On Earth as… 07/29/2019

WARNING PREACHY…

Matthew 6:10

“…your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
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“Is grandpa going to be in heaven someday?” a child asked his mother.

“Certainly,” the child’s mother replied, “why do you ask?”

“No reason, I was just thinking that I hoped he wouldn’t be.”

Shocked, the mother asked her son why he didn’t want his grandpa in heaven.

The boy replied, “If he sees us there, I am sure he will say, as he does now,—'What are these boys doing here? Let them get out of the way.' He doesn’t like to see us on earth, and I suppose he would not like to see us in heaven."[1]
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This story got me to thinking about who do I know that acts like they would be inconvenienced if I were to be in their heaven when I get there.  I admit that I cannot think of any who would be inconvenienced because those people don’t really expect that I will be there to begin with.  Why?  I don’t know, I guess I don’t think like they think or act like they act.  Maybe I’m not using the correct version of the Bible or don’t consider sacred what they consider sacred.  No, I really can’t think of anyone who will be inconvenienced by my entrance into their heaven because their heaven is not what I’m shooting for anyway; rather I’m shooting for God’s heaven through Jesus Christ.

On the flip side, when I read this story it also gets me to thinking about whom I don’t want to see in my heaven.  As I consider this thought I realize there aren’t many people that I don’t want to see in heaven but I admit that there are plenty of people that I don’t really care if I see in heaven or not. 

As a minister I’m afraid that I have become a little calloused through the years, I’ve gotten tired of people arguing against faith in Jesus so I simply have stopped trying to convince them, in many ways I’ve plain stopped caring.  I suspect my ability to stop caring is a protection-mechanism which I developed in my youth in order to cope with things that cause me angst.  I have the ability to stop caring for situations and people which/who matter and I recognize that this ability has negatively impacted many of my key relationships in life as well as having stunted my effectiveness as a minister of the Gospel.

Because of this I’m convicted to ask God to change my attitude to one that honors Him in this. 

As it is now my actions seem to demonstrate that I do not love the people whom Jesus broke His body and shed His blood for on the Cross.  His “on earth as it is in heaven” was to demonstrate self-denial in order that mankind would have a restored relationship with the Father.  He wasn’t concerned with their eternal destiny (though it was certainly part of it) as much as He was concerned with their everyday faith and relationship with the Father which art in Heaven right now.

I’ve been doing a lot of studying about the Holiness of God as of late and one thing I have determined as absolutely true is that because God is Holy and my not caring about what He cares for is to dishonor His Holy Name.  If I am really going to honor God and bring Glory to Him I need to become zealous for what He is zealous for; and that’s the people who Jesus sweated bullets for. 

As a Christian, I need my “on earth as it is in heaven” to become the reality for my Christian life now so that I can pray as just Jesus taught me to pray.

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[1] Adapted from J.C. Ryle’s Practical Religion, Chapter 7 – Charity, page 180.  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38162/38162-h/38162-h.htm#VII

Forks in the Road… 7/25/2019

WARNING PREACHY...

Leviticus 10:10

¹⁰ so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean,

Back in 1994 God taught me how to budget my money.  I was 24 years old and up until that time the only thing I understood about budgeting was not to overdraft my checkbook nor spend beyond the limit of my credit card.  So long as I had enough money each month to pay my bills, I was fine.  So when I started to learn to budget according to God’s economy it was a complete paradigm shift for me.  The very first lesson that I had to learn in order to manage my money according to God’s economy was that I had to learn the difference between a necessity and a want. 

I remember being in the grocery store where a child had wanted something from the checkout line’s “last-chance” impulsive buying opportunity.  He kept whining “Mom, I don’t want it, I “neeeed” it.”   

How many times have I whined such words to God?  But in God’s economy I had to learn that all those things I thought I needed were really just a want.  In that day the biggest things were cable TV, the vehicle I drove, and cigarettes, that I naturally thought were necessities for life, but I learned quickly that all of them in fact were not, and together they made up a huge portion of where my income frivolously went each month.

As I read Leviticus 10, this verse jumped out to me as to how to navigate our lives according to God’s economy: we need to learn to "determine between the holy and the common".  We are called to be holy as He is Holy and this is as straight forward as deciding every fork in the roads of our lives to honor Him.  For me, the idea to honor God is more a motivator for me than just doing what is right   (If honoring God is not a motivator for you, then I think there is something wrong with your faith but you most definitely need to find what a motivator is for you is and use it.)  But when we learn the lesson between what is holy and what is common in the economy of God, forks in the road become clear (or at least clearer).

And so this is the first lesson of being sanctified and of being “holy as He is Holy”, to learn the difference between what is holy and what is common.  When we learn this lesson (and we really care) the decisions that we make will naturally become less about what we want and more about what we need.

Holy Effort… 07/23/2019

WARNING PREACHY…

Hebrews 12:14 (NIV)

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

Does this verse scare you? 

Even a little bit?

“Without holiness no one will see the Lord”

I consider myself holy in the sense that I am connected to God through the Blood of the Cross of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:22).  I was baptized when I was a baby, I said the “Sinner’s Prayer” when I was seven, I was baptized again when I was 10 or 11, and then again after I actually decided to follow Jesus when I was 24 years old.  Ever since then I’ve been a regular attender of church, I read my bible everyday (sometimes twice), I’ve been adopted as a son with the full rights of a son (Eph. 3:20) so that I may enter into the Throne Room of Grace (Heb. 4:16) and I have even been made a coheir with Christ (Rom. 8:17).  So yes, I do consider myself holy.

Still though, I worry a little.

 

 Matthew 7:21-23 (NIV)

 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”  

So yes, Hebrews 12:14 makes me take pause – as well it is meant to.  

I consider myself holy but am I “being” Holy?  I grew up with the belief of “Once saved always saved” but if I am going to be terribly honest, I have lived the whole of my Christian life more from that single theology than any real effort or striving to be a holy person as the Scriptures call me to.

“Make every effort… to be Holy.”

J.C. Ryle wrote in the introduction of his greatbook Holiness, “I have had a deep conviction for many years that my practical holiness and entire self-consecration to God are not sufficiently unattended to by the modern Christians in this country.”

A.W. Tozer also wrote in the first chapter of his greatbook The Knowledge of the Holy, “It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something of a moral calamity.”  Tozer also wrote that “Holiness is a fact commanded: God wills it, Christ requires it, and all the scriptures—the law, the Gospel, the prophets, the wisdom writings, the epistles, the history books that tell of judgments past, and the Book of Revelation that tells of the Judgments to come—call for it.”

If I am going to be transparent, I too-often feel morally corrupt.  Not because I don’t trust Jesus' work on the Cross for my sin but because I too-often take His blood for granted and expect His grace and forgiveness for my sins.  So often I commit the same sins time-and-time again without any thought.  So I do believe that I need to seriously consider making every effort to be Holy and pay attention to this warning in Hebrews 12:14.

So how about you?

Do you put forward every effort to be holy?  Maybe you do but I’m guessing that you would be in the minority of this modern Christian faith.  How do you even define Holiness anyway?  In my next post I’ll tell you my definition of what holiness means.

The Fragile Ecosystem of my Spiritual Life… 07/07/2019

WARNING PREACHY…

In Packer’s Rediscovering Holiness he writes of the Christian life being made up of three things, like legs of a three legged stool so our spiritual lives in Christ also balance on three legs: doctrine, experience, and practice.  As I’ve considered his words I think he is right.  As I contemplate my own life I realize that my spiritual life is a delicate ecosystem which easily goes off and takes constant care to reset into healthy order.  

Doctrine…

Doctrine is knowledge about God and ourselves that we learn from the Scriptures.  While there is much debate about how accurate all the details of the scriptures are (I have no desire to discuss that now) the reality is that God has throughout time and history miraculously maintained and provided for us the Holy Scriptures.  I consider even a cursory look at the historical development of the bible as an amazingly miraculous fact; as much so as my own very existence. (When I look at my family heritage I realize how many of my fore-fathers and mothers had to survive history in order for me to be born – if even one grandpa or grandma (out of thousands?) had been killed or otherwise indisposed at that moment, I could not have been conceived of.)

Experience…

Experience has to do with the many ways that I interact with God and others: How I worship, why I worship, do I worship?  Is God Holy?  Do I recognize myself as sinful in the reality of a Holy God – and if so how penitent do I feel and how much does my personal repentance factor in?  How do I treat others and situations which I experience as a matter of faith or by sight?  

These questions only just touch on the depths of the experience leg of my spiritual ecosystem.  My experience is largely made up from my doctrine as well as reinforced by my practices.

Practice…

My practices then come from my doctrine and experiences and are what I do with my relationship with the Holy Trinity, commitment to my family, friends, and church, and how I conduct my labor, how I treat my communal obligations, and the sort.  This is the part that got me thinking this morning.  I started thinking about going to church this morning and joining in corporate worship; you know that bit where we sing songs to Jesus and honor God?  

I have no qualms with corporate worship but I’m simply not good at it.  I’m so easily distracted that I never actually get to worship God because I am too busy critiquing every physical aspect of the physical environment.  Is it too bright or dark, warm or cold, loud or quiet, do I know the song or don’t I, do I like the songs or don’t I, is that person singing off key, and isn’t that dress too short or neck line too low?  I don’t try to be a jerk; it just comes naturally.

The Ecosystem of my own Spirituality…

As I consider the three legs of my stool I recognize that it is out of whack.  I feel pretty good about my doctrine (it’s an ever growing work in progress, but it is growing), my experiences are sound I think (at least my doctrine informs my experiential understanding of how I exist with God and others), but my (as of right now) practices needs definite help.  For right now I’m dreading going to church because I know I won’t actually worship – I seemingly can’t and I have a tough time balancing on my three legged stool when one of the legs is missing.

The Holy Spirit’s Responsibility…

In the same chapter where Packer writes about the stool he points out how it is the Holy Spirit’s work to do in me what seems impossible to me.  He reminds me that the Holy Spirit of God does a transforming work and reaches deeper than I can know.  Also, spiritual growth is a slow work, seemingly imperceptible to the naked eye, but like the 49 year old man that I am I know that I will continue to grow over the next years; whether I can see that growth or not.  My job is simply to trust Him who is Holy and able.

So this morning I will go to church, see some friends, and worship my God.  Yes I will struggle like the jerk that I am but I will trust that He’s got this.  And I will work on my stool in my oh-so fragile ecosystem of faith.

Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV)

²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵ not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.