Heart Tracks - The Fall

      Pastor Peter Lord made two scriptures really come alive for me of late.  They are Matthew 7:13-14 and Revelation 2:4-5.  In the first, Jesus tells His listener to enter into the narrow way, the way of His life, rather than the broad way, the way of the flesh, and the way of death.  Now, those on the broad way will face few temptations, and will see little of the passing way because their own self-absorption will keep their eyes upon themselves and all their own desires.  However, for those on the narrow way, this will never be the case.  Lord said that to travel His narrow way is much like traveling the interstate.  All along the way there will be "signs" posted by the enemy with the intent that they would lure us off His way in order to "try" the many enticements he will place before us in the journey.  The enemy's every intent, like those interstate signs, will be to get us off the road we travel and to the place that is made to look so inviting.  Are there any among us who have not at some time, yielded to that invitation to leave His way, even if it be ever so slightly, in order to fulfill a desire that seeks to supplant Him as our hearts one true desire?  Thank the Father for His grace that comes and leads us back to His way, but it is a great tragedy that many who once walked in Him, but gave in to those roadside temptations, have never returned, and are now held captive by the very things they thought would bring such great satisfaction.  Might some part of you or I today be among them?

     The second scripture, from Revelation has the power to cut to the quick any who hear it.  I didn't say read it, for many can do that, but can we hear it?  Jesus is speaking to the church at Ephesus, and He commends them for their hard work, their faithful ministry for Him, their holding to good doctrine and teaching, even their suffering for Him without complaint, yet He says to them, "I have this complaint against you.  You don't love Me or each other as you did at first.  Look how far you have fallen from your first love."  Can you or I hear His words?  What part of them ring true for you and I?  We may have love of family, church, good doctrine, even ministry, but is He our one supreme love?  Do all other loves bow to our love of Him?  James Robison said he was cut to the quick in his heart when he heard Peter Lord preach on this passage and ask his listeners, "What do others say about your love for Christ?  Would your wife or husband say you love Him with all your heart?  Would your children?"  What would others say about our love for Him?  Would they say, from our actions and behavior that we do?  Would our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, fellow believers, those we serve, and those we pastor?  What's their testimony of our love for Him?                                                       

     How far off His road may we have gotten today?  How far from our first love may we have fallen?  Have other desires, even good ones, taken the place of the one desire, Christ?  How far have we drifted from our first love?  Indeed, has He ever really been our first love?  Someday, all will stand before Him, and even those who are His must give an account of their lives in Him.  What will we say to Him when He asks why, in the midst of all things, He was not enough for us?  What will we give as our reason for leaving His way, drifting from Him and His love?  Will anything we say be able to stand?
Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Rubble

      Pastor Peter Lord made two scriptures really come alive for me of late.  They are Matthew 7:13-14 and Revelation 2:4-5.  In the first, Jesus tells His listener to enter into the narrow way, the way of His life, rather than the broad way, the way of the flesh, and the way of death.  Now, those on the broad way will face few temptations, and will see little of the passing way because their own self-absorption will keep their eyes upon themselves and all their own desires.  However, for those on the narrow way, this will never be the case.  Lord said that to travel His narrow way is much like traveling the interstate.  All along the way there will be "signs" posted by the enemy with the intent that they would lure us off His way in order to "try" the many enticements he will place before us in the journey.  The enemy's every intent, like those interstate signs, will be to get us off the road we travel and to the place that is made to look so inviting.  Are there any among us who have not at some time, yielded to that invitation to leave His way, even if it be ever so slightly, in order to fulfill a desire that seeks to supplant Him as our hearts one true desire?  Thank the Father for His grace that comes and leads us back to His way, but it is a great tragedy that many who once walked in Him, but gave in to those roadside temptations, have never returned, and are now held captive by the very things they thought would bring such great satisfaction.  Might some part of you or I today be among them?

     The second scripture, from Revelation has the power to cut to the quick any who hear it.  I didn't say read it, for many can do that, but can we hear it?  Jesus is speaking to the church at Ephesus, and He commends them for their hard work, their faithful ministry for Him, their holding to good doctrine and teaching, even their suffering for Him without complaint, yet He says to them, "I have this complaint against you.  You don't love Me or each other as you did at first.  Look how far you have fallen from your first love."  Can you or I hear His words?  What part of them ring true for you and I?  We may have love of family, church, good doctrine, even ministry, but is He our one supreme love?  Do all other loves bow to our love of Him?  James Robison said he was cut to the quick in his heart when he heard Peter Lord preach on this passage and ask his listeners, "What do others say about your love for Christ?  Would your wife or husband say you love Him with all your heart?  Would your children?"  What would others say about our love for Him?  Would they say, from our actions and behavior that we do?  Would our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, fellow believers, those we serve, and those we pastor?  What's their testimony of our love for Him?                                                       

     How far off His road may we have gotten today?  How far from our first love may we have fallen?  Have other desires, even good ones, taken the place of the one desire, Christ?  How far have we drifted from our first love?  Indeed, has He ever really been our first love?  Someday, all will stand before Him, and even those who are His must give an account of their lives in Him.  What will we say to Him when He asks why, in the midst of all things, He was not enough for us?  What will we give as our reason for leaving His way, drifting from Him and His love?  Will anything we say be able to stand?
Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Source Or Effect?

    There is a lot of conversation going on in the church today as to what kind of church we need to be.  Words and phrases like "welcoming" and "warm", "comforting," and "relationship centered" are used a lot.  These are all good things.  A welcoming, warm, comforting church, is far better than a cold, distant, unfriendly one.  Yet I wonder, have we come to depend on "being" all of these in our yearning to reach a dying world?  Are we, in the end, depending on nothing more than flesh to do what only He can do?  As a good friend put it, "Good flesh is better than bad flesh, but in the end, it's still flesh."  Jesus said "Abide in Me, for apart from Me, you can do nothing."  I think in many ways, we accept this as truth, and then expend great energy in trying to prove it's not so.  Henry Blackaby wrote, "Our temptation is to give our time and effort to the goals of this world.

Then, when we are successful in the world's eyes, we seek to bring God into our world by honoring Him with our success."  This goes far beyond the ministry of the church to reach into every aspect of our lives.  We plan, and then we do it, and if we can "make it happen," we then bring it to Him in order to both honor Him and to receive His blessing for our efforts.  Blackaby calls this "giving Him second-hand glory" which is something He will never accept.  We keep trying to create what only He can create.  The question we must allow His Spirit to ask us is, are we more interested in being a life, a fellowship that is welcoming to the flesh, or to His Spirit.  As that friend I previously mentioned said, "We need to be centered on our Source, and not on the effect we hope to achieve."
      What we need to know is that the church that has as its deepest desire to be a body which the Lord can completely inhabit, will in many ways not be welcoming to our flesh at all.  Indeed, our flesh will want to be anywhere but in such an environment.  But the beauty of it all is that the seeds which have been planted in various hearts by His Spirit, will so desire to come to Him, that in a mystical way, it renders the power of the flesh null and void.  Yes, I know we still have our free will, but I believe the power of His Spirit and Life set free in His church will be a power that is almost irresistible, and if the flesh, aided by the devil, is able to resist it, then all of our efforts to make that flesh feel "welcome" will never bring to pass the desire we hold, and will certainly never bring to pass His desire.
      Both David and Paul spoke of the "one thing."  That One thing was to them, and must be so to us, Him, and Him alone.  We need to be, must be consumed by the One we must abide in.  He is the Source in and for everything.  That's not just a saying to place on the walls of our homes and churches, but written upon our hearts.  Will our lives, our fellowships, be most welcoming to the things of the Kingdom and His Life, or to the things and interests of the flesh?  Will we be Source, or effect centered?  Will the One thing, be the only thing for you and I?

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Holy Or Hollow?

   A friend wrote me not long ago to share a thought the Lord had given.  In His study Bible, he'd come across a side note in Matthew regarding Jesus' talking with the Pharisee's and how they clung to their traditions, their ideas, and their concept of truth, all the while rejecting Christ who was right before them.  The note said that they "exchanged the holy for the hollow."  My friend went on to say that this reminded him of Saul, in I Samuel 15, when he had been told by God to "utterly destroy" the Amalekites.  Out of fear of the people, he didn't do this, and when confronted by the prophet Samuel, Saul asked him to, in effect, not dishonor him in front of those people publicly.  My friend said that Saul's placing more value upon the opinions of men than the the desire of the Father was a prime example of exchanging the holy for the hollow.  It's easy to judge Saul on this, but truly, how often have you and I done the same?  How recently as well?
      T. Austin-Sparks wrote of this in his look at the actions of Saul and related them to us in our day to day living.  He asked how often do we make a "compromise with Amalek because of the hardness of the way, the greatness of the cost?"  The call of the "hollow" can so often speak much louder than the whisper of the holy.  Paul said in Galatians 5 that our flesh would always bring us into conflict with His Spirit.  When that happens, what the Father calls us to is a difficult way, paved with great cost.  It can bring the appearance of many things that our flesh hates, the appearance of weakness, foolishness, failure.  Like Saul, we don't desire that anyone see us in that light.  The Amalekites had great wealth, yet Saul was told to destroy all of it.  What king conquers, yet collects no spoil, yet the Lord called Him to exactly that.  He couldn't.  He kept the best of the treasure and livestock for himself.  Saul chose the hollow over the holy.  In the American gospel of today, what believer, what pastor, willingly chooses the way of obscurity, painful sacrifice, and a path that makes no sense to anyone else, over the promise of success, achievement, recognition, and applause.  I confess, too many times the allure of the hollow has captured my heart to the forgetting of the holy.  Is the same true for you?
      I heard it said somewhere, that whatever ground we stand on, and wherever that ground may be, is holy ground, and we're to treat it as such.
I know that many of the places I have stood was seen as holy by His eyes, but not mine.  I chose the hollow there, and not the holy.  My way and my will mattered more than His.  I'm hoping that He's brought me a far piece since then, but I know, there are still those times when the hollow has held me more tightly than the holy.  When Samuel came to him, Saul told him that he'd carried out the Lord's will and destroyed the Amalekites, but Samuel asked him, "then what is all the bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle I hear?"   What bleating and lowing come from our lives today?  Where has the hollow mattered more than the holy?  Speaking of his life and that of Christ's, John the Baptist said, "I must decrease so that He may increase."  As Sparks said, He must become more and more as we become less and less.  The hollow must fade away, and the holy must come forth.  In me.  In you.  In us.  Let it be so.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Living In The Kitchen

      Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite monk who lived and served his monastery from its kitchen during the 17th century.  The details of his life in Christ are captured in the classic The Practice Of The Presence Of God, which is still a centerpiece of many a believers library.  Lawrence of the Resurrection, as he was known among his brothers, lived his life out in relative obscurity, preparing meals in the kitchen of the monastery, yet, from that place of obscurity, left behind a legacy of what a life lived out in the fullness of His resurrection could be.  A life that could be, should be, yours or mine, if only we could "practice the presence of God."  Oswald Chambers said that "Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity."  How often have I grieved His heart because the same has been true of me?  How often may it have been true of you as well?

     The source of this quote escapes me right now, but I heard it said as this; that so many of us have no trouble living in God's penthouse, beholding His glory and wonder, enraptured by the beauty we see there, but when we must come down, and go into His kitchen, where the everyday pressures of life, difficulties with difficult people, troubling situations and circumstances, it is then that we lose the sense of His presence we so enjoyed in the penthouse.  It was easy to "practice His presence" up there, but down in the mud and blood of everyday life, well, that can be another matter entirely.  Somehow,for so many, everything changes in the kitchen.  We change.  Our spirits soared in the penthouse, but our flesh prevails down in the kitchen.
     There may be no place where this is better seen than in Matthew 17 and the account of the Transfiguration of Christ, and its aftermath.  Peter, James and John had just beheld Christ in His glory, they were in the presence of God, living in the atmosphere of heaven.  Afterwards, Jesus led them back down into the valley, where they encountered a father and his demon-possessed son, which neither they, nor the other disciples could deliver him from.  One would think that after being in the presence of such wonder, beholding such heavenly matters, this should have been a small matter for the three, but it wasn't.  It wasn't because when they came down into the valley, into the "kitchen" they were encompassed by the atmosphere of the valley, and no longer living in the atmosphere of heaven.  To live in His presence is to live in the atmosphere of the Kingdom, an atmosphere that prevails no matter where we are, be it the kitchen, or as some have called it, "the cellar of affliction."  Paul lived in this atmosphere, and because of it, no dingy prison cell could rob him of it.  His spirit continued to soar in Christ wherever he was.  It was so of Brother Lawrence.  Oh that it would be so of you and I.
      I've a friend who likes to talk of how for the believer, life is about living in the midst of parallel universes.  One universe is composed of the here and now.  It is passing.  The other is the eternal, the Kingdom, and it will never pass away.  We are born physically into the first, but our true citizenship is to be found in the latter, through Christ.  Every intent of that fallen universe we are born into is to pull us down into destruction, but every intent of the Kingdom is draw us to Himself, the upward call Paul wrote of in Ephesians.  When we live in the atmosphere of the Kingdom, we can overcome every intent and power of that fallen universe.  Whether we find ourselves in the kitchen, the cellar, or a prison, we remain in the atmosphere of heaven, living in His presence, and so, overcoming the world.  We may live and serve in obscurity, but we will leave behind a legacy that will echo throughout eternity.  You and I will, today, find ourselves in the kitchen.  Which atmosphere will have hold of us?  The Kingdom, or the flesh?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Come Away!

     A theme that resonates through the words of Oswald Chambers, who founded a college for the training of missionaries, was that before one could engage and tell a soul of the wonder of Christ, they must first intimately know and be engaged in that wonder themselves.  He taught that to seek to take the message of His Presence without first personally experiencing the depths of that Presence was an exercise doomed to failure.  In my prayer notes I have written that before He reaches the world, He must first reach His church, you, me, us.  Has He?  Francis Chan wrote that "We are pieces of clay trying to tell other pieces of clay what the Potter is like...but that the only way we may know Him is through intimacy with the touch of His hands, and the intentions of His heart."  Far too often we venture out as rough lumps of clay, and not works shaped by His hands.  We can give lots of information about Him, but little revelation from Him.  We may fervently pray for a spiritual awakening, but such an awakening can only come through face to face encounters with the risen Christ.  We want to get more of His life, but seem unaware that His Life is seeking to get more of us.
     Wade Taylor, in his wonderful book, The Secret Of The Stairs, focuses on a passage from the Song of Songs, in 2:8-9.  It is a picture of Christ and His Church.  The bride, the church, sits in her room alone, listing all the wonderful things that her lover has done for her, given her.  Her love for him is based completely on what he has done for her, not for who he is.  The scripture says that while she is doing this, he is behind the wall, listening, yearning for her to long for him as he longed for her.  Unseen by her, he moves to the latticework where he may be partially seen.  At that moment she sees him, and her heart is awakened with a new and deeper love, to which he says, "Rise up my beloved, my fair one, and come away with me."  Such is the way of Christ with us.  The walls of our self-interest and absorption keep Him in the unseen and unknown.  All the while He longs for us, and seeks to show us glimpses of Himself through the latticework of our daily lives.  Do we, like the bride, see the lover of our souls, or do we go on missing Him?

     For so long I sought to tell people of a Father I had heard so much about.  I could give them information as to who He was and why they needed Him.  I could list all the things He had done for me, and blessed me with.  Yet, in so many ways, I, like the bride, sat in a room alone, not knowing that He stood right outside that "room" deeply longing for intimacy with me, a longing I didn't really share.  I wanted to receive from Him, I even wanted to "do" for Him, but I lacked an overwhelming desire for Him.  One day, through His endless grace, I saw Him through the latticework, past the wall of my own self obsession, and began to really hear His call to "come away" with Him.  The call grows stronger.  There are still times when I let the wall obscure Him again, when I am more lump of clay than lover of His heart, but more and more I want to know Him, live in His Presence, and love Him with the kind of love He gives to me.  No longer trying to get life out of Him, but receiving the fullness of Life from Him.  Not getting information of Him, but revelation from Him.  Each day, we will either choose to remain in our "room" and all the self issues that are found there, or to come away with Him.  Stay, or come.  Which will it be?

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Tapestry

       I heard someone say onetime that the first thing they seek to know in any time of crisis is, "What is God seeking to tell me in and through this."  I must say that too often, that has not been my first response.  I'm thinking it hasn't been yours either.  Our first response to pressing need is generally to cry out to in desperation for Him to either remove the problems or circumstances that make for the crisis, or just remove it, or us, from the the midst of them.  If that doesn't "work," then generally we move into complaint/whining mode.  Why have You allowed this?  Why aren't You taking care of this?  Why won't You listen to me?  If we were not so consumed with ourselves in it all, we might notice that we sound much like the 12 year old with the sense of entitlement.  If we were not so self-consumed.  Because we are, it doesn't occur to us that maybe, just maybe, the Father seeks to speak to us in this time, reveal something deeper about Himself and ourself in it.  Or even to discover that He may well have allowed this very crisis, pain, need, in order to take us deeper into His life, and deeper into our knowledge and understanding of Him.

     Author Andy Andrews said, "God's perspective is what's most needed in any crisis.  We're so desperate to have an answer that we grasp at something that falls short of that perspective.  We live at the 'almost.' "  In Isaiah 37, after the Assyrian king has threatened Hezekiah the king and the kingdom of Judah with utter destruction in a letter, we are told that Hezekiah took the letter and "spread it out before the Lord" in prayer.  Yes, he sought God's response, but more, He sought the mind and heart of the Father.  He brought not only the need, but all of Himself, and, his heart determination was that more than the need being met, he wanted all the fullness of his God that he might have.  In response, God not only delivered he and his kingdom, but He revealed to Hezekiah a much deeper understanding of who He was, and is.  The prophet Habakkuk spent an entire chapter pouring out his heart, even his "complaint" to God, but Habakkuk 2:1 says that he would then, "Climb up into my watchtower and wait to see what the Lord will say to me."  He not only sought to hear from Him, but he sought the strongest position he could in order to hear the voice and heart of his God.  He knew his understanding, his perspective, was flawed.  He would not settle for an "almost."  Nothing other than the heart and mind of the Father Himself would do, and he would wait until he had that.
    Such was the pattern of Paul, of John, of Peter, of Bunyan, Wesley, and countess others whose names we don't know, but because they sought Him out, all of Him, there's was the joy and wonder of having shared with them the thoughts and purposes of God.  Will we join them?  Will we cease to grasp for the "almost?"  Will we, like Habakkuk, ascend our prayertowers, and watch and wait for Him, until we hear, until we see.  "But our need is great and we must have help now," we say.  Can we dare to believe that He knows that, and that He purposes to reveal to us what He sees and knows in all of it, and how, at least in part, he means to work it all for His glory and our good?  I heard a friend speak recently on the two perspectives of prayer, using the weaving of a tapestry as the example.  When one looks from underneath, everything in the weaving looks to be a confused mass of threads.  Yet, when viewed from above it, the beauty and purpose of it may be seen.  It is so with prayer.  When we look at our lives and what takes place in them only with the eyes and understanding of the flesh, all we get is confusion, but if we see as He sees, understand as He does, we may begin to see that He weaves with great care, a pattern of wonder and blessing in and for us.  As concerns your life right now, and the work of the Weaver, what do you see?  What would you see?

Blessings,
Pastor O