HELP OR HINDRANCE?

Matthew 16:21-25

Peter, who had just declared Jesus as “The Christ, the Son of the Living God”, now begins to rebuke and correct Jesus after He was telling His disciples about what is going to fulfill His mission here on earth.  Rebuking God is never a good idea and takes great pride and hubris. 

Jesus first identifies the real culprit…”Get behind me Satan!”  Jesus knows his ways because they are the same tactics he used in the garden with Eve and in the wilderness with Jesus.  Satan’s MO is to doubt God and follow your own mind and desires. Abandon God and build your own cisterns.  It is the error that has passed down from the beginning of time and continues right up to today.

Book after book after book that I have been reading is being written on the failure of Christianity, Religion, the Church, and then offers new ways and changes are being heralded to fix the problems.  Most of them question all that has been done by the church in the past, question the Bible and expressing the need to reinterpret and rewrite it to make it relevant to our times, and changing our understanding of Jesus and God altogether.  Doubting God and what He has been actively doing throughout time takes a great pride and hubris, and never turns out well.  I love and respect many of these people but they are seen as the best people in the field they are all people at best. 

After I read Jesus’ rebuke of Jesus, “Get behind me Satan”, I hear Jesus call Peter a “hindrance to Me”, and I feel sad on one hand (poor Peter) and concerned on the other by how I and others think.  Jesus doesn’t hide the motivation.  “You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man”.   Then He goes on to talk about denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, and following Him; not forfeiting one’s soul to gain the world, and so on.  How much of what good people who really love God, just as Peter did, are less than helpful and more of a hindrance to what God is doing in the world and His church?

I am not without guilt in this.  I have been critical of Christianity, Religion, and the Church in things I have talked about and written about.  I have many “great ideas” to make things different and better.  I enjoy being in the “conversation” about “re-imaging the Church”.  Lately I have been more and more convicted about thinking, talking, and writing about it.  How is the Spirit convicting me…through the Scriptures, these in particular…

Isaiah 55:6-13; Psalm 127:1; Matthew 15:13, 14; Matthew 16:18, 23.

The last thing I want to be is a HINDRANCE to the work that God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is doing in the world today, in the Church today.

Yes, I have done my 10,000 hours that entitles me to be an authority on certain things.  But in matters of God He is the ONLY TRUE AUTHORITY.

So, my solution is simple.  BE STILL AND KNOW GOD IS GOD.

I love God with all my heart, mind, and soul and my one desire is to be what He is about, not what I think He is about in this world.  Enough said.

My Prayer for myself:

Ecclesiastes 5:1,2

“Guard my steps when I go to the house of God.  To draw near to LISTEN is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.  God is in heaven and I am on earth.  Therefore

LET MY WORDS BE FEW.”

HERE AND NOW UNTIL THEN

People are calling for churches to be Schools of Love.  I love this idea but usually what happens is we never leave the place where all that love is happening.  Awful things have happened because people have misused God and the Bible.  So we respond to that by making changes in our beliefs about God and adapting the Bible differently to meet our new understanding.

I don’t understand all the violence and destruction God did that is recorded in the Old Testament.  It’s difficult to reconcile that with the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.  But I do know He is the same God in both.

God’s behavior looks harsh; unloving; ungod like.  He was destroying abominations that were things going against all He was about.  He was angry and destroyed them.  So we ask, “Where’s the love?”  We try to explain the behavior but actually make lot of assumptions and presumption on our part. 

How are those who are speaking out about Love for all treating Donald Trump and those who are following him?  How are they treating bigots and people of violence and those who hate those who hate people different than them?  I see that same righteous anger in them that I see in God’s behavior.  Where’s the Love?

Those who follow Jesus and walk with God are to show a different way than what is.  The only way to end bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence is a true heart transplant that only God can do.  Then a world without bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence must be demonstrated by those who have been truly converted to love.

Energy can’t be changed, only converted.  The energy of love and peace is the same as hate and violence; only conversion will change it.  People must be taken out of the slavery of the evil one and taken into the presence of God, where they were originally meant to be.  God did not make a world where bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence grew.  Human beings built that world by following the temptations of the enemy of God; temptations of he flesh; temptations of success, wealth, and power; temptations that human’s couldn’t overcome; temptations that Jesus proved could be overcome be overcome by listening to and obeying God.

This country has been making bad choices for a long time; we dress up sin so it is acceptable; we shed innocent blood throughout our land; we cast God out of our government and our learning institutions; we omit and change His words in our religious institutions.  Then we have the audacity to blame Him for the mistakes that those who misuse Him did supposedly in His name.

“God made man simple; man’s complex problems are of his own devising.”

Ecclesiastes 7:29

When human beings try to do things of God without being born again and having a heart transplant, without being in a relationship with Him, they will fail and misuse them.  The flesh cannot understand the things of the Spirit.

God has been trying to set up a People who would be a demonstration of a world without bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence that nations could see and be envious of.  He still keeps trying but it must be done His way.  In the end it will be that but our prayer is we can see that here and now until then.  That means doing away with the things that God has asked us not to do and living in the life that comes from doing what He has asked us to do.

God’s love shown to us and through us can and will overpower sin; all sin.  In love, no condemnation, we must take sin seriously and follow the example of Jesus.  “Jesus was left alone with the woman standing guilty before him.  Jesus said to her, ‘Woman where are your accusers?  Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one Lord’.  And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more” (John 8:9-11).  Ours is not to condemn but it is ours to point others to Jesus who can release them in love and reveal the right way to be and to live.

GOD'S WAY WORKS FOR ME

“Where there is no vision, the people perish,

 But blessed is he who keeps the law.”

Proverbs 29:17

There are many translations of the Bible so there are many versions of this verse.  Other words for vision include “no revelation of God and His Word”, no redemptive revelation of God”, God’s law and order”, “guidance from God”.

Other words for perish are, “cast off restraint”, get out of control”, law and order disappear”, “lose self control”, “decay”, “run wild”,  “stumble all over themselves”, “do what ever they want to”. As I read over the many words for perish I felt like I was reading the past few years of newspapers.  It is what is going on in this country and world today.  I found it disturbing, to say the least.

The small seeds that have been scattered and planted for the past decades have now bloomed and everyone wonders, “Where did these weeds come from?  How did we get to where we are in this country, with so much division, hatred, lawlessness, and violence?” “How did we come to this?”

This country was never perfect but it did have boundaries of behavior that were acceptable and unacceptable for all people. We had standards to measure by.  Acceptable behavior was upheld by society. Unacceptable behavior was addressed and corrected.  If unacceptable behavior was not corrected then it was punished.

Over time and tide those standards have been battered down and washed away by relativism and having no objective truth.  Little by little the boundaries of behavior were pushed against again and again, little by little, and finally those boundaries fell completely.  Without those boundaries anything goes.  Some people are now able to abuse that freedom,  to cast off restraint, get out of control,, run wild, ignore law and order, do whatever feels good to them, and in the end they wind up stumbling all over themselves.  Others now act all shocked and disgusted at those who do and say what they want with no remorse.  Then the pointing fingers come out and the scapegoating begins.  The war of words and opinions fill the air, everyone blaming one another.  This only accentuates the division, hatred, lawlessness and violence and tends to drown out any voice of reason or any hope for a solution.

I have a Trinitarian and Biblical worldview so I am not at all shocked; just sad.  I know that human nature is just that and that the deeds of unredeemed or unconverted flesh lead right to where it has led.  Many of the World Religions would testify to that as well.  But Religion is the number one boundary that has been battered down and done away with.  And that is what makes me very sad because in the end that is where the root of the problem lies.  Religion has failed to do what it was meant to do; make us better people, people of love and peace and contentment.

I consider myself a disciple of Jesus, not of a tradition or a church, but I come from the Christian Tradition so I can only speak to that; but we have failed again and again to listen to and stay true to our Source and now we are where we are.  But this is nothing new.  When Jesus came to earth the world conditions were not unlike ours.  A corrupt government centered around power, money, and immorality ruled over the people.  Those who believed in God knew at some point their king would come and defeat the rulers that were ruling over them.  Jesus did come and where did He go?  Not to Caesar or Pilate, but to the established Religious System.  There is where he placed the blame.  They had compromised their mission.  They did not help the poor or heal the sick.  They marginalized people and had no love or compassion for those who God had put in their charge to care for.  They were too busy and too blended in with the world system of power and prestige.  Out of the fear of losing that they killed the prophets and eventually crucified God’s Son.

There are a lot of people who see the problem and are trying to come up with new ways of doing things.  I have seen this concern many times and have watched as people come up with new systems to replace the old systems that are no longer working.  Eventually the new system becomes the old system and you know the routine.  I have been a part of several of these groups and they looked like this…We don’t like the idea of Pope so we will leave and do something different.  The only thing really different was that they became the Pope.  I began to see the problem.  We want to do it our way, which is that good ole human nature rising itself once again.

The thought that went through my head today was this…Perhaps our extremely righteous indignation against Donald Trump is that we really know deep inside our hearts that there but for the grace of God go I.  I don’t believe that I am the only one who always wants to have things my way and tend to want to make others do things my way.

So, when it comes to always trying to change Religion or change the Church, how much of that change reflects “things my way” thinking?  Do we even ever think to ask God how He feels about His Church and does He want things changed.  I have been to many “making the church better” meetings and except for the opening two minute prayer which we don’t even wait for an answer before we start in on our ideas, I would say the answer is no, not REALLY.  Somehow I think that might really be our problem.

I have continually been struck to conviction when I ponder Isaiah 55: 8-11.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

Neither are your ways my ways.

As the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are my ways higher than your ways

And my thoughts than your thoughts.

So is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty

But will accomplish what I desire

And achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

I don’t sense that God is all worried and disturbed about what is happening in Religion or in the Church.  The People He has been continually building since the beginning of time and will continue to build until the end of time is alive and well and “the gates of Hades will not overcome it”.

As for me, I want to hear that prophetic vision, find that “spring of living water”, and go with its flow; I want to stop digging the man made cisterns that continually break and cannot hold water.  (Jeremiah 2:13) God’s ways work for me.

 

KNOW THAT GOD IS GOD

“The wind blows where it wishes,

And you hear its sound, but do not know

Where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

John 3:8

There is this wonderfully free flowing, natural energy the fills this world.  Every living thing was created with that energy and has that energy within and surrounding it.  It causes and maintains growth and left free is creative and productive.  There is a natural flow to that energy and life follows that flow freely.

When the free flow of energy is obstructed, contained, and controlled it will produce unintended consequences.  Often these consequences are destructive.  Human beings are forever trying to manipulate and control things they have no business controlling.

Faith is being still and knowing that God is God.  It is knowing and understanding that the universe was created by the word of God, not made out of things that are visible.  God maintains all that He created within this natural flow of life and man’s responsibility is to accommodate to that natural flow. 

Human beings are to care for and attend to, not control what God has created.  We are to be assured that things spoken by God are there, even if they are yet unseen.  We are to know that we know and order our lives in that sacred knowledge that comes from the word of God, spoken either in nature or in the Scriptures.  It is not head knowledge.  It is heart wisdom.  It is seeing things as they are, not necessarily as they are said or thought to be.

We can’t see the wind but we know it’s there.  We can’t see God but we know He’s there.  If we receive Him and believe in His name, He makes us His children and we then have the assurance of things hoped for, promised by our Father, as our eternal inheritance, secured for us by His Son, Jesus.

LIVING INTO OUR INHERITANCE

All the plants and animals that God created were made “according to its kind”.  But God took a different tack with man.  “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”.  And He did.  Then He breathed His Spirit into man and he became a living creature.

When man created his sons they were made in his image, in his likeness.  The image of God was tainted and diluted.  God’s perfect nature was corrupted with man’s human nature and caused a different world of people to inhabit the world then God had originally intended.  This corruption was sparked by man’s rebellion and continues throughout the earth to this day; an earth now filled with chaos and violence.

The tension between God’s nature and human nature becomes a spiritual war within every human being.  We are continually given a choice between who to follow and obey; Spirit of flesh.  God appeals through the Spirit.  God’s adversary, Satan appeals through the flesh.  In these days of waiting for Jesus to return it appears that the imposed self serving ruler of this world Satan is winning.  But I know the end of the story.  He is already judged and condemned and soon he will be sentenced and his rule will end.  But what are God’s People, His children suppose to be doing now; how are we to be living until that Day of Days comes? Since we were originally created in God’s image and likeness it makes sense to me that we should be reflecting God with our lives and our actions.

 God is Spirit so we should reflect the attributes and fruits of the Spirit in all we do to all we come in contact with and interact with in our day to day lives.  That means living lives of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

God is love so we should be reflecting the attributes of love in all we do and to all we come in contact with and interact with in our day to day lives.  That means being patient and kind, not being envious or boastful, not being arrogant or rude.  It means not insisting on our own way, not being irritable or resentful, not rejoicing at wrong doing but rejoicing with the truth.  We are to never stop loving because love never ends.  This means we must bear and endure all things, believe the best about all things, and find hope in all things.

This is a tall order and Jesus amps it up by teaching and showing that this love isn’t only for those who love us but it is also for those who hate us, persecute us, for strangers and for our enemies.  This can’t be done in our flesh and human nature.  It is too tall an order to do this on our own.  Only the Spirit of God living in us can do this. 

We must also demonstrate this love, patience, and endurance towards ourselves because we are not yet perfect.  We need to remember that now we see through a mirror dimly and God’s image that is to be in us is still in the works and will be until that day of days when we see Him face to face and we, each one of us will be fully known as we have been fully known, complete in God’s image and likeness, just as we were created to be.

So for now our work is to make good choices; choices that result in decreasing our temporary fleshly human nature and increasing our eternal Spirit filled nature within us.  The battle has already been fought by Jesus.  Now we are to live into that victory that is our inheritance from our Father.

LISTENING SILENTLY TO GOD

I want to learn to listen silently to God

Listen with a deep internal silence

No personal agenda

No personal filters

No interpreters

No quest for personal gain

No approval from man

No praise or esteem

No respect or acknowledgement

Simply listening silently to God

Listening and obeying.

“Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.

To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifices of fools,

For they do not know that they are doing evil.

Be not rash with your mouth,

Nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God,

For God is n heaven and you are on earth.

Therefore let your words be few.

Ecclesiastes 5:1-3

“Your thoughts are not my thoughts,

Neither are your ways my ways.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are my ways higher than your ways

And my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8,9

ONLY GOD'S WAY WILL STAND TIME AND TIDE

God continually declares that He has a purpose for His creation and that only His purpose and plan will stand throughout eternity.

“I have spoken and I will bring it to pass;

I have purposed, and I will do it.”

Isaiah 46:8-13

God built His Kingdom from the beginning of time.  God is building His house and says that those who think they are building it labor in vain.  Jesus said that He was building His Church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  God is clear and direct in His speaking and yet we human beings continue to build our own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water and cannot stand. 

It is not a human endeavor to “reimage” the Church and make it more relevant to the world’s culture.  Anything done in that way is idolatry; anything built in that way is a “golden calf”.

God has had an eternal plan, a purpose, and that plan will succeed and WILL stand time and tide.  He is bringing forth His Kingdom in His way, as planned.  We are to joyfully submit to that plan and leave it in context.  In God’s time and in God’s way that plan will be revealed.  God is still at work and we are to serve Him in that work, not go out on our own and build our own kingdoms, and make names for ourselves.

THY KINGDOM COME

THY WILL BE DONE

On earth as it is

In heaven

THE ETERNAL WORD IS SUFFICIENT

“He to whom the eternal Word speaks is set free from many opinions.

From that One Word are all things and all things speak.”

Thomas a Kempis

“You shall not add to the word that God commanded

Nor shall you take from it.

Every word of God proves True

Do not add to His words.

God has spoken

And God will bring it to pass

God has purposed

And God will do it.

God’s Word does not return to Him void

It accomplishes what He purposed

It shall succeed in what it was sent for.”

Thus says the Lord God.

We live today in a world of many words, many interpretations, and many opinions.  They can become distracters and dismantlers of the Word of God and the Truth that lies within.  Human beings cannot comprehend God to interpret what He says even though we try.  God speaks clearly and directly to His People.  He tells us what we need to know and then wants us to listen and obey His counsel.  He has given us His Spirit to know the Truth of what He speaks and to give us the understanding and the power to do as He says.

Rather than attempt to speak for God to one another we are to exhibit our wisdom and understanding by living His commandments, statutes, and rules as a witness to how great God is.  What we can speak to with confidence is what we see with our own eyes and what we experience of God in our own lives.  We are to be witnesses to what Jesus did and continues to do in our lives and in the lives of others.  We are to be witnesses to show that His teachings and His life were True and continue to be True today.  These are Truths not just opinions or interpretations.

Stories are a good vehicle for this.  Personal experience as a person encounters God and interacts with Him helps us build relationships with one another.  We see God’s working within us sometimes the same and sometime different from how He is working within others.  It brings life into our interactions with one another and that results in truly knowing one another and loving one another.

Sermons have been used for generations in our churches as the central part of the service.  That is not a bad thing but one must ask oneself, “How has that been working for us?”  Do we know God better?   Do we know one another better?  Do we love God better?  Do we love one another better?

Sermons fill the ears and head

Stories fill the heart

Sermon’s mix God’s Word with man’s words

And can dilute the influence of the Eternal Word.

If this has been working for us, fine.  If this has not been working for us maybe we need to think about doing things in a different way.

GOD'S OVERALL PLAN IS DWELLING WITH HIS PEOPLE

It is not about building the Kingdom

It is already built

It is not about building personal empires

It is not about building a church.

As in the garden in the Beginning

As in the New Jerusalem…

“Behold the dwelling place of God

Is with man…

They will be My people

And I will be their God.”

God has put eternity into man’s heart

Man cannot find out what God has done

From the beginning to the end.

God has done it

And it will last forever

Nothing can be added

Nothing can be taken away.

That which is, already has been

That which is to be, already has been.

“In My Father’s House

Are many rooms…

I go to prepare a place for you

So you can be with Me forever.

Return to God

The fountain of living water

Stop building your own cisterns

Broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Return to God

And live into your inheritance.