Category Archives: Matthew

Matthew—We Can Stop Inviting Jesus

“‘Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'” 

“‘Lord,” another of His disciples said, “first let me go bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” – Matthew 8:19-22

narrow

Jesus was clear that following Him would not be a journey of 5-star hotels, but a narrow gate to a narrow road and most of what we clutch in our hands and our hearts will not fit.

He was equally clear that there is an urgency in the Gospel and no other perceived obligation can come first. To the man’s request that Jesus wait until he tied up his loose ends, Jesus’ answer was no.

But what really caught my eye was the missing invitation.

Neither of the men invited Jesus to be their Lord and Savior. Instead, they each said they would be His follower.

And for some reason, that became meat on a bone for me. A bone that I need to pick with us, the ambassadors for Christ, the disciple-makers, the carriers of the Gospel. So many of us present people with the same message, in varying forms:

“Invite Jesus into your heart/life to be your Lord and Savior, and you will be saved.”

We need to stop presenting the Gospel as though it is our invitation to God.

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah!” Acts 2:36

Our invitation does not make Him what God has already made Him.

I think the real reason that our invitation to Jesus has become a point of contention for me, is that it feels too much like we are standing on a level playing field with Jesus. Like we have the power over whether or not He is Lord.

“…so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11)

It’s not that the Christians have a Lord, and everyone else doesn’t. Jesus is Lord of all. The question will never be, is He Lord and Savior?, but did we obey the Gospel and receive life? Faith is an act of obedience, not an invitation. (Romans 1:5, 16:26; Romans 10:15-17)

I know what you’re thinking. The invitation gives them a starting point, a way of expressing verbally what is happening in their heart. It’s semantics, really.

Except it isn’t. I cannot find even a theological principle that implies our ability to extend an invitation to the Creator of heaven and earth, for anything. Even our opening the door that He is knocking on is not our invitation to Him, it is our yes to Him. He’s already at the door. No invitation needed. (Revelation 3:20)

Gospel means good news. The good part is not that we can invite Jesus in. It is that He can make us stop being dead.

 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world… But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses.

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift. (Ephesians 2:1,4, 8 – emphasis mine)

Lazarus comes to mind as a physical picture of a spiritual event. He was very dead. Jesus neither gave an invitation nor waited for one. He gave a command — “Lazarus, come forth”. Disobedience would have kept him in the grave. Obedience brought him out.

Invitations are nice, polite. Unintrusive. Friendly. I think maybe that’s what we want the Gospel to be.

But it isn’t. The keys to death and hell were not politely handed over, they were taken with earth-shaking force. There was nothing friendly about the atonement for our sin.

The Gospel is bloody and real and hell shattering and it is not about making bad people good, or hurt people better, but about making dead people live.

passionofchristqi4

This was not to make us better but to put an end to our death. 

It leaves me a little wrecked with wonder as I look back through this lens and see what really happened in April of 1989 when I thought I was inviting Jesus to come into my life to be my Lord and Savior.

In reality, He stood at my tomb and commanded me to come forth. And in His love, goodness, and mercy, He took my invitation as obedience and removed my grave clothes.

Oh. How I love Him.

Matthew—Your Father

Matthew 6:1-18

At first glance, that mountainside sermon is exactly what so many expect of God. A list of do’s and do not’s. But I’ve sat here listening on repeat for days, hearing the same phrase over and over.

your Father. Ten times in eighteen verses He uses these words (once He says our Father, but still). Ten times He looks at me and says your Father.

It is said that when scripture repeats something three times, it is emphasizing the importance of something…a place, a person, a theme. It is basically saying, pay attention, this is crucial.

Ten times in eighteen verses Jesus affirms my identity as a daughter of heaven. 

I’ve been sitting on this one thing and counting the repeats and feeling the weight of pay attention, this is crucial.

I have called Him Father for years. But Father is just one of many identities I have called Him, depending on my circumstance. For instance, if you were to intrude on my most personal moments with Him lately, you would hear me crying out to my Healer. Not all that long ago He was my Deliverer. On a regular basis He is my Provider. The list goes on and the list is not wrong it’s just that He doesn’t want to be on a list.

Knowing God by a list of the things He can do for me is not the relationship He fought to the death to have with me.

The list separates what God does from the reason He does them.

[ Simplistic example:  When my kids got hungry, they didn’t call out for the food provider. When they got hurt they didn’t run to the owie healer. It was always Mom. I fed them, helped their hurts, and gave them what they needed because I was their mom, and they knew that, at least on some level.]

molasses

And finally, something in me settles as revelation seeps in like molasses.

What He does cannot be separated from the reason He does them because the reason He does them is who He is.

your Father.

God is not insisting that I know and believe and declare that He is my Healer.

your Father.

Or that I have memorized and can recite and are standing on all of the verses that prove He is my Healer.

your Father.

Or that I make sure to let Him know that my hope is not in doctors, lest He think I am trusting in some other healer besides Him.

your Father.

or any of the other things that we do and have others do in our attempt to get Him to do what we need Him to do.

your Father.

Molasses is slow, but eventually it gets where it’s going.

His Father-heart is not in question. Jesus, with His ten times in eighteen verses, has made it a much more personal question.

Do I have the heart of a daughter?

tap-dancing

Or is it still the heart of an orphan? A beggar. A tap dancer performer scripture-reciter trying to get the attention of the Healer Provider Deliverer?

Is my heart still so starved that it clamors for what He does more than for who He is?

And this one. So hard to answer. This is the pay attention. This is the crucial. I know this is why Jesus looked at me when He said it ten times.

Will I trust my Father even if Healer is nowhere to be found?

But still, revelation molasses just keeps seeping in until it finds the place it has been after from the beginning of the ten times in eighteen verses.

Is your Father enough?

And I remember that time He asked if His love was enough. It wasn’t a theological debate question, it was simple. Yes, or no. Designed not to be cruel or accusatory, but to force my heart into a life changing decision. And it was. It was life changing to choose to let His love be enough for me. It stopped my fighting and scratching for any other love. It brought rest to my soul. His love became the prize, not the consolation.

close up of a beautiful young woman looking upwards

So in the dark hours of the night, my heart again made a choice.

You are my Father and I am Your daughter.

Yes, it is enough. 

Matthew—Blessed is hard, not lucky

Matthew 5:1-11

His words on that mountain unsettle me. I say I’m so blessed to have this [fill in the blank]. Family. Job. House. Hair. Brownie. Whatever. But a few minutes of that mountainside sermon, and I realize that what I really mean is I am one lucky girl. So fortunate to have the life I have. It takes some digging to discover that blessed goes a whole lot deeper and is a whole lot harder than lucky.

Luck and fortune have nothing to do with the blessing of God. 

μακάριος, or makarios, is the word for blessed. 

[“the state of one who has become a partaker of God; to experience the fullness of God. It refers to the believer in Christ who is satisfied and secure in the midst of life’s hardships because of the indwelling fullness of the Spirit.”*]

Being blessed has nothing to do with my relationship with this earthly life and everything to do with my relationship with God.

And it’s a slow process to realize that everything is about God. Just everything.

Blessed begins at the cross where I stand spiritually impoverished before the tree where hangs the very fullness of God. And it continues through to my persecution. In between are the steps to becoming. The walk that leads to deeper places in God and to a greater partaking of His character.

As I step into mourning my sin instead of hiding it, and as I mourn others’ sin instead of throwing the first stone, I am blessed.

As I stop resisting God and begin to trust Him, asserting myself and my interests less and submitting myself wholly to Him who is in control of everything, I am blessed.

When I stop hungering for the things of this world, the things that soothe my flesh, and begin to long for what pleases God, to desire His will above anything else, I am blessed.

refugees

As I learn that compassion must be active and not passive, that being merciful means I must actually act upon my pity and do something about the needs of others instead of just talking about it, I am blessed.

When I live with my heart open before God and not hidden, allowing Him to cleanse it, not shrinking back, not withholding any part of my heart from His purifying fire, I am blessed.

When I become active in the reconciliation and restoration of others to God, wading into the pain and brokenness of the world around me to actually demonstrate the love and goodness of Jesus, going into the war for people’s souls rather than passively avoiding it, I am blessed.

And when I am shunned, driven away, harassed, denied and threatened not because of who I am, but because of who He is, I am in good company and I am blessed.

Blessed is not lucky, it is hard. It is dying. It is emptying. It is denying. It is going instead of staying, loving instead of hating, lifting up, not pushing down. It is living, not just talking. It is carrying a cross, not wearing one.

Blessed is becoming more like Him and less like me. 

*"Greek Thoughts" by Bill Klein, posted at StudyLight.org.

He Went

 The storm passed and the boat arrived safely on the other side of the lake. I imagine they would still be a bit shaky from the storm, looking forward to some rest on the beach perhaps.

As I looked at Matthew 8:28-34 in light of my question “how and where did Jesus lead His disciples”, my first thought was “He led them to the demon possessed”. While technically this is true, I believe God wants us to see what isn’t so obvious.

First, let’s back up to 8:18 – “…He gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.”  Jesus went. That’s going to be my point today. On purpose, He went to the “other side”. Scripture only tells us of one thing He did when He reached the other side, so it’s safe to assume that Jesus went to the other side for just one reason.

He went to set someone free.

I like seeing what Jesus does by looking at what He didn’t do. It’s often how my mind processes. He didn’t wait for the bound man to come to Him (clearly, this bound man could not have “come to Jesus” even if he wanted to…note to the Church). He didn’t demand that the man acknowledge his need to be free, or that he had to tell the demons they had to leave. There was not a three week, 12 step, or otherwise long process for freeing the man.  Jesus came to a demon possessed man and demanded his freedom. I love what Jesus does, but I also love what He doesn’t do.

He went. Combine this scripture passage with Matthew 18:12, and you have my real point.

“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?”

And He will still go to the other side after the one who needs to be free, and He will still go after the one who has wandered away from Him. This revelation forever changed my prayer life many years ago. I was frustrated in my prayer for a prodigal, because I kept praying for the prodigal to “do something”… to return, to wake up, come to her senses, etc.  After all, this is what the story of the prodigal in scripture is all about. What the prodigal did, and the fact that the father was waiting with open arms. So we box God in with His own story, assuming that it is the only way a prodigal comes home, and our prayer for them becomes frustratingly limited. Then Jesus led me to the two scriptures above, and everything changed. Instead of praying for the prodigal to do something, I prayed for God to do what He clearly says He will do. Go.

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That prodigal is now running after God, and I believe it is because He went after her. He went, because she needed Him to come after her, set her free, and bring her back from the other side. This is our God and this is what He does.

Jesus led His disciples to the other side, to a man who was demon possessed. But they had seen Him deliver people from demons before, so power over darkness was not what they were there to learn.

I wonder if they were meant to see the same thing I see when I follow Him to the other side in this story.

To Jesus, the one is always worth going after.

              We tend to complicate what Jesus made very simple.

                           Some people just can’t come to Jesus. That’s ok. He’ll come to them.

God came to us and God goes after us.

May we never lose the wonder of that.