Following Jesus Son of God …

EXCERPT from Passion/Purpose/Perspective
http://ppp.livingbythewordsofgod.com/index.htm

PURPOSE: My purpose is to draw you into a vital relationship with God through his words; a relationship that fits his design and intent and brings glory to God.

Inspire you to taste the goodness of God through his words.

Introduce you to the offer of life contained in the words of God.

Instruct you in a biblical pursuit of the opportunity that God extends to us through his written words.

Invite you to share what God gives you along the way with another traveler.

So Much More
God’s word is so much more than we often realize. My purpose is to help as many people as possible experience the fullness and goodness of God that comes through a relationship with God built on a faithful determination to live by his words.

Inspire you to taste the goodness of God through his words.

Desire God’s pure word as newborn babies desire milk. Then you will grow in your salvation. Certainly you have tasted that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:2-3 GW)!

Now that’s a tomato!
There are tomatoes and then there are tomatoes. Buy one in the grocery store in mid-January or pluck one off the vine in your garden in mid-August. There is no comparison. Granted we can buy better tomatoes in January than we could in years past, but when is the last time you pulled off the skin wrap and took a big bite of that January tomato and exclaimed, “Now that’s a tomato!”

Let’s pretend that someone had only eaten tomatoes grown in a greenhouse. You would be able to neither explain to them nor convince them of the difference unless you could get them to walk out to the garden and taste for themselves. Twist it off the vine, rub the dirt off and take a big, juicy bite. “Now that is a tomato!”

And there is no convincing or arm-twisting that I can do; somehow I must persuade you to taste and see that the Lord is certainly good.

(Psalms 34:8 NKJV) Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

I was rude to someone at work yesterday, and I paid for it when I saw the anxiety on his face that I was partially responsible for.  I hated to see his look of anguish and confusion, and I was disgusted with myself.  So many things to cause anguish in this world, and I was a part of his bad day.

Sometimes we get too businesslike, too hurried, got to get the job done and people get in the way.  Shame on me; shame on us.  What I did wasn’t horrible but it was horrible in the fact that it hurt instead of helped.  I hurried him; didn’t respect what he was doing.  My. . .how important I am.  How dare someone interrupt my day.

Thankfully I was able to eventually help him.  And now that I have been thoroughly rebuked by the situation, I will be more considerate.   However, I will remember the unpleasantness for some time, so even my “jerkiness” will serve some good purpose.

(1 Corinthians 13:5 NCV)  Love is not rude, is not selfish, and does not get upset with others. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done.

No plagiarism
Jesus one time said, “My teaching is not mine.”  He went on to say that his teaching was “his who sent me.”  You may read the references below.

Savior of the World Job Description
I read this in John 7 this morning.  What stood out to me was Jesus’ perspective.  He could easily have claimed his learning to be his own, but he didn’t.  He didn’t grasp and cling; he bowed to his assignment.  Wow!  The God-Man came to earth on assignment.  The perfect Person didn’t cling to status and title.  Just fulfilling his mission, maam; doing his rightful duty as Savior of the world; did what the Father said to do; said what the Father said to say.

Super-Servant
Beautiful, powerful submission as a work of love.  He bowed to the task of providing the way to God.

So I think it is fair to ask “Is your teaching yours?”  Or “Is my teaching mine?”  How careful are we to acknowledge our source?  And when we speak for God, how careful are we to “not put words in his mouth?”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire”
And when we are fighting over “truth,” whose truth are we fighting for?  Our pet fancy or God’s eternal decree?  When we refuse to accept and understand Scripture, whose truth are we holding to?  We say we are standing up for God, but I’m thinking “liar, liar, pants on fire” may more accurately describe our actions.

“Cause”
When we cling to our teaching as opposed to God’s, we are seeking our own glory.  What we say sounds less like a teachable servant and more like a child attempting to exert his way or explain her logic by spouting “cause, cause I say so.”  We may be so self-deceived that we don’t see this but that’s the scoop, dude!  If we are truly seeking God’s glory, then we too will bow to the task as servants of the Most High.

The Word is words
I have been amazed at the number of professing Christians who absolutely believe the Bible to be God’s word who refuse to listen, sometimes even look, at the words in the Word.  Claiming the Word is one thing; bowing to the words can be quite another.

(John 7:15-16 ESV)  The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?”  So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.”

(John 7:17 ESV)  If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.

(John 7:18 ESV)  The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

    “The way up is down” — Martin Lloyd-Jones

(1 Peter 5:6 NCV)  Be humble under God’s powerful hand so he will lift you up when the right time comes.

This is another piece of wisdom from God that seems to be backwards.  Bow down and God will lift us up.  Or as some translations have it:  (1 Peter 5:6 NKJV)  Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.

We want our rightful place in life; get what we deserve, yada, yada.

So if we want to go up, God says first go down.

Jesus put it this way:

(Matthew 20:26 NKJV)  Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.  (Matthew 20:27 NKJV)  And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave.

I would say very contrary to current thought, but it has always been that way, since Eve decided God was holding out on her and to get what was rightfully hers she needed to stand up and take it.  Bite that apple, Eve girl!  (Genesis 3)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%203&version=47

The point is we want to be lifted up, exalted; we all want to be the rock star.  And God points to the opportunity — The way up is down.  Bow down and be lifted up.

But something very interesting happens on the way to the store.

Once we bow down before God, as in truly bow before him in our current circumstances, not as in our superficial, syrupy, dripping with cliche bowing down but actually bowing before God in real life.  Once we do this, our thoughts of being lifted up, exalted, being given our “rightful” place, dissipate, poof, vanish, gone, see ya later, dude!

God honors his word; he does lift us up.  But where he brings us to is different than what we thought it would be; different as in better, as in the way God does things.  Our idea is seen to be the petty, contrived little device that it was.

Being lifted into God’s purpose and plan and realizing it is more than enough; being an itsy bitsy piece of God’s amazing plan and purpose and intent far exceeds our expectations.  God whooshes us to another plane in our walk with him.

Yeah, God.  Or maybe I should say praise you, My God and King, Sovereign Lord, Gracious and Merciful Master.

My friend and his banjo came by the other night. Nice! Spring evening, doors open, sounds and smells of Spring.

And the sound of friends catching up on each other’s lives.

Sometimes we need to do that; just sit in the quiet of the evening and talk. Sharing the moment, and sharing that moment in view of life and eternity. Our moments are brief flashes set in forever. We need to take note of the moments as we look at this life and life beyond this life.

(Psalms 90:12 NKJV) So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

My friend brought his banjo, and I had my guitar, so we played a little music. Sometimes we need to do that too; play a little music. Think how amazing that is. Strum a pick across the strings and whoosh, the room is transformed with a most beautiful gift that God has given. Pick a little banjo; sing a phrase instead of speaking it and it wraps itself in all kinds of meaning.

Sometimes I play music that is very involved and it’s no more than a physical exercise. And sometimes I can stop briefly at the keyboard and play three notes and the music captures me. That is God. God does that. God touches the smallest thing and that little bitty event brings the mundane into the presence of God. No more just a sound created on a musical instrument; we enter the reality of living before God.

I like what water does in validating my work.  I am an excavator, a digger.

I dig and then the next hard rain proves my work to be good or bad.  Since I want to do excellent work, I anxiously anticipate a hard rain after completion of a job.  I have grown to appreciate this “ministry” of water, so I plan my job with the coming rain in mind.

Some people dread the rain, but I look forward to it because I want to know if I did it right! 

You see, when you work with large areas of land, you want to determine the direction of the water.  If you build a house, you want water to run away from the house not toward it.  If you have a work area, you don’t want the water to accumulate where you are working.  If you are building a road, you want it be a road, not a river.  So your goal is to contour the land so the water flows in the proper direction.

And water proves I did the right thing.  Water is a reality test, a fluff detector.

However, I could ignore the water test.  I could determine in my own mind that I have done a great job; I could coerce others to agree with me.  Or posssibly people would congratulate me on a fine job just to be nice or to flatter me.  I could take pictures and write a paper describing the merits of my wonderful accomplishment.  I could point toward my years of experience, college education and my status as a top operator to argue the merits of my work.

But nothing provides validation like water.  A hard rain’s gonna’ come, baby, and I will find out if what I have done will stand the test or will be washed away in failure.

(Matthew 7:23-27 NCV)  Then I [Jesus] will tell them clearly, ‘Get away from me, you who do evil. I never knew you.’ Everyone who hears my words and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.  It rained hard, the floods came, and the winds blew and hit that house. But it did not fall, because it was built on rock.  Everyone who hears my words and does not obey them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  It rained hard, the floods came, and the winds blew and hit that house, and it fell with a big crash.

Three guesses as to what low-technology exercise I participated in Friday evening. I shoveled dirt, or more accurately, topsoil, from the bed of my pickup into low places in the back yard. It felt great — grass, birds singing, a pleasant breeze, the smell of fresh, moist dirt. I did not have to run a virus scan or check for spyware. I didn’t have to boot the system or wonder if Windows was loading too slowly. I had no firewall installed and neither did I have to give my user name or password.

I just shoveled dirt.

How powerful are the simple things in life? I get so complicated sometimes with my music, midi-controllers, software synthesizers, sequencer software, compressors, equalizers; sometimes I just need to play music and forget all the stuff; allow a few simple notes on the piano to capture me and take me a little ways away from the speed of living; slow me down; breaking the stranglehold of worry and greed for just a few moments and breathe some of God’s good air.

Sometimes we just need to shovel dirt and forget all the stuff. Mow the grass. Pull some weeds. That’s right, I said it out loud, well, not really but you know what I mean. I am admitting that sometimes I enjoy pulling weeds.

I love watching robins skip across the yard after bugs and worms. Don’t even get me started on watching birds; talk about old guy syndrome.

(Matthew 6:26 MSG)  Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. . .
You think you’ve heard it all, but have you heard “it” from God? First hand. God’s words. Minus the religious blather.

Okay, so now you think you’ve stumbled on another crackpot who promises to show you the true way to God, claims to divine truth, special revelation or may I put it this way: “blah, blah, blah. . .”

What I want to do is help people hear what God has actually said and is saying. Everyone who professes to know God seems so eager to speak for God. Listen to Christian radio. We talk more about our indepth, beautifully illustrated studies than we talk about living out the words we claim to be so powerful and life-changing. To quote someone “we speak of the life-changing power of the words of God but we don’t let the words change us.” Oh, I guess that was me I was quoting.

God speaks very plainly in the Bible. He speaks to the most important things in life. The Bible does contain a life-changing message. The problem is we often (usually) mess it up.

Maybe the best thing I can do is to help another person hear what God is actually saying. I have read through the Bible many times in many different translations. Every time I read through and listen, God shifts a category on me. Whoops! Hey, God, I didn’t realize that.

Life is what we are all after. We chase life through the pursuit of possessions, sex, power, accomplishment, entertainment and often religion is merely our pursuit of what we want embellished in God terms. And that is what we offer to other people and it is not enough.

The pursuit of life is natural, but our methods and direction usually miss the mark.

Why do people party and do drugs? Because it is some reflection of life. Yes, a twisted reflection, sometimes a destructive pursuit, but we continue knowing the harm because it is the only place we feel alive. One time I was so stoned that I wondered if I were alive or dead, and I didn’t care. If this was death, then good; I liked it.

Why do people shop? It brings a glimpse of life. Sports, sex, church, you name it. Fill in the blank. What touches that very deepest part of your soul that tells you there is more?

But everything besides what God offers comes up short. Reminder. I am not saying that everything but what Christians say comes up short, or everything except what the Church says comes up short. Maybe the Christians are saying God’s truth and maybe we are not. Often professing Christians are as confused as the rest because we aren’t really listening to God either.

If you believe that God doesn’t “get real” in the Bible, then you haven’t paid attetention. Read the accounts of Abraham, Lot, David, Solomon, so down and dirty that we have to clean them up for Sunday School. And then we leave them there as Sunday School stories and they don’t reach us and teach us as they should.

If you are tired of blah, blah, blah. . .then begin a disciplined, honest reading of the words of God and let God break your categories of what he likes and dislikes, and what he is like and is not like.

The Bible is shocking and life-changing. It’s too bad more of us don’t see it that way.