Seek (Tuesday) – Matthew 7:7-12

Seek –  Matthew 7:7-12

There is a type of seeking which is very intentional and energetic. It is rooted in the idea that God is way up in heaven and that intimacy with him is hard for us, who are way down here on earthWe tell our selves our seeking bridges the gap, our zealous seeking more so. This type of wrong-heartedness evidences our entanglement in religion. It spills over into everything we do in relationship with Him and what we perceive we are doing in ministry for him. This error becomes embedded in the foundations of our identity and our perception of God. We might ask, “Then how are we to know if we have gone toxic in our seeking? How would we know we are entangled in-religion?” That is a good question.

I have been this type of super seeker, bridging the distance between God and myself with all the zeal I could muster, or so I told myself. I discovered my entanglement with religion painfully. It was like this: If you can imagine a car (fairly shiny) running down the highway and the dash board lights start issuing warnings. First, the power steering goes out and the car lurches hard to the left. Next the hood snaps up and crashes the windshield. Smoke starts billowing from the engine which is making some horrendous noise. The tires all pop and the thing flies off the road into the ditch where it sits, smoldering. It doesn’t preach well, but I call this the kindness of God which leads to repentance. If you know my story, there is less exaggeration here than you might imagine. MwM often supples the actual details related to this auto metaphor.

MwM started flowing from post-roadside-incident Rob in 2012. It serves as a good contrast between one type of seeking and another. I began writing because the idea of telling my story came to me in a fashion I have learned to understand as God speaking. First Clue; The idea came, for the most part, out of nowhere, yet it sounded familiar. It didn’t come from behind me as a goad to perform. It came from in front of me as an invitation. It had a Father/son – let’s-do-this-together kind of feel. In tone and content, it resonated within me.

Second Clue: The familiarity may have been due to my awareness of New Testament commands such as; “Give an account of the hope that is within you.” “Comfort others with the comfort with which you have been comforted.” “Hold fast to your confession.” “Pass these things (I have taught you) onto other faithful men who will do the same.”

Third Clue: A prophetic word Daneille and I received at the beginning of 2013 indicated that our family was going to undergo a major change. When I originally heard God’s invitation to write, it was accompanied by this thought; “When you do (write) you will you will find your family.” This was the third witness to my word from God. I can report that a community has come into view although it does not have the geographic features I had anticipated. I have discovered my family is scattered all over the earth.

Today, when I discover I have drifted back and am operating out of that spirit, that pushes from behind, I feel a bit ill. It is as though I have betrayed him. When I think my doing of anything effects his love for me or the fruit I bear in him, I have violated something very fundamental in our relationship. I cannot reconcile seeking, in this spirit, with Jesus’ words…

Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! Matthew 7:11 NAS

God is a generous Father but we treat him like a reluctant slot-machine that only pays out when we adhere to a creed or heed the proscriptions of a our religious sub-cultures. While we are storming heaven with our zealous seeking, he is saying,

“Kids, I am down here already. Recall – my address on earth is your heart. Keep this in mind when you are knocking and seeking.” Paul understood this…

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Romans 8:32 NAS

When Father tells us He loves us and He invites us to love Him and seek Him with all our hearts, we must not let our feelings, which have been conditioned in religion-birthed estrangement, flavor our seeking. When Father tells us He would never leave nor forsake us, that means He is right here, right now in our hearts and in the midst of our lives in all their varied expressions. We are inseparable. Trouble in no way indicates His absence. Our hearts becomes whole-hearted only when they are at rest in the reality of His presence, which is totally independent of our feelings and actions. God doesn’t descend on demand when we utter Jesus’ name. He is saying, “Kids, I’m here already! Simply ask.”

The lyrics to an old Jackson Browne song come to mind …

Father, my eyes have seen the years / And the slow parade of fears / Without crying
now I want to understand  / I have done all that I could  / To see the evil and the good without hiding / You must help me if you can.

Father, my eyes tell me what is wrong  / Was I unwise to leave them open for so long ? /
Cause I have wandered through this world  / And as each moment has unfurled
I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams

People go just where they will / I never noticed them until I got this feeling  / That it’s later than it seems  / Father, my eyes  / Tell me what you see / I hear their cries / Just say if it’s too late for me  / Father, my eyes  cannot see the sky  / Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry?

I suppose its the seeking I hear in Brown’s poetic-honesty that strikes me. I wonder if there is not more hope in discovering God through a broken hearted minstrel’s search than through the seeking that tries to bring God down from way up there with zeal and methodology. This secular psalmist has captured the ache without any religious pretense. Way to go JB! I trust he will forgive me for having substituted “Father for “Doctor” in his lyrics.

Father, if we need to cry a bit now over how we have thought of you and related to you, so be it. Apply your salve to our eyes. Tell us what you see. Fill our hearts with pure and simple devotion that trusts in You alone. Ween us of all the religious supplements we take in vain to nourish our spiritual lives, when You Yourself are our Life. Help us to rethink our thinking in light of this truth-and-grace ruled-kingdom. We do aspire to love you rightly. Amen.

Seek (Monday) – Matthew 6:25-34

Seek – Matthew 6:25-34

For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:25-34 NAS

We might ask, “For what reason, Lord?” and He replies, “For this reason;

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Matthew 6:24 NAS

The two-edged sword is sharper and may be nearer to our hearts here than any place in Scripture. I don’t know how the sacred texts of other religions read but I could imagine them placing demands on their adherents without explanation and levying heavy consequences on them for non-compliance. Instead, ever so gently and ever so directly, Jesus appeals to us with story after story, inviting us to come higher up, further in. When I add up all the things Jesus has said about our hearts and idolatry, it sounds like this to me;

“Children, I made your hearts such that they only function when they are dependent on me. Your heart’s task is simply to learn to listen and heed the voice of the right master. Birds, with nothing more than my gift, soar. They never exchange worry for bread yet, even with your superior worth, you manage to worry. This is my point. Worry is a malfunction of your heart and is evidence you are listening to the wrong master. You have embraced the appeals from an alien kingdom and are unable to soar as I intended you to.”

The flowers are preaching the same message. Take some time and look at them. They say more than Solomon. Equipped with nothing more than their being, they exhort. They never exchange worry for rain. They do not sweat to gain sunshine or labor to be planted.

Let’s test ourselves. How heavily is the uncertainty of tomorrow weighing on our hearts?  The answer, if we will hear it, can lead us into the skies where we were intended to fly. God’s remedy, if we can swallow it, will adorn us as the radiant citizens of another kingdom, which in fact we are. God’s council; “Seek first My kingdom and My righteousness.” If we do we will discover Life within us that, in the joy and satisfaction it provides, displaces the false and fragile external things our hearts are tempted to trust in. As alien as it might seem in this worrisome moment, the abundant life Jesus is describing is not a life to be had after death. It is the Life of My Son, who was and is, in us, and is to come.”

The false and familiar gods of this temporal world will ultimately break all their promises and enslave us before they do. They will all make themselves wings and fly away. Choose the kingdom of God and we shall indeed soar far above the clamor of this world which is fading away. If we say that we do not know how to stop worrying, here is Jesus’ council;

Go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:6 NAS

Father, disentangle us from this world. Show us the bad temporal investments we have made. Help us to be honest about our anxiety and recognize what it is saying about our portfolio. May we soar on the wings of eagles. May the enslaved and downtrodden captives of this world look up and see us, provoking their own hunger for flight. Amen.

 

 

 

Seek (Sunday) – Psalm 63

Psalm 63

God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.

We are asking you King David, “Are our lives with God to resemble a war or a romance? If this really is a war, are we to await a rapture so that we can be taken up, equipped in heaven to return one day as those armed with our long awaited and superior new bodies? Or, in Christ, do we have all that we need in this life to defeat the enemy? And David, if you know, could you tell us whether the kingdom is more of a sole proprietorship where God reigns supreme in spite of us -or- is it more like a partnership where its success will come about because our participation?

In our western culture with its fixation on black and white we have little tolerance for things in the grey zones of uncertainty, those arenas of mystery that do not bow the knee, nor yield simple answers, to reason alone. No, we want those facts that will get us elected and efficiently producing things. Our titles and how much we have gotten done are undisputed measures of worth in our culture. But what about God’s kingdom. Where do these values fit in with the culture of that kingdom?

Locked inside this western wineskin, we dare not, as Christians acknowledge how little we really know. Can you imagine what it would do to Christianity as we know it if we were to abandon our certainties regarding the black and the white, those things we believe we know for sure about God? In light of what we know for certain about the the ways about this Being of limitless dimension perhaps we should exchange our bold assertions for simple questions? How much of what we know, for instance, is just our opinions which have evolved into convictions and become, over time, our rigid wineskins, incompatible with the richer, more mysterious flavored wine that God aspires to pour out?

Do we really know enough about God’s ways to divide our selves into Calvinist and Armenian camps? I know people who will die on these fields of battle. There are secessionists mentally locked into battle with continuationists. Are we really that certain about these things? Before a rightfully skeptical world we stand divided – a city set upon a hill for sure, but casting a strange and not so convincing light upon our surroundings. We are a highly visible spectacle but of the wrong sort. Instead of the unity God desires, we portray division. In this condition we are not conveying an accurate picture of God and his love. While we are at odds with each other, we don’t appear to be anything more than another dysfunctional earthly community – hardly the long awaited light of the world.

What can we learn from David then, whose heart seems to so often be schizophrenic and undecided? A great deal I believe. We can hear David’s “Yes.” to our questions; “Yes, life with God is a trek through the desert where hunger and thirst feel as though they will overcome us. ‘Yes’, life with God is like a joyous dance in fields ripe for harvest. ‘Yes’, life with God is a ferocious high-stakes battle. ‘Yes’, This is a partnership and, ‘Yes’, while it is making no earthly sense to us now, God is the proprietor who is solely and absolutely in control.

What I learn from David, the man after God’s own heart is that God’s ways are exceedingly higher than mine, that God, in Christ, has set out a banquet for the hungry, right in the very presence of our enemies.  Christ’s Spirit is the Living water and Jesus is the Bread of Life. This is true whether we perceive our circumstance as a drought or as a flood; as a dance or as a duel.

I believe the value of mystery, this appreciation of the vast arena of uncertainty, is something David passed down to his son. Solomon, in his wisdom he tells us how we should posture our hearts in the presence of so much glorious unknown…..

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

God becomes our God in the same way he became David’s. He becomes ours as we learn to trust him in the midst of the mystery of life. It may feel like a battle or a desert when God knocks the props out from things other than himself that are falsely shoring us up. If we are dependent on our understanding, he knows it will ultimately be very costly to us. God becomes ours in the midst of our deserts when we, as partners, place our trust in that which we cannot see or understand.

God becomes ours when we ascend to places with panoramic views where we can look back with thanksgiving on his faithfulness in our driest and hungriest moments. Those who persevere with God, taste of something from another world. They learn, experientially that nothing in this world slakes their thirst or satisfies their hunger other than God alone.  In the desert God becomes our living water and on the mountain we see and give thanks. Both the battles and the feasts are natural and critical in our journey.

Thanks you King David for your transparency. Thank you for modeling gut level emotional and intellectual honesty. Thank you for showing us how your God becomes our God.

God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.

Father, whatever it takes, knock the props out so that when we stand before you, it will be in Christ alone in whom we have trusted and not someone else’s god or their convictions. May we stand before you not as strangers on that day who followed other’s journeys but those who came to know you personally in the journey we travelled together through all the varied terrain of your kingdom. Amen.

 

Seek (Friday) – Isaiah 55:6-13

Isaiah 55:6-13

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.

While men, in pride, think they are riding the main highway, without God’s Spirit, they are, in reality, on the low- way, traveling without a map along a very dangerous path. However when man responds, in humility, acknowledging his low-ways and turns to God, he is met by God’s abundant readiness to pardon and to set him upon a higher path where navigation occurs by faith in God instead of by his own wits.

Did you know we can live the christian life by our own wits and in our own strength? I should be more accurate. Did you know that we can try to live the christian life by our own wits and in our own strength? I am waiting for the prophetic voice to issue forth saying, “My children, how’s that working for you?” Thus asketh the Lord.

Much of what I write about is my answer to that question, “My son, how did that work out for you?” Today however, I need to provide a backdrop.  A principle that was built into the gospel which I responded to in 1976 was that of ownership; if God paid the high price of His Son for me, it followed that I was no longer my own. Yes, God was mine, but, more importantly I was His. To say the least this had implications on my thoughts and my ways. The mental math seemed straightforward. If I could be totally clueless for 23 years about the risen Christ and his loving designs for me, then cluelessness is a part of my make-up. In other words low way living was instinctively my bent. Clueless depravity was my deepest nature. Honestly, that scared me. In response, I vowed that I would work hard so that I could retain my “His” status.  In retrospect this was the off-ramp from the main high-way to a number of low ways. 

I further and prayerfully calculated (In a bit of a lather), “Lord, this new life is the sweetest deal I’ve ever known. I cannot bear the thought of loosing my grip on you.” You see, God had revealed to me privately with crystal clarity (in a way that explains why I am not a secessionist), “You will fall many times but I will always be there, ready to lift you out of whatever trouble you are caught up in.” This was tremendously good news to a lifelong stumbler who had just stumbled again who, in his well established low-ways, did not yet know my heavenly Father’s readiness to abundantly pardon and rescue.  (Following the prayer today I have an additional note related to this same word of promise; which explains why I am not a Baptist either or a member of any other franchise for that matter.)

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. 

Sortie: The sudden issuing of a body of troops, usually small, from a besieged place to attack or harass the besiegers; a sally. Also ; an offensive air force mission.

My salvation experience was a clear demonstration of God’s willingness to launch a sortie, to send out his word and knock a sinner right of his horse, blinding (at least dazzling) him with light. It seemed obvious to me from that encounter that God reserves the right to preemptive offensive strikes with our hearts as his target. Being the target of a God-sortie displaced any assumptions I might have had about the randomness of life; it only made sense to go ahead and give God my advance permission to launch these sorties as he saw fit. Thus, the prayer of my life to the God with whom I have to do; (from Psalm 139) became….

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. (verses 23 & 24)

Psalm 139 is one of God’s cruise missiles aimed directly at the well-established lie (a stronghold)  that life is an arbitrary or random affair.  It obliterated my defenses at 23. I surrendered, as best I knew how, to a way so high that David said it was intellectually unattainable; in other words – God’s thoughts and ways are a mystery which are not hidden from us rather hidden for us, yet reserved for revelation in the appropriate moment.

      Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. (Psalm 139:6)

I have come to believe that the hope that is within us which we are to give an account of is nothing more than a retelling of God’s sorties. Much of my life story consists of the bombing runs God has made on my own heart where I had been held captive by cruel religiously-tainted lies. His most recent heart-attack produced some surprising and welcome results, not least of which has been joy – precious, eternal and indestructible joy.

It is important that I identify the specific lie God was attacking. This stronghold was that the christian life is accomplished through my hard work and discipline which, in my low-way of religious thought, would insure and sustain my status as “His”.

For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. “Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up, And instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up, and it will be a memorial to the Lord, For an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.

This joy has become a strength so pronounced in the past few years that it has changed the reception the world gives me each day. After having the religion in my heart carpet-bombed for several years, God sent some words into my heart that I believe are even now returning to him, having accomplished the kingdom objectives for which they were sent – relief for the downtrodden and freedom for the captive. I believe that when God saw my smile and the joy in my heart he looked to his mission team and said, “Our mission objectives have been accomplished. My kingdom just grew. Nice sortie!”

Father, deliver us from our low-ways. Renew our minds such that we understand clearly and fully that with no assistance from us, you are ours and we are yours. Help us to see what sorties you have launched in our behalf. Help us to see that your redeeming love guarantees that there is always sorties underway in our hearts. Help us to update our stories that we might have fresh hope to give account for. In our new freedom and joy, arm us with heart- piercing ammunition. Help us to train our weapons on our true enemy. Let us see satanic-religious strongholds breakdown in the presence of your overwhelming force. Amen.

Note; Just for fun, I will also say that on that same occasion in 1976 where God had spoken to me so clearly about his intent to faithfully rescue me. He also conveyed an unforgettable impression of; 1) His place in my life as my Father 2) His love (which is way beyond describing with mere words) and, just for good measure, he revealed; 3) the majesty of Jesus’ name. 

To my dismay, this encounter with God of mine was not good news to my denominational partners in Evangelism Explosion. I am pretty sure my baptist team mates wished that something to this effect had been said at my public confession: “And I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit and hereby attach this muzzle to your mouth until you can see the higher road we are traveling where we are dead certain that encounters with God’s presence and his voice passed away 2000 years ago.” Note; Although I count many of Baptist persuasion as close friends, I was pretty much given the left foot of fellowship. “Unfriended” is a recently coined word that might apply here. So perhaps low-ways has a shot after all.

 

Seek (Thursday) – 2 Chronicles 7:12-22

 

2 Chronicles 7:12-22

Romans 15:4 tells us; “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” We need to ask, “Father what are you saying to us through this spectacle from 2 Chronicles? How could this blood bath set to music possibly be intended for our instruction?

For a start its helpful to see the contrast between the old and the new covenants.  It doesn’t take much math to calculate that our new covenant is vastly superior to the old. And, even though ours is better, it is important to note that, with God, things still center around the place of sacrifice – that place God has chosen for his house. In this grand moment in Jewish history the place of God’s choosing was the newly built temple which Solomon had just dedicated saying…

I have built You a lofty house, and a place for Your dwelling forever. Then….

…. the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice…. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. 

Let’s allow the apostle Paul to speak to us regarding the contrast. He believed that the new covenant revelation that should grip our hearts with awe and wonder was under appreciated by the Corinthian church as well, so he asks….

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?  1 Cor 6:19

Has it really dawned on us yet what we have become; what we have been caught up into; the vast superiority of our circumstance in Christ? How are our heart’s effected, knowing that the high and holy God, who once accepted freight train loads of animals as sacrifice, now dwells in our hearts? Instead of attending a worship service where the fire of God consumes the animals offered up by priests, we contrastingly host, in our hearts, the very presence of God. We have become the house of God! But, if our hearts are now the house of his choosing and the place of sacrifice, what is the sacrifice? Hold on to that thought.

Jesus is our great high priest who offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, accomplishing what the blood of bulls could never do. The Lamb who was slain has become the resurrected King of Life, who, astonishingly and scandalously, lives in our hearts!

Scandal:  a circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it:  a person whose conduct offends propriety or morality
 

Perhaps this is why Solomon instructed us in Proverbs to watch over our hearts with all diligence. Perhaps he knew that, being entrusted with our own powers of choice, we would inherently carry co-preisthood responsibility with God, tending the alter of our hearts; that place where both our deepest desires and motives (some still very earthly) exist alongside God -most high and most holy.  It is our holy God’s choice to dwell in flawed beings as opposed to some lofty house, to intimately relate to such radically broken beings that is the scandal. This also reveals God’s great wager, that the Spirit (in cooperation with human will) will one day prevail over the flesh (and its cohorts, the world and the devil).

Most, if not all, of the fire in our temples, comes (always graciously but not without pain) to confront and to consume the idolatrous things we are holding onto as our own. A heart that does not live out of the awareness that it is no longer its own must experience fire to ultimately live. God is not cruel; He just doesn’t want us to invest in and hold onto things that we cannot ultimately keep which will hurt us along the way and will ultimately and certainly break our hearts.

Back to the missing sacrifice I referred to earlier. It turns out that the missing sacrifice is our flesh. While it is true that it was crucified and buried with Christ, the death of our flesh (which is an established reality in Christ) plays out through the course of our lives. In our hearts where the Spirit dwells, intertwined with us, with his eyes and heart perpetually searching for the things that are secretly crouching at the door preparing to ambush and waylay us, Christ invites us to lay down all of ourselves so that he can, in turn, we can experience the “all” of himself.

It is here, within this dynamic, that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It here where Jesus Christ becomes Lord in truth. In the depths of our hearts, his story is being etched as we take up our cross daily and follow him. It is from this well we draw when we give an account of the hope that is within us. If we can grasp just a few kingdom principles, new chapters of Jesus’ conquest of this earth (through us) will be published in increasing volumes such that one day His word in and through us shall cover the earth as the oceans.

“Us” being the temple of God, must be what prompted John to say….

My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world.

We know it was never the blood of animals that God was after. He was always in the process of restoring things to his original design which was mankind relating freely to him and reigning over creation out of a fountain of life from within. It is through the ever-expanding kingdom of God that this will happen. When we grasp that it is in this kingdom into which we have been caught up, and that the kingdom was inaugurated in Christ, and that Christ is in our hearts, the tide of battle between the two kingdoms (that of light and of darkness) will shift dramatically….

The people of God will see themselves in an entirely different light. Our identities will not just be that of sinners saved by grace (with our vision consisting of little more than the hope of not being left behind); Instead of having a tread-water-till-Jesus-comes destiny. We will rise up and intentionally receive the kingdom that Christ has been offering us since he was last here. With a indignant miltancy, we will, out of our rest in Christ, wage a violent war against the powers of darkness, reclaiming all that was stolen during our season of mistaken identity. We will live with a new confidence in the reality that all things really are possible with God, and that as children of light we are vastly superior to our enemies. Truth will topple the strongholds in and around us and the rule of Jesus will expand one heart at a time until indeed his kingdom has come on earth as it is in heaven.

So be it Lord.

 

Seek (Wednesday) – 1 Chronicles 28:8-10

1 Chronicles 28:8-10

….Observe and seek after all the commandments of the Lord your God so that you may possess the good land and bequeath it to your sons after you forever.

….Know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. For the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts.

….If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.

Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be courageous and act.

The spiritual / national rule at the time this was written is the Law of Moses. That Law, with its priest system and sacrifices is the essence of the covenant through which Israel related to God. We who have been born anew are partakers of a newer and better covenant that is administered by the Spirit of grace (not law).  As attractive as many of the old covenant promises may be, they are conditional and pale in comparison to the ones we have in Christ as partakers of the new covenant. There are incredible differences between these covenants that we must understand. One primary one has to do with identity.

The old covenant established a national, corporate identity’. Their collective mind was, “We are the children of Israel.” They were a nation established and sustained through very particular rituals and the blood of animal sacrifice.” Theirs was a corporate identity dependent on a priest class that served as mediator between God and his people. Contrastingly, the new testament establishes an individual’s identity as an offspring of God.  Having no mediator, establishing the opportunity for a more personal relationship with God is, in part, what we are told the ancients were longing to see. The new covenant is without the constraints of any rituals and is established and sustained by the blood of Jesus, the sinless human sacrifice which would atone for our sin, once and for all.  A definite covenant upgrade!

Here is the primary difference though. While the Lord told Solomon that he has chosen him to build a house for the sanctuary and for him to be courageous and do it. God has told us something far far greater. In the new covenant, God is saying that he has created us as the house of his sanctuary and tells us to go and courageously be my residence (and therefore my witness) on earth. What a scandal that he chose willful man with his dismal track record instead of the dependable compliance of bricks and mortar! Such is the risk and wager of God.

What could God possibly be banking on? Based on what new variable could man possibly succeed in knowing and serving God with a whole heart and a willing mind? The crux of this answer is that with the new covenant came a new nature. As the Spirit has entered our lives, our natures have been awakened and altered. We no longer are constrained by a heart of stone. We have been given softened hearts. We can live (unburdened) by God and his commands not just because we have gotten more serious about sin and have doubled down with holy resolve against it but rather because, we are now children who share God’s DNA as did the two prototypes God once breathed life into, who themselves had their own covenant with God -the original one that God has never forgotten. To Adam and Eve he said..

I bless you; Go and be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

The common denominator of both testaments is God’s heart and his original intentions. These things have not changed. The old testament is simply the story of one of the covenants God implemented to re-establish his original human-administrated, global-dominion plan. The new covenant reveals God’s secret weapon in this battle – Jesus Christ and a body of people in whose hearts he lives and reigns. I do not think I will ever tire of saying; It is Christ in us the hope of God’s original and ultimate glory. Given that so much is riding on our new hearts, he still…..

searches them, and understands every intent of the thoughts. For the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts.

What he hopes to find in our hearts is not our doubled-down, dead-serious resolve of holy convictions and compliance but rather a simple rest, keenly aware of our altered identities and natures – hearts that know that God will never reject them (as was apparently possible with Solomon and the old covenant).  One day the resurrected Christ will establish his kingdom reign in this earth through the collective hearts of those where he is dwelling and has established his rule. (which is immeasurably more than being save from hell!)

The foundation God is endeavoring to build his kingdom on is under repair just now. That repair has to do with our identities. Only sons and friends can build in the kingdom. Fear-motivated slaves, laboring under the burden of performance religion, motivated by fear, working for God in the strength of their flesh will receive whatever rewards they have coming in this life – not in eternity. Things we do in our own strength are wood hay and stubble.

Since our hearts are God’s base of operations in the establishment of his kingdom (aka; taking dominion), he endeavors to burn these things (mere human motivation) up before we must stand before him and give account.  The refining process of our fiery trials on earth, when they are necessary, are useful in exposing where our flesh is ruling instead of his Spirit.

The baton has been passed again from the old testament saint to the new. It will also be passed from old wineskins to new wineskins. The new ones are not bound by conviction, rules and rituals. Through brokenness they are being weaned from the strength of human resolve and are becoming pliable and responsive to the Holy Spirit – God’s primary agent on earth and the Occupant of our hearts.

So, if it is not yet clear, God is banking on the Holy Spirit in our hearts. He has hedged His bet with himself. If we can grasp this, we will be free to unbuckle our religious seat belts and move about the kingdom. We will possess this good kingdom real estate and we will bequeath it to all in our spiritual linage all to the glory of Jesus Christ.

Father, in the sight of the great cloud of witnesses and a skeptical and unbelieving world establish your throne in our hearts in wisdom and rest. May we go out and courageously be the kingdom agents who establish your reign in this earth. May we grasp this overarching Kingdom Commission. So be it.