Joy To The World...?

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Recently in church a young girl showed up proudly with her violin upon which she had been taking lessons a mere 2 months. The night before she had practiced and was desirous of standing before the church and playing, ‘Joy to the World’. I’m a sucker for anything a child asks to do in church in order to participate in worship. Plus, I love her grandparents and to object would be in the category of the disciples telling Jesus to send the little children away. In light of the recent tragedy (even the word ‘tragedy’ is anemic compared to the horror we have all witnessed and felt) the child, of course, could play.

Parker stood on the stage and without accompaniment played ‘Joy To The World’. It was actually quite good considering the difficulty of that instrument, her lack of experience and the limited time she had to work on the piece. The tune was unmistakably there. So were the miss-notes, the scratching, the halting bow stokes and hesitations. But the tune was there nonetheless and I was proud of her.

As I sat and listened I realized how much her playing matched my mood, my life and my present condition before God. In the pressures of ministry, the clamor of so many with unmet needs, the trivial ‘hurts’ we react to which are inflicted by others, I can barely make out the Joy that is supposed to be mine. Stir it up with the tragedies and the gut wrenching grief I can barely make out even the presence of God, but when I listen, in spite of it all, yes I can hear Him clearly. He is still present in my pain.

Yes, I can hear ‘Joy To The World’, it’s clarion call undeniably there even in the midst of the missed notes of life. The presence of God and His purposes in my life may lie, at the moment, just beyond the grasp of my consciousness but there nonetheless. I can hear its tune carried through the scratchings of the inevitable (if unexplainable) troubles and tribulations of life. The missed notes, the uneven tempo and even the halting interlude does not drown it out. It is there, a joy that at times I grasp and at others seems beyond my greatest leap. But, the clarity of the notes, even if rare, provide a peace from God that says, ‘It is still, well with my soul’.

I know that I have at once attained and am still striving forth. I am His. I know God made me not to love Him (although the ability to love Him is a wonder) but rather He made me so that He could love me. This infinite love breaking through the terrible missteps of life gives meaning to this moment.

And in some strange way, Lewis is right. The inevitable suffering caused by the gift of free-will is a part of it all. As long as I can still make out the tune in the midst of its heartbreak, it is well with my soul.

“Joy to the World”. It is there. The evil has not been successful in masking the truth completely. The light still shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot and has not extinguished it yet.

Today, I have God. Tomorrow will be the same. That is simply enough.

Advent. God With Us.

- Brian

PEACE

I am not too excited about talking tomorrow at church.  It is the 3rd Sunday of Advent and my talk was to be on PEACE as we lit the peace candle.  I feel much too lugubrious to speak peace in the midst of tragedy.  I had to discard my entire sermon I worked so hard on all week and rewrote something this morning to try and make sense out of senselessness.  20 little children dead...My God what have we done?

Here is an excerpt from tomorrow's talk on 'GOD WITH US-PEACE':
We decry the tragedies but in the same breath we reject the One who came to lead us out of this miasma of the human dilemma.

What we must not say, and we must not surrender to is the idea that the terrible manifestation of evil breaking into our celebration gives the lie to the PEACE we celebrate in the person of Jesus.

To paraphrase Lewis in the Great Divorce, we must not let Hell blackmail Heaven.
That until there is the absence of pain, no one else should taste joy.
That theirs should be the final power;
That Hell should be able to veto Heaven.

We saw evil for what it is.  The characteristic of one consumed by evil is "their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves." (Lewis)

And another excerpt:
And you may object here if you so desire...but there is within each of us something growing which will itself, if allowed to grow unabated, unchecked, mature into Hell itself unless it is stopped immediately.  (I think I may be borrowing from Lewis or Milton or McDonald---but the idea came from outside me.)

We look out over the misery of the human situation and what we have done and how we have handled the beautiful chance at life and we realize this is serious business.
This is why HE CAME.
We must put ourselves in His hands this moment, this hour, this very day.

So He came to give HIS PEACE.  And there will be a day when you wake to find that you grasped it and held onto Him, OR that frightening realization that HE was right there for your choosing, within your reach, and you have lost Him forever.

-Brian

A CRY FOR JUSTICE, MAYBE...

I’ve often thought, rather than learning to bless those who curse me, perhaps it would be better if God just dispensed some of that Justice He is so good at. Really, don’t you cry out for justice? Isn’t that one of the reasons it is so difficult to bless someone who has done you harm? You’d rather there be justice. Quick, severe and absolute.

When I tire of being the punching bag and when the mayhem de-jour is served up in the nightly news-I cry out to God for justice. God where are you, send your justice. God are you uncaring-how could you let this go unpunished, you are just aren’t you? Then send justice.

And God says to me-alright, Brian---

where would you like me to start with this dispensing of justice?

Should I start with you?

Maybe I should start with your children?

Should I begin with your closest friends, perhaps their children?

Should I go all the way back to Adam?

Would that be a good place to start and put an end to all of this?

Suddenly my cry is no longer for justice-but for mercy. Mercy from an infinitely good and competent God who is nothing like the God described by the mean spirited, condemning Pharisees around us. The ones who know exactly which human beings will end up where at the end of the age. Yes, mercy, oh My Father.

It somehow makes it more appealing to learn how to bless those who curse you, let it go and shower on them forgiveness. After all forgiveness is the language of the Kingdom.

BLESSING THOSE WHO CURSE YOU

Of the things I am learning to put into practice, at the top of the list is learning from the Master: How to bless those who curse me.

I’ve had some experience being cursed and if you have spent anytime in the church (small ‘c’) you have as well.

What does it mean to bless those who curse you?

It means to will the good of another under the invocation of God.

Whew…that’s a mouthful! To will the good of another. Stop right there.

I have just uncovered my first problem. I’m not sure I want to do that.

God, they have hurt me so deeply. Friends who claim to be friends who turn on you, spread lies, speak half truths, stab you in the back and then blame you for bleeding all over their carpet. To will their good??

Would it be a good thing to will someone else’s good? Would it even be safe to do that? Yes, IF, I do so under the invocation of God. In other words, calling on God to do for me what I cannot do myself. This is invocation.

And because the Lord is my Shepherd, He will make sure I am cared for.

So, can I learn to do this as a disciple of Jesus? The good news is yes.

First-I have to be one who is not thrown off by being cursed.

This involves not a Pharisaic approach to obedience but an inner spiritual transformation. Where I become the kind of person who isn’t bothered by being cursed because I am becoming the kind of person who doesn’t have to get what they want. I am no longer into protecting me. To do this, I must engage in disciplines that lead to a calmness of soul. Perhaps blocking out some time in my day over a significant period of time to be quiet. To listen to God speak. To empty myself of this desire to defend, give slap for slap and discover that just because someone hurt me doesn’t mean I have to run out and hurt them back.

Second-It requires understanding their situation and condition. These people who curse others, especially when they can so seemingly easily curse a friend, are the kind of people who NEED a blessing. They certainly are not going to benefit from me cursing them back. They too are human beings whom God caused to come into existence. How we see other people is a major component as to how we treat other people.

Third-train yourself under God to ask Him to give them good things.

Am I willing to ASK God to give them good things. This is absolutely necessary because it allows me to turn loose of the agonizing pressure of controlling or being responsible for their lives.

I can do this when I realize it is much preferable to being the kind of person who curses others. I have to look no further than the kind of lives people live who routinely curse, criticize and gossip. Frankly, they really are miserable people that need a blessing. They don’t need more cursing.

Besides, it will be a revelation to them and confuse them-they won’t know what to do with that kind of response. You will be engaging in actions as a disciple of Jesus that completely changes the makeup of the relationships.

By our lives we actually switch things around and these, who are so in need of a blessing, will be drawn into a different kind of world…The Kingdom Among Us. And then the Kingdom of the Heavens they are so antagonistic towards, will be unleashed into their lives and God will change them too. If they don’t want to change, we learn to trust Him with that as well and say: Thank God you are changing me. Yes, Thank God for God.

AT THE GRAVESIDE OF MY MOM

I was asked by my father to conduct the graveside service of my mom along with my nephew Joshua. I have been asked to reduce what I said to writing. For those familiar with me, my teaching and understanding of our lives before God, this will sound familiar:

Graveside Service; Greenwood Cemetery; December 31, 2011

We often quote as professing Christians Romans 8:28. For we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who know God, to those who are called according to His purposes.

This is a part of the ‘ALL THINGS’ and now we, mom’s family have the opportunity to find out if we believe this or just profess to believe it.

Will God make this work so that our lives are richer because this happened?

That is our big God. The danger is always not thinking big enough about His purposes and plans. This is indeed part of the all things He promises to cause to work for His good. For His purposes. So, of course we grieve, but we grieve not as others who have no hope.

This is not mom in this casket. It is her body. That does not mean it is insignificant. It is very significant because God will raise it up on the last day and glorify it. But it is not Mom. She was not her body and because she was not her body she did not pass out of existence.

She was more than her body and has but stepped in to her next phase of existence.

If that is true about mom then it is true about us. We are not our body.

We are more than our body.

If this is not mom, if she was not her body than who is she?

Mom is a spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s wonderfully created universe. Mom has but stepped in to her next phase of existence as this never ceasing spiritual being.

If that is true about mom, that it is also true about us.

Who are you? You are a spiritual being who will never stop existing with an eternal destiny in God’s created universe. That’s the glory of the human being God has created and made provisions for.

3 things I can tell you are true about mom.

God planned to bring her into existence. God invested His life in her. God likes her. Those three things.

If that is true about mom then it is also true about us.

God has planned to bring us into existence as never ceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe. God has invested His life in us through Jesus Christ. And, He likes us. Not just loves us. He likes us.

But you get to choose whether this One who has invested in you is the real deal. Mom did.

PRAYER:

Father, God, Sovereign, Creator, Eternal One, He who is from everlasting to everlasting. We humble ourselves before you and know that you, with your abundant mercies, can assuage the grief that is very real. I pray for each here what mom had. A rich life of joy and power. Abundant in supernatural resources and a clear vision before each of us of the eternal significance of our life and work day by day. That each of us here would have a radiant life and a glorious death just as mom had.

Amen.

LIFE

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:9-14

Paul’s prayer is what he profoundly longed to see in the lives of these he ministered to. This life of which he speaks, is nothing less than the result of inner transformation, spiritual transformation, a life of grace in the One who has been transferred into life in the ‘Kingdom of His Beloved Son’.

All of this is the result of life, in being risen with Christ beyond death.

1 Corinthians 15:17 “If Christ had not been risen you would still be dead in your sins.”What about the cross? The cross must never be presented without the resurrection. You don’t have a cross that means anything without a resurrection. Without resurrection you have a dead salvation that does not relate to the present spiritual life in Christ of the believer. For Jesus, life was the issue.

This is why we must get past a view of atonement in which all that matters is that Jesus has taken the punishment for our sins. The problem with such a reductionist view of the gospel is evident in the lives of many who limit it to such. What about discipleship? It is viewed as not required or even irrelevant to the status of our now ‘saved’ condition. Why? Because ‘saved’ has been reduced in meaning to my sins having been forgiven.

LET ME EMPHASIZE (because it is ever apparent that I now must say what I don’t mean by what I say!): It does indeed mean the glorious truth that my sins are forever forgiven, without which any hope of change, transformation, discipleship, eternal life, heaven would be an unreachable hope. Of course it is forgiveness, it is not just forgiveness.

The theme in the New Testament is life, regeneration, who we are becoming and becoming like Christ. From God’s perspective the basic truth of salvation is the impartation of life. Over and over this truth is proclaimed.

1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…

and 1 John 3:1-3 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Without this truth, inner change (spiritual transformation) is seen as an oddity, irrelevant, perhaps a bit ‘monkish’ or even heretical. But if understood from the perspective of a new life received from above, then it can be seen as a transformation in this life. A progressive transformation because who we are becoming is of primary importance to God the King.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE KINGDOM

Mark 11:22-26
Jesus is giving instructions on asking in faith. Moving mountains and requests being granted. The disciples have been enamored with the death of a fig tree and are asking about this unique event. In this teaching moment Jesus is encouraging His young followers and telling them of the marvelous strength of prayer. He then adds a seemingly extraneous instruction: And when you stand praying, forgive.

Why? Because forgiveness is the language of the Kingdom. You can’t stand in the powerful resources of the Kingdom without practicing forgiveness.

How do I handle the unfair and spiteful attacks from those I neither know nor have contact with? I am aware there are some unmerited criticisms (both verbal and written) being disseminated in our community about me, even condemning me as a heretic and worse. (The authors may not know this but some of them clearly border on libel.)

I was asked today, why I do not defend myself?
The reason is because I forgive them.

I hold no animosity in my heart toward them and I will not build my life around their offense nor will I make them pay for what they have said and done to me. I don’t need to. As I trust Christ, I know what is going to happen to me, He is going to take care of me.

What makes forgiveness possible is His grace at work in our life to accomplish what we cannot do on our own. That is why grace is not just for guilt, it is for life. The sinner needs grace just to forgive sins, the disciple and follower of Christ depends on grace for every step, every action as they move more clearly into the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

For those who mistreat you, you can ask, ‘who are you?’ as you hold them up next to the One who says, “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (See: Romans 8:1) Besides, they try and condemn me but forget, “I am dead and my life is hidden with Christ in God…” (Colossians 3:1-4).

One of the more unpleasant statements of Jesus is found in Luke 10:3 in His great experiment of sending out the 70: Go, behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.

Just examine the evidence yourself and look at the vituperative, unpleasant and mean-spirited language used in the attacks. The sniping and calling me out. The relentless barbs and references in blogs. The snide letters and language.

Who are the wolves?
By their fruits you shall know them.