Could I Have Just a Moment?

I Samuel 19:20 "But when they saw a group of prophets prophesying with Samuel standing there as their leader, the Spirit of God came upon Saul's men and they also prophesied."
I Samuel 19:23 "But the Spirit of God came even upon him (Saul) and he walk walked along prophesying until he came to Naioth."

So let me get this straight: Saul, who is so full of himself that he can't even see straight at this point, so full of rage that he wants to kill someone who has just delivered him, is overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit? As he goes to finish the job that his men can't seem to do (kill David) he gets a dose of God that knocks him to his knees in prophetic ecstasy?

And I can't even get a taste at all this week, not even a sniff? Even though with everything within me, I am chasing after a moment like that?

I realize that I am a slave to my senses. God knows that as well. Is He trying to break me of that addiction? Is that one of the reasons that fasting exists - to break me of the need to have every itch scratched immediately?

Increase my faith, because I need a touch and You don't always give out those touches.

Riding The Thin Line

Last night I took my 7-year old son Joshua to his first Sox game at Fenway. The look in his eyes when I told him that I had got him tickets was worth everything. When I told him we were taking the subway into the game, he got even more excited.

So . . . .we're riding the T last night and he's talking and taking it all in and having the time of his life. I can literally feel his joy. As we passed a stop in the middle of town, a thought suddenly occurred to me. I can make the best night of his life the worst, by stepping out the door of the subway car just before it closes, leaving him alone. I don't know why this thought came to me, I would never, ever do that to anyone, but for some reason I realized the tenuousness in life between absolute joy and abject horror - and it's a very thin line.

For Josh, the thin line was simple: my presence. As long as I was there, even in the middle of the chaos of a crowded subway car, it was the best night of his life. If I suddenly disappeared, it would immediately turn into the absolute worst moment he'd ever experience. My presence was the difference.

While thinking about this I almost started to cry for him, for what he would feel if that did happen. I would do anything to protect and stay with him, to keep him in his joy, to let him rest secure. I wrapped my arm around him, without saying anything, just to give him a physical reminder that I was there. He looked up at me and smiled . . . . All is well.

I thought of God - how He loves us and promises to never leave and forsake us. How He desires to wrap Himself around us, if we would only let Him. I thought of how horrific my life would be if He suddenly stepped away just before a door closed, leaving me alone in this chaos. My feeling for keeping Josh close must be exactly how He feels about us, knowing what our life is like without Him.

I thought of His feelings for the people of this world, His children. Just as I wanted to cry at even the thought of Josh going through a terrifying moment without me, He must feel the same about His children that reject Him. He knows what they will ultimately experience as a result of this rejection. If I felt a pang of sorrow over what Josh would possibly go through without me, imagine what He feel knowing what they will definitely go through without Him. Jesus was a 'man of sorrows' and that has to be a part of it.

Hell is the absence of God. Heaven is His abiding presence. I got a little glimpse of that through my son's eyes last night.

And to top it all off, Big Papi hit a home run.

Immediate Test

So - do I really believe what I ended my last post with? That I simply wanted to be a "drink offering" and didn't care if I received any glory or blessing as long as the work went forward. The work of healing?

Well, God didn't take long to put that thought to the test and I FAILED.

I met someone who I had been counseling through some bad times in their life. They had been on the brink of complete destruction so it there were many nights of phone calls and meetings. I met with this person through these dark times and then I saw them the other day and it was evident that a healing had taken place. Their countenance had changed, they were testifying to God's power and it was awesome.

But I failed the test when they explained how it happened: This person went for a couple of days to another ministry and something clicked inside of them and God moved them out of the darkness and into the light. I felt a pang in my heart - I had spent countless hours and now they were giving this other ministry glory for helping them through - in one moment of light. Of course, they were thankful for the time I had been with them, but still . . . why couldn't it have been through me that this breakthrough occurred?

And so - I failed the test. The blessing of the "work" isn't the only outcome I desire, the blessing of the "worker" is still embedded in my heart. I see it clearly, I just can't overcome it. Yet.

Jesus said first remove the log from your own eye - and I am on a quest to know how. (A minor detail that He happened to leave out of the Sermon.) Sanctification is one tough process.

The Blessing of the Work, Not the Worker

James 1: 22 “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”

When we are living out our faith by helping others we often have underlying motives that betray us. We want to be blessed in who we are. But this passage in James says something else - it says we will be blessed in what we do. That's a big difference. The action we are performing - feeding the poor, counseling a brother or sister, visiting the sick - that will be blessed.

If we truly want to be an effective ambassador of Christ in this world, if we truly want to see people healed, then this is exactly what we want the promise to be. That the work will be blessed, not the workers. It goes against every popular teaching. It goes against the desires of my flesh. It cuts across the nerve center of my natural man. I want to be lifted up in my self-sacrificial ministry. I want to receive the praise of man.

Jesus states in John 5:41 - 44: "I do not accept praise from men, but I know you, I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in My Father's name, and you do not accept Me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?"

Do you see what Jesus is saying? He is saying that when we are seeking the praise of man, we do not have the love of God in our hearts, we have the love man! We will accept words from men and we will accept their praise, but we do not seek out the praise of God. Jesus says that in this case . . . . . we don't really believe. So, just to get this straight, when we are seeking the praise and acceptance of man, we don't really believe, and we don't have the love of God. In a moment of honesty, I would have to admit that this is one of my biggest hurdles. I want the praise of man. I want their acceptance. I have to be broken of this for any fruitful ministry to take place in my life.

My goal for this year is to be a true Drink Offering. The drink offering was poured on the sacrifice and burned into it, never to be seen again. The only thing that was seen was The Sacrifice. We become part of the aroma, that's all. But that's good enough for me, because II Corinthians 2:15 tells us that the aroma of Christ brings healing and life to those who are seeking Him. So what if no one ever notices me . . . . the work will be blessed.

I want the work to be blessed. I want to see people healed, lives changed, the lost come to Christ, the poor fed and clothed, the church united, relationships mended, forgiveness poured out, . . . I want to see THAT happen. I don't want or need to be lifted up in the process. I don't need to be blessed for who I am. When I'm walking in the Spirit, I want to see the work prosper and God be praised.

A Very Becoming Savior

John 1:14 "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us."

When we were lost, God became and He came. Not in the Spirit, but in the flesh. While dead in our sins, counted as enemies, He became one of us, and He came. He wasn't in some semi-detached spiritual form shouting out holy counsel, He became fully human and He came.

This is the true Gospel: God 'pitched His tent among us,' lived with us, ate with us, cried with us, rejoiced with us, lifted our heads, healed our eyes, opened our ears, cured our diseases, brought us out of darkness, walked side by side with us, taught us, gave us water when we were thirsty and food when we were hungry. He touched us, and He let us touch Him. He was here with us in every human way.

According to the prosperity gospel, all people have to do is give more, pray more, be closer to God and all will be well. Why should anyone go among the hurting? Just give them this message, preferably over the radio or television, and move on. Other churches are preaching the Word every Sunday, but are never making this Word "flesh" and dwelling among the lost.

This is not the Gospel. The Gospel is that God dwelt among men and then saved them. When we step away from the poor, for whatever reason, we are eliminating the humanity of Christ, and without His humanity there is no Gospel. He took our sins and our pain away as both God and man. It was through a combination of His love and strength that we were saved. Through His love He identified Himself with us and took our sin upon Himself - the true Intercessor. Through His strength He took on the full weight and darkness of this sin and then destroyed it completely upon the Cross, shattering its hold on us - the true Savior.

When we deny our brothers food and water, when we deny them their humanity, we deny the true Gospel which takes on their humanity and delivers them from the darkness. When they cry out . . . . we come to them. We don't shout out holy counsel from white-washed palaces. We physically enter into their world and touch them, hold them, feed them, cry with them, laugh with them and love them.

When we cried out, God became flesh and He dwelt among us. We can do no less for our fellow man. That's the true Gospel.

Lost in the Translation

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a Bible translator in Central America and she told me that they have only translated the New Testament to this point (and she has been there over 20 years). I looked into this further and found that this is pretty much the case across the world. If you had to translate a part of the Bible as quickly as possible with maximum effectiveness, of course you would focus on the NT.

However, they are finding out that the Old Testament is more than just a luxury - these cultures are begging for the whole story, for a number of reasons:

1. They feel that they've picked up the story in the middle. Why the need for a Messiah? Where does He fit into the Big Picture? What about the beginning? Where are the frames of reference for all that is happening? If Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law, the final Sacrifice, what does that even mean? There is so much missing if you just pick it up in the Gospels.

2. Many of these cultures have a great understanding of the OT culture. They get why the genealogies are so important. They understand the Law better because their societies are similar in how they function. Even the agricultural concepts are more familiar to them than to us. The OT makes sense to them.

3. They miss the incredible stories of faith. Read David and Goliath like you're reading it for the first time. Or Joseph, Elijah, Daniel, Nehemiah. . . . . these are people who believed that God would actually move and act in wonderful ways. Because they're so familiar to us they can lose their emotional impact. Imagine reading the story of Joshua crossing the Jordan and taking down Jericho for the first time. You would think anything was possible with God. (What an amazing thought!) The verses and doctrine of the NT come to life with the stories of the OT.

Read the whole Bible and be thankful that you can.

Terminal Disease or Taking Leave of our Senses

I just finished reading an article about a local private school that has emptied out its library of all books and now is completely on-line. It now has roomfuls of empty shelves, with everybody sitting at their own terminals.

I don't know about this - I feel like an old man even saying that I don't like it but . . . . . I don't like it. There's something about a book - holding it, feeling it. Even the smell of an old book brings back feelings of prior readings and places in my life. I know this sounds contradictory as I sit at a computer and type a blog, but if this is where we're heading, I can't help but feel a deep sense of loss.

There is something to be said about engaging in a full sensory experience - even with a book. When I hold my Bible, I feel everything involved in it. I feel passages I've read that have moved me. I see things I've written in the margins that marked struggles and victories in my life. I even have food-stained finger-prints of that day. And some pages, when studied closely, look like they've been gripped tightly, as if at that point in my life I was getting my heart ripped out by God. I think we're supposed to be like that, that's the way we're wired. We're meant to hold, taste, smell and touch. It's how we remember. It engages us, and years later, on subsequent readings, re-engages us.

I envy in some ways the Old Testament worship experience, where they could smell, hear, feel and ultimately taste their offerings to the Lord. It was all around them and they were fully immersed in it. We weren't meant to lose that when the sacrificial system was replaced by The Sacrifice. Communion, serving, singing, eating together, praying together, Bible studies . . . it's all meant to be a part of the normal community of believers. Our daily life together.

But now we have a "terminal disease" - each one of us worshiping on-line, reading and listening to our favorite pastors and teachers, never coming together and eating and talking. The community has fragmented and we're losing our senses. We've perfected the H1N1 Fistbump, having gone from a holy kiss to a hug to a handshake to a fistbump to a head nod. What's next, a computerized message of the events of our day? We even think that somehow, one hour a week in church will bring us some kind of connectedness.

I think the pendulum is going to swing back. It may even be happening now. We are wired for a sensory experience, and the churches that start to engage each other and get deep into the heart of the world will be the ones that will draw people in. The ones that create true communities that meet more than on Sunday mornings will find seekers knocking on their doors asking to get in.