by RobertCummins | Feb 4, 2016 | 04. Hunger and Thirst
Hunger and Thirst – Jeremiah 2:13
For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
A friend knew I was headed off to another of my many construction industry conferences. He asked, “Is this your annual Tar convention?” “Tar!” I thought, “Nooo! It’s the National Asphalt Paving Association’s annual meeting! It’s ASPHALT! Not tar! Dear Lord. Do you not know that asphalt is the most recycled material in the world and that 90% of the roads we use are made from it? Strangely though, as I was mastering my defensive thoughts, I knew that for many of us asphalt devotees, our gathering might be called The National Tar & Broken Cistern Conference.
This is not a blanket judgment on capitalism or its partner, democracy. Not at all. They have helped create the most stable society this earth has yet known. Yet, we do see the cracks, don’t we? Capitalism and democracy are not inherently evil. They aren’t the two specific evils Jeremiah is referring to, but being human institutions, they are infected.
If my construction brethren and I have lost sight of the fact that God is the creator of hydrocarbons and the giver of the intellectual gifts which enable us to produce asphaltic cement and build roads with it; if we are greedily lavishing upon ourselves the spoils of our profits, then we have forsaken God. If our lives are purely financially driven and asphalt is merely our ticket to material blessing, then we have hewn out for ourselves lives that are indeed cracked. Our cisterns will never hold living water – the very thing they were designed to do. This is a great loss because Living Water is the only means of satisfying our native hunger and thirst.
How tragic that by merely living out the American Dream (unedited), we can participate in evil. Evil? Really? I am certain the fine looking (almost exclusively Caucasian) executives with their wives and children walking the granite and marble corridors of the Marriott would find the idea – that they are evil, absurd and offensive. It is quite understandable. Have their pastors, dependent on their tithes, addressed the idolatry of materialism as it may pertain to their hearts? It would be rare. For conservative, upper middle class American Dreamers, only those who commit violent crimes (and those who do not believe as they do) represent evil.
If however, evil is redefined as those things which cause the greatest harm, to the greatest number of people, over the longest period of time, then broken-cistern Christianity, where Living Water is ritually wasted is culpable. If we have discredited the gospel with our lives, which convey that surrender to Christ as Lord, and walking in the Spirit are optional tracks, then an evil (although benign in appearance) has infected our ranks. The enemy will rule us as long as we continue to measure Christianity by our own standards instead of those that Jesus revealed and the apostles preached. How much Living Water leaks out of a pseudo-Christianity where surrender to Christ is optional?
To some, whose grasp of God’s sovereignty disallows questions, this essay will be folly at best and misleading heresy at worst. However, those who are hungering and thirsting may find encouragement because someone is validating their questions. Their broken hearts are not irrelevant. In fact, their holy dissatisfactions (minute as they might seem) likely represent the sprouting of kingdom seeds God has planted. And being of the mustard seed variety, they may ultimately grow into safe spaces where others can find refuge.
Holy dissatisfaction is a pivotal crossroads in our journey. One road leads to liberty and the other leads to bitterness, posing as super spirituality. When the idea of dissatisfaction first crosses our minds, the enemy will be present telling us it is the church’s fault for serving an inadequate diet of spiritual nourishment. He may also throw in a few people who have always rubbed us wrong to sweeten his next proposal, which is typically, “You need to find a new church.”
In a quieter voice, the Holy Spirit is also speaking. He says, “Watch over your own heart. For your own good, don’t pass the blame of your barrenness onto others.” If we follow the Spirit’s path, we will find that He is present and that he has always been present. As we acknowledge who God is, we will discover that he has prepared a feast for us in the presence of our enemies. New opportunities, we have only dared to imagine, will appear on our horizon.
It is the Father’s glory to deliver his children from their worldly affections, from whatever tar we have given our lives to, from whatever cisterns we have hewn for ourselves. To do this we have to know where we have become entangled in this world. We must humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord and ask him to show us.
Father, deliver us from all evil, for Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forevermore. Make us vessels of honor, which not only hold living water, but which also pour it out for those you have placed near to us. Amen.
And, did I mention that asphalt is the most recycled material in the world?
by RobertCummins | Feb 3, 2016 | 05. The Heart
The Heart – Isaiah 29:13-16
Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed.” Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, “Who sees us?” or “Who knows us?” You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, “He did not make me”; Or what is formed say to him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?
Does the prosperity it has created, in itself, qualify the American Dream as a success? While it is critical, it is obvious that economics is not the guarantor of peace on earth and good will among men. We have growing problems that money can’t fix. It might even be argued that money exacerbates some of those problems.
As I drive through my neighborhood and see the privacy fences and then the larger homes with land and fences between them, I wonder how frequently these neighbors interact? I also wonder what is going on in the privacy of those houses. Are the family members partitioned off from each other? How many of them are engaged with video games, social media, entertainment or any of the (so called harmless?) things that rob them from authentic lives lived out face to face within a community?
Taking this one step further; inside the hearts of these individuals, what is going on? Might we find our core problem here, hearts that are deeply hiding their plans from the Lord (and each other) and whose lives are being lived out in dark (private) places, where they are essentially saying, “Who sees us?” or “Who knows us?”
I am beginning to wonder if TV producers are not mocking us with their zombie productions. Are they using the images of the living dead as a metaphor for our own grotesque inner lives and the dysfunctional communities we create? Could God be saying through these horror shows that in our isolation from Him and each other, we ourselves are the living casualties of the material world we have worshipped?
If we think of community simply as the connectivity between those created in His image, I believe God is giving low marks to the American Dream in the area of community. Who is taking the vital signs of community? Are there any preventative community-health measures we need to consider? Does God have any corrective measures in play?
For those Isaiah is reffering to in our passage, living with their private and toxic thoughts, God has a plan He thinks will be wondrously marvelous. How marvelous will it seem to the beneficiaries of this plan when God lets them know their worship is repulsive to Him? How wondrous will it seem when society’s remaining lights of wisdom and discernment are switched off? As children of light, we should find this commentary on visibility fascinating and sobering.
When we are healed and restored, we become agents of His kingdom. We ourselves become the credibility of His Good News. We become the safe houses for others. As we live out in the open, knowing we are fully seen, fully known and loved by God, our very lives become an invitation to the enslaved and isolated to venture out of the dark places where the devil has been systematically robbing us of the life of God. There, as children of light, we will demonstrate the liberty and freedom of the kingdom of God. We become the undisputed evidence that God’s Dreams trumps the American Dream. One day, the community of the redeemed, His Church will get high marks as she majors in connectivity, helping all those around her find their way back to the Father and to each other.
Father, even now, set your wondrously marvelous plans into motion. Awaken that communal gene of Yours in our hearts. Help us to find our security in You, that in love, we might lead a host of captivities into the liberty and joy of Christ. May all Your dreams come true in us. So be it.
by RobertCummins | Feb 3, 2016 | 05. The Heart
The Heart – Ezekiel 11:17-21
When I read the old testament and I hear the decrees God spoke against Israel and the promises He made to them through the prophets I try to keep in mind; that was then; this is now. Israel was living under the auspices of a different covenant than we do. But, even though these words were not spoken to us directly, we can glean much about God’s great heart through His dealings with His initial chosen people.
The scene is familiar, Israel has played the harlot by abandoning her part of that old covenant. She has partaken in the idolatry of foreign peoples. Under that covenant, in this circumstance, God is obligated to fulfill His promise to judge them. This judgement, in part, has caused Israel to be exhiled to Babylon where they will serve as slaves. Yet Ezekiel prophecies some encouraging news to the judged nation. Thus says the Lord God…
“I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries among which you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.” When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations from it. And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God. But as for those whose hearts go after their detestable things and abominations, I will bring their conduct down on their heads,” declares the Lord God.”
When God is represented by those filled with the guilt and shame of religion, He is portrayed as angry, poised to judge. But there is something crucial we must learn about God’s heart – in the way it was disposed, even to those who had suffered His wrath…
Though I had removed them far away among the nations and though I had scattered them among the countries, yet I was a sanctuary for them a little while in the countries where they had gone.
Even to those whom He had judged He had positioned Himself as their sanctuary! Is God’s heart as fundamentally angry and poised to judge as we have been told? This is a glimpse of His heart in the days of the old covenant. Even then, it seems as though He is at least as ready to restore as He is to express His anger. And, if this was so then what do we have now? So, what do you think? ……
With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? Romans 8:32 MSG
I believe the Jews were hamstrung by not having the promised new and softer heart that Ezekiel refers to. Were the ancient Jews even capable of compliance, shackled with hearts of stone as they were? The more important question is really, “Are we capable of living in harmony with God as members of a new covenant?” Being in Christ, having Christ as our life, is the essence of the new hearts He has freely and gladly given us. So I must answer with a grateful and enthusiastic, “Yes! God Himself, in-Christ, is our sanctuary and astonishingly, we are His.”
A friend, just this morning, has given me the perfect adjective to describe the covenant we enjoy. It’s “apocalyptic.” Here is his offering:
“Apocolyptic” is used to describe a certain genre of literature (and also by some to mean an end times catastrophe). What the word really means is; the revealing of something that was previously not known. Jesus’ life, death & resurrection was apocalyptic, not because it signaled the end of the world, but because it revealed things which the Old Testament only hinted of. It is the key that unlocked the Old Testament prophecies. The Gospel is not only good news. The gospel is apocalyptic good news’!
Oh Lord, how majestic are your ways in all the earth! May the heights and depths of what you have done register in us. Continue to reveal to our new hearts the breadth and the length of your astonishing love until they are filled up to the fulness of You. Now to You who are able to do exceedingly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to You be the glory in Your Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Feb 3, 2016 | 04. Hunger and Thirst
Hunger and Thirst – Isaiah 55:1-3
In the gospel of Matthew we find the parable of the Marriage Feast where a great king is hosting a grand celebration, all centered on the union of his son to a chosen bride. I believe Isaiah helped pen the invitations. They read:
Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
And he who has no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
And your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
Hear, that your soul may live;
And I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
My steadfast, sure love for David.”
Where were you when you first received your invitation? Has it arrived at your heart yet? How did you respond? Rather, how are you responding? It seems many I know were sitting as children or teens in a meeting when the evangelist handed out some invitations he had printed up that read:
Dear Monsters of iniquity,
You’re hearts are wicked beyond knowing. I am mad as hell about it and am prepared to send you there without even blinking if you don’t agree with this right now. Today is the day of salvation!
Affectionately,
The Great King
I will get back to the evangelist in time. But permit me to shift gears here.
I recently was encouraged by my daughter to watch Brené Brown’s TED talk on YouTube (it may be titled “Transparency”). Mrs. Brown is a PhD researcher in the area of human interaction. She is a nuts and bolts, fact driven, social scientist whose research is closer to revelation than science. Is that really surprising if we are beings created in God’s image living in a world He created for us? Here are a few of her bullet points:
1) We are neurologically hardwired for connection.
2) It turns out our stories are data with souls.
3) Shame undermines connection because it undermines transparency.
4) The whole-hearted have overcome shame and live with the assumption they are worthy of love and belonging. Their healed and whole hearts allow them to treat themselves with compassion and kindness. They live out of the conviction that “they are enough.”
5) To have courage means to tell the story of who you are with all your heart (especially with the imperfections).
6) Love, belonging, creativity and joy are birthed in the vulnerable hearts of the whole-hearted.
7) Vulnerability can be blunted. We can squelch it when we shut down our emotions and blame others.
8) Blame is a way to discharge shame and discomfort.
In addition, she makes an interesting reference to religion. She says that instead of becoming a celebration of mystery, religion has become a mere set of declarations of certainty. I mentioned that we spoke the same language. The book I have reread most often in the last ten years is The Myth of Certainty by Daniel Taylor. My blog site address is middlewithmystery.com. That site was constructed as a platform to transparently and wholeheartedly tell my story; it has much to do with an escape from religion, which I think of as any system of thought or practice whereby the doing of it causes me to think that I have gained the favor of God.
Mrs. Brown and I also share something else in common: we both had breakdowns of sorts. Since both of us arose from the ashes of those experiences with new and whole hearts, we can think of them as spiritual breakthroughs. I think, in our souls, we both received God’s invitation…
Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
And he who has no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
And your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
Hear, that your soul may live;
And I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
My steadfast, sure love for David.”
The condemning spirit of our evangelist is pervasive within Christianity and all religions where men are working out their salvation with fear and shame. I can testify, there is no living water in this well. But, that will not keep the spirit of religion from encouraging us to regularly dip into it to reinforce how utterly deformed and alienated from God we are, how angry and ready He is to punish us.
While there are elements of truth in this twisted gospel, it contains the poison that explains how we have become so smug and certain about God whose vastness and mystery dwarf human perception.
Since my heart has been delivered (to a greater extent) from the burden and deception of religion, where I was striving for the approval of God and man, it has been in a continual state of celebration, declaring, “I am enough because God created me in His image, and that image, though marred, has been restored in Christ. I am not just a wretched sinner saved by grace. I am a new creation, beloved of God. This is my identity. Christ is the unchanging rock from which I gratefully and continually make this declaration. So, I would love to rewrite the shame-driven counterfeit invitations that our evangelist tries to hand out. I would write:
Dear Beloved,
I created your hearts in my image. In Adam’s fall they have become misshapen. I have sent Jesus to explain all that is confusing. Look to Him. In Him, My image can be restored in you and you will discover the way back into the safety of my heart. Hell is real, but it was not created for you. Today (and every moment, for that matter) is the day of salvation! And for the record, I am not mad at you. On the contrary, thoughts about you make my heart beat faster.
Affectionately,
The Great King
The Parable of the Wedding Feast (essentially, the theme of the Bible) is about the Kingdom of God, not the religion of Christianity. This kingdom has come in Jesus Christ, and it enjoys its inevitable expansion in the earth as its laws of Love and Truth overthrow the shame and guilt of performance-driven religion. Millions of the kingdom’s sons and daughters are beginning to glow more brightly than they even imagined possible as this kingdom, which is also within them, finds expression. Their stories frequently have common themes…
Life’s circumstances have created some kind of hunger or thirst. They have often bottomed out, realizing they have been spending their money on that which is not bread and laboring for that which does not satisfy. They are listening more diligently. They are inclining their ear that their souls may live. In a new and radically beautiful covenant with God in Christ, they are coming and buying wine, milk and bread without money and without price.
So, how shall we get from religion to Life? Perhaps we begin by being radically honest and vulnerable with ourselves and with God. We could take Jesus council…
When you come before God, don’t turn it into a theatrical production. Don’t make a show out of your prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are.
Set the world right; Do what’s best—
As above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge! You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty! Amen.
by RobertCummins | Feb 3, 2016 | 04. Hunger and Thirst
Hunger and Thirst – John 7:37-41
If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says.
We Christians in general are filled with passions that enthuse us and drive us to share them with others. I relate to many followers of Jesus Christ, who together represent an surprising array of particular passions that bubble over when the opportunity allows. My heart’s desire really is to listen to those passions, praying that my encouragement will serve to bless those particulars in the most beneficial way.
Meanwhile, on another planet…
In a gathering of believers in my home, I am trying to learn how to give the Holy Spirit room to express Himself; you know…when you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation or a teaching; has a tongue and an interpretation. I Corinthians 14 suggests this was the extent of the early church’s liturgy. Beyond this limited picture, we also know that in these meetings, the secrets of men’s hearts were revealed; they would experience conviction; they would fall on their faces and declare that God was certainly among them. The outcome of these gatherings where the gifts were being expressed through many was the edification of the group as a whole. However, in my home group, I am often taken aback and challenged by the disparate particulars and passions that surface.
disparate: 1) containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements 2) markedly distinct in quality or character.
In our home gathering of 20 or so people, here is a sampler of the particulars that can bubble up: Messianic Christian emphases, a TED talk (having nothing and yet everything to do with Christianity), angels, the latest prophetic word on what God is about to do, foreign missions, the revival that is on the near horizon, the need for signs and wonders, or God and American conservatism. As a facilitator, I just try to keep one eye toward heaven and the other on earth in hopes of reading the currents of what God is doing among us. This is challenging—trying to lean into God, listening for that common divine vibration that needs identified and encouraged. In fact, I am going cross-eyed in my efforts.
I have come, by way of hard knocks, to a firm belief that groups, no matter what their size or mission, are healthy when they have something they can collectively own, something we can call ours. I may be wrong (I am seeking feedback on this), but as a facilitator I am concerned that the disparate nature of our bubbles (for some in the group) is producing more of a sense of “theirs instead of “ours.” As a leader, I have not picked up on our common current. I have even wondered if I am reading crosscurrents. I not sure whether I’m looking at living water or something else. As far as the edification of the group is concerned, is the water still alive if its particulars are alien to others present?
From 1991 to 2013, a part of me died in the local church trying to determine if my particular current held anything in common with that of my co-elders. In that setting with its particular passions, I learned that it is very challenging to have a creative open dialogue that will benefit the whole body when most are simply waiting to share their particular passion. When one person’s passion is alien to another’s, the available options are: 1) promote and endeavor to infect others with your passion; 2) subjugate your passions to the passions of others; 3) abandon your passions; shut them down; go through the motions; just try and survive without bitterness (good luck) in an environment that repeatedly fails to esteem the things you call treasures.
Do you see the dilemma? How do we nurture and honor all the disparate particulars and simultaneously create the hallowed and essential our that makes a group healthy and fosters legitimate community? If I am right, when people sense that a gathering is mostly somebody else’s, they will leave and instinctively seek a setting where there is an our (that includes their passion). As well they should.
As the facilitator, I thought I had detected the common current: it was Christ in us, the hope of glory. I thought, “Voilà! That must be it!” Down below all the disparate particulars, there is Christ, who is our life; Christ alone and Him crucified; Christ who is our sufficiency; Christ Jesus who aspires to be the satisfaction of our soul’s deepest longings. At the very bottom of the well Holy Spirit must be present, revealing to us the Son of God and the Father. The natural expression of this living water must be present tense awe and wonder with God alone. Real living water is flavored with a now joy, a now abiding contentment and rest, all flooding out of God Himself. So, it turns out that its not so much a passion of particulars as it is a passion about a particular person–Jesus Christ.
As it turns out, my particular passion, Jesus + no particular particular, may be the most peculiar and disparate particular of our gathering. As this has dawned on me with some force, I have begun to wonder if I would make a good Catholic or Episcopalian. I find myself longing for liturgy—anything to take the strain off my eyes, which are failing to find a current we can collectively call our own.
I know some of you might be concerned that I have set my sights too high and am setting myself up for more disappointment once again. I just want to share with you that I have a great peace about this because in the end everything will work out because it’s my house and I know I am right. 🙂
In case that was unsatisfactory…
For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in Christ Jesus and finds its purpose in Him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, He organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body. He was supreme in the beginning and He is supreme in the end. From beginning to end, He’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is He, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in Him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of His death, His blood that poured down from the cross. (Colossians 1:15-20 MSG)
Father, as we press on to know You, help us to keep smiles on our faces, knowing that You are the head of Your church, that You’re not going to loose a single one of us that the Father has given to You. You are not going to fail to have a Bride that is radiant beyond our grasp. Thank You that where we are the most fragmented, You are holding us together in the site of God, holding us harmless of every offense. If we never see an iota of our particular, may we be individually and collectively content with You alone. Just give us Yourself. Our cups will overflow. Amen.
