Heart Tracks - Living At The Wrong Gate

    Too often I have seen in my life, and the lives around me, that the future is defined by our past.  What has been, whether conscious of it or not, is what we expect to be.  We're held captive by what has gone before, and so we spend our lives living in the same place, repeating the same mistakes, bad choices, failures, and yes, sins, because of it.  
     2 Kings 7 tells of the time when Samaria in the northern kingdom of Israel was under siege by the kingdom of Syria.  Famine was rampant in the city and the people were starving.  Elisha the prophet had announced to a cynical king and his advisors that God was about to lift the siege and provide food for the city by the next day.  At this same time, sitting at the gate of the city were four lepers, who were the most despised of people, indeed, were seen more as non-people.  They knew nothing of the prophecy, but said among themselves, "Why do we sit here until we die?"  They saw their options as remaining there as good as dead, while they waited for death, or going into the city, where they most likely would be killed out of fear of their leprosy, or going to the Syrian camp and perhaps being allowed to live, and more, to find food.  Reading on in the chapter tells of the rest of the story.  God did indeed deliver the people.  The siege was miraculously lifted, and food was abundantly available to all, including the lepers.  In the midst of all of this though is a question for each of us; why do we continue to sit at our various "gates" waiting to die?  Why do we continue to live in the same place, in the midst of the same woundedness, failures, wrong choices, and sins, doing nothing more than waiting to die?  What gate, and behind what bars do we continue to "sit" instead of entering into the wholeness that can only be found in Christ?  What "bars" keep us there?
     I recently heard Australian speaker and writer Christine Caine speak on this passage, and she said that the bars of our gates may be constructed of most anything, fear, bitterness, unforgiveness, a "victim" mentality, an abusive past, gender hatred, dysfunctional family background, the list is really endless.  What matters is that while sitting at these gates, behind these bars, we see all of life through those bars, and everything is colored and affected by that.   Caine says we continue to sit at these gates and behind these bars for what we consider "justifiable reasons."  God's word may come to us, but we insist that it do so through these bars, and so the power of it is greatly lessened if not altogether lost.  So, we go on sitting at our own particular gate, behind our own particular bars.  And we'll continue to do so until we too, like the lepers, ask ourselves, "Why do we sit here until we die?"
    If we will finally ask ourselves that question, finally receive His Word and life to crush the bars we've placed there, we will find life.  we will discover wholeness.  We will experience He who calls Himself the Gate of Life.  When this happens, we find the words of Christ in John 10:10 to be true, "I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly."  Through Him who is the Gate of Life, we have life.  We no longer live at the wrong gate, but with and in Him who is the Gateway to all that true life is.
   In John 10, Jesus spoke of the thief who comes only to steal and destroy, the enemy of our souls, satan.  It is at his gate that so many sit today, mostly unknowingly, held captive by the one whose only desire is to steal, kill, and destroy.  It's he who built the gate and constructed the bars.  Those bars may keep us in, but they can never keep Christ out.  Will you come out?  Will you leave the gate and bars behind as they fall before the power of His life?  Why sit there any longer?  He has come to you.  Now, will you come to Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O   

Heart Tracks - The Deeper "Yes"

     Recently, in a time of prayer, I heard a brother ask the Father to lead us into a "deeper yes."  That is, the place of even deeper surrender to Him, of saying yes to Him, to His will and His way.  This place of the deeper yes is a place that He calls all that are His, yet not all really want to go there.  Do you?  Do I?

     In his book, Walking With Christ In The Details Of Life, Patrick Morley tells of his struggle of coming to grips with the truth of Psalm 37:4, which reads, Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Morley said that he had often put this promise before the Father concerning the many desires of his heart.  Desires for things, success, recognition, and accumulation.  Most times, his prayers went unanswered, causing him to doubt the truth of His Word.  One day though, the Lord opened his eyes, and he writes, "I discovered that it was not that the verse was untrue, but that I had not yet penetrated the passage deeply enough.....I had only superimposed my own expectations upon it.  When it didn't deliver, I assumed the verse was in error, not me."  We see the word "delight" to mean something that brings us great personal satisfaction.  It's root meaning in Hebrew however is to be "soft or pliable."  To have our delight in Him is for us to be like clay in the hands of the potter.  We are yielded and surrendered to however He wishes to shape us, and as we submit to the shaping, we will need to say, many times, an ever deepening "yes" to His shaping.  As Morley says, "We become anxious for God to 'make me' rather than for Him to 'give me.' " 
    When we live in the place of the deeper yes our expectations change from being expectations of Him, to expectations in Him.  Our desires change from being almost totally about ourselves and our lives, to about Him and His life.  We desire what He desires both for us, and through us.  We are soft and pliable in His hands, and to be shaped by Him is truly a delight to us.  As our desires become one with His, we find that His Word is completely true, and that He does give us every desire of our hearts, because our heart and His are one.  Along with this we discover that He gives us so many good things for our lives, things we never asked Him for, but that in His love and goodness He poured out upon us.  This is where we find that His mercies to us really are new every day.

    A great battle and controversy rages in the church today as to the "inerrancy" of scripture.  This is not a new battle, and indeed has been going on since the devil first asked Eve in the Garden, "Did God really say that?"  I don't enter into this battle.  I simply choose to believe His Word.  Yet I love what Morely said on this; "The Bible is not in error, we are."  Our great pride refuses to allow us to ever believe we could be the ones who are wrong.  So, if we're not, He must be.  Yet, as Morely says, "We are vapors that appear for a little while and then vanish, but the word of God stands forever."  Could it be that you're living in the midst of such controversy right now?  Things, life, aren't going as you'd desired and expected.  God has not been who you've wanted Him to be.  Are you ready for Him to be to you as He is?  Are you ready, willing, to go to the place of the deeper yes?  To know, in that place, that He is true, and His promises really all are "yes and amen."

Blessings,

Pastor O

 

Heart Tracks - The Longing

     Back in the mid-70's when the so called "counter-culture" rebellion was in full swing, my friends and I, who all lived in a notorious place called the Edinboro Hotel, just off the college campus, would all gather around the TV each week to watch the family oriented program, The Waltons, which featured traditional values, and an emphasis upon home and family.  This group of long haired, beer guzzling, pot and hash smoking, and oftentimes acid dropping group of hippie wannabe's, never wanted to miss this show.  Why?  I think, because it appealed to a longing deep within all of us for "home," a place where we're unconditionally loved, accepted, and feel secure in.

This longing exists in all of us, in fact, we're born with it.  Most seek to find it in this world, but at best, this world can only offer a very temporary imitation, and one that can be taken from us in a moment.  I found this to be so in my own life.  As my marriage collapsed, one of the greatest losses I felt was that of losing my "home."  I had thought that secure, but life taught me, as it will each of us, that the only true security we may have is in Him.
    C.S. Lewis said that if we find within ourselves a longing for something that this world cannot provide, then perhaps we should realize we were made for another world.  This world is temporary.  We were created for eternity, and each of us is born with a heart that longs for eternity, and knows, somehow, that it will never find it here.  Our lives may be filled with "stuff" and they may mask that longing for a while, but when the stuff is lost, and one way or another, all stuff is, the longing remains, and no matter how hard we seek to satisfy that longing in this realm, it can only be satisfied in Christ.

    Moses wrote in the 90th Psalm, Lord, through all the generations, You have been our home.  Moses, once a prince of Egypt, next a shepherd on the backside of the desert, and finally, the one who, as he was led by the Father, himself led the people of Israel through the wilderness, knew that none of those places was truly home, not even the promised land to which they were being led.  Home was in the heart and life of the Father God.  He had always been, He would always be.  Have you come to know that as well?  Or, do you still seek to find your home here in those things which are passing and temporary?
    In the book of Ruth, Naomi and Ruth, the only ones left of their family, a family that had left Judah, their home, to live in Moab.  In Moab, their husbands died, and they were left alone.  1:7 says that they left the place where they had been living, and they took the road that would lead them back to Judah.  Perhaps you find yourself living in Moab today.  You're not alone.  We're all born into the citizenship of Moab, but there is a road that leads home, if only you'll, we'll, take it.  That road is found in Christ, who identified Himself as the the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  He's the way home.  The only way.  If you've been awakened to that longing within, He bids you come.  If not, know that He will wait upon you, wooing you, calling you home.  Calling you to the home you were made for.  His heart, and His life.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Flatliners

     There's a great emphasis today being put on the words and actions of Jesus, particularly the action part.  Much is made of His acts of love, His going to the lost, His ministry of healing and so on.  This is all good, it's very good, but I think in our emphasis on His works, we are missing His greatest work; Calvary.  We're trying to emulate Christ, but without our own personal Calvary.  We live life on the horizontal plane of our own strength, instead of the vertical ascent of His victory and life.

     In Luke 18:31, Jesus said, "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem."  It was at Jerusalem that Christ would fulfill the pinnacle of His calling, the cross.  His call to each of His disciples was that they too would "go up to Jerusalem," to their own personal cross.  Oswald Chambers said that "Nothing must deflect us from going up to our Jerusalem," yet many things do.  One of those things is our own personal "works" or ministry.  It is much easier to imitate His workload, than go to His cross.
What we miss is that we cannot "go out" to them, until we have gone up to Jerusalem.  Neither can we live the overcoming life, or be vessels of His grace and life, until we've done so.  We may do much, but in the end it can be "much ado about nothing."   A.W. Tozer said more than a half-century ago, "Only what is done through the Eternal Spirit will abide eternally; all else is wood, hay, stubble. It is a solemn thought that some of us who fancy ourselves to be important evangelical leaders may find at last we've been but busy harvesters of stubble."  Somehow we think that the Father will honor our good intentions, but our good intentions, like all else, have to go up to Jerusalem.  They must die upon our, His, cross.
    Three times a year, the faithful of Israel would go up to Jerusalem, singing Psalms 120 to 134.  These were known as the Songs of Ascents.  Just as the road to Jerusalem wound upward, so were their hearts to likewise go upward to Him.  This would be what Paul called "the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  Jesus knew that road, and very likely, He sang those songs not only with His lips, but with all of His heart, especially as He went up to Jerusalem and His cross.   Have you and I taken that road?  Are we singing those songs?  Or, are we going out, day after day, without ever really going up?  Are we spiritual flatliners, living on the horizontal, or vertical climbers, hearing that upward call, letting nothing deflect us from our own Jerusalem.  Are we going out, without ever having come up? 

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Another Day In The Desert

     Have you ever been in that place where your life just seems like another day in the desert?  Might you be there right now?  That desert place where everything seems exactly as it was yesterday, and as you look on the horizon, you see nothing to make you think that today will be any different.  The drab, barren landscape around you comprised of your emotions, circumstances, and difficulties, seems to stretch on forever, and there seems to be no end to your desert.  You wonder, is this where I'm going to die?  You keep moving, yet always circling the same mountain(s), moving, but seemingly, going nowhere.  More, you cannot understand why you're even here.  You know that for their unbelief, the Israelite's wandered in the desert for 40 years, yet you can honestly find no place where you are openly disobedient, no place where there is unconfessed sin, still, here you are.  In the desert.  And it seems like a lot longer than 40 years.

    We hate the desert, and our first impulse, our ongoing one, is to cry out to Him to bring us out, to end this misery.  We see nothing of value here, and our only concern is how quickly it might end.  Yet it doesn't end, and this will bring us face to face with both God and ourselves.  What will happen then?  Will we become as those spoken of in the 78th Psalm, who "rebelled against You in the desert, and grieved Your heart in the wilderness."  Or will this place become to us as it did to Christ.  A friend.  A friend because in it, if we will have it, will be discovered the deepest realities of who He is.  An intimacy entered into beyond anything that the green, lush meadows we long for could provide.  A knowledge of Him that comfort and ease could never bring, and can only be found by looking beyond those horizons unto His horizon, and see beyond that dry and weary place to the overflowing water of His life.  Discovering that what we see in Him is no mirage, but a reality that the desert has brought us to, and a place of life in the midst of what seemed to be death.

The place we believed to be nowhere, was instead the gateway into the beauty of having all things in Christ.  In the barren place, we become fruitful.
    In Isaiah 48:17, God speaks, "I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go."  Commenting on this Chris Tiegreen says that when we balk at following Him, even if that means going into a personal desert wilderness, we suspect that "God doesn't have our best in mind, that we'll have to look out for ourselves.....that His way will not work out to our advantage in the end."  Have any of those or similar thoughts crept into your heart during this time?  Have we begun in that desert place to question the goodness of God?  I heard Margaret Feinberg speak recently of her own longlasting desert place.  She said the situations had pressed in upon her to the extent that she found herself weeping in her kitchen, lying on her back on the floor.  She said she then heard His Spirit lead her to simply say, in that place, "God is good.  God is on the throne.  Breathe in.  Breathe out."  In her desert, she could say that God was good, even when her life was not.  In her desert, she discovered how powerfully true that was.  Can we?  Let us speak with our lips the truth of His goodness in the midst of the desert.  Let us breathe with spiritual lungs, the life giving air of His Holy Spirit.  In that, we go on, and though it may seem we're still going nowhere, we know in our hearts, we journey ever deeper into His life.  The life no desert can extinquish, and indeed, in that desert, we discover anew His abundance.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Heard, Seen, Touched

     In his book, God Tells The Man Who Cares, A.W. Tozer wrote, "I for one am weary of the familiar religious pep talk.  I am tired of being whipped into line, of being urged to work harder, to pray more, to give more generously, when the speaker does not show me Christ.  This is sure to lead to a point of diminishing return and leave us exhausted and a little bored with it all."  He wrote this more than 60 years ago, and I believe it's more timely now than then.  When you get past all the audio-visual aids we use (and I am not against these), our power point sermons, our lively worship teams, and our seeker friendly atmosphere, what, in the end, are we really left with?  No matter what approach we use in seeking to get people to live the way they should in Christ, are they, in the end, left exhausted and a "little bored with it all?"  Are we lecturing them as to who Christ was, or showing them through the power of a resurrected church and life who Christ is?  Are we showing, both in and from the pulpit and pew, religious pep talks, or, through the power of Holy Spirit  revelation, who Christ is, and who we may be in Him?

     I John 1:1-2 reads, "The One who existed from the beginning is the One we have heard and seen.  We saw Him with our own eyes and touched Him with our own hands.  He is Jesus Christ, the Word of life.  This One who IS life from God was shown to us and we have seen Him.  And now we testify and announce to you that He is the One who is eternal life."  In their testimony is resurrection power and life because they did not present a Jesus that they had heard of second-hand, but a Christ that they themselves had heard, seen, touched, and handled.  They knew Him through an intimacy that literally lived in their words about Him.  When they spoke, their listeners knew that they were hearing someone who knew the object of their words.  Whether they received or rejected that testimony was on them, but they could not deny that these men spoke of something, someone, real, and alive.  The simple truth that He lives, saturated their lives, and permeated their culture.  May it be so with you and I.
   May it truly be so in our fellowships.  When we come together in His name, may we realize it is not to tell nice stories about Him, but to experience Him in our midst.  May we tell of Him as ones who have also heard Him, seen Him, touched and handled Him.  May it take place when we come together, and when we go out separately.  May He be so alive and real in and through us that we announce, not only with words, but with our lives, that He is the One who is eternal life.  We do this because we know it first hand.  May it be so....right now.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - What Translation Are You?

     There are so many excellent translations of the Bible available today.  King James, New King James, New Living, New International, and a number of others.  Most of us have a favorite we like to read, a translation of His Word that speaks clearly to us.  With this in mind, I'm pondering a question today; Just what "translation" of His Word is my life, your life, speaking to not only the world around us, but to the church we're a part of?  Is it a translation tinged with bitterness, selfishness, unforgiveness, coldness, lukewarmness?  Do our lives translate His life and word in a way that demeans both?  When those around us "read" our lives, what do they read?  Woundedness that never heals and just festers into ever deeper decay?  Anger that simmers beneath the surface, exploding at the most unfortunate times and in the most embarrassing places?  I Peter exhorts us to live properly amongst our unbelieving (and believing) neighbors.  We're to be a translation of His life, love, healing and forgiveness that can be read and understood by those we come into contact with on any level, day by day.  What translation are they reading as they read us?
    I think most of us are so absorbed in our own lives we never really think much about this.  We live in the state of "Oblivion."  In this place, the only life that really matters is our own.  Our life, our family, our goals, desires, and needs.  We come into contact with so many people each day, but for the most part, they remain faceless, lifeless people, barely noticed, and quickly forgotten.  We don't see them, but we do see us, except somehow, we never really see "us" as we are, and even moreso, as He created us to be.
    Have you ever wondered what Jesus meant when He said in John 14 that we would do His works, and in fact do even "greater works" than He had done?  He raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, and healed their disease.  How can we do greater than that, even though our flesh may long to?  We so often think the greater things mean the applause of men and the notoriety we receive among them.  Yet I'm coming to see this isn't what He meant at all.  It means, I think, that we live out our lives among others, for others.  Patrick Morley in his book, Walking With Christ In The Details Of Life, writes, "Jesus calls us to be like Him, to do what He did when He entered the river of humanity......He did not develop a great organization.  Instead He gave His life to a handful of improbable men.  Whom are you giving your life to?....Are you sacrificing your life for God, or building monuments (to yourself)?"  What translation are we living out; one founded upon our life, or His?

    Today, and everyday, we'll have opportunities to do greater works than He did.  Opportunities with the weary cashier at Wal-Mart, or the heavily burdened single mother waiting upon us at our favorite eatery.  We'll have opportunity to give of our life to them, to do the greater work, to be the only translation of His Word and life they may ever see?  Will we do that greater work, will we be that life giving translation?  Or, will they remain just another blank, unnoticed face, as we go on, building our monuments to self?  What translation of His life are we, the real thing, or just a lifeless counterfeit?  This life is not lived by imitation, but by intimate participation in His life, living that life in His power and presence.  May we truly enter into that life, and so be the living translation of Himself.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Things Undone

       Something we tend to not spend much time thinking on in the ministry of Christ is the number of people He strongly discouraged from following Him.  Quite different from the present-day church where we'll joyfully take most anyone who's willing to sign up.  As I heard the great missionary/pastor Earl Lee say years ago, "Everyone gets in, no one gets out."  This was not the way of Jesus.  His call was to everyone, yet His acceptance was only to those who were truly willing to leave all to be His, and to follow Him.  He was not looking for those with good intentions, or even with passion.  He sought those who had been "undone."  If you doubt this, look to His exchange in Luke 9 with 3 different men who said they would follow Him.  All 3 were turned away because all 3 had an "undone thing" standing between they and Christ, and this undone thing prevented them from fully surrendering to Him and going with Him wherever He led them.  Oswald Chambers, commenting on this passage said, " The one whos says, 'Yes Lord, but', is the one who is fiercely ready, but never goes."  Perhaps this is seen nowhere more clearly than it is in the life of the rich young ruler, and his desire to follow Christ.

    In Matthew 19, Jesus speaks with a young man who was, as Chambers writes, fiercely ready to follow Jesus.  When asked if he had observed the commandments faithfully, his reply was a quick "yes."  Yet, in him, Jesus saw what was for him, the "undone thing."  His inability to surrender his possessions.  He could give Jesus all, but he could not give him those.  The young man went away grieved in his heart.  The possessions themselves were not the problem.  His inability, refusal, to release them to Christ were.  They were the undone thing in his life, but our own "undone thing" may be something entirely different.  It could be our mate, our children, a cherished relationship, a job, an attitude, a treasure, a desire, even a ministry.  We cannot yield it to Him, and so it remains in our lives, undone, and since it is undone, we cannot truly follow Him.  we cannot truly be His.  There were, and will always be, blockages between He and we.  Blockages that will keep us from coming after Him, keeping us from His path.  As Patrick Morley writes in Walking With Christ In The Details of Life, the question we must be asked, and only His Spirit can bring forth an answer to, is, "What do i still lack?  What impediment to true faith is blocking you?"  The rich young man asked this, but could not abide with the answer Christ gave.  Can we?
    Jesus calls us, right now, to come, and go with Him.  Can we?  Will we?  Chambers said, "When once the call of God comes, begin to go, and never stop going."  The call has come, but we cannot begin to go until we, like Isaiah, have been undone.  We cannot go and keep going, until the undone thing, has been done, has been yielded, has been given over, completely, to Him.  Have we done the undone thing?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - What Appears To Be

     There's a much taught and preached story in Acts 27 concerning Pauls' voyage to Rome where he would stand before Caesar.  The ship they were on had been slowly making its way along the coastline when it put into a port called Fair Havens.  The season for sailing with any degree of safety was coming to an end, and Paul, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, admonished them that it was in all of their best interests to remain where they were for the winter.  He told them that to ignore this was to bring certain destruction upon them, with the loss of the ship and all of their lives.  Scripture says that the Roman Centurion in charge was "more persuaded" by the pilot and captain of the ship.  He felt they knew far better than a landlubber like Paul.  More, they were motivated by the need to get the ship to port or lose the opportunity to make a profit from its cargo.
Verse 13 says, "And when a moderate south wind came up, supposing they had gained their purpose, they weighed anchor and began sailing."  Very shortly, a "violent wind" came up, and they were driven along.
    It's so easy for us to read this, hear this passage, and add our "tsk, tsk" concerning the foolishness of the centurion and the ship's captain.  Of course they should have listened to what God was saying through Paul.  We would have.  Wouldn't have we?  The captain and the centurion made their decision based upon what "appeared to be" reality.  Immediate circumstances "appeared" to verify what their central desire was, getting to Rome.  Paul's warning went against their desire.  When faced with a choice, they went with their desire and used as their guide what they saw with their human perceptions.  My question for each of us is; if, judging by how we make almost all of our real choices, whether in dependence on our own fleshly perception or by the guidance of His Holy Spirit, how likely are we to have heeded Paul's warning?  Would we have chosen any differently than the captain and centurion?  It's easy to say we would have, but what do the choices of our own lives say?  How much of our life is really guided by the appearance of what is around us, instead of by the voice of His Holy Spirit within?  How many disastrous choices have been made based on appearances?  How many relationship choices, occupational choices, financial choices, and yes, ministry choices, have come about as the result of how things appeared to be, and that those appearances brought us to, like the centurion and captain, think that we have gained our purpose?  How dull, even deaf, have we become to the voice of the Spirit, and instead listen to the tyranny of our own desires and wants?  And always to our own destruction.
    A.W. Tozer wrote "The only power God recognizes in His church is the power of the Spirit, whereas the only power recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man.  God does His work by the operation of the Spirit, while (believers) seek to do theirs by the power of trained and devoted intellect."  Paul and all those on board did suffer shipwreck, as will all who try to live life in the power of their own understanding, yet, as always, hope remains.  Paul, who was now seen as something more than a foolish landlubber, told them that the same God who'd issued the warning, now offered deliverance.  They would stay with the boat, even as it sank, and God promised to bring all of them to shore, alive.  And He did, and so will He do for all who will come to the place of refusing to be led by anything other than the voice of the Father.  No matter where our foolish and ill-conceived choices may have gotten us, He will, if we'll seek out His heart as well as His voice, lead us out of that place.  Our way may well have brought wreckage, but His way will, even in the wreckage, bring us safely home, whole in Him.  No longer living by the appearances of things around us, but by His appearing within us.  Day by day, living for His desire, and not our own.

Blessings,
Pastor O