Monday, February 28, 2011

3rd Steps

3rd Steps

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way (Mark 1:2).

The story of The Revolution of Jesus Christ is as old as the dawn of time, but it puts down roots in the lives and prophecies of the prophets and the patriarchs.

I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them (Isaiah 42:16).

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is indeed an unknown and unprecedented path to salvation. God coming to earth, sharing the form and vulnerabilities of a human being, is hard to comprehend and impossible to place in the box of human control. If we are to follow the path we need illumination, light to guide our way.

The Holy Spirit provides the light we need to walk the path of Jesus Christ. There are many dramatic stories of going from darkness into light. Our whole understanding of reality changes when we experience the light. What we often fail to appreciate is that living in the world acts as a slow but consistent dimmer switch. Two realities, Two masters compete for our hearts minds and souls. Our human impulse to try to accommodate them both. While we aspire to live in the heavens, we do after all live in the world. By walking the path of Jesus Christ we learn to live in but not of the world. However, our course can only be maintained through the steady illumination of the Holy Spirit. To walk the path where we are certain to be persecuted, struck down, and abandoned we must seek the Holy Spirit’s constant illumination of our minds, spirits, hearts and souls. When God’s love becomes more real to us than the rocks people throw, the falls we take and the isolation of being a Christ follower, we cease to have two masters. Jesus Christ is our only master.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Second Steps

Second Steps

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1)

Who is “Jesus Christ, the Son of God?” Is he a human that God vested with the mantle of “Messiah” and charged with saving his people? Is he the divine and immortal son of an all powerful God?” Is he a human subject to the same temptations we all are? Is he a God impervious to sin’s temptations? Is he a man who fishes, eats and socializes? Is he a God who makes his points with miracles?

The bridge between that which is comprehendible and that which is incomprehendible is tenuous. Does the human element of Jesus Christ make it easier to comprehend the God element? Does being the Son of God give meaning to Jesus Christ the man?

All Man and All God

What is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

 The God news is that Man and God-God and Man are joined.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Week Two Review

Week Two Review

On night, in February of 2011, I had a long night with God, the kind of night where I can’t sleep and God won’t leave me alone. Those hours of praying and trying to doze led to a vision of the person that God could transform me into. I committed to the experiment of spending five minutes out of each hour asking God how I could serve him in the next hour. I expected to spend a couple minutes of prayer opening myself to God and his love. The next two minutes were supposed to be dedicated to listening to God during the final minute I was supposed to open my eyes and find some concrete way to serve God in the next hour.

Week Two Results

When I first started this journey a couple weeks ago, God’s instructions seemed simple: clean this, pay attention to the child, love this person when you are tired. These last ten days have been a whirlwind of people and opportunities to love them. As usual I’ve found that my efforts to love are insufficient and broken. My hope is that God’s grace will continue to transform me and that my displays of imperfect love will be transformed into instruments of his perfect love.
            This week, the concept of the wilderness been very important to me. The wilderness is the place, either literal or spiritual that I go to hear God’s voice clearly. When I am swept up in the world, its cares and the business around me, I cannot hear God’s voice clearly. The wilderness, whether it is a month-long trip in the desert or seven minutes in prayer, is a process of emptying. I empty out the world, its rules, concerns and reality to hear God’s one true voice of love.

Intercessory prayer has become a much bigger part of my life. I have at a dozen people who keep floating through my prayers. Some of them I know very well and some of them I know through the whispers of God. God unexpectably opens up opportunities to witness with the attendant at a cafĂ©, I’m emailing with my brother who is serving in a Muslim country and then I go to church and meet a couple getting ready to serve in another Muslim country. It is very much like God is opening my eyes to a world that was always there but never perceived by me.

During this week God has opened me more fully to the opportunities my children to witness to God. When my wife and I first had children I was overwhelmed by their constant need to be loved and cared for. As they got older I started to treasure whatever time I could get to myself. This week God has opened me more fully to the joy and pleasure of saying, “yes” when they come asking to play.

Fatigue: There were moments this week when I felt just completely exhausted. I was so tired that all I could do was sit and not move. The idea of putting more effort into seeking to serve God seemed overwhelming. I’m still trying to figure if these are signs that I’m ignoring an important principle like Sabbath rest or opportunities to exercise my faith that God still calls to us when are not actively seeking him. What does it mean to rest in the Lord?
Blessings: God has continued to bless me with some wonderful time with my wife, children, family and friends. I thank him for those blessings. God has also given me something that I have not had in a long time, hope. There are precious moments in these last days when I believe that I can be of use to God in his central task of loving.

Friday, February 18, 2011

First Steps

First Steps

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1).


            All revolutions have a beginning that sparks thousands if not millions of other beginnings. The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God is really the beginning of time. Yet each human being is constantly waiting for the secondary explosion of a new beginning. These secondary explosions are the catalysts that convert us from bystanders to participants in the revolution of the good news.
            The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God is a concept so complicated and alien to human beings that Mark spends his entire text trying to explain its meaning. In short, the good news is that it is now possible for human beings to be joined with God in his perfect will.
            There are two first steps that initiate us as participants in The Revolution of Jesus Christ. First, we are to constantly expect, prepare for and welcome the new beginnings of Jesus Christ in our lives. It is not enough to be saved 10 years-ago, 5-years-ago, 2 years ago or last week. We need a new beginning with Jesus Christ each day, hour, minutes and second that we breath. When we welcome these new beginnings, God draws near and we start to experience reality through his perspective of love. Allowing God to open our eyes to his perception of the universe is the second step toward participation in The Revolution of Jesus Christ. Through God’s grace we learn to see the world as the domain of three or four billion people starving from insufficient quantities of God’s love, guidance and grace. The Revolution of Jesus Christ is an exponential chain of new beginnings in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Week 1 Review

Week 1 Review:

A week ago, I had a long night with God, the kind of night where I can’t sleep and God won’t leave me alone. Those hours of praying and trying to doze led to a vision of the person that God could transform me into. I committed to the experiment of spending five minutes out of each hour asking God how I could serve him in the next hour. I expected to spend a couple minutes of prayer opening myself to God and his love. The next two minutes were supposed to be dedicated to listening to God during the final minute I was supposed to open my eyes and find some concrete way to serve God in the next hour.

Week 1 results:

Sometimes I opened my eyes and had very concrete tasks before me. The most obvious example was when I opened my eyes and saw two new toilet brushes on the toilet. It took a couple minutes of arguing with God to realize that his plans were different from the plans I’d started the day with. I’d planned to spend the day or a good portion of it writing and getting the 1st post set up. God wanted me to spend the day getting the house clean and prepared for the company we were having that night.

When I obeyed God and started serving him the way he asked me to he blessed my with special time with my wife, my children and our guests.

Sometimes I would do my prayer routine in the midst of other activities, like writing, taking care or children or doing household chores. At times I felt his blessing and encouragement to continue in what I was doing. Yet, later I would realize that praying in the midst of doing other things, no matter how practically essential, does not take the place of deliberately setting aside time to open myself and submit to his desire for my service. Maybe there are two kinds of prayer involved in this process, the continuous prayer of inviting God into every aspect of our daily lives and the solemn prayer of setting aside time just for communing with God. It’s probably not practical to do solemn pray each hour, but is quite possible five five-minute periods each day.

Sometimes there were hours when I was either “too tired” or “too distracted” to pay attention to how God wanted me to serve him. Are such periods normal and expected for all people, Christian or not? The alternative theory is that these are the times when we are nibbling ourselves away from God. I’m still wondering how a Christian takes his or her rest in God.

Sometimes there were periods of crisis when I felt helpless and feared losing everything. In these time I prayed to God, confessing my fears and pains. The biggest comfort I got was that the ability to pray is proof that I am not completely helpless.

General Results

My relationships with my wife and children are better.
My house is cleaner, not just from a one time cleaning binge but rather from a more determined daily effort to keep it clean.

I’m devoting more time to intercessory prayer.

The Doctor told me that I could drive in the daytime.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Joining the heavens and the earth

Jesus Christ was put to death for being a rebel.  In John’s Gospel,  Jesus’ enemies claimed that Jesus was rebelling against the Emperor of Rome: “the Jews cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.’"(9:12). Luke presents a similar theme: “They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king” (23:2). Matthew and Mark concentrate much more narrowly on the question of whether Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews. There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that Jesus’ enemies accused Jesus of being an enemy of Rome, while at the same time threatening to riot against the appointed Roman governor: “So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves"(Mat 27:24). If Jesus was leading a rebellion against Rome his execution did little to save the Roman Empire. In less than 300 years Christianity would become the official religion of the Roman Empire.
            Alternately, Jesus was put to death because he was rebelling against the Temple authorities. As Mark, the earliest gospel, describes, Jesus made a bold entrance to temple:

“Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves;  and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.  He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers.’  And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching”(Mark 11:15-18).

The next day, the temple authorities came to Jesus and asked him, "By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them"(11:28)? These questioners are counting on Jesus to side with either earthly or heavenly authority. If he claims he is authorized by God they can kill him for blasphemy. If he claims he is authorized by earthly authority they can quite plainly make clear that no earthly authority has authorized him. Either way they get to kill him. Jesus wisely answers back with an in kind question: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin”(Mark 11:30)? The Pharisees bemoan their entrapment: If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him?'  But shall we say, 'Of human origin'?" -- they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet.  So they answered Jesus, "We do not know"(Mark 11:31-33).” The answer that is conspicuously absent from the dialogue is “both.” In the beginning of time, God describes an event in which the heavens and the earth, the creative actions of God and the creative actions of man are fused together: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens”(Genesis 2:4). Since the fall in Eden, the heavens and the earth were separated. The temple authorities were charged with safely and reverently connecting the Jews to their God in his domain of the heavens. The execution of Jesus Christ did little to preserve the temple or its system. Within a generation, the temple was destroyed and the Jews were scattered to all corners of the empire. The Roman governors were charged with maintaining order on the earthly domain. The Jewish revolt in Palestine similarly thwarted the mission of the secular or Hellenistic Roman authorities.
            To ask whether Jesus Christ was murdered by religious or secular authority is like asking whether the Baptism of John was of heavenly or human origin. The answer is clearly both. The more important question, however, is what was Jesus Christ rebelling against? Was his target a less than perfect religious system or an oppressive empire? The answer is both and neither. His target was something more intrinsic to the universe. As Christians we tend to use the shorthand of “sin” to describe the target of Jesus Christ’s rebellion. There are, however, at least three separate connotations to the word “sin.” There is social sin, a failure to observe the most basic societal propriety. There is moral sin, the act of doing wrong, lying, cheating, stealing, killing . . .  There is also spiritual sin, a dysfunctional relationship between a human being and God. Many Evangelical Christians choose to define “sin” as anything that separates the individual from God or other human beings.
             The most glaring separation between God and human beings happens to be the separation between God’s domain of the heavens and the human domain of the earth. Adam and Eve’s trespasses in the Garden of Eden tore apart unity of the heavens and the earth-God’s creativity and human creative activity. Through the incarnation Jesus Christ responds to Adam and Eve’s initial trespasses with his own audacious act of trespass. He, a unified Man-God, enters into to the broken and fractured domain of human beings. Thus Jesus Christ becomes what Paul calls the last Adam (I Corinthians 15:45). “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”(1Corinthians 15:21-22).
            2,000 years later, those who consider themselves disciples of Jesus Christ are still struggling with the nature and form of this struggle to restore the unity of heaven and earth, God and human beings, spirit and flesh. Where does the Christian put his or her time, effort, energy, talents and resources? Is it is building institutions, reaching the lost, ministering to the poor and down-trodden, worshiping with heart or just simply trying to love in everything we do? The Christian church, especially in America, has an embarrassment of resources. With all the buildings, money, staffs, state of the art audio visual and power point technology, Churches make marginal at best, gains in moving the world toward a place where God’s will is done. It’s estimated that for 90% of the people who call themselves Christians, calling Christ Lord or attending church makes absolutely no difference in how they live their lives. In fact having Jesus come and implement the will of his Father would be decidedly uncomfortable for the majority of the “Christians” in the Western World.
            So why do the Christian institutions of the Western World make so little headway in training and motivating their members to actively strive for the reunification of the heavens and the earth, for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven? E. Stanley Jones suggests that “we inoculate people with a mild form of Christianity, rendering them immune to the real thing.” While Jones’ theory has great merit, it does not speak to the motivation behind such a watering down. As so called Christians, we tend to drastically underestimate the degree to which God is foreign to ourselves, our culture and our world. If God is fishing for human beings, then he is fishing from a domain as different from ours as the above water world is from the underwater world. If someone hooked a fish and somehow communicated that he or she wanted the fish to help bring the air of the above water world to the below water world, there would no doubt be some fear and confusion. In this metaphor of fishing, Jesus Christ is an amphibian who breaths water and air. To those who trust and surrender to Jesus Christ he instills a nascent amphibious capacity. With faith and practice, this capacity grows, like a mustard seed.
            Most Christians understand that at some point their individual ponds are going to dry up and that they will need to breath air. They may accept Jesus or at least the doctrines of Christianity as a hedge against that distant need, but at the same time remain deeply fearful of air and the necessity of breathing air. Breathing air, changes all the laws, structures and comfort zones of those who live as fish. Air breathers are therefore foreigners subject to suspicion, ostracism and persecution. It is also this ability to breath air that allows certain fish to pass on the promise and hope of life after the pond to other fish.
            When Christians recognize the fact that the most salient feature of their faith is its ability to transform them from being creature of this world its rules to being creatures of God’s domain and his will, the powers and principalities of this world tremble. Such a transformation is only possible when we accept the guidance and opportunities provided by the holy spirit.
            What are the natures of these gifts of guidance and opportunity? The guidance of the Holy Spirit is that which allows us to see glimpses of how God sees the world. John gives us some interesting insight into how God sees the world: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (I John 4:16). When God sees the world billions of people all of whom he loves. That is a sharp departure from the way the world trains us to look upon the populace of the world. According to the calculus of the world, there are good people and bad people, friends and enemies, allies and opponents. The world tells us to treat our allies well and our enemies with contempt. The guidance of the Holy Spirit teaches us to look upon each and every person as someone beloved to God. If we abide in God and God abides in us, we have the opportunity to love others as God has loved us.
            It is important to understand that we cannot love through hard work, conviction or determination. God’s grace enables us to love. This same grace, purchased through the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, frees us from a world of calculation and self service. It also teaches us to give freely from the love that God has already invested in us.
            The Holy Spirit’s guidance opens our eyes to the opportunities we have to love as God has loved us. Because we are human beings we tend to focus on the most dramatic instances of God’s grace. The dramatic instances, like the time we helped a homeless person, the time we helped someone receive salvation or the time we saw an apparently hopeless resolved through God’s grace, are important because they demonstrate the vast power and majesty of our God and his grace. The life of a Christian, however, is a marathon not a sprint. When I first learned to jog, I would sprint for a couple of hundred yards and then lapse into a walk. My Christian development proceeded in a similar manner. I’d have a couple very dramatic experiences with God and opportunities for service and then lapse into walk during which it seemed there was nothing I could do for God. I am now convinced that God offers us dozens of opportunities each day to serve him and his purpose of love. I’ve made it a goal to spend part of each hour asking God how I can serve him in the next hour. I expect him to present me with small concrete tasks that serve his purpose of love. Please help me and encourage me on this journey.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

How do you clean up really big messes? When I was a child, I needed my mother to help. The Legos went in this box, the blocks in the clothes basket, the Lincoln Logs in their can and the action figures in their carrying case. When my mom was beside me, cleaning went quickly because she would direct my tasks; breaking the gargantuan job of cleaning my room into small achievable steps. Without her I was lost in a hopeless quagmire. It is similar with God. We are called to love others as Jesus loves us, to live lives that are worthy of the gospel, to go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. To most of us these expectations sound like Formula One racing. In contrast, many of us feel lucky to get our beat up pick-up-truck to start. As long as we keep trying to clean up the messes of our lives on our own we’re going to be bouncing around in backfiring trucks. Once we make a habit of soliciting the guidance of the Holy Spirit and acting upon that guidance, our lives are transformed into the full and abundant lives that God intends for us. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the opportunities that God puts before us. We can be absolutely certain that whether we are the pastor of a mega church or an invalid that can’t get out of his or her house, God gives us more than enough opportunities to be good and faithful servants. The challenge, of course, is to be faithful in recognizing those opportunities and responding to them.