by RobertCummins | Jul 18, 2014 | 29. Becoming
Becoming (Friday) – Isaiah 45: 4-10
I named my blog site In The Middle With Mystery because that is the best phrase I could think of to describe where I live. I don’t mean where as in my geographic location. I mean where I live in my thinking as it compares to reality – the way things really are. As a Christian, the bible has effected my thinking in profound ways. In fact it is the bible that binds me to mystery. The following verse from our passage is what has reminded me of just how deep is the mystery I am in the middle with.
Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour down righteousness; Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, and righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created it.
Instead of righteousness, yesterday the skies above the Ukraine rained down something else; the material and human debris from an airliner shot down en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Reports indicate that the plane was downed by a Russian made missile. As an act of war? Did one side gain some advantage by this mindless and heartless act? Of course not. Evil does not need to justify itself. It does not take sides. It simply is. In its apparent randomness it seems to prey indiscriminately upon humankind.
This passage and many others in the bible highlight the sovereignty of God; that aspect of His being that seems to give him final say in all matters. Does God have the final say when missiles strike passenger planes or angry men strike their wives and girlfriends? Or, when a thousand other evils are perpetrated in human choosing? Some branches of theology (that I suspect thrive best in the west) would conclude that due to God’s sovereignty, if it happened it must have been God’s will. My response to this is, “Impossible! A thousand times a thousand, impossible!” And I read on…..
I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.
What are we to do with our bibles now? Do we merge the old and the new and say, “For God so loved the world that he causes well-being and creates calamity?!
This disconnect has caused many to never open the Old Testament or to abandon the bible as a benchmark to reality altogether. This is where I have to say that I am working my salvation out in a bit of fear and trembling. I say this because I reject outright the idea that God had an active or passive role in yesterday’s evil or any other of its myriad expressions. But, am I on solid ground with this stance? Where did evil come from in the first place? Did God not create all things? The bible now drives me back toward the idea that evil would not be on the earth if God did not permit it. This troubles and confounds me. I don’t want to be at odds with God. I don’t want to bend reality to fit my preferences. That would be extreme folly. It’s verses like the following that cause some of my trembling….
Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker- an earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to a woman, ‘To what are you giving birth?'”
I suppose Mystery has become my refuge in a way. I don’t understand the above verse in the light of who I understand God to be so I explain it to myself as a “mystery.” Hyper-Calvinistic doctrines drive men to think things about God that I will not entertain. I cannot, in light of what I know about God’s love, associate him in any way to evil. If he has permitted its existence on earth, it is for reasons that are light years beyond my understanding. The God who has rescued me from my sin and its consequence is, to me, the ultimate champion against evil and will one day slay it with the breath of His mouth. Here in the middle with mystery I simply say with David,
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
I conclude that these are matters that are for now beyond the finding out. In this place (where dogma is so unappealing) I defer to God as my Father. When I encounter apparent random evil, death and disease I ask myself, “What has this to do with my loving, kind, good, powerful and yes, sovereign Father?” I conclude, “Nothing”.
I don’t need to understand everything. All I need to know is that God is good. Jesus came to clear up the mystery as best he can in our time and material bound world. He came as a Man and subjected Himself to all that evil could throw at Him. Evil did its worst to Him and He overcame it in its most malignant expressions. My New Testament bible reality says, “Yes. In this world (because of evil) we will have tribulations, but take courage because Father has overcome the world.”
In spite of evil’s unexplained and mysterious presence, I am betting my life that there is no evil in God. What a worldly philosopher or psychologist would say upon reading this is, “Here we have in this man’s quaint and superstitious indulgence, the anatomy of religious deception; man in his frail and helpless perceptions, inventing a being to rescue himself from the meaninglessness of a cosmos void of any God.” If this same person were to read on in middlewithmystery.com they would be fascinated by the refinement of my delusion. I have 37 years in the middle with Mystery and I have seen nothing but evidence that God is good.
I believe the greatest blows to evil in this world are on their way. These great exploits will be accomplished by men and women awash in the mysterious realities of a good God who will one day (perhaps soon) have his foot on the throat of evil. Until then…
Father, we groaned as we saw the spectacle of evil yesterday and even as this spectacle reminded us of horrors and tribulations nearer to us. We don’t even know how to think or pray at times. Sometime our prayers are even silenced as we are worn down by evil. Thank you though that it is in this place where we feel lost in mystery that you intercede for us with perfect prayers. Lord, we prefer to navigate by our knowing but where you have deemed us to walk by faith, gird us; that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides You; that You are the Lord, and that there is no other. Help us to press on with steadfastness of heart, clinging to our great certainty, that here, immersed in the middle of mystery, we are with You and You are good. Amen.
excerpt:
Yesterday July 17th, 2014 a Maylasian Jet carrying 295 people was shot down by a Russian-made missile en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. This was pure evil.
In spite of evil’s unexplained and mysterious presence, I am betting my life that there is no evil in God. What a worldly philosopher or psychologist would say upon reading this is, “Here in this writing we have, in this man’s quaint and superstitious indulgence, the anatomy of religious deception; man in his frail and helpless perceptions, inventing a being to rescue himself from the meaninglessness of a cosmos void of God.” If this same person were to read on in middlewithmystery.com they would be fascinated by the refinement of my delusion. I have 37 years in the middle with Mystery and I have seen nothing but evidence that God is good.
by RobertCummins | Jul 17, 2014 | 29. Becoming
Isaiah 29:13-16
For most, the process of becoming will involve living in the midst of theological tensions capable of pulling us part and causing much pain. There are no shortage of these points of contention as our many denominations are evidence of. One of these tension-laden God-thoughts that is currently front and center for me involves the judgement of God. While I am tempted to abandon this track (and I confess, all other tension producing God-thoughts), the wiser part of me (I pray) is hearing something like this; “The Truth is in the tension. Do not flee it. Do not fear it. Embrace it.”
That God judges, is ever so apparent in the Old Testament. Israel’s stiff heart seemed to regularly invite God’s wrath. Yet, in the New Testament judgement does not seem to be as prominent of a theme. (although Annanias and Saphira might beg to differ). Didn’t Jesus absorb all the judgmental wrath of God on the cross? So what are we to do with this tension between the Old and the New Testaments? Did God change between Malachi and Matthew?
How is God, the Judge expresing Himself under the New Covenant? What does that look like? If we back up just a bit to verses 9-12 we see a possibly overlooked aspect of God’s judgement that may shed some light on this question. Here God has “poured over them a spirit of deep sleep”. The consequence of God’s judgement was that the wise men and prophets (those called to lead) were stumbling around, and disoriented. Therefore, as a result of God’s corrective measures, we don’t find God’s people dealing with the more classic visible signs of judgement such as boils or natural disaster; instead we find them afflicted with something far less conspicuous – the illusion that their worship is acceptable to God.
In dealing with doctrinal tensions (particularly when I was younger and more certain), I wrangled with others on the ideas dividing us – hoping to win them over and thus create a unity of understanding. This unity was going to happen of course as they repented of their doctrinal error. I have to ask myself; Was it really unity I wanted? Or, is it possible (in my pride) I just needed to be right? Is it possible (out of my independence) I needed God to conform to my perceptions of reality so that I could maintain some degree of control? Is it possible (out of my insecurity) I developed inordinate dependencies on others who would agree and validate me? Well…looking back, I know the answer to these questions and all I can say is, “Oh the marvelous kindness and the wonderful patience of God.”
Even though I have repented of the notion of a knowledge-based unity I still cannot help but long for the unity Jesus passionately asked His Father for …..
…. that all of them may be one, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. John 17:21
I believe God intends to answer Jesus’ prayer. Here is a question; Do you think this unity will be achieved through a massive doctrinal reconciliation where we will all be converted to a common theological understanding and creed? If so, shall we use yours, mine or theirs? Verse 16 describes us as objects of clay in the hands of a potter. I am no biblical scholar, but I am thinking the clay may not pull this off.
When the Potter decreed that His Words (the scriptures) be left to us, was it His intent that they inspire solely by dovetailing into our existing grid of logic and reason? Did we anticipate that when the two-edged sword of His Truth touched our hearts that it would always draw an “Amen?” Were the scriptures left to us so that we could analyze and critique “the letter” of their content? Did the Potter intend for us clay-creatures to perfect our knowledge, form air-tight arguments about Him and then go out and argue the world into God’s kingdom? Is the foundation we are building on constructed from doctrines that we have systematized, memorized, and used to make rational sense of our lives? If it is, what is being built will not stand. I believe in kingdom that God is building there may be some significant demolition scheduled prior to construction.
In our newer grace-driven covenant, God the Judge has also revealed Himself as God the Father, having given new hearts to those who have entrusted themselves to Him. The Old Covenant, even though it was not without its own glory, was unsuccessful as God knew it would be in creating sons and friends. It depended on the Law and judgement to deal with a fallen nature. The New Covenant depends on God’s grace and His discipline (not judgement) to shape our new natures.
In the New Covenant, judgement has yielded to discipline. However as men who are saved, (yet still dealing with flesh) we are only partially awake. We are still being awakened from a deep sleep. However, If we will walk with Him in the Spirit, we will discover that He is providing sufficient alarms (personal and societal) to awaken us from our slumber. Any alarms going off within your hearing?
Our understandings, where they are constructed from mere human reasoning, must be demolished before we can awaken and lay hold of that for which we were laid hold of by Him. Our individual and corporate understandings and the religious institutions we have formed around them are in no way capable of containing and organizing the affairs of a God such as ours. If this has not yet dawned on us, we are still asleep to some degree.
My point? Our sleepiness, like Israel’s, (due to our flesh) contains elements of religious self-delusion. And, because of our dependence on our belief systems, we are not inclined to question them. That collection of ideas (we have deified) is the best we know. Why jack-hammer away on our own foundation? Because, in spite of the good we perceive it might have served to this point, it may be the enemy of something far greater the Master Architect is aspiring to build. How are we to know if God is undertaking something of this sort in our lives? See any attempts of demolition going on around you? Within you?
As usual, God’s projects will involve the Spirit invading the kingdoms of our own belief systems with His Word, disturbing our status quo thoughts and disrupting life as we have known it. We can participate with the Holy Spirit by asking Him, “Are these disturbing and disruptive things going on in me and around me intended as discipline? As wake up calls? Are You wanting to use these things to awaken me from specific delusions? Remember, the essence of a religious delusion is to be in a state of sleepy unawareness. Given our family linage, (going back to Adam) it will be to our advantage (as we have trended toward darkness) to keep certain prayers and questions always before the Lord, such as:
“Father am I just going through the motions of a well-established religious routine? Search my heart and expose me.”
If today’s passage has any application at all, it is as a warning to those of us who may think we (and/or our group) are the most doctrinally pure. The sleepiest among us may be those most confident in their orthodoxy as opposed to Christ alone. If we are cruising along on auto-pilot, comforting ourselves with favorable comparisons of our selves to some standard or another, we are asleep at the wheel and the Lord says…..
because you draw near with your words and give me only your lip service, and your reverence for Me consists only of tradition learned by rote, you have removes your hearts far from Me “ Isaiah 29:13
I write as one recently awakened (to an extent) from a religious delusion. The battle I faced with religion has as intense as any direct battle I have had with the more common foes of lust, greed envy or anger. From this experiential vantage point I offer an observation; In the insecurity imbedded religious bondage, I felt isolated and rejected by everyone who did not agree with me. I would instinctively create space between myself and those parties to avoid the pain of rejection. This dynamic which I observed in myself shed light on church splits, denominations and the general sense of disunity the Church has projected to the world.
To testify as to how God delivered me from this condition of heart, I present a phrase in two versions of Isaiah 29:13-14.
therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous. (from Isaiah 29:13-14 NAS)
I’m going to step in and shock them awake, astonish them, stand them on their ears. (from Isaiah 29:13-14 MSG)
And, as one who is currently more awake (and alive) than he has previously been, I write to say that the alarms God used to awaken me had more of the MSG (shock) ring to it than the NAS (wonderful) ring to it. While the marvelousness of God’s ways have begun to find expression, the awakening itself felt anything but wonderful.
My belief is that the persuasive unity that God has slated for His Church will not happen as we all graduate from some grand and unified curriculum. I believe the Church will one day find herself in unity because all her individual parts have learned to respond to the Holy Spirit’s ongoing wake up calls. He wants us all to stand before Him one day, not with some diploma in hand, certifying our mastery of doctrine. He wants us to stand before Him with a history of His Spirit’s operation in our hearts, which has transformed us into lovers of God.
Won’t we be shocked and turned on our heads when we discover that our theological differences and the tensions they created were never intended to drive us into thousands of sects? (There are currently between 30 and 40,000 denominations!) Our differences, instead, can be our opportunities for love to triumph. Won’t it be wonderfully marvelous when we acknowledge that right now in our midst, He has provided everything (especially tension and grace) to live out of the unity of Christ’s life within?
Father, I believe that Your wrath that was rightly due us and that would have condemned us, was absorbed entirely by Your Son on the cross. And today, whether we refer to it as discipline or judgement, You have never taken any corrective measure with us Your children, that was without love and purpose and that did not have a wondrously marvelous intended outcome.
I pray that we might be awakened in our various camps if we are laboring under any “religious” delusions – giving us false comfort while our worship is actually unacceptable to You. Whatever is necessary Lord, would you draw us out into the light – out past the boundaries of our intellectual security into these places of potential differences and tensions where love will triumph over all fear – where Your Spirit of Truth is working to answer Jesus’ prayer – that we be perfected in unity so that the world may see us as one Body and know…. that You have loved us. Truly Father, that will be wondrously marvelous. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 16, 2014 | 29. Becoming
What exactly is it that we are becoming? John answers this question and also tells us something about what we are now…
Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 1 John 3:2-3
We are currently the children of God and are as pure as is our hope in Him. And as to what we are becoming we are not sure but we have an enormous clue; We shall be like Him! The fact is that (regardless of our perception) we are in a very good place and we are on our way to becoming something beyond good. The scriptures use the word “glory” to describe the status of transcendent goodness. God’s Word says that….
We …. are being transformed into the same image (that of Christ’s image) from glory to glory. (partial rendering of 2 Corinthians 3:18)
We tend to errently think of ourselves as mortals stuck between the rock of our current temporal trials and the hard place of our compounding future ones. This time-bound appraisal would have been utterly foreign to either Paul or John. These saints considered themselves as currently knowing the transcendent benefits of being God’s children who are becoming beings who will one day be like Jesus, whose future benefits can only be described as exceedingly above and beyond what can be conceived by our frail, immature and childlike imaginations.
We especially tend to think of each other as stuck between the proverbial rock and hard places. This view stunts the natural growth of the kingdom of God. In our own dim perception we look about and see each other in our plight. In all the trends and complexity we see little hope for good outcomes. We are either saddened, burying our bleak projections of the future in our consciences or we shrug our shoulders and say (with no small amount of religious fatalism) “Oh well. Thy will be done.”
When we live out of this perspective, our highest prayer is typically, “Come quickly Lord Jesus”, revealing our rock-and-hard place outlook (which is also known as faith). If we are to cooperate with God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, we will have to learn to cooperate with the transformational ways and means of God as He is both the author and the perfecter of the glorious things we have become and of the glorious things that we are becoming.
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. (full rendering of 2 Corinthians 3:18)
If we were to see ourselves from His perspective (which is what faith demand of us) we will see each other created in His image; not stuck between rocks and hard places but being transformed by them. Whether it is God’s glorious objectives in our lives to deliver us from or through our circumstances, the theme of glory is being embedded by God into our stories. By faith, our circumstances can be transformed from sentences we must endure into opportunities from which a glorious harvest will ultimately come.
This glorious (other oriented) seed will one day germinate and blossom into something beautiful on an unimaginable scale. We will see the hope and faith (deposits of eternity) that God has placed in each other’s hearts and the surrounding circumstances as the soveriegn proving grounds for this faith. The veil of our limited vision will be removed and we will look upon each other and see Christ’s resemblance. As we look upon Christ in each other we will encourage, bless and support what we are seeing in each other’s becoming. This can only happen in the context of increasingly intertwined lives where the Groom intends for us to become the unified Church God has always envisioned as His Bride.
This is more or less how I perceive how God is going about the building of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It will all happen through an increasingly pure community of faithful children. (Remember; We have prayed “Thy KIngdom come” more than just a few times.) What if the height and depths of God’s loving intentions involved answering this prayer?! What if we discover that eternity has already begun and that in our childlike, incomplete state we are even now caught up into it? What if Jesus was being literal and that truly, we will not taste death since we already possess Him as our Life?
I have good friends who love me and are concerned for me because I no longer attend traditional church. One main reason I don’t attend is that I have become so busy experiencing organic Church. Please permit me to offer my very condensed Reader’s Digest explanation of that last statement.
As one who gave himself faithfully for 20 years (most of that time as an elder) to the enterprises of traditional church, I was never able to overcome the unspoken (Please note: I did not say, “hidden” although stranger things have happened) agendas within the institution which inherently hamstrings the dynamics of community. My interactions with everyone were typically tainted with motives that hindered (not promoted) authentic community. The sad truth that fueled this superficial parody of Church was that I needed them to attend and to give in order for me to carryout and fulfill my institutionally-defined responsibilities. And, they needed me to reciprocate.
With time being in such short supply we all had to skip over the main point which I believe is God’s kingdom-building inner transformation of our hearts. While God was endeavoring to write and reveal His glorious story in our lives, we were mostly looking to each other as the means to each other’s ministerial ends. If we asked, “Is all well with your soul?”, we really couldn’t afford to pause and hear a complete and authentic answer. Time would not permit it. The show must go on. We must each don our institutional hats and perform. If not church as we know it would cease to be.
Today, without a title, other than friend, I am able to approach people without much agenda other than a sincere interest in their lives. Without the time constraints of preparing to lead worship or a sermon, I have the time to better connect with folks (not to mention God) and listen to their hearts. I want to hear what God is up to in that domain because I believe it is from that beachhead God will launch His greatest invasion yet into the darkness of His planet. Perhaps He will call it Operation Renovation. Here is one of Paul’s reports from the front lines of the operation…..
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
As a co-heir with Christ in a now-kingdom, being in dwelt by the Holy Spirit, I don’t see Paul as an historical anomaly. I see him as a representative example and forerunner of who God intends us to be. That is why I believe by listening to Paul’s motives we can learn what God is trying to launch within us.
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
You may be asking, “Aren’t you breaking Paul’s own command in thinking more highly of yourself (and us) than you ought? If you were to ask Paul this question, I believe he would respond….
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
I was recently told by a younger brother in Christ that the reason he had revealed his heart to me was that he knew there was nothing that he had to offer me. In other words, he knew that he was not a means to my end. We had created (through significant iron sharpening iron experience) a safe space for us to be ourselves in all our current and questionable glory. I think he knew that I actually cared for him and was loving him where he was. Hopefully he knows that I do not see him stuck between a rock and a hard place. Rather I see him in that hope impregnated place of a brother and coheir of the Kingdom who is being transformed from glory to glory. This is the kind of dialogue that I found impossible in my previous hamster-wheel institutional religious existence. I perceive that I am freer today than ever before to love people the way that God intended me too.
Father, I pray that you would soon pen the next glorious chapter of the Church where love trumps all. Transform us from the inside out. Reconnect us one to another as those children supremely confident in their status and exceedingly hopeful in your current process of making us ultimately into Your likeness. Show us where the plots of our stories overlap. Show us Your common ways and means in our hearts. Enable us to assume our roles as new covenant servants, agents of Your Holy Spirit, investing in each other’s lives. As we see our challenges as Your opportunities, convert our sorrow into song and our mourning into dancing. So be it.
by RobertCummins | Jul 15, 2014 | 29. Becoming
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. Galatians 5:16-17
Paul is saying that there is an active contradiction within us. We have our flesh and the Holy Spirit both vying for the cooperation of our will. How conscious do we need to be of this inner struggle? If our choices are involved don’t we need to be aware of and recognize the agendas of these opponents within? I believe it is helpful to have an awareness of our inner lives for the sake of being led by the Spirit. When Paul says, “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law” he seems to be saying that we will be living either by the Spirit within or out of compliance to an external written code.
This is timely because I have found my flesh insistent of late, tempted to nurse hurt feelings into offenses, entertaining resentment and flirting with bitterness. Due to pervious expereince I knew early on in this most recent season that I was going to have to side with the Holy Spirit’s inner directives in order to work this out in my heart. It actually sounds easier than it is. Even though I knew the choices before me I had to die to this whole line of thought (focused around my rights) if I was to walk in the Spirit. This was not my first impulse.
My question: Was this fleshly side of my contradiction simply an outburst of my fallen sinful nature – wretched as always in its opposition to God? Or, was this a phantom impulse much like the amputee who feels his toes after his leg has been taken? Or, as a preacher friend proposed, “that God withdrew His presence from me, so as to remind me of my bankrupt status without Him.”
I also had input from a spiritual father. Spiritual fathers are rare indeed. They are those who walk in the Spirit along side us and our messy lives. They love by listening and responding from out of the Spirit’s work in their own lives. They do not talk doctrine so much as they talk of life in the trenches. They speak out of an earned and granted authority. They may or may not be graced with any title other than friend but the kingdom is being shaped by them. My friend offered some wisdom that has helped me to think about the dynamics of my own spirit / flesh contest.
While I was bent on thinking of the flesh as my nature, he encouraged me to abandon that idea. So, I loosened the bolts on my belief system and ask him to proceed. He suggested it would be better to think of the flesh as a seed bed that is filled with seeds that can be watered or not. Those seeds would be things that Paul is mentioning in our passage….
…..immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these….
As I was working out my contradiction, it was clear I could deliberately water the seeds that were trying to germinate or not. I asked my friend, “Then how should I respond when the flesh seeks to have its own way ?” He first told me what not to do. He said, “Don’t let yourself fall into either of the two classic errors in dealing with the flesh. First, don’t proactively start trying to uproot the weeds by developing an excessive focus on sin and making fresh resolutions to live righteously. He warned me that this would simply empower sin and create an ongoing and un-winable war. Note: Some plants grow more aggressively when you disturb the roots.
The other error would be to think that as new creations that we are above such skirmishes. This error would be born and sustained by pride. It would eventually lead to denial and religious pretense. The best council I received involved simply trusting that I was a new creation even in the presence of these assertions by my flesh. In short, battle the flesh by focusing on the Spirit.
Walk by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh.
As we learn to respond to our flesh by staying focused on Jesus we will discover that out of our inner most being will flow….
the fruit of the Spirit, which is is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
By learning to do this math continually in our hearts we will have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. We will be living and walking by the Spirit.
Father, I groan as I sense this tug of war within. It does bother me that my first impulse is often fleshly. I am trusting that it is your Spirit that makes me aware when specific sins are crouching at the door of my heart seeking to devour me. Help me to not think too highly or too lowly of myself. Thank you so much that even when I am bogged down that Your Spirit intercedes for me and that you are my advocate before the Accuser. In these messy places that are still being worked out may grace abound all the more for Your glory. Thank you so much Lord.
by RobertCummins | Jul 15, 2014 | 29. Becoming
So my dear family, this is my appeal to you by the mercies of God: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and appropriate worship. What’s more, don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out what God’s will is, what is good, acceptable and complete.
Through the grace which was given to me, I have this to say to each one of you: don’t think of yourselves more highly than you ought to think. Rather, think soberly, in line with faith, the true standard which God has marked out for each of you. As in one body we have many limbs and organs, you see, but none of the parts of the body have the same function, so we, many as we are, are one body in the Messiah, and individually we belong to one another. Romans 12:1-5
I believe Paul is proposing to those in Christ to loosen the nuts that have our current thinking bolted down so tightly. This comment will be met with considerable skepticism; especially by those who have the highest regard for (and trust in) their belief systems. We treat our belief systems as our foundation. To tamper with this rigid structure is tantamount to causing an earthquake. Many testify that to have the earth move beneath your feet is the scariest thing they have ever experienced. For Christians, with our transcendent hopes, our beliefs represent the firm reality of the unseen kingdom. At least we think they do. Let me give you an example of just one place Paul might ask us to unbolt our thoughts.
If Paul were to ask, “How is your worship today?”, most would of us would think that he was a day off (since today is Monday); yesterday was Sunday, the day of worship. Many would also question his verb tense, didn’t he really mean, “How was worship? Our disconnect with Paul would originate with our errant (yet sacred and tightly bolted down) idea that one day is more sacred than another. Paul would still weigh in on this topic if we would permit it. He would likely say, “You are thinking wrongly about worship if you have connected it to a specific day or ceremony or feeling. He says, “I am appealing to you by the mercies of God……
offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and appropriate worship. (I believe while honoring the spirit of the text), The Message makes it even clearer….Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.
Paul’s point is that in the New Covenant, our lives have become worship because we have become the temples of God. Consequently, the choices we make in the living out of our lives are how we are working out our salvation and these decisions (and how we make them) represent the essence of our worship. Within Paul’s assessment of reality (which I try and defer to) he presumes that the ruler of this present evil age has been squeezing us into a shape that serves his ends (not God’s). He would keep us blinded and bolted down to a set of lies (and half-truths) which he believes will best serve his ongoing efforts to oppose the expansion of God’s kingdom, which is connected to our transformation. Paul simply presumes that a worshipping life is transformational and that our status quo mindsets will be challenged. He puts it like this…..
Instead (of being squeezed into wordily conformity), be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out what God’s will is, what is good, acceptable and complete.
The traditional model of worship often invites us to go and to feel while the Blue Book would suggest we should also stop and think. While their is nothing wrong with liturgy, song and emotion, the greater part of worship has always involved the use of our minds to work out the will of God in our daily walk around lives. Our minds are integral to the realization of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.
Father, teach us to love you with the all of our minds and souls and strength. Deliver us from the notion that our foundation is our belief system. Help us to transfer our trust beyond our beliefs about You to You Yourself, our Rock and our Fortress. Amen
by RobertCummins | Jul 20, 2013 | 29. Becoming
Matthew 5:1-16
This passage concludes with; “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” and it began with the Beatitudes’ “Blessed Be” list. I think from this passage and many of Paul’s teachings it is clear that God intends for us to convey something about Him to the world such that “something” is going to include whatever “blessedness” looks like.
If you were asked to describe what God’s blessing looks like, what does your mind gravitate toward? Who comes to mind? Do you consider yourself blessed? Hopefully our answers will bear resemblence to Jesus’ description. Let’s crosscheck. Here is Jesus’ list. You are blessed if you; are poor in spirit, mourn, are gentle, are hungery and thirsty for righteousness, are merciful, are pure in heart, are a peacemaker, have been persecuted or you have been slandered. So, how blessed are we?
There is one arena of blessing (at least in the west) that is conspicous in its absence from Jesus’ list – that is wealth and the material comforts it can provide. I mentioned theological tension yesterday. There is a good deal of tension around the topic of money within Christianity. Jesus could have resolved a great deal of this by simply saying, “Blessed are the successful for they shall have the comfort and security of material wealth”. The truth is that we in western culture have added this on our own. In His silence on this theme, Jesus has spoken much. In the midst of the tension between our mindset and His Word, He leaves us with His Spirit to watch over our hearts with diligence.
I proposed the idea Thursday that the Truth was in the tension and that we should not fear it nor flee from it. While flight may be a real temptation, here it would probably be wise for us to defer to the Alpha and the Omega, Someone who is taking the long-view in regard to life. From His vantage point, this life, where so much energy is devoted to the pursuit of happiness by means of material comforts, is just the blinking of an eye in the grand scheme of things.
I suppose in a world infected with darkness Truth is not only in the tension, Truth is the source of it. In our minds that are being progressively renewed to mirror that of Jesus’ mind, tension may indicate the presence of Truth knocking on our heart’s door. So, my prayer is;
Father, may Your Spirit prevail in Your claim on our minds and our hearts. May we surrender our rights and all our claims for things in this world and transfer title to back to You. May You be truly glorified by our lives as we discover the eternal and infinite dimensions of blessing and demonstrate them before a world lost in the finite and temporary. Amen.
