by RobertCummins | Dec 30, 2014 | 56. Home
Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, where are You going?” Jesus answered,“Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.” Peter said to Him, “Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for You.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times.
When Jesus told him He was going somewhere and that he could not go with Him, Peter was thrown for a loop. He was not on track with this at all. He had gone practically everywhere with Jesus for three years!
Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for You.
Jesus response: Really?
In the coming days and years, Peter will look back and say, “I just thought I was following Jesus back in 29 AD. Following a risen but unseen Savior, walking by the Spirit is a whole new thing.” And he no doubt mused….”Had the Spirit not taken up residence in me, if Christ were not in me, I would still be thinking absurd thoughts about myself and believing things happen right in this moment.”
As the Father disciplines each of the chidden He receives, so He disciplined Peter over time. Peter was not at all the man he believed himself to be. You could say that Peter was not just driven (in a general sense) by His egotistical flesh, he was also driven (specifically) by his false selves. As Peter’s grew up and figured out how to make things work out in life, he did as all humans have always done, he protected, at all costs, the fragile spirit that was born into a fallen world. As an infant and child it was done as instinctively as a cat landing on its feet. As an accountable teen and a young man, the soul-habits of survival became more deliberate. And as an adult the personality was habituated into who he believed himself to be.
This is a problem when the self-made person (and we all are) are nothing like God created us to be. When we erect walls around our hearts to protect ourselves we construct a barricade between us and love which was (and is) to be our chief vocation. These instinctive and deliberate acts of self-protection also create a barricade between us and truth. Having creates ourselves in our own image has wrecked our capacity to see and hear things without distortion. In other words we all have specific blind-spots of which we are usually the last to discover and to admit.
We were originally created in God’s image. In the kingdom that has come in-Christ and is also coming, God is making all things new. That which has been lost or stolen in regard to our personhood is being restored. That is what Paul is getting at when he says…..
We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren. Romans 8:29
The foreknown and predestined are eventually invited to share the sufferings of Christ through the trials, tests, and whatever else is required so that we might experience the full kingdom gospel, the gospel that not only saves souls for heaven but transforms them along the way. Whether our distorted vision has seen it or not, when we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” this is (among other things) our invitation for God to transform us into the image of His Son and to teach us to live as Jesus did. He was not just our Savior. He was our model! The Spirit’s mission is to see that the children ultimately bear family resemblence.
So, if we press on as disciples we should anticipate that God would expose our false selves (again, we all have them). The old things have passed away, behold new things have come! Like Peter, we will discover that we were not who we thought we were. We will discover in Christ that the old was in fact a sad parody of the self that God in making anew. We will discover with Peter that things don’t often happen right now. God is big on process. It is in the the ebb and flow. the living and the dying of everyday life where we come to truly know Jesus our elder brother (and our All in All).
A contemporary of Jesus’, a man who became known as Pliny the Elder is credited for saying, “Home is where the heart is.” That is not bad for a pagan. Jesus is credited for saying…
Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.
THis passage leads me to conclude; “Home is where Christ is.” Christ is in me. Therefore Rob (the old guy) declares, “My heart is Christ’s home.” Together, we foreknown and predestined ones comprise His Body on earth. We individually and collectively have become, in our new and better covenant in Christ what the Temple was in the Old Covenant – the dwelling of God. It was expedient that Jesus ascend to our Father so that we could become the temples of the Holy Spirit – a community of saints destined to become expressions of resurrection life ergo the light of the world – that shines revealing the Way.
Blessed King, my heart extolls your beauty and your wisdom. That I am your son is my chief delight. May my vision be forever restored that I might behold you with even greater clarity. In the midst of whatever unfolds, may You continually be the chief treasure of my heart. I love you Father, Thank you so so much.
by RobertCummins | Dec 29, 2014 | 56. Home
Revelation 21:1-7
And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.
When I read the book of Revelation I run into the idea of “overcoming”. In our passage its, “He who overcomes shall inherit these things.” Is overcoming the equivalent of being “saved”? As in, “Are you saved, brother?” I haven’t heard this question for a while now. Thank you Jesus! (I sometimes imagine though that I get that AYSB look from time to time.) I always want to sit down with this person and dig a bit deeper. However, often I have found digging deeper is not a welcome proposal to AYSB-types. In fact questions may suggest that you are a contentious person bent on wrangling over words. Questions portend of a rebellious spirit, a stiff-necked fellow who only stirs things up. This is a problem when you personably believe questions are the evidence of a truly free, honest and living spirit.
For sure there are questions that are meant to conceal unbelief, to mislead, stall or deflect such as: “Who is my neighbor? ” or “How shall I know that these things shall be?” But there are also questions that come from thirsty souls whose heart-quest for reality and truth requires them to inquire. I pray these are the sort my heart generates. My zealous AYSB’s however have already decided to not even share a meal with such a one who would challenge the sacrosanct status quo – even when its yield is somewhat less than the 30-60-90 projections.
Bonus: To get a top-drawer bible teacher’s view on this please check out Insight for Today -Charles Swindoll. Use his search tool and look up; The Problem With Progress, Parts 1 & 2.
I do have questions and I honestly don’t know who to ask them to. That is probably one reason I write. I can allow my questions to freely surface in this safe space alone with the Trinity. Then I can search out those things that create thirst in me; all without getting “the look”.
One of the bigger topics I chew on is salvation and discipleship. I have asked myself if our traditional status quo definitions of these terms are the same as those used in the New Testament. For example; Jesus came proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. We mostly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ which invites people to accept Jesus into their hearts with the anticipated event being eternal life which commences (for real) after death. What then is the point of living? It turns out not too much. Thus, “Come quickly Lord Jesus and rapture us our of this unredeemable planet!” And by all means, “Don’t get “Left Behind!”
Could the absence of our 30-60-90 harvest be related to fundamental misconceptions we have sanctified over time, encapsulating them into our doctrines and traditions? Perhaps to Him who is making all things new in his kingdom, renewing a biblical understanding of salvation and discipleship would be in order?
My understanding is that God woos us to that place where we believe that Jesus is His Son, that He is risen from the dead and has secured abundant Life for all who repent and place their trust in Him to save them. My renewed (I believe kingdom) understanding views salvation as a process not just an event. The process of living with Jesus as Lord in my heart is the essence of discipleship. My event-oriented AYSB would get further with me if he were to ask, “What is it like being saved by Jesus?” Then we could have a dandy conversation. With a bit of fear and trembling, at least one of us could tell of the ways of the Spirit and the Word in our hearts and how they have worked in creating so many accounts of hope within us.
If I were to give an honest account of the hope within me I would have to share that overcoming is the same thing as being saved if we consider that salvation includes the moment by moment, day by day process of working out the Life of God within us. Salvation came when Christ took up residence in our hearts.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them.
Since I have come to think of the kingdom as having come in Christ and still coming with a grand flourish due at some unknown time, a large adventure has begun to unfold. And why should it not if, Christ who is the same yesterday, today and always, dwells in our hearts? Having God’s DNA in us, always working to transform us into the image of His Son should not cause us to primarily anticipate the Rapture, praying, “Come quickly Lord Jesus!” It should anticipate the expansion of God’s kingdom; praying, (in general), “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And (more specifically), “What strongholds of the opposing kingdom within me and without will we be demolishing today Lord?”
I have to again honor the power of questions. I do not believe much of the recent transformational work in my heart could have occurred without the Spirit of Truth stirring these questions up down in my core. Since they have led to more personal freedom and joy I am inclined to ask if the thing that needs to be overcome is not those strongholds within our belief systems which limit a more full working out of our salvation.
If I were God’s enemy I would do my best to infect the ranks of his army with a notion that God saves men primarily to get them to heaven before he destroys the earth and separates the sheep from the goats. This would leave them to simply derive as much pleasure as they could out of this life and to, of course, see that other souls get saved. AYSB?
I believe the leaders who can recover and nurture the spiritual reality of Christ in us with its moment by moment implications will restore discipleship (the working out of Christ’s life) to salvation. This mobilizes and arms the troops with fresh stories and creates communities with much more to do than attend church and refine our Bible knowledge. Living with Christ as the Lord of our hearts inevitably creates an interaction between the saint and their Father that will make the relationship we have claimed was personal actually become personal. It will be a much brighter light than the world has yet to see from the Church.
It is this bright day I believe we were created to behold and partner with God to manifest. In our joint-venture with God, we must ask questions and pray that we will be thirsty and honest enough to embrace the answers when they assault the strongholds of our sanctified, less than reproductive, religious traditions. Perhaps it is these hallowed habits and traditions we have trusted in instead of the Man, Jesus Christ that are the things which must be overcome so that we can inherit the spring of the water of life without cost and simply be His daughters and Sons.
Father, while we are still living in the era of first things, let us not fail to see that it is you that all things become new. Even if your work in our hearts exposes where we are false and we must weep, strengthen us to persevere, knowing sorrow is but for a season. May our hearts be liberated from any old thing that is in anyway preventing the Life of God from expressing itself through us. May our hearts see that they are the created objects of Your affection and that You will conclude the matters which you have begun. Make all things new Lord, especially us! Amen.
