectual assent means nothing if that knowledge does not drive our will and emotions.

How can I profess to believe in the sovereignty of God when I cannot even trust his “advice” on forgiveness?

Ephesians 4.32
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Kind, tenderhearted, forgiving. . .

We push this God-given direction aside for our little petty, mean actions and wonder why God isn’t moving in the lives of more people.

C’mon, dummy!

Sometimes our culture and/or subculture, such as evangelicalism, allow words, thoughts and ideas to evolve untethered from their original meaning and purpose. This is why we have English words that were used to translate the Hebrew and the Greek of the King James Bible which now mean something very different, sometimes opposite of, what they did four-hundred years ago.

This is actually a normal process of language. The meanings of words and expressions change over time.

“I got screwed.” You would never have heard that expression thirty to forty years ago in contexts that we do today. The tricky part is that some of the influence hangs around and is still vivid in the minds of people who remember very specifically what it used to mean and still does at times.

The expression “living by faith” is an example of subcultural influence running the intended meaning off the track. It took me some time in my Christian life before I realized that all Christians are to live by faith, not just missionaries. It doesn’t mean that you live on a financial faith promise system. That may be one way in which a person lives this truth but the meaning is much greater and broader.

(2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV) We live by faith, not by sight.

(Habakkuk 2:4 ESV) Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

So now back to persecution.

Persecution is one of those ideas that has slipped off the track because we have lost touch with its etymological and biblical roots. We have layered so much cultural influence on this concept that many (I think most) do not know what persecution actually means.

Is the idea of persecution really limited to living in a country where you may be punished for your religious expression? Or on a more personal level, is persecution really limited to incidents such as not being able to pray in school or not being allowed to have a copy of the ten commandments on my desk at work?

To find what God is really talking about we have to sort through and peel off some layers.

(2 Timothy 3:12 ESV) Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Why don’t we let the words of God scrub away our definitions and peel off a few layers.

Possibly two key expressions in this text: “all who desire” and “will be”

Boink! It hit me one day several years ago as I read through my Bible. It doesn’t say live godly, be persecuted. It says just think about it, dude, and you’re asking for trouble. Says nothing about government oppression.

When I hear the subject of persecution discussed, I can’t get over the absence of our main enemy.

(Ephesians 6:12 ESV) For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Okay, let’s go for a little etymology now. The common thread you will see whether in the Strong’s Concordance or in any number of online resources is the idea of being pursued, followed, chased after, a persistant antagonism. (See YourDictionary.com, Online Etymology Dictionary, Dictionary.com and others.)

I can’t believe that we overlook the spiritual battle. Haven’t you ever sensed the dark forces pursuing you, threatening you concerning your next decision for God? Don’t you ever feel the enemy’s rage and accusations as you desire to live past the cliche?

I am not trying to be judgmental, but what does our inspired resource tell us? Desire to live godly life in Christ Jesus, will be pursued by the enemy.

News Flash: The spiritual forces of evil are not hampered by national boundaries.

I have some more thoughts but think I’m going to go to bed before long as 5:00 am will be here soon.

I’ll give you my list of verses and hopefully tomorrow or Saturday will probe some more.

(Matthew 5:10 ESV) “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

(Matthew 5:12 ESV) Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

(John 15:20 ESV) Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

(1 Corinthians 4:12 ESV) and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;

2 Corinthians 4:7-10 ESV But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. (8) We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; (9) persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; (10) always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

(Galatians 6:12 ESV) It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

(2 Timothy 3:12 ESV) Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Reading the Bible is like time travel.

You go back hundreds of years and forward into eternity at the same time.

At least that is what I was doing the other morning in Exodus.  And it seems to be a recurring theme in my reading.

Ping. . .ping. . .3500 years ago to the time of Moses, zing. . . forward to the throne of God and the judgment seat of Christ.

Ricocheting across time and eternity, understanding better God and our relationship with him.

I can only imagine what it will be like
When I walk by your side
I can only imagine what my eyes will see
When your face is before me

I can only imagine
I can only imagine

Surrounded by your glory
What will my heart feel?

Will I dance for you Jesus,
Or in awe of you be still?

Will I stand in your presence,
Or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing Halelluja,
Will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine
I can only imagine