Churches: How Are You Planting & Building?

There are teachers who see their duty

Is to impart information to students

There are teachers who see their delight

 Is to inspire inner ideas from their students.

Power and control are advanced

When learned helplessness is encouraged

Freedom and sustainability is advanced

When learning how is encouraged.

Institutions state the way

By legislating and enforcing the laws

Jesus shows the way

By living and empowering God’s Law.

Masters yell at their servants from a distance

Jesus yokes himself with his servants right beside them

Systems train their people to perform their functions

Jesus transforms God’s people to perfect their fruits.

Golden Calf Museum

We are building a Golden Calf Museum in our world today

All the empty church buildings

All the dreams and schemes of human beings

All our gold and gifts that God gave us, wasted away.

We enjoyed the tickling of our ears by old dead men

But in the end it only deadened our ears to hear Truth

We filled our fertile minds with human philosophies and

Great ideas from highly credentialed men and women

Only to find in the years that followed

Empty hearts lying fallow; cold and hard

Wondering why our Golden Cows gave no milk

Nothing to feed us and nourish us.

There they stand, brightly shinning, as the sun

Shines on them through the window of time.

As lifeless as they were when human hands created them.

Are You Pleased With Me?

What is encoded within me?

Am I living in perfect accord

With my Creator’s plan and purpose

For me?

The psalm says that

You formed my inward parts

You knitted me together

In my mother’s womb

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Are you pleased with your creation

Can you look at me and say

“Behold, it is very good?”

PROFICIENT NOT PROFESSIONAL

I want to be proficient at the things I do; not a professional.  Something of the fun and enjoyment goes out of the activity when it becomes a job.  I have experienced at camp; I have experienced that in the church.  Money and titles put pressure on a person to live up to certain external expectations from others.  It’s your job to do this or that, not just your interest or delight.  Why is the pastor cooking the soup?  That is the responsibility of the hospitality people.  The priest shouldn’t be setting tables.  He should be studying the Word of God.  An ordained clergy is necessary to give communion. No lay person is able to do that, even if it means a church must close because there is no clergy available.

At camp we would often take our best counselors, those who worked well with the kids, and advance them into leadership positions, away from the kids they worked well with, and have them do paperwork and organizational tasks.  Most would lose heart because their hearts were into the kids they worked with.  The money was good, but was it worth the price. This all seems like a destructive pattern and one that doesn’t seem to honor the worker or God, whose work is being done; camp or church.

In God’s world there is hierarchy and leadership; but He is it.  We are His servants; his workers, all equal in who we are and what we do; none more important than the other.  We are all called to be proficient at what we are called to do, whatever the responsibility is. 

Jesus is so clear in that and yet the church seems to continually ignore the teaching.  Matthew 23 is a heavy condemnation against those who were overseeing the religious system of the day.  Perhaps that teaching needs to be attended to by the Church today.  “You are not to be called rabbi for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.  And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.  Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.  The greatest among you shall be your servant.  Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Every child of God is born in the image of God.  Each one needs to be proficient at doing just that; being the image of God.  That’s the purpose of spiritual growth, spiritual practice, spiritual discipline, spiritual direction, and all we do to present a clear image of our Creator, Lord, and Master to those around us.

Just Different

I am what I am and I’m doing the best I can

But for some reason that is never enough

To satisfy others or to get me someplace

It’s difficult to trust myself

When other voices keep telling me I’m wrong

Or lacking to see how things should be.

I am different and have been taught that I am wrong

Out of step, out of rhythm, out of rhyme

But I look at the trees outside my window

Each one different; not right; not wrong; just different

Who told them how to be?  Who told them how to do?

They simply BE and DO, absorbing from their roots all they need

Four different types of trees, all from the same Source of soil

Four different types of trees, all from the same Source of seed

Just different seed that will produce what it is meant to

Each growing strong not caring that the others are different.

THIS IS THE CHURCH

Religion never was, nor is meant to be an institution.  It is a way of life.  The tabernacle was the Presence of God; it was movable and fluid.  When God moved, it was moved; when God rested, it rested.  It was not built to stay in one place forever.  Only dead buildings do that.  Only institutionalized religion does that.

          “Would you build me a house to dwell in?  I have not lived in a house

            since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this

            day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling.  In all

            places where I have moved with all of my people of Israel, did I

            speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded

            to shepherd my people Israel saying, ‘Why have you not built me a

            house of cedar “(2 Samuel 7:5, 6)?

Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.  He is also the fulfillment of the temple.  PRESENCE, God’s Presence is what is to identify Christians.  Where two or three are gathered with Jesus in the midst, that is the Church.

MIRACLES IN THE MIDST

The journey often gets overshadowed by the focus on the destination.  Focusing only on the destination we can miss many things that are in between the starting point and the ending point; things that we think are inconsequential to our getting to where we are meant to be.  For me the journey itself is equally important as the destination because I don’t want to miss the miracles that happen along the way.  Too much is missed in life because we are in a hurry to get to where we are going, or do what we have set out to do.  One too many times I have reached my goal, gotten to my destination, and then say to myself, “Is that all there is?”

I am finding that as I grow older and more seasoned in my faith, I look at life with a more eternally minded perception.  Perhaps this is because I can’t move as fast as I could when I was younger.  Or perhaps my soul keeps asking me, “why the rush; what’s the hurry; do I need this pressure?”

The officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and the Roman soldiers from the state were on a mission the night they went to arrest Jesus.  They had their orders.  The peace of that garden where Jesus was with his disciples was disrupted by men with lanterns, torches, and weapons.  The soldiers were after a supposed enemy of Rome; the chief priests were after a blasphemer. When they approached Jesus they did not find a man standing in terror; they found a man at peace and a man who offered no resistance.  His disciples were not so calm.  Peter brought forth a sword, raising the level of tension, and cut off the ear of a servant of Caiaphas’, adding blood, fright, and confusion to the scene.  Jesus moved, not to fight back in defense, not to run away from the situation, but to bend down and heal the man Peter had wounded.

The chief priests and soldiers were so focused on their mission that they missed this miracle, bound Jesus and took him away.  How could they miss what had just happened right in front of their own eyes?  I wonder if when they got off duty that night and returned to their homes, if they sat down and recalled what they had seen and experienced.  I wonder what they thought when they saw Jesus being nailed to a cross and crucified.  I wonder what they thought when he rose from the dead.

I am sure Malcus took time to consider the events of that night and the next few days.  He had been touched by this man; he had been healed by this man.  His relative also witnessed this event and found Peter in the courtyard.  Peter, in fear for his life denied even knowing Jesus to her face.  She obviously wasn’t after him to do him harm, or she would have alerted the guards.  She was there for another reason; possibly in quest of a Lord and Master other than the one she was now serving.  Peter missed the opportunity to tell her about such a man.

The rush to be going about our business and fear keep us from truly seeing what is to be found along our path as we journey through this life we have been given to live.  We miss miracles; we miss opportunities; we miss the life we are journeying through to reach something or to get some place. 

In the words of Simon and Garfunkle, “Slow down, you move too fast.”  In the words of our Creator, “Be still and know I am God.”

CONTINUING REVELATION

There will always be continuing revelation.  God is alive, not dead.  Nature will continue to reveal God.  The Holy Spirit will continue to speak what he hears.  But continuing doesn’t mean evolving, so it will be the same revelation as it was in the beginning and will be until the end.  God’s world may change with the times but His Word doesn’t change.  God’s Word was perfect in the beginning; it remains perfect in the end; the Alpha and Omega.

Spirituality that does not remain true to God’s Word is a false spirituality.  The Holy Spirit will only speak what he hears from God and will only glorify Jesus.  That is the plumb line.  As much as we’d like to attribute an ‘I’m OK and you’re ok philosophy to the realm of spirituality, we can’t. 

The Holy Spirit came to, “Convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”  He did not come to earth singing, “All you need is love.”  Love is always matched with obedience.  That’s the way it was in the beginning.  That’s the way it will be until the end.  If that is not the continuing revelation of what we are hearing from the spirit we are listening to, then it is not the Holy Spirit of God.

BONDSERVANT NOT SOLDIER

When I am most zealous about something I tend to move under my own direction and under my own steam.  I run ahead of God into the battle and I always return bruised, battered, and bloody.  It is not enough to say that God is on my side; He must be at the front and in command or it is not His battle; it is mine.  Once I know that I will lay my sword down and wait for His orders, His direction, and His leading.

When I see myself as a soldier for God rather than a bondservant of Jesus, I move out of His service and into my own plan of battle.  I will fail, no matter how righteous the battle cause may be. 

I frequently get caught up in causes.  There’s a world of injustice and unrest that surrounds me daily; pain, suffering, poverty, and war are in the worldview of everyone and it impossible to escape the cries for help by the multitudes.  But I can’t let those cries drown out the voice of God.  He hears those cries as well and He has the only sustainable solution to meet them. Try as I might to grow in faith, and into the mind of Christ, I can never outgrow my need to listen to Him, who knows all.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found;

Call upon Him while He is near;

For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Neither are your ways My way

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.”

Isaiah 55:6-9

When I see things that are broken I want to fix them.  But at times my zeal has me stepping out of rank, from bondservant to soldier.  God may want things to break; things that were not in His plan but were devised by human beings, with asking Him first.  We build our own houses for God, our own golden calves, and assume God will bless them because we ask Him to.  Those hand made things must break for God’s plan to be accomplished.  His purpose is the True purpose that will be accomplished forever.

“My word that goes out of My mouth;

It shall not return to Me empty,

But it shall accomplish that which I purpose

And shall succeed in the thing for which I have sent it.”

Isaiah 55:11

FACE TO FACE WITH TRUTH

The day at the Spirituality Conference was fulfilling and exhausting.  A lot of ideas to process; good ideas that I want to incorporate into my faith.  My plumb line always; do these ideas and tools bring me closer to God and the image of God that I reflect to share with others; do they help me be a faithful disciple of Jesus; do they strengthen the work and the Presence of the Holy Spirit within me?  Then, as the Bereans, I go and search the Scriptures to see if these things are so; then I will study them as true.

Truth is difficult to find.  People search for Truth because it is the only real thing, stable thing to stand on, or build on.  We continually search for Truth, but too often we are searching in all the wrong places.  “You say that I am a king.  For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world; to bear witness to the Truth.  Everyone who is of the Truth listens to my voice” (John 18; 37).  After Jesus said this Pilate asked the question humans have been asking for centuries.  “What is truth?”  But he never waited for an answer.  Here Truth was standing right in front of him, face to face, and he did not hear or see.  Or maybe he did but consciously did away with him for fear of the people.  He found no guilt in Jesus; he did what he thought he could do to release Jesus.  But in the end he handed him over to the people to be crucified.  In the end he declared the truth putting an inscription on the cross.  “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”  When asked to remove it he refused declaring, “What I have written I have written.”

I don’t know what Pilate’s outcome was; but I know he was face to face with Jesus, heard Jesus, and believed what he said.  I’d like to believe that at some point in his life he remembered that encounter and that remembrance transformed his life.  Who knows?