Heart Tracks - I Will Pour Out

      Beth Moore said that she loved the sound of rain falling, and that she had a recording of that sound that she often listened to as she went to sleep.  She said it was the sound of a heavy rainfall, and though she did go off to sleep, the one thing she noticed every morning when she awoke was that she was perfectly dry, not wet at all.  She was able to make the sound of rain, but she could not make the rain.  She thought this a great example of what so much of the church has been occupied with in these days; trying to make the rains of heaven and the Kingdom, but all the while, and despite all the effort, remaining completely dry, not rain soaked at all.

      In the late 19th and early 20th century, there were men who traveled through parched, drought afflicted lands, promising that they could bring rain.  Many of them were nothing more than con-artists, but there were among them, some who truly believed they could.  They were sincere, honest, and caring for the people they sought to help.  Yet they could make no rain.  I think we in the church today are sincere, honest, and truly desire to help those we seek to lead and serve in the church and outside of it.  We come together for conferences, meetings, and planning sessions.  We share the burdens, dreams, and even visions we believe we have to see the rain of His Spirit fall upon the church.  We talk about how we may see His Kingdom advance, His church grow, and we may even do so from a godly perspective, yet, in the end, we can make no rain.  The landscape remains parched, and the drought continues.  We are all of us thirsty, but are we thirsty enough?  Are we so thirsty that we cast aside all of our self-made rain making equipment, all of our techniques, plans, and even dreams, so that all that is left is He, and we?  Are we so thirsty that we come to Him, on our knees, face down, crying out, desperate?  So desperate that like Elijah, we will not cease our crying out until we hear the sound of thunder, and the storm clouds gather, the heavens open, and rain of the Holy Spirit fall upon us.  One of the old songs goes "I will pour water on him who is thirsty."  Tell me, are we thirsty enough?  Parched enough?  Has the drought gone on long enough?  Are we so desperate that nothing less than the true rain of the Holy Spirit will do?  Are we weary enough of trying to be rainmakers, and seek the heart and face of the only One who can bring that rain?

     Isaiah 44:3 reads, "I will pour out water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.  I will pour out My Spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your children."  I heard it said that before we can be give His wondrous water, we must first admit to our overwhelming thirst.  Can we do this?  Can we admit that how we've lived, how we've "ministered," how we've been "doing church" has not been able to satisfy the evergrowing thirst within us?  Can we confess, and yes, repent of our dependence upon the rainmaking "tools" that we have devised?  Can we let go of the all the "bottled water" we have been drinking that we may have the refreshing, life giving waters that only He can provide?  Can we admit to how parched, dry, and drought ridden our lives, homes, and yes, churches really are?   Moore said that each week, we gather in our buildings, and like her recordings, we "make the sound of rain," with our music, our meetings, and our messages, but each week, we leave those places totally dry.  We've made the sound of rain, but we haven't received it.  Do we long to receive it?  Are we desperate for the rain only He can bring and give?  I have spent most of my life and ministry trying to find a way to bring the rain.  I cannot.  You cannot.  We cannot.  Will we come, confessing our thirst, crying out for His rain, His water, His life, that the waters of heaven will flow to and through us?  Let those waters flow.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Real?

       The word "real" is highly popular in church circles these days.  So many fellowships, including ours, include it in some part of their purpose statement and it can be found all over many church websites.  We want to present ourselves as real people, dealing with real problems, offering real solutions, through a real God, to those we seek to reach.  I believe in the sincerity of our desire, but have deep doubts as to the very "realness" of ourselves.  We have great difficulty in being real with others, ourselves, and most especially, with God.  The very structure of our fellowships so often works against it.  We make room for people to "share" their problems, but too often neglect making room for God to truly encounter they, and us, in real, life transforming ways.  We seek to create an atmosphere where people feel accepted as they are, but have so little place for Him to truly come in and do His miraculous work of transformation.  We seek an intimacy that never seems to go beyond the flesh, the idea of a God who shows up in our gatherings, and where our only response can be to fall on our faces before Him, scares the daylights out of us. That's just a bit too "real" for most of us.  In those places where He is able to bring us face to face with Himself, we more often run away from, rather than to Him.  We look for another fellowship, another prayer group, where we can be involved, but on our terms, with us setting all the boundaries.  God is no respecter of boundaries, and will cross them every time in order to get to our hearts.  This is "real church" but it's too real for too many.

     I heard a good brother named Jimmy Evans recently speak on how he served the Lord as a pastor, and in what were outwardly successful ways, yet all the while denying to himself the deep woundedness and dysfunction of his life.  Yet, that love that will not let us go pursued him.  As Evans says, God wants to come to us face to face, stick His finger in our coffee and stir it.  He makes it real.  As Beth Moore says, He wants to "mess with our mess."  Most of us prefer Him to leave our mess alone, but as Evans says, "True authenticity comes only when we allow the Holy Spirit to explore us."  We have believed so many lies, about ourselves, others, Him, and only by face to face encounter, a head on collision with Him, can those lies be broken.  When Christ messes with our mess, it can be very messy.  Too often our desire for being "real" doesn't go that deep.  It's much easier and lot more orderly to just keep it on the surface kinds of intimacy, call that real, and go on unchanged, missing what being real with Him is really all about.

    In Ephesians 3, Paul writes about the "priceless gain of knowing Christ," and how it took coming to realize that everything else was garbage in comparison to that knowledge.  This came about by his having a transforming encounter, one that was ongoing, with Christ.  The Lord messed with his mess.  Stuck His finger in Paul's life.  Got down and real with him.  He seeks the same from you and I.  Will we have it, or will we just keep running?  T. Austin-Sparks said that "True spirituality is not to live on the outside, but to live with God right down deep in your own being, where the Spirit is."  Moore once said that God gave Jacob a "20 year look in the mirror."  That's being real.  At the end of it, the Jacob who was, was no more.  A lot of us avoid mirrors for obvious reasons, but we cannot afford to avoid the mirror He holds before us, the one which shows us as we are, but will also show us, if we will tarry before Him, who we have been created to be by Him.  Will we have this?  Will we be real, for real?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Of, But Not In

      A little more than 10 years ago, I had a job working for a large department store chain.  One of their promotions was to send out notices to all their charge card holders of a special discount sale to be held on Sunday evening after regular store hours.  I was not enthusiastic about working that, I do believe in the great value of having a day set aside to really rest, renew, and center on Him, but when I took the job, I was told that doing this from time to time would be expected, and I clearly felt that this was a job He'd led me to, so, having made the agreement, I came into work that evening.  The next day, a lady came in, holding the previously mailed invitation sent out to all credit customers, and told me she was " a Christian, and didn't shop on a Sunday."  Since this was the case, she wanted to be given the same discount on that day, Monday.  I told her I understood, that I was a believer too.  I'll never forget her answer.  She told me, in a spirit that can only be described as arrogant, that maybe I should take a stronger stand for Christ, and not work on Sunday.  I knew I was being put down, and I also remember wondering just how this lady came across to unbelievers?  You know, people that didn't know you're "not supposed to work on Sunday."  Did she have any understanding about what the real circumstances of their life might be?  Of what my circumstances were?  It's easy for us to tell someone "just trust Jesus, and refuse to work," but fail to realize that we're not the ones with rent, mortgage or car payment due.  I also wanted to ask her if she and her family had gone out to eat after church the day before.  Most restaurants are filled with after church customers each Sunday.  Many believed as she did about Sunday work or shopping, but somehow, that always seems to be different when it comes to eating out.  After all, that's fellowship.  I wanted to ask her this, but I didn't.  I don't think she would have heard or seen.  We are adept at disguising our personal hypocrisy.

     This lady displayed something I think that is prevalent among so many believers today, and that's a spirit of entitlement.  She wanted it known that she would never shop on a Sunday, yet she also wanted to receive the same "bounty" as those who did.  She wanted to display her "righteousness," but she also didn't want to lose anything because of it.  In her desire to prove how non-worldly she was, she was instead showing how much a part of it she truly was.  I didn't sense from her any understanding, compassion, or care as to why I was in that store the night before.  I did sense judgement, condemnation, and pride.  Tell me, which are of the Spirit, and which the flesh?  When you and I walk before the world, which do they see more of, the face, heart, and presence of Christ in us, or our fleshly, religious, self-absorption?
     If you think I've been writing about legalism, or not working on Sunday's, you're missing the point.  Our problems are much deeper than that.  I think in many ways, western Christianity has become much more about getting guarantees of finding protection for ourselves and loved ones, and in the process being laden with blessing.  Blessing that stops with, rather than flows through us.  We don't walk and live in His Spirit, but the world's.  We've become so good at it, at being religious without being holy, at setting ourselves apart from the world, but being blind as to how like it we truly are.  Christine Caine asked if the lost remain lost because the church itself is lost?  The lady I encountered that day thought she had sight, yet she didn't see me.  How many others did she also not see?  Who are you and I not seeing?  Jesus said that we are "to be in the world, but not of it."  As Caine remarked, "the western church today is of the world, but not in it."  The only cure for blindness is to have sight, His sight, and we may only have His sight by receiving it from His hand, and living in the fullness of His presence.  We live eyes wide open.  First to Him, and then to all that is around us.  Jesus sent His disciples out, but not before they had been fully immersed in His Spirit.  Then "as they went" they shared Him, His life, His love, and His wholeness.  As for that lady, I can't condemn her.  Far too many times I've been just like her. I haven't really seen those around me because I've been too busy seeing what matters to me, my needs, my cares, my desires and dreams, and yes, my ministry.  How true might that be of you?

Blessings,

Pastor O

 

Heart Tracks - Stamp Of Approval

      In the days before all of the computerized, high-tech ways of doing things now available to us, much of the business dealings between people were of a much more hands-on type.  One of these was the approval or rejection of such things as personal and business loans, and other types of applications that a person might make.  Oftentimes the paperwork that was submitted was stamped at the end with either an "approval" or a "rejection" imprint.  Very often, the ink was red.  This practice, at least as far as the stamping goes, is not much used anymore, but I think it is still, in a form, very much in use in the western church.  Particularly as to how we function in prayer and in our asking "in the name of Jesus."

    Jesus did say in His Word that "anything that we ask of the Father in His name," we will receive that which we ask for from the Father.  I think in so many ways, we see Jesus and His name as a kind of "stamp" that we apply to our prayers, no matter what that prayer may be asking for, that will guarantee that we "get" what we want from His hand, no matter how self-serving the request may be.  We know, at least vaguely, that in the epistle of James that we ask Him and receive nothing from Him because we are asking from our own selfish desires, that we may "consume" what we ask for towards our own ends.  I say vaguely because we don't believe that that's what we're doing.  We just believe that if we want it, it must be good, and since it's good, the Father must be inclined to give it.  Adding Jesus' name to the request just kind of "seals the deal" for us.  I wonder if we ever stop to think that we apply His name to our prayers like a kind of magic, like Aladdin's rubbing of the magic lamp in order to get his wishes to come to pass.  We're in deception about it all, and so, we're blind and ignorant as to what it really means to "pray in the name of Jesus."
    To pray in the name of Christ is not a magic formula for getting what we want.  When Jesus spoke those words, those who truly heard them knew He meant that they would pray for the very things that Jesus Himself would pray for.  They would seek to receive from the Father that which Jesus Himself would seek from the Father for them.  They would be led of His Spirit to seek from Him what His heart longed to give them, and what His heart longs to give will always be far higher and greater than anything our fleshly hearts would ask for or desire.  As a friend put it, when we pray in His name, we pray from the perspective of heaven and the Kingdom, and we view His response to those prayers from the same perspective, so we are not, like the world and the flesh, measuring, weighing, and counting, how we see the response, because we're seeing not with the eyes of the flesh, but of His Spirit.  It's a mystical process and one we learn and grow in, but the process always brings us ever closer to His heart and His desire for us and for that which we pray.  When this happens, He's no longer the stamp we apply to our requests, we pray with His heart, and His desire and His will.  And our guarantee is also written in red, and that is His blood.  This is praying in the name of Jesus.

Blessings,
Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - God's Objective

       In the midst of an ordeal that pressed in every way imaginable, physically, mentally, and above all, spiritually, Job was able to proclaim of His Father, "Even if He slays me, yet I will trust Him."  We admire those words, and we want to believe that we would say the same in those circumstances, yet, I think, in our hearts, we don't really believe God would ever deal with us in such a manner.  We don't believe that He would ever really desire to "kill" us, but I think our belief would be wrong.  Very wrong.

    Pastor and writer Jack Taylor once said to the effect, "Stop asking God to deliver you.  He wants to kill you."  That's a strong statement, and it's not one that will find a lot of listeners in the western church.  When our times of testing, trouble, pain come, our cry is for Him to get us out of these circumstances, this pain, and this trouble.  We want to evacuated, and in a sense, so does He desire this for us, but the difference is found in our understanding of evacuation.  We want brought out of situations that we believe are killing us.  He wants to bring out of us conditions, attitudes, strongholds of the flesh, and of sin, things that He knows are killing us.  In effect, He wants to kill what's killing us.  The process will most assuredly feel like "death," because these things can take a very strong hold on our lives.  Bitterness, unforgiveness, lust, jealousy, unloving hearts and lives, the list is really endless, and the presence of any and all of them brings the element of death into our lives.  The Father, in His love, knows that their presence in our hearts does us great harm, and He also knows that we rarely see them as He does.  We're adept at tucking them away in different parts of our heart and life, giving them different names, and denying the reality of what they are.  Only by taking them, and us, through the fire of affliction and yes, pain, is He able to bring them to the surface of our life, kill them, and bring us into a deeper purity.  We cry out for deliverance, but it's a deliverance that allows these things to remain in our lives and hearts, but God is not interested in leaving such things within us.  As Taylor says, He wants to kill that in us so that we may truly live in Him.  His call to us is always to "go on" with Him, but we can't go on until these things are brought to death so that we might have life, and our lives will be an ongoing journey His bringing us to death so that we might have His life.
He wounds that He might heal, and He "kills" that He might give life.
     To what degree is the Father's objective being carried out in yours and my life?  Is the cross of Christ something we see in churches, or a reality in our life?  Are we most interested in a life that allows us to hold onto things that are killing us, even if it may be a "painless" death, or do we embrace a life that will die to everything that is not of Him, so that we might have all that is Him?  The first yields a life composed of what Paul called rubbish.  The latter yields the fullness of His life, the fullness of Him.  The first is the flesh's objective, the latter His.  Whose objective is being carried out in us?

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - Riser And Step

      Paul writes in Philippians 2:12 that we are to, "work out our salvation with trembling and fear."  How do we understand that scripture?  Does it mean that we are to make sure we are constantly doing good works in His name in order to insure that we remain saved?  If it does then it negates the meaning and power of His grace, for we are not saved by our good behavior, but by His unending grace.  We are to live lives that show in the living, His life, and His love, but something much more than good works is being spoken of by Paul.
    Wade Taylor, in his book The Secret of the Stairs, gives a much clearer meaning to this scripture.  Everywhere in His Word we are exhorted to "grow in His grace," and this happens through the work of His Holy Spirit in our lives through the revelation of Himself and His Word.  We grow in grace when His truth becomes incorporated into our lives.  We don't merely have it as intellectual knowledge, but it becomes a literal part of our life, of who we are.  Through His Spirit, the Father gives us revelation and understanding of Himself and His Word.  First our minds understand, but it can't stop there.  It has to become a literal part of who we are.  I have a close friend who likes to speak of "chewing" on those things of which the Father is speaking to her about, revealing to her, in order that this truth might become a part of her life.  This is what it means to "work out our salvation."  Taylor says that it means that we "work it our experientially in our lives."  Understanding in our minds, becomes reality in our lives.  This is how Jesus' words about "knowing the truth" and therefore, becoming free.
    Taylor illustrates this in his use of a stairway.  He said the "riser" on the stairway is the place where the Father brings to us a new, deeper understanding of Himself and His Kingdom, but that revelation doesn't become truth and reality to us until we place our foot upon the actual step.
Doing this he says will require an act of both obedience and a dying to self.  This truth has to be taken to His cross, and whatever wrong ideas, resistance we may have to it, or where our flesh battles it, has to be died out to, only by that, can the truth then be worked into our lives.  Only then, can we actually place our foot upon the step.  Growing in His grace is then a journey of coming again and again to the "risers" He puts before us, and the crosses that accompany them, that we may, step by step, grow in the grace and knowledge of the Father.  This is growing in grace, and this is what it is to "work out our salvation," and we do so in deep reverence, awe, and yes, fear, for we are then in the hands of a most Holy God.
     The church desperately wants to take His salvation to a lost and dying world, but I don't think we will see much real success in that until we first have it worked out and into our own lives.  Texas pastor Tony Evans said that "until the world sees that (Kingdom) world in YOUR world, you are not truly a follower of Christ.  Until the truth, power, and life of His Kingdom, of Christ is being experienced, worked out in our lives, I believe we labor in vain to spread it.  Before each of us today lies a stairwell, and that the first step of that stairwell has a riser.  This is where He speaks to reveal Himself to us.  Have you heard Him?  Have you ever heard Him?  If you have, have you allowed what He has spoken to be worked out, experienced in your life?  Have you, we, been willing to die out to every contradiction to that truth that exists in our lives?  Have we taken that step?  Do we look for the next one?  Are we growing in His grace?  Are we truly living and experiencing His truth and life?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Kingdom Trail Mix

    In Psalm 78, Asaph recounts Israel's failure to trust God in their wilderness experience.  You cannot water down the words he writes, "They willfully tested God in their hearts, demanding the foods they craved," and that they, "spoke against God Himself, saying 'God can't give us food in the desert.' ", and that the people, "did not believe God or trust Him to care for them."  From the perspective of 3500 years later, believers tend to read all this and come away thinking, "How could the people do this after all the Father had done for them in bringing them out of Egypt?"  What is left unsaid is that we would not be guilty of this were we to have been in their place.  Yet is that really so?  In the place of our greatest need and most impossible challenges, in our own desert places, how like the Israelites have we been in our journey with Him?

    We have a remarkable ability to rationalize and explain away our failure to trust and believe Him.  We tell ourselves that it's not a matter of thinking that He can't, but that the need, the wound, the sin, has just gone on so long, been unresolved for so long, that it's just too late, it's all too far gone.  This is what the enemy of our soul will whisper to us in the desert places of our lives.  He'll tell us this as concerns our relationships, our families, our marriages and our children, and ourselves.  He'll speak it concerning our churches, ministries, and people, communities, and nations Christ seeks to reach out to through us.  We don't believe it's impossible for Him, we just believe that it's too late.  Verse 40 of the Psalm says that they "rebelled against Him and grieved His heart in the wilderness."  We would never classify our rationalizations as doing such to His heart, but how could they not?  Whatever ways we may try to "dress up" our unbelief, it is still unbelief, which is ultimately rebellion against His truth, and we grieve His heart in the wilderness He seeks to lead us through.  Too many times, in too many desert places, I have done this to Him.  Might you have as well?
     There's one more and greater matter of trust to look at here.  He will feed us in the desert place, but we must trust Him with His choice of the food and means of the feeding.  The Psalm says that the people craved meat, and "He gave them what they wanted," but to their own great harm.  In the desert, the cravings of our heart will come to the surface.  Many of them will be very impure.  We may crave an earthly kings bounty, but He offers us there what looks like trail mix in comparison, but it is a Kingdom trail mix.  It is His manna for us.  In John 4, before His encounter with the woman at the well, the disciples were hungry and went into town to find food.  When they returned, they offered some of what they had gotten to Him, but He refused, telling them,  "No, I have food to eat that you know nothing about."  As a friend put it, they went into town to find satisfaction at the local McDonald's.  Christ dined on the food of heaven.  In the desert, McDonald's will never satisfy, but His manna, made especially for us in that place, will.  Our cravings for the menu at McDonald's will be replaced by a hunger for Him and the things of the Kingdom.  Kingdom trial mix that yields His life.  Which menu is before us today?

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - On Guard

      I heard author and speaker Lisa Bevere relate this story recently.  A friend's son had been taking fencing lessons for some time.  He had advanced so far that he was taken on as the student of renowned instructor.  For his first lesson, she told him that he was to go home, stand in front of a mirror, and practice his on guard position for the entire week until the next lesson.  He attempted it, but feeling foolish, ceased to do so after the first day.  When he returned for the lesson, she asked him to demonstrate his on guard stance.  He did so, and she quickly stated, "You didn't practice, did you?"  He told her that no, he didn't, feeling the exercise a useless one.  She then told him that in any fencing match, the key to victory began with knowing how his defense looked to his opponent.

     I think we in the church have done two very self destructive things.  First, we have so emphasized the works of the devil as to make believers more aware of him than of He who totally conquered him on the cross and in His resurrection.  Many have suffered because of this.  However, I think even more have suffered as the result of living as if he didn't truly exist, consigning him a place in the past, not seeing him as any kind of presence in the sophisticated, modern culture we now live in.  We do so, to our great harm, to the harm of our households, and in the end, to the harm of the church and the cause of Christ.
     I Peter tells us in 5:8, "Be careful!  Watch out for attacks from the devil, your great enemy.  He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour."  Paul warned the church to be aware of satan's ways and strategy, that we were not to be ignorant of them.  This doesn't mean that we live and walk about constantly rebuking him, and looking for demons in every "nook and cranny" of our lives and the church.  We are nowhere told to be a bunch of "spooky and creepy" people.  We are told, exhorted though to be "on guard." to be aware of him and his constant seeking of openings into our lives, homes, and churches.  To fail to do so leaves us open for destruction in all of those areas.  I saw this in my own life.  I assumed that because I was a believer and follower of Christ, I would be immune from and protected from these attacks.  I did not live in an "on guard" position, and so, my enemy was able to subtly work to destroy my marriage, and if not for the mercy and grace of my God, my ministry and life.  I didn't seek to know what my spiritual life and defense looked like through the eyes of my enemy, and so, he was able, in the short term, to defeat me.  Whenever I have neglected that on guard position, he has been able to "devour" some aspect of my life or ministry.  Has he been able to do so with you?  Is he doing so now?
     When the enemy looks at our lives, our marriages, our homes, and families, our ministries and our churches, what does he see?  Does he see an opponent who is ready for him, clothed in the saving, resurrection power of Christ, living the Spirit filled life, on guard, and ready to put him to flight upon his first move against us?  I love the story of Martin Luther, who was awoken one night to the sound of a stirring in his room.  He looked and saw it was the devil himself at the foot of his bed.  "Oh, it's only you," he said, and went back to sleep.  Such is the life of the one who lives in the on guard position.  The enemy of our soul is real.  The power of our God through Christ is infinitely more real.  Which is more real to you and I today?

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Downward Mobility

         Recently I heard 84 year old pastor Peter Lord preach on the 3 types of mobility he saw within the church.  The first were those who pursued upward mobility with all their hearts and energy.  There are many in the church who fall into this category, especially pastor's, and I place myself in the forefront of that group.  Advancing, whether in ministry, professions, academics, really, into whatever endeavor we enter into, is a goal, and one, if we're honest, something we feel He has promised us, even owes us.  The Father does give us an "upward call" in Christ, but we have most often seen it a matter of moving upward in this realm, not His.  The second group, are those with "no mobility."  These are the ones who, whether through defeat, discouragement, distraction or just plain apathy, stay right where they are, emotionally, and above all, spiritually.  They may well have left the church, but more likely, they are there, week after week, physically, but they have left their hearts and their minds elsewhere.  They leave, exactly as they enter in, but they have gone nowhere.  The last is a group with a very small membership.  Christ is found there, but I fear, not many of us who say we are His and who "follow Him," are found there with Him.  This is the group whose sole interest is in achieving a downward mobility in and with Him.  This group holds no attraction to the flesh, and because of that, it doesn't hold much attraction to most of us who are very preoccupied with feeding that flesh.
     Philippians 2:7-8 says, "He made Himself nothing, He took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form...He humbled Himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross."  He made Himself nothing.  How willing am I to join Him in that ministry?  How willing are you?
I think I have spent so much time seeking to be "something and somebody," avoiding at all times His invitation to join Him in the secret place, the unseen place.  The place that is invisible to this world, but so clearly seen by the Father in His.  I have spent so much energy seeking to be "seen" here, and so little seeking to see into His realm of the Kingdom.  We grasp and seek to hold on so desperately to that which is passing away, all the while losing that which will never pass away, the Kingdom of God.  We want to be highly visible and "seen" in a world that will one day be no more, indeed will be "invisible" and all the while are blind to the eternal, which will never pass away.
     Christ took the path of downward mobility, and by it, brought unending glory to the Father, and unending life to all who would receive Him.  He came in obscurity and yet was exalted to in the highest.  We seek to be exalted, and reject any idea of obscurity.  Christ willingly came as the least, but we seek to be "the most."  Christ lived  and lives in the high places of the Father, we hunger for the high places among men.  Which place does your heart, my heart, seek today?  What "mobility group" are we to be found in?  Can we join Him in His?  Are we willing to be nothing and nobody, to embrace that, joyfully embrace that?  To live out our lives in faithful, trusting humility, very likely unnoticed by most if not all, yet in full view of heaven, of that great cloud of witnesses, in the loving eyes of the Father, Who, as we humble ourselves before Him in brokenness, brings us to Himself in wholeness.  Downward mobility.  It's truly the only pathway to His glory.  Who among us will walk that way?

Blessings,
Pastor O