Get Out Of The Way As Leaders & Take On Our Role As Servants

Hebrews 10:28

Jesus is coming to earth a second time to those who are looking for Him and eagerly awaiting Him.  That was the description of the folks who received Him the first time.  Those who aren’t looking and waiting will probably miss Him, just like most folks did the first time; those who did not understand or weren’t even concerned about His coming.  How sad, with all the prep time allowed and all the encouragement to know who He is and what He has done.  Those who miss Him have no excuse.  That makes me sad because I know what they are missing.  But God in His faithfulness and steadfastness has tried over and over again to love all He created; but He will never force Himself.  His love will never fail, but time is getting short.

I am looking for Christ’s return.  I am eagerly looking forward to seeing Him face to face and being taken to the room He has been preparing for me in His Father’s house.  But I have to wonder once in awhile if my life reflects that looking and eager anticipation.  It is easy for me to get distracted with other things like the affairs of the world.  I also find myself getting entangled in the affairs of people around me, especially in the people who are apart of the church and claim to know God, people who are to be reflecting God and His character in their lives, inviting others to know and love God.  Having spent a lot of years working in the church, I fear that we haven’t done a very good job. This is a pattern that has been followed since the beginning of time.  We miss the mark so we look around for fig leaves.  We should really know better by now.

The Bible is a history of God’s people failing in the Covenant He made with them and then trying to figure out how to fix things.  To this day we are still failing the one thing we are to do…obey God.  We are continually back in the garden listening to Satan asking, “Did God say?”  We are still back in the garden chewing on the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil deciding for ourselves what is good and what is not.  We still choose to ignore God’s voice and listen to ourselves, to others, to our culture, or to the world’s new and improved enlightened movement.  By now one would think that we would be beyond that.

Before Jesus came they may have had an excuse.  But now, we live under the new Covenant that Jesus initiated.  Through Him we have direct access to God.  God has put His laws in our hearts and written them on our minds.  Deep inside we have His Spirit convicting and convincing us of the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.  Our problem is obeying God.  We’d much rather do what we want to do and what works best for us.  So we keep on committing the two evils we always have.  We abandon God, the source of living waters and dig our own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

I love God’s creation; I love my life in Him; I love people.  I have spent much of my life’s time and energy on trying to fix thins and people who were broken, beginning with myself.  But what I realize more and more is that only God can fix what is truly broken and is the root for all the other brokenness;  a vital and whole relationship with Him.  Once that central thing is accomplished all the other “stuff” will fall into place, if we humans get out of the way as leaders and take on our roles as servants.  God did His part through Jesus.  Now it’s time to do our part by believing and receiving all that was finished on the cross.  Once we know our role it will free up time to look and eagerly wait the return of the One who made that relationship with God possible.  Maranatha!  Come Lord Jesus, Come! 

The Greatest Freedom Ever

                                           Hebrews 4:12-17

I wish I was perfect.  It would make my life much easier.  But, I’m not.  My suspicion is that as long as I am in this fleshly body it will be a nag and interfere with the holiness and perfection I long to have.  Thankfully I can say that on most days I am better than I was when I was at my worst; but that doesn’t bring me to where I want to be.

My body and mind are great reactors.  I hear something, read something, see something, and BOM, I go into full attack or defense mode.  It doesn’t matter whether or not what I hear, read, or see has anything at all to do with me, I am right there at full attention ready to attack or defend.  I find that in this mode I have no compassion, mercy, or patience.  I just go for the sword and start wielding it.  After all that energy is used up, I sit, come to my senses, and then the self attack begins; “Some lover of Jesus I am!”, “Way to demonstrate my contemplative self!”. “What a hypocrite!”.  After a while of sitting and feeling badly eventually my compassionate, merciful, and patient self appears and ministers first to whatever or whoever I attacked and then eventually to myself.  I compose myself, find my center, and get on with my life.  This is a pattern God and I have worked on for many years.

God has helped me with this first by helping me see and know this is a deeply rooted, life long pattern that requires patience.  He has also helped me with this by giving me spiritual disciplines that require practice. To get to the root of my pattern I work at discovering and uncovering why these things that I react so strongly to matter to me.  That requires some digging up of my past experiences throughout my life.  It means being open and vulnerable to the hidden discoveries and receptive to the healing touch that God provides as He walks with me through my past.  He made me and was with me throughout that time so He’s the best companion to have as I retrace my life.

The two greatest spiritual disciplines that God provided as tools are stillness and silence.  When I feel that reactive energy start to rise I speak to it and say, “Be still and know that God is God”.  This gives me the perspective to look at things correctly, knowing that God is hearing, reading, and seeing what I am and has it under control.  Knowing that I stay silent and allow the Spirit that is within me to trump my fleshly reaction and help me respond appropriately, with reason, respectfulness, compassion, and mercy.

I am not perfect, but patience with myself and practice of the Spiritual disciplines are at work moving me closer to my goal.  I find the truth that God lives and works within me and nothing I do, say, or think is hidden from Him a great comfort and a great freedom to be who I truly am.  

Writing As Spiritual Practice

Writing has always been a Spiritual Practice for me.  When it becomes a product, a procedure, when publishing is the goal, it becomes less fun, less enriching, and before long becomes extinct.

I have a life where I am not responsible for anyone or anything except myself.  I have no schedule or anyone or anything demanding my time and attention.  I have a life that I can whatever I want of it.  I do not want to waste it.

I am responsible for my happiness and don’t need to look anywhere except within myself.  Writing helps me do that.  I am responsible for my success and don’t need to look anywhere except within myself.  Writing helps me do that.  I am responsible for what I think, feel, and want to pursue and I don’t need to look anywhere except within myself.  Writing helps me do that.  I am responsible for my relationship with God, my one true love, and I don’t need to look anywhere except within my self.  Writing helps me do that.

I often get enticed and entangled in the wake of someone else’s waves.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  I often feel fear and shame in the dignity of my own experience, my own knowledge, my own way of seeing the world.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  I want to trust in what I know and love.  I want to continue down the path I truly believe God has put me on in this life and let it take me where I need to go.  I want to follow who and what I love and be intimate with what is deep within me.

Rather than be my worst enemy I want to be my own best friend and return to my first true love of writing as a Spiritual Practice. And then follow where that leads. 

What Does God Require of Me?

I loved the work I did in the Church

I did not like the arguing and the politics

I loved the work I did at Camp

I did not like the arguing and the politics

I loved the work I did at Retreat Center

I did not like the arguing and politics

When I commit myself to my work

I am in it heart, mind, and soul

All I want is to do what I am there to do

But wherever I have been I get entwined

I get drown by the wake of the waves of others

I become disillusioned and feel betrayed

By those in control with all the authority

I am unable to do the work I love

And I leave, either voluntarily or by invitation

But I still loved the work I did

And I miss it

Now I am under no one’s control, except God and myself

But often I find myself entwined

In the arguments and politics

Even though I have no business there

Why?  I don’t know

But I do know this

I do not like it…so STOP!

It is not what God requires of me

What's That to You...You Follow Me

I often find myself on the outside looking in.

I often find myself left behind in the dust

of a new movement that gets past me

before I even see it coming.

I try to join the crowd but they move too fast for me

and I find myself walking the path alone.

But soon, in the quiet of that lonely path,

I am joined by a Presence I know very well

and immediately recognize.

The Presence softly smiles and speaks to my heart.

“I too have been left behind in the dust;

I too find myself on the outside looking in.”

I smile and we walk on together.

What Are My Conversations About?

John 4: 1-42

QUERY

What are my conversations about?

Will they bring me and the one I am talking with

To a better place, a deeper life?

Will they quench our thirst for meaning

For our love and desire for God?

Will they open the way for Transformation,

For planted seeds to sprout, bloom, and blossom?

Will the ground we are standing on

Become holy ground

Because of the work of growth being done within us?

Because of the Presence of the One

Who comes to us as we speak to one another?

What are our conversations about?

Is Life A Test?

Job

Is life on earth a test?  Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”  The cross was a test for Jesus.  He could have said no…

Satan is a player in this life on earth.  It is his spirit that rules the world.  Right now he has possession of the world.  Just as in the days of Job he wanders to and fro, walking up and down it.  He has regular discussions with God about his opinions of people on earth and what makes us tick.  Satan claims that Job is blameless, upright, fears God, and turns away from evil only because God has put a hedge around him, has blessed him, and given him many possessions.  God allows Job to be put to the test.

When man and woman are taken out of the enclosed garden and put out into the world, will they still look to, love, and obey God as he and she were designed to do?  God never constrains; we always have a choice.  Job and Jesus’ choices are recorded in the Scriptures.  “In all this Job did not sin.”

Jesus said, “Not my will but God’s be done.”

From the beginning of time God wanted his created beings to be in His Presence; through thick and thin; in sickness and in health; rich or poor.  His people are His treasure, His Bride.  But He will never coerce us.  He chooses us and wants us to choose Him out of our love and our own free will.

Satan is our adversary.  He is always around us, crouching at the door, waiting to pounce.  God explained this to Cain (Genesis 4:7) and it holds true to us today.  “Sin wants you; its desire is for you.  But you must rule over it.”

Ruling over it suggests that it is a test of wills and that will always produce some suffering.  Our suffering purges us of all impurity, just as the fire rids the metal of impurities.  When the battle is done and the suffering subsides we will be healed and whole in the life to come and that life is eternal. 

Is life on earth a test?  My experience would make me say yes.  I suspect Job would say yes and I suspect Jesus would say yes.  But Jesus tells us very clearly, “My kingdom is not founded in this world.”  If I follow Jesus then I am not of this world.  When I keep this vision in my heart, soul, and mind the temptations will weaken, the trials will wither away, and the test will be passed and won.

What Would Jesus Do?

John 13: 1-17

There are so many words, ideas, philosophies, and religions in the world today it is difficult to tell the true from the false.  Jesus warned us that this would happen in the last days and it has.  The enemy of God has succeeded in twisting truth and falsehood together, of producing doubt and distortion about God and His ways.  Religious people have wandered far from their roots and have experienced foundations that have crumbled.  Many people do what is right in their own eyes and then claim “spirituality and even God as their source and then go on to control the minds and hearts of others.  It is done in the name of tolerance and peace but in reality the results are anarchy, confusion, and foundations built on sand that will be swept away with the waves of trials and tribulations.  There’s a hard rain coming and any truth not of God will be destroyed and washed out to sea.

How do we know who to believe and what to do anymore?

One way works for me.  It is the way that has been tried and tested by fire for millions of people over 2000 years and has stood true.  Jesus Christ is the Way, Truth, and Life and he lived his life here on earth as an example to be followed.  So the adage “What Would Jesus Do” works for me and has worked for me all of my life.  As I read John 13:1-17 today I saw a lesson to be learned in this matter.

Jesus was nearing the hour of his death and departure from this earth.  He would be leaving folks that he had spent much time with and loved very much.  In these last hours he wanted to leave them prepared and equipped for the mission and responsibilities they would be given to carry out after his departure.  Not only did he tell them, he showed them so that it would be very clear in their hearts and minds.

Looking at this lesson I can see two directions his actions would have gone in; one might well be chosen by many folks today.  The other is the way that Jesus chose.

          “With full knowledge that the Father had put everything into his

           Hands and that he had come from God, he…”

Choice #1:  He went out and condemned the world showing everyone from the Pharisees to the woman caught in adultery their faults, shaming them for not listening to him, and coercing them into conversion to God’s Way.

I see this choice worked out by many people today with their stinging words and their hateful placards.

Choice #2:  He stripped himself, took a towel, and washed the disciple’s feet, even Judas and Peter’s, who would in the near future betray and deny him.  He became a servant, doing the lowliest of jobs, washing dirty feet.  This is the option Jesus chose, out of pure love for these people.

          I have given you this example so that you may do as I have done.”

So many of us are more concerned to have the approval of man, to be seen as doing things for God and feeling all holy, spiritual, and good about how we are being God’s witnesses on earth and converting souls.  It all looks good to us and to the world, but we should be more concerned with how it looks to God.  Jesus came to earth to show us what pleases God, not others, not even ourselves.  Being a servant is very humbling in our world of titles, degrees, and positions of honor that give the Self a sense of pride and self esteem.  But Jesus continually shows us that is not how it is in God’s kingdom.  In God’s kingdom the one who loves and serves, just as Jesus loved and served, is the place where happiness is found.

How do we know who to believe and what to do anymore?  Find what Jesus did and do it in love and true humility.  That is the simple Truth that dispels all confusion, doubt, and falsehood.

Rooted In God & In God's Ways

I am rooted in who God has made me to be.  I find my delight in God and in His Ways.  I spend my time, day and night, pondering His Law, meditating on His love and His words.  I have become like the tree that grows outside my window and I watch for the lessons that it teaches.

My tree stands strong and silent.  It is just what it is meant to be.  It does just what it is meant to do.  It silently helps maintain life on earth.  It provides food and gives shelter to many of God’s little critters.  It provides beauty for those who take the time to look at it.  It doesn’t try to correct bad behavior; it doesn’t try to convert people to be a tree; it doesn’t sit and plan wicked and evil things nor does it try to stop them.  It simply stands there, being what it is and doing what it was meant to do.

My tree silently, without words, testifies to God’s invisible attributes, God’s eternal power, and God’s divine nature.  It provides and maintains life for all living things and gives me a sense of awe in the workings of God. It gives me a sense of peace in the knowledge of God’s Presence here on earth.  When I am faithful to who God made me to be and what God created me to do, I will yield my fruit and I will prosper.

God will see to the wicked ways that are in the world.  They have no rooting in God’s creation.  They, like chaff, will be driven away by the wind and will vanish from this world.

Not A Point of Pride...A Point of Great Humility

John 6:44,45

I am as I am now

But before I am, I was

I was taught by You

Before I ever knew You

Drawn to You

Before I began seeking You

That is why I knew You immediately

When You came and sat with me

That is why I knew You immediately

When You came and spoke to me

No doubt…no hesitation

I began to follow You, only You

You have been my foundation from forever

In all my wandering I always come to my senses

And return home to You

This amazes me

And holds me in awe of You.

Sitting In Silence & Stillness: Useful Not Busy

The world is a busy place these days.  The churches are busy places these days.  I am not busy these days, mostly because of a body that can’t be running around doing this and that.  So I watch and remember my days of working and ministering to others. 

There was always so much to do, so many needs to be met, so many people who needed only moments of time.  But those moments mounted in number and I remember reaching the point of exhaustion more than once.

As I sit and watch others running around at top speed, developing multitudes of new programs to meet all of the needs of folks around them, I have to wonder, is keeping busy keeping others busy the tact that Jesus had in mind for His Church.  What I see and hear is a lot of busy people who use that busyness to curb the loneliness they feel inside.  Keeping people busy, having programs that meet every conceivable need is a tact the world sails on.  Always changing, always progressing, always on the move resulting in people who have no time to sit still and reflect on anything meaningful or soulful; this can’t be what God had in mind for His people.  One look at nature would confirm that He had more than being busy in mind for all of His creation.

In today’s world not being busy equates into not being useful.  That is a lie and it is a lie that God’s people should be exposing, not engaged in.  Being useful without being busy is the lesson my trees outside my window teach me as we sit in silence and stillness each other’s company and simply BE with one another.

When Will We Stop Squandering What is Sacred?

How can anyone who reads the Bible and sees the love of God expressed in such tender ways down through the generations not respond with absolute love towards God?  How can anyone not see all that God does for His people  and for all of His creation not fall absolutely in love with Him, desire to worship Him, serve Him , and be a good steward to all He created?

From the beginning of time, from generation to generation, continuing on into today and forever, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has expressed absolute love and care to all His creation, especially to His people.  That love and care is freely given to all who would receive it.  How can anyone that receives that love not respond in absolute adoration to this loving God?

It is beyond my thinking how that love can be ignored, rejected, or despised.  It is beyond my thinking how Jesus can stand in this world today and still be stripped, mocked, and spit upon.  It is beyond my thinking how we can pollute the air, rape and pillage the land, and contaminate the oceans.  It is beyond my thinking how we can so easily dismiss the Scriptures that hold truth, the life, and the ways that provide the solutions to all of the troubles in our world today.

How bad do things have to get, how much precious life and land needs to be squandered, before we come to our senses and remember the One who created us and all things; remember the One who only has love, joy, and peace to give to us?