Heart Tracks - Square Business

      In the long ago days of my youth, I had a friend who, when wanting to emphasize the truth of what he was saying, would add the exclamation, "Square business!"  That was brought to my memory by something British author and pastor T. Austin-Sparks said, "If you mean business with the Lord, the Lord will mean business with you."  As we enter into yet another new year, how many of us will truly "mean business" with the Father?  How many of us will "transact" business with Him?  Business that involves every aspect of our lives.  Business that will not exhibit a willingness to make minor life adjustments, spiritual tweaks, but does business with Him at the very root of our being?  How many of us, as a result of recent conviction, will resolve to do better, do more, be less self-absorbed, and more "other" centered, only to see ourselves after a few weeks of good intentions, slide right back into our inherent self centered lives?  Francis Chan said that "we like to be convicted and think that's success."  Judging by how little so many of we who profess to follow Him truly are transformed year after year, we're enjoying a great deal of that "success."  The status quo for most remains the status quo.
   In Numbers 14:24, it is said of Caleb that he walked in "another spirit" than the majority of the people of Israel in that he wholly followed and belonged to the Father.  He meant business with God.  God meant business with Him, and the result of it all showed forth in His life.  Caleb, as Sparks said, "lived up to, and out from heaven."  His heart and spirit lived in the throne room of God.  On most days, where is mine found?  Where is yours?  In the midst of this comfort, safety, and pleasure obsessed culture, a culture that has fully invaded the church, where will yours and my heart be found?  Will we live out, by His grace, another year that ends with us in very much the same place as where we began?  The place we were the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that, and.....
   I heard Bishop Harry Jackson say recently that in Chinese, the symbol for Christ was "danger and opportunity."  How many of us would embrace that symbol of the Savior?  Provider, Protector,
the One who makes all our desires and wants come to pass, Him we'll eagerly embrace, but One who offers only the dangerous reality of what it is to truly live for and in Him, and all the opportunities that yields to live for, in, and out of Him in the midst of that danger?  Well, that may be another matter entirely.  Which symbol of Christ will we embrace, the One which can be used to enhance our agenda, or He who leads us ever onward, into real danger, yet all the while safe in His hands, and all the opportunity such a life will bring?  The One who has business to do with you and I calls.  He calls now.  Square business!

Blessings,
Pastor O
   

Heart Tracks - Jesus Is Christmas

       I first wrote this in 2004, and felt led to once again share it, with a new addition at the end.  It is not about me, but about the wonder of Immanuel, God With Us.  It's a kind of "Tale Of Two Christmas', widely different, but present with the same Christ.  It's my prayer that He blesses you in the reading.

    

    The first experience took place in Colorado Springs, nearly 25 years ago, during the first year of my study for the ministry.  I was single, away from home and family, and alone, as my roommates had left to be with their families.  Before they'd left, we'd gotten a tree, and draped it with as many decorations and lights as it could hold.  I remember Christmas Eve, after returning from my church's special service, lying on my sofa, listening to the songs of the 2nd Chapter of Acts, gazing at the tree and the lights.  Here, over 1500 miles from family, separated from friends, physically alone, I had a sense of His Presence unlike anything I had known in my young walk with Him.  In that small apartment, my Lord was with me, giving me Himself.  I would open no presents that night, something my family always did, but it wouldn't matter.  I had the gift of my Jesus, and nothing else mattered.  The joy of my Lord flowed out of my heart.  I had never experienced such a visitation before, and while He has come to me in so many beautiful ways since then, I've never again had a time with Him quite like that.  For one who'd come out of deep darkness only a year before, it was, and is, a gift to be treasured all the rest of my days.  It was my happiest Christmas.

    The second time happened 9 years later, on a church campground on a bitterly cold night the week before Christmas.  My wife had left me several months before.  In the midst of that, I'd had to resign my church, and leave the ministry.  I was working at a Coca-Cola distribution center in Charlottesville, Viriginia, driving a forklift.  I had just returned to the campground.  It was late at night, and very dark.  The place was almost completely empty of life.  My heart was filled with an indescribable ache.  Each day I would drive in, and each night I would drive back, constantly asking the Lord, "How did I end up here?  Why did you let this happen?  Father, where are you?"  As I parked my car and got out, the intense cold hit my face.  It couldn't have been more than 10 degrees out.  I remember the thought that came to me as if it were yesterday.  A voice that came from a much deeper darkness than made up that nighttime.  It whispered, "Aren't you weary of the pain?  Everything has been lost.  Can it ever be good again?  It can all be over.  All you need do is walk into those woods over there.  Lie down.  Go to sleep,  It will be over."  At that moment, in the midst of what seemed complete hopelessness, I looked towards those woods.  It was then that I heard another voice.  It was soft, but mighty.  It was Him.  The Jesus, my Jesus, who'd come to me in the midst of my most special Christmas, had also come to me in the time of my darkest.  The same Jesus.  I didn't hear words so much as truth.  I was not alone.  This was not the end.  Where I was now, was not where I would stay.  I had life, and though the enemy sought to destroy it, I would live.  I would laugh again.  I would live again.  I was living now.

    With that I went to the small cottage I was staying in, and just like in that small apartment 9 years before, I was washed with His Presence.  I was not alone.  He was with me, and true to His word, my life didn't end there.  Neither does it end here.  There will still be pain.  There is pain now, but whether in laughter or sorrow, times of light, or times of darkness, He is, and will always be, Immanuel.  God with us.  With me.  With you.  He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

    It may be as you come upon this season, you find yourself in a place you never thought you'd be, or a place you can do nothing to change.  Please know that no matter how cut off you may feel, how alone you might think yourself to be, you are not.  Into your time, this time, allow Immanuel, Jesus to come.  He will, and He will not leave.  This is not the place you will stay, it is not here that you will die.  He will bring you out.  There is life for you, abundant and free.  Let Him lead you into it.

 

    I end this with the story of a missionary family's first Christmas in the tropics, one spent away from family, friends, and all that

had been so familiar to them.  The wife struggled with the isolation until, as she sought Him, her eyes were opened to something much greater than she had known.  "I was shown the actual heart of Christmas, which in turn changed my own heart.  It occurred to me that while all these things (friends, family, cherished decorations) symbolize Christmas, all of these things are not Christmas.  I learned that Jesus is enough.  Jesus is Christmas.  When all the stuff...lights, gifts, trees, food and even friends - was taken away, it came down to Jesus.....I learned that everything I need for Christmas and for my life is found in Jesus."  Psalm 16 reads, "Apart from You, I have no good thing."  Apart from Him, we too, "have no good thing."

 

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Hamster Within

     Writer Patrick Morely tells the story of the time his daughter's pet hamster, Jesse, had crawled through a crack at the bottom of their fireplace and fallen deep into the space behind it.  There was absolutely no way that the hamster could bring itself back out.  As Morely says, "She was doomed to die.  We all knew it, but she didn't."  The hamster, oblivious to her fate just crawled about in the darkness, exploring, "carefree and unaware of the slow, lingering death awaiting her."  The family was in deep pain, but Jesse had no idea there was even a problem.  Morley went to bed, praying that the Father would show him how he might rescue her.
    The next morning, Morely awoke, and went straight to the room behind the fireplace.  With a hammer, he began to break through the paint covered drywall.  After making a hole large enough to reach through, he shined a flashlight into the dark place.  Immediately he saw Jesse and "quickly grabbed her before she scurried from the light, retreating back into the shadows.  She had been in the darkness long enough."
    Morely then used this experience to relate it to God's way with us.  Because of sin, we are born into the darkness, and the darkness is death, leading us ever onward to an eternity in its grip.  Like Jesse, we have no idea of our extreme soul danger.  We move about, "exploring," experiencing, living what we call life.  We are in desperate need of rescue, but we have absolutely no way of getting ourselves out.  We are trapped behind walls we cannot free ourselves from, and the Father, in His deep pain and anguish, broke through that "wall" with the giving of Jesus Christ, through His life, death on a cross, and His conquering of death with His resurrection life.  Yet, when He breaks through, our initial inclination is not to come to the light, but to run from it.  Like Jesse, we fear the light, and seek to draw back to the shadows.  As Morely writes, "God has to reach down and draw us up."  That's the only way out for the hamster, and for you and I.  Has this light come to you, and if so, do you draw back from it, or laid hold of by it?
   We all have our "inner hamster."  Even if we have had the joy of being "found" by Him, there can remain in our hearts, a great deal of the character of the hamster, avoiding the light, finding comfort in the shadows.  It seems safer there.  It seems "right" there.  we can "hide" from the things and issues we don't want to face, we can hide from His face.  Yet, as His word tells us, the end is death.  Wherever you are, the light of Christ pursues you.  That light will clash with the darkness, the shadowland we seek to stay in.  Will you draw back, or will you walk into the hand, and heart, of He who grieves over you?  Jesus says in John 12:46, "I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in Me should stay in darkness."  Will you stay, or will you come?  You've been in the darkness long enough.

Blessings,
Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - For All People

     I came across this account from a missionary to the Pacific Rim.  It was Christmas time, and as missionaries, they'd had to leave behind all the familiar and cherished decorations.  The one thing they did have was a fine ceramic nativity set that they'd purchased en route to their assignment.  She placed it with great care upon the table in their home, using what she called the "standard American set up," Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in front, wise men to the right, shepherds and cattle to the left.   
    The next day, as she attended a language school, her househelper had come to care for the apartment they lived in.  When she returned from the school, she found the nativity scene completely rearranged.  All the figures were set in a circle, with the baby Jesus in the center.  There was no order to the members of the circle, shepherds next to wisemen, wisemen beside cattle.  She quickly moved them back to their "proper order."  She again went to the school the following day, and once again, when she returned, the figures were again arranged in what she saw as a hodgepodge circle, Jesus once again in the middle.  This pattern continued for a number of days.
Finally, exasperated, she asked her helper why she was doing this, thinking, "After all, everyone knows shepherds and wisemen have definite stations in life, and her arrangement just wouldn't happen."  In response, her housekeeper pointed to the scene and said, "Jesus should be the center of everything."  The missionary then writes, "Pointing to her heart, she continued, 'Just like in here.'  Pointing to the wisemen, then to a shepherd, and then to herself, she continued to teach me, saying, 'He loves us all the same.' "
    Within each of us is a deep yearning to feel that we are special, precious, and we spend a lifetime searching for things, positions, possessions, and people who make us feel so.  Yet none of these  do.  We only end up with a deeper hunger, a greater void in that desire.  We need ever greater verification that we are, all the while comparing ourselves with others, seeking to prove that we are a little more special, a little more precious than them.  This attitude runs rampant in the world.  It does so in the church as well.  We manufacture "definite stations" for people.  "Shepherds" belong in one place, "wisemen" in another, and those stations need to be strictly observed.  Like the world, we go right on comparing ourselves with others, and whatever sense we have of being special, or precious, disappears when someone else comes along who seems more blessed, more special, more precious to others, than we are.
    The Father, in Christ, says to each of us, no matter our "station" in life, that we are infinitely precious and special to Him.  We are His treasure, and what we do, where we serve, who we are, does not make us any more, or any less so.  Like the simple, gentle househelper, we must come to know that "He loves us all the same."
    Luke 2:10 reads, "But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people.' "  All.  Shepherds, wisemen, day laborers, Doctors, handymen, professors, janitors, all, both great and small.  All are precious in His eyes.  Special beyond words.  Do you believe this?  Have you received this?  Receive it.  Receive Him.  Now.

Know the good news and great joy that is Christ.

Blessings,

Heart Tracks - Crippled

     A good brother recently said that he was painfully aware of how his deep love and intimacy with Christ, a relationship of deep riches for his inner man, didn't always show forth in his outer man in how he related to others.  I think this is a difficulty for all of us, and one of the great tragedies is that we seem able to only see the imperfect outer man  What would be the case if we could see others as Christ does?  What would be the result if, as we looked at another, especially within the church, we would see past the imperfect flesh, and see who those without Him could be, and who those who are His truly are?  Would we be so quick to cast people out of our lives and our fellowships for their failures, great or small?  To cease throwing away relationships because we are unable to see Christ in them, and through them?  Could we admit that perhaps we are unable to see Him in them because we're unable to see Him in ourselves?  The veil remains over our hearts, and because of it, our sight is deeply flawed.

     Jesus said that the first great command was to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind."  Christine Caine says that "We do love Him with our hearts, souls, and mind, but that our hearts are broken, our souls wounded, and our minds tormented."  Because of this, we're crippled.  Crippled in our relationship with Him, and so, crippled in our relationships with all others.  Our wounds have caused us to build walls, walls that we add onto, make thicker, higher, all the time.  Because of these wounds, we consciously or unconsciously make vows.  Vows that we will never allow anyone to hurt us in such a way again.  A wall of isolation has been constructed, and no one is ever fully allowed to "get to us" again.  Little do we realize that in doing so, we've included God in that vow as well.  These vows block His entry into these wounded places.  And so, we go on, leaving a trail of broken relationships behind.  We'll not be disappointed again, and at the first sign that another may do just that, we run from them, running from Him at the same time.  We cannot see that what we so desperately desire is what we so desperately seek to avoid.  To yield to His healing requires we be vulnerable, and we've already decided we'll not be that, so we go on, and on, and on.....in our lameness.
    Who have you and I been guilty of doing this with?  We all have.  Just how deep does the woundedness in us go?  How crippled have we been in our relationships with others?  How crippled is our relationship with Him?  Can we even see over our selfmade walls to answer that?
Paul said that there is a veil over our hearts that only Christ can remove and if we allow that, we will see Him, ourselves, and others with clear eyes.  His eyes.  Our hearts and minds begin to be renewed.  Does the veil yet remain for you and I?  Which path will we continue to live on?  The path that is lived out of our woundedness or of our wholeness?  One will continue to leave a trail of broken and lost friendships, marriages, families, and churches.  The other will live from a place of wholeness in Him, the fruit of which will be restoration and reconciliation.  One will live deeply in Him, the other outside of Him.  In Matthew 11:28, Jesus invites; "Come unto Me, ALL of you...."

All of ourselves, without walls, given to all of Himself, that we might receive all that He is.  Cripples no more.  Made whole IN Him, that we might be whole people to one another.

Blessings,
Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - Can You?

       I love John 11:25-26, and recently, the Lord took me a bit deeper into the meaning of what He says here.  He is speaking to Martha, whose brother Lazarus has just died, saying, "I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in Me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again.  They are given eternal life for believing in Me and will never perish.  Do you believe this Martha?"  There's richness here far beyond my or anyone's ability to fully comprehend, but the eternal life He offers is not something that awaits us only after our physical bodies have died, but is a life, His life, available to all who really believe, right now.  A better interpretation of His words "Do you believe," is "Can you believe."  Jesus is not asking Martha for an intellectual agreement on His words.  He asks her if she can fully receive all the power and life of those words into her life and being.  Can she believe all that is in the power of His promise?  Can you?  Can I?  In the encroaching darkness of these days, and any days, can we believe Him?  Can we experience the fullness of His life?  Can we know and walk in resurrection power and life?

    In his book, The Root Of The Righteous, A.W. Tozer writes, "To many Christians, Christ is little more than an idea, or at best an ideal.  He is not a fact.  Millions of professed believers talk as if He were real, and act as if He were not."  He goes on to say that any belief that does not "command the one who holds it is not a real belief at all, it is a pseudo belief only......For true faith, it is either God, or total collapse."  So many, when faced with the possibility of total collapse, will turn to their own devices and abilities for deliverance, unable to trust and rest in the power and promise of Almighty God.  At such times, their faith is exposed as being pseudo faith, not a real one.  Do we dare to see if such faith dwells within us?  Can we stand before Him, in the midst of the deepest trial and darkness, and in spite of it, say in response to His question, "Can you believe this?", "Yes Lord, I can."  And because we can, we may live in the midst of that darkness with the power of His resurrection life.  Overwhelming problems cannot stand against the power of His overcoming life.
   Tozer says, "For each of us, the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God....to the man of pseudo faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith, it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain."  When that time comes for you and I, when Christ stands before us, with every circumstance pointing to the impossibility of His words being true, and He asks, "Can you believe this?", how will we answer?  How will you answer?  Pseudo faith or real faith.  In which are we walking?

Blessings,
Pastor O   

Heart Tracks - A Disturbing Faith

      "Faith is a perturbing thing."  This was a saying among the early Lutherans.  What they meant by it was that true faith in the risen Christ was a life transforming experience.  Nothing remained the same and nothing would ever be the same again.  Truly, real faith in Christ made all things new, saw old things passed away, and a transformation from the inside out had taken place and would continue to take place all the rest of the life of those who lived that faith.  A.W. Tozer writes, "The faith of the apostle Paul was a revolutionizing thing.  It upset the whole of the individual and made him another person altogether.....It took up its cross and followed along after Jesus with no intention of ever going back....it made earth a desert."  The world and all it offered could not compare with what was gained in Christ.  The world at its best was nothing more than, as Tozer said, a desert, compared with the wonder of knowing and having Christ and His Kingdom.  Such a transformation was not only upsetting to the individual, but upsetting to those who had no such experience or knowledge of Him.  This was the experience of the people of Thessalonica, who, upon hearing the preaching of Paul and Silas said, "These men who have turned the world upside down with their preaching are now here disturbing our city."  Make no mistake, a vital, lived out faith in Christ will turn our world upside down, and disturb a great many in the process.

     Now, believers have been guilty of disturbing many in the past, but too often for all the wrong reasons.  We can disturb and perturb with our judgemental spirits, our legalistic views, and our stiff self-righteousness, and the devil has gleefully taken full advantage, and fought back very effectively.  However, he has no defense against a life lived in the resurrection power of Christ.  Such a life will shine with the light of Christ in the midst of the deepest darkness, and the darkness can do nothing but shrink back.  I understand why a church feels it must explore ways to reach the lost and unchurched, but I have come to believe that such "ways" won't be needed if we, His people, truly live in the light and life of Christ.  Such lives will definitely disturb and perturb, but will also draw men and women to Himself.  They will upset the world and its spirit wherever they go.
    I leave off with these words of Tozer.  "Faith now means no more than passive moral acquiescence in the Word of God and the cross of Jesus.....We need only nod our heads in agreement.......Such a faith does not perturb people."  Jacob, in the book of Genesis, after wrestling all night with God, emerged a different man, with a new name.  32:31 says "The sun rose as he left Peniel" It shone upon him, a new day shining upon a new man.  This is true faith.  Disturbing, perturbing faith.  Is it yours?  Is it mine?

Blessings,

Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - The Gain

     Some years back I was walking through a time of great loss in my life and ministry.  I could not make sense of any of it, didn't know of any place where I had consciously disobeyed Him, and had a desperate desire to come out of this place of suffering, a place I felt I didn't deserve to be.  Eventually, I came across a book written by a brother who had and continued to walk through his own place of loss and trial.  Naturally, I was drawn to it and to the premise of the author, which was that in the pain and sorrow of life, his and my part was to hold onto Him, persevere in our desires through prayer, and that in His time and way, the Father would bring us through and give us all the desires of our heart.  Among the writer's examples was of course Job, who at the end of his time of deep trial, we are told in Job 42:12 that God "blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first,"

giving him twice the amount of everything he had lost.  If I would believe and persevere as had Job, God would also come through for me, and all that I had lost would be restored, and then some.
This seemed a right theology to me, yet I was missing by a wide margin something very key, and that was in what I would gain.  In the midst of the losses of life, I wanted to gain back what I'd lost.  The Father's great desire for me was that I would gain more of Him than I had ever had or known.
    In his book, Walking With Christ In The Details Of Life, Patrick Morely writes, "Our hope is not to gain prosperity, but to gain Christ.  Job doesn't model enduring pain for an expected outcome, but to show us how to respond to tragedy.  In due time, God restores, but sovereignly.  Surrender your expectations to God and wait patiently for Him to restore you.  Our hope is Christ."  Ultimately, my focus had been on myself.  What I'd lost, what God would be obligated to give back to me, if only I would go through the prescribed "steps" of "perseverance and faith" and so "earn back" all that I had lost, and even more.  The deep desire of my heart was to gain "stuff".  The deep desire of His heart was that I would gain Christ, that I would have in my heart the same attitude that was in Paul when he said that he counted the loss of all things as nothing but "garbage" for the surpassing joy of knowing and having Christ.  In my pain, I had thought that I'd surrendered to Him by my "willingness" to go through it, not seeing that all the while I was bargaining with Him, seeking to convince Him that by enduring it all, I was worthy to have Him restore everything exactly according to my plan, not His.
    It's been more than a decade since that time.  The Father has restored, but not in the manner of which I once hoped.  Much of the "stuff" that was lost has not been brought back, but what I gained through that time can never be lost to me.  I gained more of Him, more of His life, His hope, His joy, peace, and hope.  Had He brought back all that I had thought lost, I see now that I would have lived, consciously or not, in fear of losing it again.  What I gained in Him can never be lost.  There is road yet to be walked with Him, and what He will choose to add on to my life is in His hands, but I have learned, and continue to learn to trust Him in it all.  My plans for myself will always turn to dust, but His plans for me will endure through eternity.  They will for you as well.  What is it that you really seek to gain today?

Blessings,

Heart Tracks - Home 12/3/13

      One of the aspects of growing older is how much time one can spend reflecting on what has been in their life.  As I reflect upon mine, I have come to realize how much time I have spent looking for "home."  I didn't grow up in a "horrible" family, but through my teenage years and early 20's, I came to spend far more time in my friends homes than I did my own.  For whatever reason, my home just didn't feel like "home."  In my early 20's I began a journey that found me living at many different addresses, yet none of them were home.  There always seemed to be something missing, though I didn't know what it was.  I didn't realize that I was, as Anne Graham Lotz puts it, "homesick for God."  Then, at the age of 29, Jesus Christ captured my life.  I had found my home, or at least, I thought I had.  I had yet to realize how inwardly empty I still was.  It's said that each of has an empty area in our soul that only Christ can fill, and that's true, but I have come to see that He can only fill it when we become aware of how vast and deep it is, and how desperately He is needed there.  Even with Him, I had not yet found that out.  That would not begin to happen for another 10 years.

    With the collapse of my marriage, among the many devastations I experienced was the feeling that I had lost my home, a home that was far more than a house.  I felt that the security and well-being I had known was lost, and because of that, I had a sense of lostness as well.  The next 20 years would find me changing my address 22 times.  I lived in many places, none of them were home.  Then, in 2008, the Father worked in truly miraculous ways that enabled me to do something I had not thought possible, actually purchase a house.  That house has become my home, at least in the earthly sense, and my gratitude to Him goes beyond words that I can express.  Still, a greater miracle than that has taken place.  Though I knew Christ, followed and loved Him, there remained in me a kind of dull ache, an ache that I thought could be remedied through the rebuilding of that "home" I had lost so many years before.  If I could find the right person to share this new home with me, than life would be complete.  So many make this same mistake, thinking that home is all about marriage, family, and the well-being that can come with them, so we spend our lives looking for that right person to help us make that a reality.  That person doesn't exist, because no person has been created that can fill that void that all of us come into this world with.  That longing for Him, that "homesickness for God." 
     Psalm 90:1 reads, Lord, through all the generations You have been our home.  It was not the promised land of Israel.  It wasn't the abundance of fruit and life that He blessed them with there, it was Himself.  He was their home, and without Him, no place could really be home, for they, we, are created with the purpose of finding our home, our lives, in Him.  In Acts 5:42, the apostles, preaching to the Jews in the Temple said, The Messiah you are looking for is Jesus.  He speaks the same to you and I.  The Messiah, the Answer, the Hope, the Life, the Home, you have been searching for, is Jesus.  I have known Him now for more than 30 years, but it has been in the last 5 that I have truly discovered that it is He, and He alone who is my home.  Marriage, family, houses, these are wonderful blessings, but blessings that can be lost to us in a moment.  He is the home that will remain.  Our outward "address" may change again and again, but He is the constant, He is the One that, no matter where we may be, is home.  Our home.
    In this season of thankfulness, I can't express the gratitude I feel to Him, who is, has been, and always will be, my home.  Have you truly discovered that yet, or do you continue to seek to find that security in an "address", be it person, family, occupation, or ministry?  You'll look in vain to those places, for the One you seek, you look for, is Jesus.  There may be aspects of life we are missing, but if we are missing Him, beloved, we are missing everything.

Blessings,
Pastor O