by RobertCummins | Sep 9, 2014 | 37. Time
Psalm 102:1-28
Some of us have been through rough stretches emotionally. I have gone through seasons where the Psalms were about all I could (or would) read. In those times it was that part of the Bible that rang the truest to me. I found them refreshing because of the gut honesty of the authors. That is a big deal to me – having a Holy Spirit inspired writer giving me permission, by way of their example, to be gut honest with myself and with God. When I grasped this, my quiet times were not-so-quiet anymore.
I know this is not very reverent but two recurring themes I distinctly recall from these seasons of emotional duress and growing openness were; “WHAT IS THE DEAL!!??” and “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!??”. Warning: If you pray like this in public, you will forfeit opportunities to lead out in future corporate prayer. Note; If you aspire to pray publicly, shouting and weeping should also be avoided. I love the Psalms because they pull the mask of religious pretense.
This psalmist’s days were filled with distress and illness. As he wept and withered away, he pleaded with God, “Hear my prayer! Let my cry for help come before You! Listen to me!” While the anguished writer has no sense of God’s personal attention, he did take his remaining energy and refocus it on something he was more confident about. He seemed to reason; “Even if I may have fallen off God’s radar, certainly Israel, the object of His compassion has not.”
In his emotional drift, it is as though gut honesty allows the Psalmist’s anchor to catch somewhere way down below the fickle emotional currents and and lay hold of the firm reality of God’s goodness. From this place, emotional equilibrium is restored and he is then able to think, write and proclaim with new clarity and fresh authority.
A brief story. A pastor friend asked me a few years ago, why I thought businessmen did not attend his church (which is ultra-positive and upbeat). I admired him for even asking the question; most of them aren’t being paid to ask questions. They are paid instead to have answers, to maintain (or build) buildings, to keep church programs running and preach, preach, preach. The institutional leadership pool knows intuitively that questions can undermine it’s charge, the 501(c)(3), of the type of momentum and motivation it must have to perpetuate itself.
My response to him was that life in general has never been perpetually upbeat and positive. There is something incongruent that I suspect may be unsettling to businessmen who are mostly realists – people who rarely see idealistic circumstances prevail for long. It had escaped my pastor friend’s notice that businessmen and psalmists had this trait in common.
I used to occasionally speak to groups of Christians. When I did, I usually just shared my story, which has some messy pieces in it, emotionally speaking. I usually tried to get feedback. The responses were interesting. The religious would ask; “Brother, where was the victory in that?” Or, “Brother, what sin are you harboring that has caused you to have such a negative testimony?” Or, (a favorite) “Brother, why are you not in proper submission to authority?” I confess that I have an involuntary twitch now when someone calls me “brother”.
Then there were the hungry (those a bit poorer in spirit perhaps) who would just breathe a big deep sigh of relief as they heard someone just being emotionally honest with them. They were so glad that someone handling a microphone has struggled like they have and are willing to be honest about it. The positive aspect of my story is not that God has exempted me (in Jesus’ name) from life’s messiness; it is that He is with me in the midst of the mess and leads me through it. I’ve noticed at my friend’s church a testimony seems to get more amen’s by getting delivered from something than enduring that something. I’ve also noticed a great deal of pre-emptive religious energies seem to get employed in an effort to make life work out like the American Dream.
I recall one sermon where a pastor got transparent and shared (with genuine fear and trembling) that he had said a curse word after missing a free throw. Well, actually he spelled it; “S-H-O-O-T! “. My involuntary response to this scandal was “Oh S – # – ! – T! I am toast if this is how the score is being kept!” I had a grandmother who was apparently a sailer and a father who was a contractor. They were practically artists in profanity. Shoot, I was proud I didn’t just release an oath there in the sanctuary from the foul thesaurus that is my brain. I don’t think I was alone in feeling that I would never clear the bar of the standard that was just set so high. That is probably the glorious day that I decided to quit jumping at all.
My conclusion: Transparency produces credibility and credibility is a root of authentic authority. This is one reason why I think pastors with professional smiles can have credibility / authority problems with businessmen. Note; This was not intended to be a Joel Osteen dog-pile session. JO may be the real deal. I hope so.
In my story, while brokenness has had its place, I no longer highlight it as my singular cross to bare or as the premier value in the Christian life. (I actually did at one time in order to justify my own spirituality). In my painful emotional drift (which is also known as depression) I logged many emotionally raw hours in God’s presence, asking questions with bitter undertones and getting very few answers and zero apologies.
My anchor did catch though (finally) and a great deal of emotional stability was restored as well as a new spiritual vitality that I had forgot even existed. I can’t emphasize enough how crucial being emotionally honest is in walking with God. I believe people want to be led by those who have shared the trials and the pain they have known. Jesus was a man like us who suffered and was tempted just as we are. This qualifies Him to lead us now. He is our safe place. In our transparency we can be safe spaces for others. The great news is that God will use the messy, non-professional, Christ dependent bricks of our lives to build HIs Church.
Father, thank you for giving us permission to be real and honest. Would you show us how to move forward in creating these safe places for each other. Continue to encourage us in becoming the honest psalmists You desire us to be, who worship You daily in Spirit and Truth. Help us to press on to know You through every emotional barrier that would tempt us to think we are lost or unworthy. Deliver us from the evil of setting or trying to meet standards which are nothing more than sad imitations of holiness and distractions to the authentic life we have in Christ. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Sep 8, 2014 | 37. Time
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven- a time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost; a time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together; a time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.
Shall we all sing “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be) now? Solomon’s fatalistic tribute to time may be beautifully poetic but I don’t believe he was really at his best when he wrote it. He sounds like a tired ruler who has been worn out by his 900 wives (can you even imagine!) and discouraged in his worship of idols. At one point Solomon may have been the wisest man on earth but his unwise choices regarding wives and worship in themselves may keep him out of the Wisdom Hall of Fame. And even though he is past his prime, he continues to journal. Here are a few of his (somewhat tarnished?) gems…
“There is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him.”
“God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.” For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust.”
It seems Solomon’s capacity for hope has been sacrificed to the idols he worshipped. Regarding the future, he believes God has worked so as to intentionally obscure (or even obliterate) it so that men might focus completely on their three (or 2) score and ten allotment of years. Listen to his sermon…
He has also set eternity in their heart, so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end…..That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by.
Humans and animals come to the same end—humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there’s really no advantage in being human. None. Everything’s smoke. We all end up in the same place—we all came from dust, we all end up as dust. Nobody knows for sure that the human spirit rises to heaven or that the animal spirit sinks into the earth. So I made up my mind that there’s nothing better for us men and women than to have a good time in whatever we do—that’s our lot. Who knows if there’s anything else to life? (MSG)
I am remembering Country Joe McDonald’s impartation of wisdom after his cheerleading debut at Woodstock. Joe may have just listened to the Byrds’ rendition of this scripture passage and been under Solomon’s spell. Indeed, Solomon’s wisdom may have fueled the 60’s moral devolution.
This passage may have come from the scripture but I have to keep in mind that not only was
Solomon weighed down with the so called benefits of this life (wealth and women), he had no
conception (or had lost his) that a new covenant was on the horizon. Do you think Solomon
might have liked to edit his work after learning of Jesus – his people’s promised Messiah? I
think, like myself, he would have deferred to those whose view of the future were effected by
the hope-filled gospel of the kingdom, men such as Paul whose heart was also calibrated in
time with Moses, who said….
Teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.(Psalm 90:12)
Paul is clearly a man filled with bursting hope regarding the future. He practically cries out, to
the Philippians, “I long that I….
may be found in Him…..that I may know Him…..that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead…..
I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. But one thing
I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
While I do agree with Solomon that God has made everything appropriate in its time. I also
suggest (with Paul) that…..
…..as many as are perfect (i.e. “saints”), have this attitude; and if in anything you have a
different attitude, God will reveal that also to you.
So, while there is an appointed time for every event under heaven, I believe there was
a time and a glory for the Old Covenant and that it has past. Now, I believe is the time for the
New Covenant and its own unique and enduring glory. I truly hope at some point God revealed
this to Solomon before he discovered that he was in fact much much more than just an animal,
whose fate was nothing more than just dust in the wind.
Father, thank you that our lives in Christ are anything but in vain, that our advantages over the
beasts are infinite. Thank you that even though our vision is not comprehensive, it is
sufficient to see the revelation of Your resurrected Son. Thank you that we too share the
inheritance of resurrection Life and that we have been created for a future and a hope as those
called not just to fear You but to love You and live in a place You have gone ahead to prepare for
us.
by RobertCummins | Sep 15, 2013 | 37. Time
Luke 12:35-48, 54-56
In this passage Jesus likens “being ready” to being a good steward. He even reveals His sliding scale of performance, “And from everyone who has been given much shall much be required“. As I try and process this story, characterized by incentives and disincentives, I think of Paul and wonder, if he were to be preaching to us in expository fashion on the Master’s words, “what would He have to say, given His personal revelations of grace?”. I wonder if He might expand more fully on the first verse, something like this;
“Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps alight.”
“To those of you who have repented and been baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, Christ has become your righteousness. The attire required to attend His Wedding Feast is this very righteousness He has freely given to you. By grace you were introduced to faith. And by faith you have been justified before God and can now, clothed in His righteousness, stand continually and boldly in His holy presence with great joy. It is no longer about you and your performance. In fact, truth be known, you no longer live. You died and were buried with Christ. You have been raised from the dead with Christ and Christ now lives in you. Christ is now your very life.”
Later in this discourse, Jesus gets quite sober with the multitudes and says something to the effect; “You are great at predicting the weather based on your experience and observation, why then are you so dull in appreciating what is happening right now?”. I am uncertain precisely what Jesus was after but as I continue to filter His words through the revelation Jesus Himself gave Paul, I wonder if Paul would not add this point of clarification;
“Jesus used this story to highlight the impossibility of timing His return. You will best fulfill His command by not focusing on a future coming; but instead focusing on the fact that He has come. You will best stay vigilant, ready to open the door for the Master by keeping it fresh and clear in your understanding that you are, right now, the temple of the Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit resides in you. Your stewardship consists of the continual celebration of your favored status as sons and daughters of the Living God; of enjoying His presence and the intimate communion available from moment to moment.”
Father, to think that we have been invited to a feast that You have prepared and that You will personally serve is something we cherish. Just the anticipation and hope of this day causes our spirits to burn brighter. May You burn so bright within us that this world will take notice of You and awaken to the grand reality of this day; Today, which is the time for salvation. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Sep 13, 2013 | 37. Time
Mark 13:32-37
A Thief In The Night was a movie I watched as a brand new wide-eyed baby Christian in 1976. The film opens with a woman awakened by an emergency radio broadcast. In her half sleep, the commentator is announcing the disappearance of millions of people no more than 30 minutes prior. After the woman realizes her husband is missing, she sinks to the side of her bed as the radio voice quotes the BB scripture passage for today.
“Therefore, be on the alert – for you do not know when the master is coming,.. lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.”
The net effect of this film for me was what (I thought) Jesus wanted when He said, “Be on the alert!”. I lived for a decade with a gnawing concern, fully expecting Him to return at any time. That might seem fanatical but in the context where I met Christ, you definitely had the impression just about anything could happen. It was the waining days of the Jesus Movement and the Charismatic Renewal. It was as if Jesus, after failing in the mainline, had sent his servants out into the highways and byways and extended His banquet invitation to a multitude of unlikely characters such as myself. It was an amazing time! People were being saved and transformed all around me. It looked like a God-ordained “end-times”, ingathering of souls that many presumed might just precede a “rapture”. My bags were packed, but not really well.
Even today the legitimacy of those two movements is challenged by many of the mainstream advocates of the Christian religion. If you are unfamiliar with these movements, they pop up quickly on Wikipedia. For millions including myself the religion of Christianity was exchanged for a rebirth into a fresh and vibrant relationship with God, the Father. As Keith Green
was touring and preaching with his Last Days Ministries, myself and many I knew were “on the alert” setting aside what we were doing with our vocations and plugging into ministries and missions in order to participate in this harvest and, very importantly I should add, to be found “awake”; being about “the Father’s business” when He returned.
It turned out we were wrong about the timing of Jesus’ return. If you have some familiarity with the New Testament you know that they too thought Christ’s return was imminent. I do not regret being wrong and becoming abandon to the prospect of His “anytime” return. I doubt if any of those New Testament saints did either. We were wrong in one sense; but in another more important one, we were right in that we obeyed. We were alert.
I mentioned earlier that I thought I knew what Jesus meant when He said to be on the alert. Well, I didn’t just miss the timing. I also missed “the spirit” of the command. There was an unhealthy type of “fear of God” in my heart then, evidenced by the gnawing concern that I mentioned. Obeying God because you fear He will leave you behind is an inferior motivation for obedience. Fear exposes our questions about the “keeping” competence of the Father. Moving forward because you are being prodded from behind by fear is not the same as moving forward because you are being drawn by His love.
I am so grateful that the soil of my life was deep enough and of the right type that when my “gnawing” fear motivation dissipated there was a love component there in the soil composition of my heart that has served since as a more durable and enduring motivation. I believe I am ready to meet Christ at the appointed time in whatever setting He might choose. However, I have repacked my bags with readjusted expectations as to the timing. I feel I am in good company on this since neither the angels nor Jesus Himself knows at what time this will happen.
Father, whether You come today or thousands of days from now, may our hearts find secure and safe refuge in Your love, so much so, that we avail ourselves of the bold access we have to You throughout each of those days, however many of them there are. May we maintain our alertness out of Your life within us; out of Your love for us, as we joyfully live out our days in Your loving presence.
by RobertCummins | Sep 12, 2013 | 37. Time
Job 7:1-10 ( I hope you wil read Job 6-7. It will make my story more understandable)
Years ago I was teaching an adult Sunday school class on Job and someone was struggling with the book’s seemingly unending theme of suffering. They proposed a solution in resolving the tension between the futility of Job’s life and what they perceived the abundant life of Christ to be. It was really quite simple. They proposed that we just ignore Job. They reasoned before the class, “since suffering and futility were such minor themes in the Bible, that we should simply discount the life of Job. I recall almost falling over when they said this because it was ingrained into me early on that all scripture was inspired by God. Just because I didn’t like it, or I didn’t understand it, did not exempt me from considering its relevance to my walk with God.
What can we take away from the book of Job? Today’s passage is representative of Job’s story. He is steeped in emotional and physical pain so intense that He has asked God to take his life. Job’s only remaining consolation is that maybe, if God quickly answers his request, he may die before he denies God. Have you ever been this distaught in your circumstances? I think I must have a low TfS index (Tolerance for Suffering) because I felt like this in 1990 and my situation was a cake walk compared to Job. None of my children had died and my skin was not falling off (yet). Here is my brief story. I bother telling it because suffering is something we all have in common.
That year a host of problems, which had been gaining momentum on me, converged all at once. Some were of my own making. Some were beyond my control. The areas of my life that were impacted were physical health, emotional health, estranged members of my immediate family, a failing business, a collapsed vision of life and ministry and the separation between myself and my closest friends and a familiar environment I loved. When I lay down, I could not sleep. I was haunted at the living nightmare my life had become. When I was awake, I was just barely able to put one foot in front of the other.
My orientation to God, my theology (which I could not off-load for convenience sake) instructed my heart that God was intimately acquainted with all the details of my life and that He was personally leading me along a particular path for the sake of His name. (Psalm 1, 23, 139). I was to take comfort that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him (Romans 8:28). The strain of all these converging pressures was crushing me. I thought I was going to suffocate. I wasn’t sure just how much more of God’s intimate attention and lovingkindness I could handle.
In my life, Job’s friends were there on the radio and in the books offering me all their standard council. Options they presented were; 1) Deny God exists and at least releive yourself of the burden of reconciling your miserable life with some fairy tale you have subsribed to. 2) Deny God is soverign and involved in intimate ways so that you can at least salvage God’s reputation as one associated to the debaucle of your life. 3) Swap theologies for a more victorious version that would offer a new (more comfortable) track to ride on. 4) Repent more thoroughly of the hidden sins that have obviously attracted God’s judgement 5) Have someone cast out the demons that have been assigned to destroy you and rob you of the abudnant life. 6) Take the antidepressents the doctor has prescribed and see a mental health professional. 7) Just praise your way to victory. 8) Pray more frequently in your prayer language 9) Deny your prayer language. Let me say emphatically, I definitely could not handle any more council from men!
Back to the Sunday school experience. If I were to have bought-in to the idea that Job’s expereince should be ignored, I would have forfeited the deep truths (and future grace) that God had embedded in Job’s life and in my own. I would have also started down the road of making a cut-and-paste theology that may have provided some shallow comforts along the way but would have eroded the all dimension of scripture’s revelation. It is a common transaction, but swapping the eternal for the temporal is a terrible trade.
I feel no duty to know if that season of intense pressure was an attack or a test (or both). It was not my refined understanding of biblical truth that carried me through that period. It wasn’t many of the things that Christianity holds out as the pat answers to problems such as I was facing. It was just trusting in who God is and what He is like, as a good Father; that He was in that storm with me. It was just holding on by faith to a truth that I deeply believed but could not feel at all; that He loved me and that there was purpose buried in the apparent futility of my life.
We are to comfort one another with the comfort with which we have been comforted. If my story has any comfort – value to you, it should be that our greatest blessing is currently disguised as our biggest obstacle. The problem or crisis we entrust to Him is the place we will look back upon as the place our faith grew most dramatically. It is the place we will look back upon where we grew to know Him and love Him at a new and deeper level. And, when we arise from the ashes we can speak with confidence and authority in these specific areas where we proved to be over-comers.
Father, you are good. You are kind. You are sovereign. In the midst of our trials and tests (which seem to suggest otherwise) give us the grace to persevere and to overcome for Your Name’s sake. Whether we are escorted around or through our trying situations, be glorified as the world sees us falling more deeply in love with you, more yielded than ever to the soverign, mysterious paths You lead us on. Amen.
Note: I spoke about emotional honesty yesterday as a foundational aspect of walking in relationship with God. Job got this. (Read 7:11) `
by RobertCummins | Sep 11, 2013 | 37. Time
2 Corinthians 5:11 – 6:2
“Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation.” I am curious what is coming to your mind as you read this verse; especially what comes to mind when you read the word “salvation”. The original language of the New Testament was greek and the word used was “sozo”. The definition of sozo is to; rescue, deliver, heal, protect, preserve, to make whole, to do well. When you profess to others that you have been saved, is this what you intended to convey? Or, like most of us, did you mostly mean, my sins have been forgiven and I have been saved “from” eternal punishment?
Wow! If that is what salvation includes, the gospel is not just good news. It’s great news! One pastor I track drills into his listeners that salvation is the forgiveness of sins; the deliverance from oppression and the healing of disease. Do you think he has gone too far? When (and if) we we wrestle with this tough question are we reasoning from experience or from scripture? If we are committed to reasoning from scripture, Jesus’ words help us;
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because he has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year (time) of the Lord.”
I believe that as God’s government increases (as He promises it will) and His kingdom comes (as we are instructed to pray), the Church will progressively discover that we have not just been saved from a gruesome ending but saved into a glorious now. I believe we will discover as our minds are more and more renewed that our status in Christ is a considerably bigger deal than we have understood.
“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come.”
“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry (task) of reconciliation…we are ambassadors, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
I do not know completely what Paul meant when he used the phrase,, “all these things” but given our fuller understanding of “salvation” (sozo), it would probably not be outside the spirit of Paul’s intent to include; healing, deliverance and blessing as apart of what will be involved in reconciling the world to Himself. Those things seem perfectly compatible to Jesus’ inaugural words as well as to the heart of a loving God.
Father, may we lay hold of that for which you have laid hold of us. May we not discount Your intentions or our callings. May we fulfill Your desire for us as agents of the tremendous news of Your abundant life. May Your blood not be wasted upon us nor Your Word return to You without accomplishing that for which it was sent. Help us to reconcile our thoughts with Yours. Save and deliver us from any limiting notions we have embraced of your kingdom. Upgrade our understanding and expereience from good to great. Upgrade our expectations from then to now. Amen.
