An Act of Worship

July 13, 2009 — Bible, Christianity, Christology, Spiritual Growth — 6 min read

Mary, by Sholem Asch

I’m posting here my Amazon review of Sholem Asch’s book, Mary. If I can introduce anyone to the outstanding Christian works of Asch, I will have done a good thing. -p.

When I was done reading this book, my soul sat in a collapsed heap, drained but cleansed, awaiting the Spirit’s rejuvenating touch.

I was first introduced to the works of Sholem Asch some 25 years ago by an old and dear Jewish friend in NYC. Though he wasn’t sympathetic to Christianity, he just loved Asch’s vivid writing. He gave me a copy of Asch’s phenomenal The Apostle. I had to wait a bit though, for him to find a copy that he hadn’t annotated during his many readings of the work. Such was his devotion to Asch’s writings.

Through the wonders of online browsing, I recently came across Mary, the earliest part of Asch’s trilogy about Christ. Thinking I could use some easy background reading to break up my more serious pursuits, I started skipping around early parts of the book. But the descriptions of Yeshua growing in stature and favor began first to interest me, then to arrest me.

It turns out that Jesus wasn’t air-dropped over Israel as the full-blown Messiah. Just as it is with us, his destiny didn’t come automatically. He had to study the scriptures and interact with people in a developmental way, over what we call his hidden years. (more…)

Forgiveness vs reconciliation

July 3, 2009 — Bible, Christianity, Culture and Society, Spiritual Growth — 4 min read

I came across this this morning. You may be aware that South Carolina’s governor had been playing the bad boy and was found out. His wife just came out with a public statement, and despite the pain and anger she must be going through, it is refreshingly morally clear.

She’s definitely not a doormat. And she doesn’t seem to be the “I’ll stand by my man because it’s good career calculus” type (I’ll refrain from citing an example…).

Its abundantly clear that she first of all has a God perspective. And she has a handle on a very significant distinction that so many don’t get: forgiveness is not reconciliation.

Forgiveness in mandatory, because we are neither competent nor called to judge the secrets of men’s hearts in this life. But reconciliation is conditioned on repentance and the willingness to work at rebuilding trust, upon which sincere relationship is built.

God rightly demands that we forgive others if we want to remain in His good graces. Otherwise, we set ourselves up as God, judging others. But He also warns us against casting pearls before swine. In other words, be free of judgment and bitterness, but be careful whom you trust. God cares about His temple, which is us, and He wants it protected from defilement.

The only way to accomplish this is to separate forgiveness from reconciliation. Those who fail to do so run a dual risk. They can either withhold forgiveness because they fear the inappropriate reconciliation they think it will necessarily lead to, or they go ahead with the forgiveness and reconciliation. In the first case they harbor unforgiveness, and in the second they become unequally yoked in an abusive relationship. Either of these lead to spiritual disaster.

But if we forgive from the heart and then judge reconciliation as a separate issue, we keep our hearts free from both bad internal and external influences. And that is the very “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” kind of wisdom the Lord has enjoined us to practice.

Ms. Sanford sounds like a Proverbs 31 woman to me, with godly integrity. Kudos. Here’s her statement:
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Catching the updraft of grace

July 2, 2009 — Bible, Christianity, Spiritual Growth — 8 min read

Have you ever fallen off the wagon with a particular besetting sin or weakness – for the hundredth time? Done something really stupid that you knew not to do? Felt like you were making no progress and there couldn’t possibly be any hope left for you? And then did you go into self-hatred and condemnation?

It’s like getting caught in a whirlpool dragging you down to the bottom, with your best efforts against it being helpless. Your thoughts are your own worst enemy, and you get the depressing feeling that it’s not going to be a good day – or life, for that matter.

I know because I’ve been there – many times. And I’d bet that most of us have. Yet if we’re Christians, enjoying perfect, eternal covenant with almighty God, shouldn’t there be a way to overcome this common trap that magnifies our failings against us?

After a long time being Saved I’ve finally learned, by experience rather than mere head knowledge, the New Testament way to cope with this problem. It’s rooted in grace and it makes the critical difference between victory and defeat. (more…)

Abide Until The Power Falls

June 28, 2009 — Bible, Christianity, Prayer, Spiritual Growth — 8 min read

In John chapter 15, Jesus tells us of both the necessity and the central requirement of bearing fruit:

Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. – Jn 15:2,4

We are given a very stark choice. Either we’re going to bear fruit or we’re going to be taken away. And whether we bear fruit or not is a question of whether we abide. (more…)

Setting the Captives Free

June 24, 2009 — Bible, Christianity, Church, Culture and Society — 7 min read

I’ve been participating in the “twittering” going on about the protests in Iran. I’ve watched the video of the innocent and defenseless girl in the street, intentionally shot by religious thugs and dying as her friends hopelessly tried to save her. A beautiful young life cut off by the Islamic Revolution’s coercive lust for power.

Acid is dropped by government helicopters onto peaceful crowds. Women are beaten with truncheons for standing on sidewalks. Police use knives, razors, and axes against demonstrators.

That was just the first day. Since then it’s gotten worse, with more murders, imprisonment without medical treatment, and destruction of property by the police.

And exquisitely, all this is perpetrated in the name of… God?

Let’s see how we got here.

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Persecution Rages in China, Elsewhere

June 20, 2009 — Christianity, Church, Culture and Society, Prayer — 5 min read

Nothing gained by compromise

Today comes a horror story out of China, in which people infiltrated a registered Chinese church in order to disrupt its Body life and to ultimately destroy the church. Finally one Christian was brutally beaten and then, with the cooperation of the authorities, falsely charged and jailed for hurting one of the thugs beating him! http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/2574510721.html

It seems that, if anything, persecution in China is stepping up. The government line for several years was that underground churches should register, and then they will be legitimate and safe. But one of our own forefathers wrote that people who exchange freedom for security will end up with neither.

That seems to be proving itself out in China. The registered churches are free to preach the Gospel as long as it doesn’t encroach on the government’s false totalitarian authority. How far do you think that goes? While people are being Saved and other good things are happening in these churches, ultimately where the Spirit of the Lord is, there must be liberty.

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Chosen and Foreknown

June 18, 2009 — Bible, Christianity, Christology, Spiritual Growth — 5 min read

“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain. – Jn 15:16

I’ve always had problems with the concept of being chosen by God. When I came to the Lord some 29 years ago, it was all about me choosing Him.

Or so it seemed. I was on the carpet of my bedroom, crying for mercy from the bottom of my heart. So while I’ve often had a strong presence of the Lord, and could understand how I was led by Him into making the choice for Him, I never had the assurance that I was on the receiving end of being chosen.

And make no mistake, knowing you are chosen is an assurance. When you’re in the devil’s heat of battle, the difference between simply hanging onto the rear deck of the Gospel train for dear life and knowing that the Lord specifically zeroed in on you, as an individual, to be a recipient of salvation is vast. It’s the inestimable personal, subjective, relational factor.

So, all this time I thought that I was the one who did the choosing. Now, if I’m the one who did the choosing, my situation is tenuous. Because, knowing myself, I can easily “unchoose” something when the going gets tough. I know myself well enough to admit that.

And if I’m the one who did the choosing, I’m inherently uncertain about my relationship with God. Did He really want me? Is He really interested in me as a person, or am I just another salvation statistic? (more…)

Prayer that is worthy

June 18, 2009 — Bible, Christology, Prayer, Spiritual Growth — 3 min read

I was in prayer yesterday afternoon. It seemed like my position was eroding rapidly. I felt like Peter sinking beneath the waves.

HELP! was the gist of my prayer, and desperation was the attitude behind it. But very quickly a funny thing happened – a veil was lifted and I saw that the whole thing was irrelevant, unworthy.

It’s not that I condemn desperate prayer at all – I’ll use it myself the very next time the need arises – but in my own situation I’ve been at this same point of distress many times now, and I sense that I really need to exercise more faith than in the early days. The purpose of crisis is to grow from faith to faith.

So I began to reason – if I were God, what kind of prayer would please Me? I saw immediately that, as God, I would certainly listen to prayers of desperation. But it would be prayers of bold and confident faith uttered from those same desperate situations that would really please Me.

The Father is pleased to give us the Kingdom and desires that we bear much fruit. Sometimes He grants requests in order to prime the faith pump, but most times He requires that we come up to a standard of faith before we receive.

This is how He draws us to Him! By affirming His sovereignty, power, and goodness, we focus our attention away from our problem and onto Him, away from our need and onto His infinite supply. And beholding Him as He is, we are changed into His likeness:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. – 2 Co 3:18

Organic union, via our spiritual marriage to the Son, is exactly what God is after.

It’s a process of being drawn out and stretched. Just as with muscles, it takes persistent exercise to become flexible and strong.

The sooner we understand that God’s goal is to make us like Him, the sooner we will realize the kind of prayer that pleases Him. And the sooner we pray well, the sooner we see victory.

It all rests on realizing God’s worthiness and exalted purpose and then acknowledging that He deserves the best sacrifice of prayer that we can offer.

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Motivational Purity

June 17, 2009 — Bible, Spiritual Growth — 3 min read

What if the glory was only in the next life? What if we were to serve God here and never reap any reward until then? Would we still cling to Him? Would we still believe in His goodness and power?

The Bible is full of promises even for this life, yet some people are taken early and some have very difficult lives. When life doesn’t make sense, will we still love and serve?

I used to be haunted by the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald lyric, “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

I’m no longer haunted by it – God’s love goes nowhere. God still loves us when we’re going through trials, and we should still love Him back. What we are subject to in this fallen life changes neither God’s objective worthiness nor His loving nature.

It’s important to get this right. Because if we’re serving for earthly rewards only, our relationship with God is selfish and we are going to fall when the tests come. And come they will, and indeed their purpose is to purge us of wrong motives.

All that can be shaken will be shaken, we are warned. The one motivation that cannot be shaken is to seek the manifest glory and love of God.

The three young Hebrews knew that.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter.
“If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king.
“But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” – Da 3:16-18

That’s an excellent attitude.

While they were respectful, their faith was subject to no man. No authority can rival God’s authority.
They believed that God was able to deliver them.
They believed that God would deliver them!
But even if, according to God’s unassailable wisdom He declined to deliver them, they were still going to remain faithful.

The three Hebrews were in a tough position, but all saints should count on trials that test their motivations. If we want to pass the tests and receive the promotions that last, those which come not from man, but from God, it is essential that our motivation is true.

The Bottom Line: God’s love

June 16, 2009 — Spiritual Growth — 4 min read

I started using Twitter a week ago. They ask you to make a short statement that sums up what you’re about. I wrote:

God became a man. The only sane response is to follow Him. Read Jn 3.16: http://bit.ly/17pLjO

Pretty good, but it was from the head rather than the heart. My new statement:

God became a man and gave His life for us. How can you resist love like that? Read Jn 3.16: http://bit.ly/17pLjO

The past few days I’ve been reliving the Keith Green experience of so many years ago. Watch him sing Your Love Broke Through, and you will see his love for Jesus. Or watch a one-hour video of his life story and see his amazing dedication. He was immature in some ways, but he was growing. He gave up a lucrative record deal and instead gave away his albums. He opened his doors to the hurting and the seeking. He and his wife were pioneers against abortion. (more…)

The Church needs an “MRI”!

June 13, 2009 — Church, Culture and Society, Spiritual Growth — 6 min read

One of my greatest passions is the church. Anyone who has been saved by Jesus should care deeply about the house of God, which is God’s family and the Bride of the Lamb, right?

So how are we doing? From my American charismatic perspective, not terribly well.

Let’s take the one mark that should stand out above all others: love. Is love simply awash in our corporate gatherings? Maybe your experience is different than mine – I hope it is – but I see a lot of people out of church, and I see a lot of hurt people alienated from church.

I just devoured a small book by the late Derek Prince, entitled Protection From Deception. In it, this great elder of the church made the following bombastic statement:

From my experience I would say there is no greater problem in the church today than personal ambition in the ministry.

Wow! I haven’t come across that degree of honesty on this subject anywhere else, ever.

I envision the problem as a board game, “Careers in Christ”. It’s what burned me royale so many years ago, and I still haven’t forgotten. It’s what happens when church leaders put their own aggrandizement above the health of the Body and start abusing the sheep in order to protect their own interests. (more…)

Prayer That Overcomes

June 10, 2009 — Prayer, Spiritual Growth — 11 min read

I have spent a lot of years of my life – more than I would like to admit – praying for things the “old fashioned” way.

It was all very impressive, I’m sure. Great articulation. Plenty of emotion. Even weeping and wailing at times. If they had an American Idol for pray-ers, I would have had a shot at the gold.

The only problem was that I didn’t have a whole lot to show for it, except maybe sore knees. Very few real answers came down the pike, just a lot of spiritualizing on my part. Heaven seemed to increasingly take on the timbre of brass. My faith waned, my overcoming power faded, and my walk dwindled to near-nothing.

Looking back on it now, I would venture a guess that the reason the whole enterprise collapsed under its own weight is because this emphatically was not the way Jesus taught us to pray for our needs.

The prayer of faith

Indeed, Jesus gives a radical formula for the prayer of supplication, one indicative of a different relationship with God than anything before.

And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God.

“Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.

“Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.

[“But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.”] – Mk 11:22-26

There are several requirements in this instruction, and they point to some startling presuppositions. Let’s take a look at them.

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The Cost Of Discipleship

June 10, 2009 — Spiritual Growth — 6 min read

How many leaders do you know of, who at the very height of their popularity intentionally thinned their supporters’ ranks? Precious few, I’d guess. Yet that’s exactly what Jesus did!

Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them,

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

“So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. – Lk 14:25-35

Evidently it was becoming misleadingly easy to follow Jesus. Too comfortable. Too much a country festival. Hey – free loaves and fishes, healing, great preaching – it’s a party! What’s not to like?

Here we see the essence of the man-centered Gospel: what can I get out of it?

It’s natural and understandable, but Jesus would have none of it. It was the very antithesis of the attitude He Himself brought to earth, and He knew that those with their own agenda would quickly fall away. So He abruptly returned the focus to God by emphasizing the demands of discipleship.

It is God who is driving the whole plan of salvation. It’s for God’s pleasure that we were created, have been redeemed, and finally will be glorified. Yes, we reap unspeakably glorious benefits from being in relationship with Him, but the priorities of the Alpha and Omega must come first and last.

We are in a battle

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The Master Strategist

June 5, 2009 — Bible, Christology — 7 min read

I’ve been veeery slowly reading Paul Billheimer’s Destined For The Throne. I can’t buy into everything he says quite yet, but he is bringing out some compelling points that have augmented my own thinking on some foundational issues.

I’ve understood for a long time that God knew, before He “rolled up His sleeves” and began history, that Creation would fall and that the sacrifice of His own Son, Jesus Christ, would be necessary to save it from eternal destruction. This is what the Word means when it tells us that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. – Rev 13.8

If that reality is new to you, take a moment to dwell on it. Seeing the end before the beginning (Is 46.10), and the terrible Price salvation was going to exact, it would have been so much easier for God to say, “Nope, nice idea, this Creation business, but it’s just way too expensive. Who needs the aggravation? For a bunch of ingrates?” He could have declined, and no one would have been around to feel bad about the decision. No harm done.

But He went ahead with The Project. And we must ask why.

God’s “super-redemptive” love

I’ve come at this every way I know how, and have concluded that there is only one possible reason for God’s going ahead with Creation. God is passionately in love with us. Now, I don’t mean that He’s desperately, forelornly lovesick and swooning over us. He emphatically is not out of control. He is not a fool for love. He is not Dion’s “Teenager in Love”. He still is awesome and majestic, sovereign in knowledge and power, and unshakably enthroned over Creation.

But behind it all He has a deep love for us that simply will not be satisfied until we are fully reconciled to Him, and indeed, until we are in organic ontological union with Him. And that love was willing to pay any Price, even the death of Jesus, to realize that goal.

God, from the very beginning, had both Creation and Redemption in mind. And by Redemption I mean not only that He would restore Adam’s race after it had fallen, but that He also would institute an entire new race, not of mere men, but one spawned from the Last Adam, the God-man Jesus Christ. We, as the Bride of Christ, will one day be in a “one flesh” marital relationship with Him!

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. – 1Jn 3.2

As a certain pastor I used to know would say, “Selah” on that for a while.

A well-kept secret

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