Category Archives: In the Word

i can live with that – part one

At the same time the Benjaminites did not drive out the Jebusites who were living in Jerusalem. The Jebusites have lived among the Benjaminites in Jerusalem to this day. {Judges 1:21}

I could go on about how I was in the book of Judges with no idea why I chose to go there. How I was reading along at more of a yada yada pace than taking a contemplative stroll. I could tell you about reading past verse 21, but not really because my eyes kept going back to it even though my brain kept wanting to move on. Get to something interesting. I could tell you all of that, but I won’t. I’ll just cut to the chase. Or to the quick. Whichever it happens to be for you.

What are you co-existing with that you should have driven out?

Personally, I needed a whole minute after that question. Could have been a month. A month of trying not to let it stop at conviction. Forcing myself to stay with it and not push it away as one of those oh, that’s good moments and then go back to being whatever it is that I am. Oblivious. Comfortable. Unconvicted.

I may need more time. But here is where I share my journey with whoever may be listening, so I’ll share a couple of miles or so I’ve gone with this so far.

The Israelites had been told to drive out the inhabitants that were in their promised land. Get rid of them. The promised land was the territory God had given them. Places He had given them the authority to dwell as His people.

What is the spiritual shadow being cast by this physical reality? What is my land, my territory of authority?

My home, family. My marriage. If I were still raising children, my parenting would be a place God has given to me, but now it’s my grandparenting.  Ministry. Calling. Gifting. My workplace. My relationships with God, and with others, inside and outside of the Church.

This is my land, my territory. God has planted me here and given me authority, spiritually.  These are the areas I have felt led to ask myself the question — what have I been allowing to co-exist with me here, rather than driving it out?

Some that I came up with apply to me, and some do not. Maybe they resonate with you, though.

Fear, including the fear of man. The fear of disappointing someone, of feeling their disapproval or criticism. That kind of fear will keep us in a place of striving, trying to please and appease. It will keep us from speaking the truth when truth needs to be spoken. Then there is the fear that comes when we watch the news. That’s the fear that can turn our desire to be informed into an obsession. And because we are obsessed with what is going on around us, we are continually fueling fresh fear.  And no, the answer is not to bury our heads, no longer paying any attention to the news. The news is not the trespasser on our land. Fear is.

{Also, for the record — fear includes control, because control is rooted primarily in fear.  Think about it.}

Pride, which includes a low self-esteem. Whether thinking too much of ourselves, or too little of ourselves — we are still continually thinking of self. Narcissism, which is pride on steroids, is rampant in the Church. One day on social media will confirm that, I promise.  Comparison is also rampant and is rooted in pride. Self-hatred, self-loathing, self-everything — all the offspring of pride.

Pride ensures that no matter where we look, we see ourselves.

{It also includes a judgmental and/or critical spirit, both of which can be traced back to pride.}

Apathy/Complacency. Couch surfing Christians. Those who believe they follow Jesus, but never actually follow Him past the couch. They keep their religion as a “private” matter, never talking about it with others.  Or, they post spiritual memes on their social media accounts and consider that sharing the gospel. It is spiritual laziness and we have made peace with it and allowed it to co-exist with us in every aspect of our lives.

I can think of others, can you? A religious spirit, unbelief, addictions of every kind, and compromise, just to name a few.

To figure out how and why these things are enemies that should not be allowed to co-exist with us, we have to consider what they destroy, or at a minimum, what they hinder in us. We’ll do that in the next mile. Stay tuned!

do you love me or are you just checking out my fruit?

To God’s church at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and called as saints, with all those in every place who call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord—both their Lord and ours. – 1 Corinthians 1:2

The salutation alone should convict us. But let’s go on.

In the next 5 verses Paul affirms the Christians in Corinth.

…you do not lack any spiritual gift… He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you will be blameless …you were called by Him into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

And then he begins to address their sin.

“For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers, by members of Chloe’s household, that there is rivalry among you.”  (1:11)

In fact, you are still not ready, because you are still fleshly. For since there is envy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and living like unbelievers? (3:2-3)

 For who makes you so superior? What do you have that you didn’t receive? If, in fact, you did receive it, why do you boast as if you hadn’t received it? (4:7)

It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you… (5:1)

I say this to your shame! Can it be that there is not one wise person among you who is able to arbitrate between his brothers? Instead, believer goes to court against believer, and that before unbelievers! … Therefore, to have legal disputes against one another is already a moral failure for you.(6:5,7)

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” Come to your senses and stop sinning, for some people are ignorant about God. I say this to your shame. (15:33)

And it goes on. He addresses the way they took communion, their handling of the spiritual gifts, and the disorder of their services.

His letter to them was very disciplinary in nature. Apparently, they needed quite the spanking. But here is what he never said to them:

You are bad Christians. You are so-called Christians. You are not really Christians.

Ok, let’s table that for a sec.

We are fond of checking one another out in search of fruit. We love to quote Jesus saying “you will know them by their fruit”, which apparently permissions us to demand to see some fruit as validation of one’s true Christianity, as though we’re the border guards of heaven.

Can you tell it just peeves me?

Let’s read it together. But this time, let’s read the entire passage, instead of just the last verse.

“Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves.  You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-20)

Question: Who will be recognized by their fruit? Answer:  False prophets. The context of this fruity passage is false prophets, not the brethren (I just like saying that word).

Since we’re doing this, let’s look at a different passage.

“I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)

Question:  How will followers of Christ be recognized, by all people? Answer: By the way we love each other.

I’m begging us to love one another and stop pointing our fingers across the aisle, demanding to see fruit. Especially from people we only know from the other side of a computer screen. The internet is no place from which to judge authenticity, purity, or any other fruity substance.

If you’re going to demand to see my fruit, we’d better be in some kind of relationship, know what I mean? 

We are to bear much fruit. For.our.Father. Not so that our fruitfulness can be weighed and measured by our brothers and sisters and a decision can be reached as to whether we really are who we say we are.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians teaches us something if we will dare to learn it. It’s the art of calling believers up and out of their sin.

Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or anyone practicing homosexuality, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

Paul doesn’t deny their believership (yes, spell check, I did make that up. go with it.). He affirms it and calls them to come up to it, basically saying to them, “This is not who you are anymore. Stop living as though it is.” How ’bout we do that? Call one another up to our true identity, as those in Christ. What if we affirm one another instead of yanking out our fruit-seeking spyglass. What if we loved each other enough to say ‘Stop that. That’s not who you are.’?

I know. I get it. There is just something in us (some of us, not all) that feels the pull to point out what others are doing wrong. Not because we love them, but because we are offended and highly indignant that they are sinning. We feel the need to defend the image of Christ. We get mad when someone sullies it with their sin.

And we’re cranky because we have this log in our eye so we can’t see too good and that makes it hard to look for your fruit.

what are your lies?

snakeThe woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’” 
“No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman.  “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; 

How many times had she looked at that tree? Walked past it? She was well aware of the presence of that tree in her garden home. What was it about this day?

A lie was spoken and a lie was believed and then the woman saw. 

 Things look different through the lens of a lie.

If you believe that gratifying your lust is natural, and doesn’t hurt anyone, then pornography will look harmless.

If you believe that the life of the unborn is expendable and of less value than your own life, then abortion will look like a right.

If you believe that your happiness is what matters most, then being faithful in your marriage will look optional.

If you believe that certain people are superior to others, or that a victim mentality is yours by right, then racism will look justified.

The enemy knows one thing very well.

The best way to make something deadly look good, is to lie about it.

We all have lies that have been whispered in our ear. Lies about God, about other people, and about ourselves.

But the power is not in the lie that we hear, it is in the lie we believe.

If Eve had heard the lie but chose to trust God’s word over satan’s, things would have been much different.

We have the same choice.

So now I’m asking God to show me my lies, because, you know. The lies sound true and the tree still looks good, know what I mean?

I have to be willing to ask:

What have I believed about God, about others, and about myself that cannot be supported by His Word?

And then I have to choose truth, no matter how hard it is. No matter what it costs me. No matter how wrong it will make me look. No matter how much humble pie I have to eat. No matter how much it will force me to forgive someone, including myself. No matter how much I will have to repent. No matter how addicted I am to self-loathing. No matter how right my victim attitude feels. No matter what I will have to let go, stop doing, stop thinking, stop saying. No. matter. what.

I must choose truth if I am going to choose life.

this is how He captured my heart

matt-9It amazes me that I can read passages that I’ve read many times before, and still see something new. This chapter is full of familiar stories of healing and confrontation, but in the midst of all that He is saying and doing, I find the heart and character of Jesus.

And my own heart is compelled to run to Him all over again.

Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

His paralysis remained but his sins did not and Jesus called it a ‘take heart’ moment. And in those few moments between the spiritual healing and the physical healing, I wonder what the paralyzed man was thinking. Was he disappointed that Jesus gave him what he couldn’t see, leaving his physical need unmet? Did his heart do what mine does sometimes — put the spiritual healing in a pocket and hold out its hand for more of what it really wants?

And I wonder if, a few minutes later, he was blown away by the profound generosity of a Savior who gave him what he desperately needed and then lavished him with what he desperately wanted. Did it occur to him (or me) that the forgiveness of sins was what he needed the most and deserved the least? Me and that paralyzed man have this in common…

We should be blown away by the generosity of God.

 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, ‘Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?'”

Nothing is hidden. No thought. No action. No intent of my heart. But the lump in my throat is not because He knows. It’s there because He’s always known and it didn’t stop Him. He pursued me anyway. Chose me anyway. He is so very different from you and me. He has known all there is to know of me, and still He calls me beloved.

And this becomes the death knell to my shame:  I am fully known yet fully loved.

 “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?'”

phariseesOf course they asked. They needed to make a point. Holy does not mingle with the unholy. Rules were breaking and they didn’t like it one bit. Most of us know at least one pharisee in our lives. Some of us have to look no further than a mirror.

But it is His answer that captivates me.

“I desire mercy”

For three months I didn’t know if there was cancer anywhere in my body other than my uterus. They saw something in my lung and then in my breast and the waiting about did me in. In that waiting, I found myself with one cry, and I raised it every day. “Lord have mercy.” Given the way I had treated and neglected my body, and my family history, I believed that the only way I was not going to have more cancer was through the mercy of God. 

Two days before Christmas mercy fell with the words “your PET scan is clean”.

The fact that Jesus eats with sinners means one thing to a pharisee and something else entirely to a sinner.

But His desire for mercy means everything to me.

girl-in-shockI love that He can move mountains, that His voice can shake the earth and that He can tell sickness and disease to get out and they have to obey. His power and authority leave me wide-eyed with wonder and awe.

But this…

He is profoundly generous, giving me what I desperately needed the most and deserved the least. And then He lavished me with what I desperately wanted. He fully knows me and my every thought. Every motive of my heart, every desire that is less than pure, every prideful, selfish piece of me. And He loves me still. And though judgment and punishment I have well earned, the desire of His heart is mercy. 

praise-you-god-i-give-it-all-to-youThis is how He captured my heart.

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.

what has to happen for His word to be true

typing-on-keyboardAll the writer people are doing it, and something in me that wants to be counted among the writer people set out to do it too. Put fingers to keys and let flow something profound about the birth of Jesus. So I flipped over to Luke chapter 2 and got ready. But I never got past the first seven verses.

Because I saw this —

“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.” (Luke 2:4)

And then I remembered this prophecy — 

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

And then I went back to verse one and my mind blew up just a little.

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.”

In that year, that month, Caesar Augustus had to call for a census.

But before that a man named Joseph had to love a girl named Mary and ask for her hand in marriage (or offer her dad six goats and a really nice rug).

And Joseph had to come from the line of David so that he would have to travel to his hometown of Bethlehem, the city of David, to register for the census.

But before that, Mary had to become with child by the Holy Spirit at just the right time so that she was almost due to give birth when the census was ordered, so that once in Bethlehem, our Savior was born.

And all I can think is nothing is random.

There is order and strategy and purpose in everything God does to bring about His word.

And then my mind does a mad dash.

And we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory… (2 Corinthians 3:18)

What has to happen for this to be true?

Every mountaintop and every valley.

refiners-fire3Every crucible, deep water and wilderness wandering.

Every moment spent at His feet and every single one spent with my face to the hard ground of Gethsemane whispering “not my will but Yours be done”.

Every green pasture and still waters and invitation to the table with Him. Every stumble and every victory dance.

And every single trial.

Nothing is random and nothing is wasted. Everything is leading from glory to glory.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)

What comes to me comes for me. Because God keeps His word. Always.

The Savior was born in Bethlehem, and I will be transformed into His image.

water and wine

 

The Gospel of John. Second Chapter.

“On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee…When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

water-to-wineSo He took water and made it wine and the miracle is only noticed by a few. And this story is so familiar  I want to just move on, keep reading. But I am drawn back to the story of water and wine and I discover there are depths here that I have never seen.

“In the ancient Near East, with its scarcity of water, wine was a necessity rather than a luxury, so it came to symbolize sustenance and life. Due to its close relationship to the ongoing life of the community, in association with grain and oil, wine is also representative of the covenant blessings God promised to Israel for obedience, and which He would withhold for disobedience. Finally, wine also represents joy, celebration, and festivity, expressing the abundant blessings of God.” – Martin G. Collins, Forerunner Commentary (emphasis mine)

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

All at once I am flush with conviction because those words go into my soul, you know? Into my doubtful, my fearful places, into my rebellious places. Into the place where I’ve been putting off what I know He wants me to do. So the words of a mother spoken to her son become the words of a Father spoken to His daughter. 

Do whatever He tells you

fill the jar to the brim

offer your loaves and fishes

take up your mat and walk

cast your net to the other side

step out of the boat

be still          go            fast and pray             give

forgive           love          believe

Trust Me.

Do whatever He tells you. 

I know. It sounds simple. Seems silly that it even needs to be said. But reality? We sit in our place of ‘no more wine’ and will not get up and do whatever He tells us to do. We have need and we weep and we worry and we wonder where He is but we will not obey. We think about it, we say we’ll do it, we tell others it’s what they should do, and honestly? We want to do it, I know we do. We just don’t actually do whatever He tells us to do.

And that is why we have water but no wine

 

“Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

rear-view-mirroAnd right there my heart loves Him more, again. Right in the place of the best is not behind you but in front of you, always. So when you’ve been looking in the rear view, thinking the good stuff is behind you, you’ll plant your foot right here on this word and weep.

Just when you thought the good wine was gone He reminds you that He is good and He gives nothing cheap, so the best is always yet to come. 

 

And all of that is so good. Conviction to deeper obedience…good. Joy in the best yet to come…so good. But something in the words of this story still nags at me.

Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification…

And no matter how much or how often that water flowed it would never clean more than the outside. It would wash hands but never hearts. That water is everything I ever did to try to wash away what made me unclean, to make me better, to make me good enough. And that thought leads to this…

“Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them and said, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.”*

And sometimes I’m left on my face at His feet because God turned the story of a wedding into my story and I just don’t know how He does it. But He did and somewhere from the deep of my heart come the only words I can say to worship Him.

You turned my water into wine.

 

*Matthew 26:28