[God's] Timing [is everything]

Sometimes I get frustrated at my own youth. Because sometimes being young means being right at the wrong times, and therefore means being right in the wrong way.

Let me illustrate. You know that old phrase: "You can take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"? Fifty bucks says that someone over the age of 50 coined that phrase. No way was it coined by a 26-year-old male... I'd bet on that.

Now, the 26-year-old male might understand what that phrase means in principle, and perhaps would even be able to use it correctly in a sentence or apply it appropriately to a situation. BUT, that truth has yet to be internalized and burned on his heart and mind... burned by years of experience and the wisdom that comes from it.

That phrase about a thirsty horse has embedded within it a very scriptural, spiritual truth: only God knows how and when to give those thirsty for him a drink. It could be quite obvious to anyone that what they are thirsty for is God or something of God, but until God has them where they need to be such that they are willing and able to take long, satisfying draughts of his presence and mission... well, like the phrase says, you just can't make them drink.

Now, this truth and the reality of it should inform the 26-year-old male about how he should operate. It really should. But, truth be told, sometimes the young man fails to make adjustments to the way he is operating, mainly because he is young and therefore stupid and willful at times. He learns, but only after his God treats him in the same manner as He is treating other thirsty people. As the young man sees God's impeccable timing in the lives of those he is ministering to and with, he begins to realize that what he himself is thirsty for is humility. And God in His faithfulness (and in His humor, I surmise), has uniquely positioned the young man to take some difficult but satisfying gulps.

The body of Christ is unique. One part is able to tend to another only with humility and gentleness, attuned to the heart and mission of the Great Physician, because this is the only way that the Physician brings about true and lasting healing. Just like a doctor must be gentle and sure with the scalpel, having on his or her mind the weightiness and delicacy of the task before him or her, so also must we as members of one body have on our minds the weightiness and delicacy of the task before us: tending to the needs of one another. And loving one another, while it is expressed through a variety of means and for a variety of purposes, is always properly prescribed with an appropriate amount of gentleness and humility, patience and longsuffering. If it is not, then it is not the love of Christ.

Scripture Speaks (and doesn't need our help)

The difference between the two is startling. On the one hand, one can preach by coming up with a mandate (compatible with the Bible or not), and then go to the Bible in search of support for it. On the other hand, one can preach by coming up with a question or an issue, and then looking to see what the Bible mandates about it... if anything at all. And yes, there is a dramatic difference between the two "hands."

Let's back up, and perhaps get a little foundation as to why there is such a dramatic difference between the two approaches to preaching. There are a few core doctrines, or things that we believe to be true, about the nature of the Bible. Let's take a look.

To begin with, we believe the Bible to be the "Word of God." Unfortunately, that phrase is used so often that it's almost become a surname of the Bible, losing the significance of its meaning in common speech. Suffice it to say, we believe that God--the real and living God--really communicates to us today through the words that are written on the pages of the Bible.

But let's dig a little deeper than that. How exactly have we come to this conclusion that the Bible is the real word of the real God? Well, we believe that He inspired it--we believe that He was in a supernatural and intimate relationship with the many authors and editors of the many books of the Bible. We believe that He interacted with real human beings in real faith communities across time periods and cultures, working through their uniquely human personalities and perspectives, to cement the timeless truths about who He is and how He interacts with His beloved people. Inspiration was the mechanism by which the Bible claims to be the Word of the One Who Inspires.

God inspired faith communities through His real Spirit. This Spirit now illumines us, or makes the truths cemented in the Bible effective in our minds and hearts. Picture it this way: God turns on the "lightbulb over our heads" as we encounter His truth in the Bible. It's that "Ah hah!" moment where a truth is integrated into our very lives. We believe that the truth of the Bible, our belief in it, and our obedience to it (see the entry entitled "faith") to be spiritually transformative. As we encounter it, as the Spirit illumines us to it, as we believe it, and as we obey it... we become more and more like the Word himself, Jesus.

So those are the doctrines of Scripture--that's what we as evangelical Christians believe it to be, and that's how we believe God uses it to work in our lives. So, back to where we began. In light of these truths, how are we to share this Word? How are we to teach it? To preach it? To use it in conversation?

Well, when we go to share, teach, or preach it, we have to remind ourselves that that this Word is effective in and of itself. There is a real God whose real Spirit really interacts with real people, and really illumines them to the effective truths in the Bible. And while He might use us as tools in this process (or He might not!), make no mistake: He is the one who does it, and does it with our without us.

(A little aside: as you read that, what's your first reaction? Are you jumping to defend the need to explain it? The need to study and understand it rightly? The need to preach it faithfully? Careful. While all of those things are good and have their respective place, their respective place is not first and foremost. What is first and foremost is God and His truth that He effects in the lives of those He has created and loved. It's important that we keep the right order.)

When it comes right down to it, the thing that "makes" this truth effective in the lives of those who read and hear it is God's Spirit. One can preach, teach, and share with great conviction and emotion, and should do so appropriately. But it is not the teacher or preacher who is the catalyst. It is God's Spirit Who Is the catalyst. The preacher and teacher does not make a Scripture "relevant;" it already is relevant. We have already sinned, and we stand here and now in need of a Savior. This is objectively and already true for all of us. And the Spirit already stands ready to illumine us to our objective reality. He has already inspired the biblical authors to communicate this truth.

So as we discover this truth in the Bible as we read and study it, and as we allow the Spirit to illumine us to it, it becomes imprinted on our hearts. As we let the Bible speak its redemptive message to us first, we are able to preach and teach faithfully and effectively. As we rediscover these truths over and over again through a vibrant connection with God's Spirit, we communicate them with the Spirit's power. We don't need new ways to communicate old ideas; we need the Spirit to awaken our hearts to the beauty and power of God's timeless truth.

Let's go to God's Word with our questions and let the Spirit answer us, instead of using God's Word to support our own answers. And let's preach and teach in such a way that we encourage people to encounter the living God by his living Spirit through his living Word... instead of handing them our boiled-down, simplified, relevantly-packaged version of it.

God First?

What do we mean when we say things like "Put God first" or "Make Jesus central?" How does one "put" God anywhere? How does one "make" Jesus do anything?

Of course, we have very good intentions when we communicate by using phrases like those above. We mean something along the lines of obey God, be pious, go to church, read your Bible, and other things surrounding a devotional life... or a life devoted to God.

But good intentions assumed and aside, the language we use to communicate the need for a devotional and devoted life is very, very telling. What does this language tell us about ourselves and about our perception of the life devoted to God? It tells us that we, by and large, think that the God-devoted life is completely and utterly up to us being devoted to it.

That's a mouthful. Better stated: We've got the cart ahead of the horse, so much so that we think that we're the horse, instead of passengers in the cart.

Let's expand that metaphor a bit. As we're using it here, the Trinity is the horse, and we're passengers in his cart. Just as a cart can not get where it needs to go without the horse, so also are we stuck in our sin and death without God's Son, Jesus. This is our reality. This reality begins with God. God is. His name, Yahweh, I AM, says just that. Without him there is nothing; without him we are nothing.

But when we say "Put God first" or "Make Jesus the center", it's almost as though we're jumping past the truth that God is first already, before and whether or not we recognize it. It's almost as though we're forgetting that Jesus is already the center, before and whether or not we read about him or pray to him daily.

Isn't this just semantics? Isn't this just a different way of saying the same thing? No, I don't believe that it is. I think the Jews would have laughed at a phrase like "Put God first"... at least the pre-Pharisaical Jews would have. To them, God was first, whether in times of obedience and blessing, or in times of disobedience and discipline. God was real to them, whether they obeyed him or not. His presence was rarely assumed or manufactured. You can say what you want to about how they responded, Most of what the Jews did (or didn't do) was in response to God and the reality of his presence.

Likewise, I think Paul and the early Christian church would have balked at a phrase like "Make Jesus the center of your life." For them, Jesus was the center of their lives, whether or not they always lived like it. To be clear, they did want to live as if Jesus was the center, but that was not the same as making Jesus the center. It was recognizing that Jesus was the center, experiencing him and his Spirit, and then living in response to that recognition.

Let me put it another way. John Ortberg writes,

"What causes incongruence in my life is spending so much of my life unaware of [God's] presence. I allow myself to act and talk in ways that are not shaped or influenced by God's constant presence."

He illustrates the above statement with this example:

"I recently visited the Christian college I attended, and I was remembering the odd game we played in the cafeteria. As we sat down to eat, we would all surreptitiously put our thumbs up, and whoever was the last one at the table to get his thumb up had to offer the prayer over the food.

Now, think about that! God is watching this the whole time. But we're sticking our thumbs up, and the loser has to pray. Then we bow our heads and say, 'Dear God, thanks for this food and we love you so much.'

God is present the whole time, but we were acting as if he's not paying attention until we bow our heads and close our eyes; then he picks up the phone and we're connected. But we act as if the thumb stuff escapes his notice."

Live your life, speak your words, and do what you do as if God were present with you. Because He is.

Are we aware?

How Do I Tell You

How do I tell you
That God is both real and present
And that is where to begin and end?
How can I persuade you
That you need to start there
And there you should never move beyond?
How can I convince you
That awareness of Him is what you really seek
When your eyes look right past Him
Or upon Him refuse to gaze?

How do I tell you
That contemplation leads to clarity
And reflection to relevance?
How can I explain
That being present with God comes first
And always before speaking in God's name?
How will you see
That God has just as much to say about His means
As he does about His mission?

How do I tell you?

By being patient,
By being gentle,
By being faithful,
By being courageous,
By being a servant,
By being rejected,
By persevering,
By keeping in step with the Spirit,
By looking always and never away at God,
By dying to myself,
So that Christ can live in me.
My loss is your gain,
My death is your life.

Sweet Jesus, give me the grace to die.

A Prayer

God the Father:

Gracefully grant me a heart of flesh;
Without it I am calloused to Your Ways.
Gracefully grant me eyes of faith;
Without them I am blind to Your Moves.
Gracefully grant me an attitude of humility;
Without it I am a danger to my brothers and sisters--Your Children.
Gracefully grant me a gentle spirit;
Without it I am violent towards all those You bring into my path.
Gracefully grant me a quiet mind;
Without it I am lost in the noise of life.
This I request in the name of Your Son Jesus,
And at the behest of Your Holy Spirit.
Amen.

I'm Like Jonah (an aside from Without Love)

If I am supposed to live a life of "a long obedience in the same direction," I fall miserably short.

Instead, I'm like Jonah: short spurts of obedience, mainly begrudgingly, couched by a series of disobediences, mainly involving self-righteous judgment.

"The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.' But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD."
Jonah 1:1-3

Not much of an introduction... pretty much straight to the point. God told Jonah not to be the deliverer of judgment, but to be a messenger of a merciful (yet stern) warning to Israel's sworn enemy, the violent empire Assyria. And Jonah responded immediately--not verbally, but with his posture--he ran the other way. No way. Not me. If it was a message of judgment, then yes, sign me up. Those people don't deserve anything but divine retribution for what they are doing. Let them reap the fruits of what those idiots continue to sow. Mercy and love be damned. What they need is a good punch in the face, not a slap on the wrist.

And that was my attitude, to a certain extent, toward those in my context. I came, I saw, I judged, and my posture reflected my attitude. To be honest, I'm still tempted to go there. Every time I see pure, unabashed copying of another church. Every time I see excellence held above authenticity. Every time I see strategy in front of relationship, the individual life above the common life, the churched life above the missional life, what we do in God's name above what God is already doing for his name.

And my self-righteousness swells within me. How dare they? Don't they understand? Ministry is serious! It must be protected! It must be pure! We must have a clear understanding of an order of things, lest we let the secondary reign supreme and derail us!

And, subtlely but intentionally, my message turns from a repentant invitation to a crushing (and arrogant) judgment: "If they don't listen to me, then let them be damned. Go ahead and wallow in your anxious drivenness. See where it gets you. See what God thinks of all that."

I'm Jonah. I've made God into an angry zealot, and when He comes to whisper to me that indeed He is not that (or, more accurately, he is not only that), and oh, by the way, go warn those folks to change, because I love them, I respond to him like Jonah--not with words, but with my posture: No.

Some make God into an angry zealot for the sake of religious rules--an easily challenged and discarded cause. But others make God into an angry zealot for the sake of "the glory of His name," or "authentic worship," or other such modern-day Puritanic aims--a cause that is much more difficult to challenge. We desperately seek to turn God's message to people--people whom God pursues to the grave--from a loving warning to a vengeful judgment. But a warning without love is really a judgment in disguise, for pride has yet to be eradicated.

And God knows this. God has been dealing with human pride as long as humans have walked his earth. He must root it out, lest his messengers and ministers deliver a respective message and ministry that proports to be in God's name... but is, in reality, devoid of His power, and even worse, deviated from His aim.

With pride, there is no room for love.

And without love, your message and ministry are worth nothing. Growing or shrinking, unified or fragmented, clear or muddy, without love, it has no eternal substance, becuase it is disconnected from the energizing and effective love of God.

Back to Jonah: God has chosen his messenger, and uses the necessary means (namely: a great fish) to bring Jonah into submission to what he already knew, and yet chose to run from. And when faced with this reality--that God was indeed giving him a second chance to obey, despite his brash disobedience--Jonah repents and embraces the loving warning. And so he goes.

And wouldn't you know it--those people who were beyond repenting, who would never change, who would never get it, who can only understand violence and its consquences--those people heeded God's loving warning. They actually apprehended God's love for them, understood that he chose to warn rather than to judge, saw their sin for what it was, and turned from it.

And Jonah hated that.

Again, I am like Jonah. I have experienced that initial repentance, and have seen my sin in my desire to deliver a judgment rather than a loving warning. And now that I've delievered the loving warning, and now that the recipients are heeding it... I'm a little mad. Maybe even disappointed.

Isn't that sick? It is! It's terrible--a blight on the very mercy on which I rely.

Continue to convict me, Lord. I am unworthy to spread your message. I am sinful beyond comprehension. Let my story not end like that of Jonah's.

Without Love, Pt. 2

Previously in my entry entitled "Without Love, Pt. 1," I came to the conclusion that as we cultivate this interior life founded on and fueled by the gracious love of God--expressed mainly in the death of his wonderful Son Jesus, and mediated by the effective and ongoing work of His Holy Spirit in us--we discover both God's mission in the world and the means to accomplish it.

That's a mouthful. But it can be put simply put. First:

God is real and alive and present and moving. He is moving according to His mission: to eradicate sin from the face of His world by the blood of his Son Jesus, and to establish a new (yet ancient!) way of living under Jesus' kingship among his new subjects--you and me--who have consented to being loved by King Jesus. Second:

We discover this mission--how else?--as we spend time with God. Yep. Turns out that spending time with God isn't really for us; it's for Him. Our own personal benefit from these times of devotion with Him are only a byproduct of discovering and living out His mission. This is what it means to cultivate an interior life with God--to treat Him as a person who communicates, moves, and directs through His Word, His Church, and His Divine Spirit. And third:

GOD DOES NOT STOP HIS COMMUNICATION WITH US AFTER COMMUNICATING HIS MISSION TO US. He does not say: "Go and make disciples of my Son Jesus... any old way you want to." Turns out He has something to say about our means of accomplishing his mission.

And by the way: it's not our mission to accomplish. It's HIS mission that HE will accomplish, with or without us. Yes, He is capable of doing it. He's God, the Author of All that Is. And we would do well to remind ourselves of that daily, and contrary to the temptation to come to the conclusion that the ministry of the Holy Spirit would come to a screeching halt without us.

But back to point #3: God has a lot to say about how we go about making disciples, building community, worshipping, etc. Take Christ's temptation, for example, as treated by Henri Nouwen in
In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. Satan tempted Jesus not on issues of mission, but on issues of means. First, he tempted Jesus to be relevant, i.e., to prove his power by turning stones into bread:

The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
(Matthew 4:3)

Jesus responds by remaining irrelevant, meaning that he did not fall to the temptation to use his own power to manufacture the desired result. He did not seek to take God's rightful place of Sustainer and Provider, and says as much in his response:

Jesus answered, "It is written: `Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' "
(Matthew 4:4)

So Satan comes at him again, this time tempting Jesus to be spectacular--to prove his own worth to himself and others by his own accomplishments:

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:
" `He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' "
(Matthew 4:5-6)

But Jesus refuses, and remains anchored to his humble position as One submitted to God, and one in solidarity as a servant among humanity:

Jesus answered him, "It is also written: `Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' "
(Matthew 4:7)

Finally, Satan pulls out all the stops and goes to the very thing that caused he himself to fall: the temptation to be powerful. Satan knows that we are capable of paying a lot of lipservice to building God's kingdom, but often our means of accomplishing that goal are such that we are building our own little empire (see entry entitled "Crystal Cathedral;" see also "Lakewood Church"... and if you really wanna dig, even look up "Focus on the Family"), we end up utilizing God's name for our brand. Note Satan's attempt:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."
(Matthew 4:8-9)

But Jesus didn't come to become powerful. Jesus' power rested in his humility, submission, and radical obedience to his Father with whom he was intimately connected. He didn't need the power of the world and the influence it offered to accomplish his mission. He just needed 12 guys for three years and a cross. That's it. And he knew it. So Jesus responds:

Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: `Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.' "
(Matthew 4:10)

Jesus didn't strategize about how to "take this message" to the world. Rather, he simply lived it out, even unto his death, all the while teaching about and modeling this life to the twelve who chose to leave their lives and follow him.

Means and mission are intimately connected in Jesus' recorded life. He had to continually clarify his mission as well as continually police the suggested means for accomplishing it (remember the story of the "Sons of Thunder," the mockery of the suggestion to "come down from the cross," and the repeated injunctions of the Pharisees to return to moralism? Means come up an awful lot!)

And the importance of means are not only restricted to the story of Jesus! Remember the story of David, in which he had repeated opportunities to take the life of his murderous pursuer Saul (1 Sam. 24, 26)? He refused to do so on both accounts, in the name of God, putting his faith in the fact that God would remove Saul by His own means when He saw fit. We see the same theme again in 2 Sam. 7, where David seeks to build a temple for God, but God puts a stop to the whole thing... simply because he hadn't directed David to do so.

You see, there is a position that God seeks to occupy--no, that He does occupy. God is primary and preveniant. He acts first, then we do. If our means do not recognize this reality, and (more importantly) if they do not cause others to recognize this reality, then we might be taking people somewhere... but it's not closer to God.

Again: the temptation is to become the Primary Mover in the name of the Primary Mover. But cultivating a love for the Primary Mover will simultaneously cultivate a hatred towards the desire to take His place.