Heart Tracks - Kingdom Maniacs

       Sometime ago, I heard a pastor describe how he met his wife.  He was a committed follower of Christ on a very secular college campus.  One of his friends, very much a non-believer, told him of a girl he needed to meet.  He told him, "You'll like her.  She's weird, like you."  The friend meant that she too was a follower of Christ, and, that she was, like him, "weird."  It put me in mind of a book collection of comic strips featuring one of my all time favorites, "Calvin and Hobbes," by Bill Watterson.  The collection was entitled, "Weirdos From Another Planet."  To be a full hearted disciple of Christ, is to be, truly, a "weirdo from another planet."  That "planet" being the Kingdom of God.
     There is much discussion, and much of it good, in the church today about understanding the culture we are in, and knowing how to engage it.  This can be very healthy, but I think in doing so, we, consciously or not, can slip into a mode of trying to look like them, talk like them, and to some degree, act like them, in order to win them.  But "win them" to what?  We're in the age of the hip and cool church and pastor.  I'm not trying to paint everyone with such strokes, but so often, it seems like we want to apologize for who we are and what we believe, in the hope that our approach will make them "like us."  I don't think Jesus was ever concerned with this.  In fact, scripture reveals that He went out of His way to discourage people from following Him unless it was to do so with a fully dedicated and surrendered heart.  More, He was very willing to appear very "weird" in their sight as He proclaimed to them who He was, and the Kingdom that He came from, and lived within.  Scripture abounds with such examples.  He spoke, acted, and ministered in ways never before seen.  He said things that dumfounded, amazed, and most of all, angered people.  People were drawn to Him, and also repelled by Him.  Sometimes they were both.  In John 6, many were following after Him, in large part because He had been supplying them with "good bread," but when He told them that to really be His, they had to partake of His life completely, and doing that meant partaking of His cross.  John 6:66 tells us that at that time, "many turned away and no longer followed Him."  Jesus then asked the disciples if they too would leave.  Peter answered for all, "Lord, to whom would we go.  You have the words of eternal life."  The disciples struggled with what they saw and heard from Him, but their hearts responded to Him, were drawn to Him, and couldn't turn away.  The strangeness to their flesh of what He said, was overwhelmed by the beauty of who He was, and is, and this hasn't changed.  Jesus had no problem with appearing to be a "weirdo from another planet."  Yes, He was willing to be found IN and at the places where the lost were, but never was He OF those places.  His holiness and purity shined just as brightly there as it did amongst those who fully believed, and hearts would "feel strangely warm" because of it.  It won't be any less so today.
     I've a friend who spoke of what it is to be a "manic-depressive," or, as commonly labeled, bi-polar.  This is a person who experiences wild mood swings.  Very high, highs, and very low, lows.  The definition of manic is "showing wild, and apparently deranged excitement and energy."  They appear to be out of their minds.  My friend said that more and more, he wanted to live a "manic Kingdom life in the midst of a fallen, depressed world and culture."  Jesus was accused often of being demon possessed, deranged.  So was Paul.  Why, because they lived with an energy, joy, and power the world could not comprehend.  Lives of Light that prevailed against all the power of the darkness of the culture that surrounded them.  It is what marked the early church, and it is what must mark us now.  Scripture says that believers were called a "peculiar people," and so must we always be.  Living in the fullness of the Spirit is always going to look weird to the world.  It will to much of the professing church as well.  Dare you and I seek to have and live such lives?  Lives so lived in Him that when all hell breaks loose, that life breaks through hell.  Fools for Christ, as Paul put it.  Kingdom maniacs might be another way to say it.  Weirdos from another planet to be sure.  Residents of His Kingdom.  We pray "Your Kingdom come," but its coming will make "weirdos" of all who are His, for His glory and the good of a world culture in desperate need of Him.  Your Kingdom come Lord.  Maranatha.  Come Lord Jesus.  Come quickly.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Shipwrecks And Snakebites

       I heard not long ago of a book entitled, "The Insanity Of God."  Now, before you pull back and label that a blasphemous statement, I challenge you as to whether there has ever been a time in His dealings with you where you thought that maybe, just maybe, God had lost His mind?  A time where nothing made any sense, where He seemed to not so much be absent, but to be literally working against His own interests, allowing things that seemed to be destroying the very foundation of His kingdom.  
      I've no doubt that if we were asked as to our belief in His sovereignty, infinite power, and many promises of victory, we would affirm that we believe them.  We would quote the scriptures that tell us that "all things hold together in Christ."  We would say that we believe Revelations 19:11, that He who sits on the throne is always faithful and true.  We would say we trust in I Peter 3:22, that all angels powers and authorities must and do bow before Him.  We believe that, but then, in one of those "sudden things" His Word speaks of so often, everything, and I mean everything, collapses, and life becomes, as Mark Batterson said, like that of Paul, "a pattern of shipwrecks and snakebites."  Shipwrecks and snakebites orchestrated by the Father, and which to those who were looking upon the events of Paul's life, must surely have indicated that the Father had indeed, "lost His mind."  It may have seemed so to them, but it didn't to Paul.  Was he perplexed, yes, and he wrote that he was.  Were there times that he was discouraged, again, yes.  Cast down?  Crushed?  He admitted as much.  But he was never beaten, and indeed, said that he was "more than a conqueror," through and in Christ.  He was so because though he may not have understood at all what His Father was doing, or know just where and to what He was leading, He knew His God.  He knew His heart, and that His heart towards Him was one of goodness, mercy, and love.
And so, even in the midst of the seeming insanity of His God, He lived at and in His rest and His peace.  Why?  How?
     The answer is seen in Ephesians 2:6, where Paul said that God has "raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realm." Amidst the pattern of shipwrecks and snakebites, the prison cells and the suffering, Paul lived in the heavenly realm with Christ, in His presence, partaking fully of His life, peace, joy, and strength.  The snakebites and shipwrecks were real, but life in Him was more real.  So much of what was happening to him made little or no sense, and to the flesh, it would certainly appear as if the Father really had lost His mind, butseated, not running about, in panic, composed, at peace in His presence, Paul knew that what appeared to be was not what mattered.  It was what was, and what is.  The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.  This was his real "reality," and the chaos and insanity of life could not move him.  Neither, if we will live in that place that Paul did, will it move us.  
     Are you living the pattern of shipwrecks and snakebites?  Does it look like God has lost His mind, at least in His dealing with you?  If we wait for Him to explain Himself, we will wait for a very long time.  If we will choose, as Paul did, to live not at the mercy of our circumstances, but in the power of His presence, in the heavenly realm, we will, in Him, be raised above them.  Shipwrecks and snakebites may continue, but we live in victory in their midst.  They can only serve to take us more deeply into Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - The Lord's Prisoner

      Brother Yun, known as "the Heavenly Man," is a follower of Christ and has one of the most powerful testimonies of the life of Christ working within Him.  Having suffered for years in various prisons in China simply because he would not renounce His Lord, he eventually was freed and embarked upon a wider ministry outside of China.  During this time, he noted how he increasingly became wrapped up in the work of the Lord rather than the Lord Himself.  His heart had grown cold.  One day, while at an airport in Thailand, he was detained by customs, as they found problems with his passport.  He was arrested and once more, found himself imprisoned, and he would be in that "place" for 2 long years.  In relating the story, he said that as His life and heart had drifted from His Lord, the Fathers response was to "give him a holiday in prison."  A holiday.  Does that sound like madness?  Most certainly it does to our flesh, but beyond the cell, Yun saw what His Father was doing in his heart, a heart that had wandered from Him, and what He meant to do through his time in prison.  Equip and make him a man who could bear even more fruit for His God and His Kingdom.  For most of us, our response to such a condition would be to cry out for release, Yun's was to cry out to God, not for His release, but for His Fathers purpose in all of it to be made full.  He didn't see himself as a prisoner of the Thais, but of Christ.  In that, he found a common place with the heart of the apostle Paul.

     Twice, in Ephesians 3:1 and 4:1, Paul referred to himself as "the prisoner of Christ."  He said that it was for his testimony of His Lord that he was there, but he never saw himself as a prisoner of Caesar and of Rome, but of Christ, and because he was a prisoner of Christ, he knew that he was free from being a prisoner to anything or anyone else.  He lived so deeply in Him that his reality was always Christ.  The cell and the bars may have been real, but Christ was more real.  He didn't see himself as a victim, but a victor.  He knew that if the Lord had allowed him to come to this place, that He had a purpose in it, and so he didn't bemoan his circumstances or seek to enlist a prayer movement to get him out of that cell, but instead sought His God and His will and purpose for him in that place.  We see the beauty of that purpose in Ephesians and in the other letters known as the prison epistles.  Out of the seeming ashes of his prison cell came a beauty that continues to speak to and enrich lives and the life of the church 2000 years later.
     I've a friend that wonders if Paul could ever have written the rich, Holy Spirit filled words outside of that prison cell?  There is no doubt that his flesh suffered in that cell, but his spirit soared with Christ.  The result was an encounter with Him that he couldn't have had outside of it.  Yun called his experience a holiday.  The root meaning of holiday is holy day.  Could you and I dare to believe that our present circumstances, which may be hard, seemingly impossible to us, can be used by Him, indeed are purposed by Him, to be for us, and those we are to impact, holy days. Days of bringing forth fruit for the Kingdom?  Could we dare to believe and see ourselves as not being prisoner to our circumstances and conditions, or the opinions and esteem of others, but of Him, and Him alone?  Could we dare to have the courage to be "prisoners of Christ?"
What fruit will come forth from our lives if we are?  What will be the result of our own holiday in prison if we see ourselves not as prisoners of what is happening around us, and truly live in chains, but instead the prisoner of He who lives and reigns within us, and so, free of all chains? Can we embrace our holiday, our holy day in Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Beholder

       "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  Likely you've heard that saying, and for sure it's a true one.  Everyone has their own definition of beauty, but I've been thinking of late as to just what the Father's definition would be, is?  We live in a culture obsessed with beauty, and the church has not been immune from the obsession, at least not here in the west.
       Our flesh is drawn to what we consider "beautiful," but is His?  His Word speaks a great deal about the relationship between Christ and His church, of His love for her, His bride.  That love is one that penetrates to the very depth of her being, to who she is, and the beauty of who she is moves His heart.  His eye doesn't stop at the surface of her being, but goes to her heart, and it is to her heart that He is drawn.  That "glorious church without spot or wrinkle."  There are depths to explore here beyond this short devotional, but I'm wondering today just how far our definition of her beauty may have drifted from His?  In the life of the church, wherever you or I are placed in it, who is it that we most long to attract, men, or Christ?  Is it our deepest desire to be beautiful in His eyes, or theirs?

      Writer and pastor Donald Rumble said, "The church has been impressed with has attracted men.  If our goal has been to attract men to the church, than what they think will govern our actions."  This is hugely convicting.  In the "planning" of our worship, our outreach, our "strategies," how much prayer and thought goes into what will please men and women, the flesh?  Do we hope to attract more people, or more Holy Spirit?  Do we want to make our fellowships a place where people want to be, or a holy place where He truly dwells?  Yes, we need to be a "welcoming" place, but it is a welcome that is extended from His heart, and not ours.  It is a welcome that says "Come to Me," and such a welcome brings with it the command that we come not just as we are, but with all that we are.  I think we worry so much that people might be "uncomfortable" in our fellowships that we do everything we can to see that they're not.  No, we cannot have a legalistic, judgemental, rules and behavior oriented church, but the simple fact is, that if Christ is truly present in a manifested way, our flesh will be decidedly uncomfortable.  It can't be otherwise.  Jesus told His disciples, "The world hates Me because I convict it of sin."  This will always be so, and I think if we try to lessen this reality in the desire to be more acceptable to the flesh, we may be "attractive" to it, but not to Him.  Whose favor do we really want?  In whose eyes do we really wish to be beautiful?
     In Acts 7:20, it is said of Moses at his birth that "he was beautiful in the Lord's sight."  Not because he would be perfect, without sin, or that he would do everything right and never fail, but it was because he, like David after him, had a heart and life that was set to pursue the Father with all its might.  This is what is beautiful in His sight.  Yes, this heart wants to reach people for Him, but the overwhelming, the all encompassing desire of that heart is to know and worship Him.  Nothing can take the place of that desire, nothing can get in its way.  There will be the desire that others come to Him, but the desire for Him will never be compromised by a desire to reach them.  When we become such a person, and our fellowships are comprised of such people, we will truly be beautiful in His sight, and He will truly dwell among us.  Others will be drawn to that beauty that only He can possess.  We no longer have to come up with plans to reach men because He is so powerfully in our midst that hearts are being drawn to Him through His beauty in us, and if they are not, then no plan is of any value anyway.  May it be our deepest desire that we be beautiful in His eyes as He beholds us, forsaking the favor of men, for the favor and glory of God.  Beautiful in the eyes of the Beholder.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Skylight Theology

      I heard a passionate young preacher speak of what he called "mirror theology," and "window theology."  He said the first was the theology that is most prevalent in the American church, a theology that sees itself before it sees anything or anyone else.  Everything is about "me" and all things, people, the church, and God, exist to make "my" life experience, and that of my loved ones, better, complete, and happy.  The second, window theology, was that which focused outwardly, to those in need of Christ, who are suffering, dying, and all without the life of Christ within them.  I liked his points, and don't disagree at all, but I think he missed the "theology" that is most lacking, as well as most needed in the western church today, and that is what I call a "skylight theology," that which looks first and foremost, to Him.  

     Oswald Chambers who established a training school for missionaries, said something that I think is lost on so many of we who sincerely wish to reach a world without Christ.  He said, "The central thing about the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men."  Jesus said in John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world," and we say we know that, but I think we are seeking to bring His Kingdom to the world in our own strength and according to our own understanding.  We may reject the mirror "all about me" theology, that which looks inward, and embrace the window theology, one that gazes outward, but neglect the deepest, most needed, that which looks upward, that fixes its eyes upon Him, and then all that is seen, is seen through kingdom eyes and understanding.  Revelation 4 says that John "Saw a door standing open in heaven,"  and the Fathers voice saying, "Come up here and I will show you what must happen."  Before John could be truly used of Him outwardly, He had to first come up to Him and, as Chambers puts it, "soak in His presence."
     Chambers told his students that they had been placed in his school to "soak before God."  He said that to fail in this was to invite failure in their lives, that they would break under the strain, no matter how noble or good their desires.  So it is with you and I.  We must renounce our obsession with the mirror theology, and our eyes must be opened to the deep spiritual need that is all around us, but before any of that can happen, we too, like John, must "see" the door He has opened unto us of the very throne room of God.  We must hear and obey His voice as He call us upward, to Himself.  Only this will break the power that mirror theology has over us, over the church, and only this will empower us to take His life and ministry to all those we see outside the window.  The "skylight" is always above us, but we will only see through it to Him if we look up.  So.....look up, and soak in His Presence.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Faith Is The Victory

    I recently heard a friend describe faith as "living in the victory before the victory comes."  He said that means we "live in the realm of 'nothing is impossible," instead of the realm of "possibilities."  Think on that for a moment.  In the 80's and 90's, the term "possibility thinking" was a much used phrase in the church.  On the surface, it sounds great, but if we allow the Spirit to illuminate just what it really means, well then, not so much.  If we live in the realm of possibility thinking, then we are really living in the place of seeing what it is we think is possible, and that will always fall far short of what God says is possible.  When we bring our concept of what we think the possibilities are, they will always collapse when they come against the "wall" of the truly impossible.

    I heard author and speaker Christine Caine recently say that the first thing the Israelites encountered when they began their entrance into the land promised them by God were the walls of Jericho.  She said that "the promise" lay beyond those walls, but that they could not enter into that land, that promise, until those walls fell.  By faith, they obeyed His leadings, and in faith, they saw those walls collapse, and the pathway into the land was open.  The victory however was not won when the walls fell down, but in their obedience and trust in Him before they fell.  They were living out my friends definition of faith, living in victory before the victory came.  Living in the reality of the fallen walls, before the walls actually fell.
    I'm not promoting some teaching of "name it and claim it" faith, but I am saying that when we are truly living in, abiding in Christ, having more and more of His mind, heart, and sight, we can begin to see and understand what He sees and understands.  We see this in Jesus speaking of the rich man and the Kingdom.  He said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven.  The disciples were dumbfounded and asked then how could anyone be saved?  Jesus replied, "With men, this is impossible, but with God, nothing is impossible."  The disciples saw everything from the perspective and limitations of the flesh.  Their "possibility thinking," had very real limitations.  Jesus saw everything from the perspective of the Kingdom and the eyes and understanding of the Father.  So, no matter what was happening around Him, even when all betrayed Him, He lived in victory even before the victory of His resurrection actually came.  We can as well.  I don't mean that everything we want or envision will come to pass, but I do mean that no matter what happens, good, bad, or worse, we can, and must, live in victory whether that victory has come yet or not, or even if it may not come until after we have left this realm.  Hebrews speaks of this kind of life when it talks of those who saw the victory, the culmination of His promise from afar, but died without realizing it in their lifetime.  They lived in victory before the victory came.  All the walls that the enemy raised up to try and keep them from that "land" He had promised had fallen, and they had entered in.  Circumstances, difficulties, everything being against them, still they lived there.  Will we?
     One of the great lines in the great old hymn is "Faith is the victory......O glorious victory that overcomes the world."  I want to live in that victory, before the victory comes, even if the fullness of that victory doesn't come in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my ministry.  I will never do that by living in the realm of possibilities, but only by living in the land of "nothing is impossible."  May I, you, we, truly enter into that land, trusting that as we do, all the walls before us will fall.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Good For Nothing

      Good for nothing.  It's one of the worst assessments that can be made of someone, yet, it is the very description that Jesus Christ took,willingly took, for Himself.  It is not an assessment that many, me included, really seek to have made about ourselves.

      In Philippians 2:5-7, Paul wrote of Christ, and us, "Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had.  Though He was God, He did not demand and cling to His rights as God.  He made Himself nothing."  It's amazing how easy it is to breeze through that scripture.  It's almost like we don't really believe He calls us to the very same life.  I have written in my prayer journal, "Christ was willing to be nothing and nobody, while I am always seeking to be something and somebody."  How true might that be of you as well?  We can be sure the truth of that will be tested in us every time we are passed by or over for recognition in the workplace, ministry, even in our own families.  It will be tested with every offense committed against us, every put down, every time someone else is applauded, while we're ignored.  I have written in another journal, "Lord, may I continually receive the grace and strength to be nothing."  It's not a prayer that comes from my naturally humble spirit and heart, but rather from an all too powerful desire of my flesh for the "first place," and not the lowest one.  Our human flesh lives can never see the beauty, the good, that can come, the wonder that can flow out of a life that is willingly made nothing for Him, so that He might be everything through it.  Jesus said that He only did what He saw the Father doing, but our desire seems most often to be that He bless, and bless richly, what He sees us doing.
     In that passage in Philippians, Paul says that Christ assumed the position of "holy weakness."  Holy weakness.  It was the way of His life, but how many of us know such a life today?  It has been my experience and observation that when we get to a place where there seems to be absolutely no way out, and no hope of change or deliverance, our thought, both as individuals and church fellowships, is that we must "do something."  We've given Him what we feel is more than enough time, and now, we have to act.  This flows out of the spirit that longs to be something and somebody.  It can never be a part of that which is good for nothing.
    Paul says that in response to Christ making Himself nothing, the Father "raised Him up to the heights of heaven and gave Him a name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father."  All because He took the place and name of nothing, of nobody.  May it be so that more and more of us will follow Him, join Him, and in the joining, bring unending glory to God.  Shaped by His hands into vessels that are good for nothing, and so made vessels of His Life and Glory.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - If I Be Lifted Up

     Jesus made both a powerful and beautiful declaration when He said in John 12:32, "And when I am lifted up on the cross, I will draw everyone to Myself." The question that arises for me is, how do we go about "lifting" Him up?  Is it a matter of trying to imitate His life, doing things that Jesus did, showing love, compassion, care?  Is it telling people who have not heard of Him about Him, how He came from the Father to save a lost and dying human race?  Is it singing songs and preaching and teaching messages about Him?  The answer is that it is all of those, but with a distinct qualification, we can only truly and effectively lift up Christ and His cross through lives that themselves have, like our Lord, gone willingly to the cross themselves.  Not near it, or around it, but to it.  Lloyd Ogilvie once told the story of his time at seminary when he was struggling with yielding the whole of his life to the Father.  One of his professors, with great wisdom, said to him, "Mr. Ogilvie, you cannot sneak around Golgotha."  Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified, is also the place we must go, where we must die to the control of our self life, so that we might enter into the fullness of His life.  Only then can we really lift Him up before a world that so desperately needs Him.  Our problem is, we want to tell the story of Jesus without the cross having entered into our lives.  We want to sneak around Golgotha.

     It is only a crucified life that can lift up and display before the world the crucified Christ.  Without this, and despite all that we might say about Him, what shows is our flesh, us.  I think the world has seen enough of "us" in the church, they desperately need to see Him instead.  We can do good works, and tell good stories, but the need of this day, of all days, is a church alive with the Presence and Life of Christ the King.  A church, a people, empowered not by our own strength and good intentions, but by His Spirit, His Heart, and His Life.  Not by our might, or our power, but by His Spirit, and the fullness of His Spirit comes only by way of the cross.  He can only take the high place in our lives and churches if we willingly take the lowest.  We sing songs that call for Him to magnified and glorified, but in the day to day working of our lives and fellowships, who really is being magnified and glorified, He, or us?
    We seem to be able to come up with more and more innovative ways to do outreach, but all the while getting fewer and fewer "results."  We strive to be "relevant" to the world, and I understand that desire, but oh that we would yearn to be His manifest presence to it as well, the literal presence and life of Christ the King in its midst.  Moving, ministering, in the resurrection power and life of Christ.  David Wilkerson, a preacher from the little town of Turtle Creek, PA, answered the Fathers call to go the streets of New York City to minister to street gangs.  His life and ways were not "relevant" to the gangs, and he had nothing in common with their backgrounds, but the power of the life that he walked in, resurrection life, was, and so the Father raised up a great church that was built on nothing but a risen, lifted up Christ.
    We in the church flock to seminars and conferences on everything from marriage, financial stewardship, to worship and church growth.  We often emerge from them feeling empowered, but the power is too often just a mirage.  Before long we need another seminar, another conference.  I don't diminish what these can be, but they cannot give us what only His life can give us, and His life and fullness come only by way of the cross.  It is a crucified life that will make for a better husband, wife or parent.  It's a crucified life that will bring about better, wiser, stewardship of what He has given.  A cruciifed life will see worship and witness not as what we do, but who we are.  It flows out of us as He is lifted up through us.  Such a life can't be taught, it can only entered into.

Will we enter in....by way of the cross, or, will we, as a friend puts it, continue to try and make "flesh improvements" in our lives, seeking to be better people, but all the while, remaining in control of our lives, ultimately giving self the highest place, and relegating Him to the lower.  We will have one, or the other. Which will it be, One, or the other?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Traveling Light

     I remember the late Dr. Charles Strickland telling of his meeting of an African pastor.  As he came upon him, he noticed that the man had no shoes, was dressed in threadbare clothing, and seemed truly undernourished.  Feeling pity, he asked what he could do for him, especially as concerns getting him more food.  He said the brother looked at him with eyes shining with the joy and light of Christ and said, "Ah, I have food to eat that you don't know about."  He was not rebuking the Doctor, but was just quoting the very words of Christ Himself to his disciples when they came to Him just after his meeting with the woman at the well in John 4.  While He had been ministering to her, they had gone off in search of something to eat from the local grocery store.  Jesus, filled with the Life of the Kingdom, refused their pleas to eat what they had found, simply saying, "I have food you don't know about."  Dr. Strickland's story, and Jesus' words pierce my heart, because far too often, most often, I like, the disciples, seek to find my satisfaction, supply, resource and source, in the supply stations of this world, rather than in the Person and Life of Christ.  Could that be true of you as well?

     I have a pair of devotionals with entries written by missionaries and are based on their experiences in the field.  One such entry told of a young African pastor who learned of a village half-a day's journey from his, with a desire that they might have a pastor.  Feeling the definite pull of the Holy Spirit upon his heart to be that pastor, he and his family, carrying everything they owned in 3 bags, walked and rode in the back of an old truck to that village.  Six months later, the pastor and his family came to the medical center run by the missionaries for needed treatment.  They had indeed suffered hardship in the answer to their call, even to the point of being very undernourished, yet, they did not dwell upon the hardships, but their eyes, especially that of the young preacher, shown with joy and light as they told of how the Father was working through their lives to reach many of the villagers with the wonderful news of Jesus Christ.  They, like the pastor encountered by Dr. Strickland, had partaken of that unseen and unknown food that was known and seen by Christ, and more, offered through Christ.  A "food" based on and flowing out of His Life, and is the true sustainer of life.  A food that I think we in the west, so dependent of what we can see, count, and store, know little or nothing of.  We feel we cannot go anywhere unless we are able to bring along all of our "stuff" with us.  They are our source and resource. Mark Buchanan said that what we call the 3rd world church, lacks physical and material resources of every kind, but is mighty in the power of God, but we in the western church, blessed with resource seemingly beyond counting, are spiritually weak and powerless in comparison.
     Whenever I come to the place of whining about my "hardships" and that can be often, He brings to my mind such stories as I've shared, men and women, who, "for the joy set before them," endured the deepest hardships and suffering.  I, who so often need to be guaranteed ahead of time that all my needs will be met, who must have resources that will fill a tractor trailer, cannot envision setting off with Him with only that which I could carry.  Maybe that was so once, but the goods I have accumulated make that impossible.  My dependency on them makes me unable to see or know the bread which Jesus offers.  Might it be the same for you?
     May it be that we in the west would come to know about, to consume this bread that Christ the King offers.  May the "goods" that own us be released that we may be owned by Him alone.  May I, we, travel light, needing only His life and presence, and so partaking in His power and might.

Blessings,
Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - Potted Plants

      Anyone who's ever played baseball or softball knows the exhilaration of getting a basehit.  Literally, you're a "hit."  Likewise, you know the dejection and feelings of utter failure if you should strike out.  Also literally, you're a failure.  The goal is to hit the ball, not miss it.  If you miss it, you didn't make your goal.  You failed.

      I was blessed by something I heard the late Jack Frost speak of on You Tube.  He spoke of his journey into ministry, and all the things he'd been "taught" along the way.  Note as you read; you don't have to be in ministry to have been taught these things in the church.  They're almost a standard lesson for all who profess to be His......Frost talked of how, when he came to Christ, he was filled with His joy, and soon felt what he believed to be a call to full time ministry.  He went off to Bible College, and there began his "education."  He began to be taught about the value of a disciplined prayer and Bible study lifestyle.  What he heard seemed to suggest that unless he began each day with at least 30 minutes of prayer and study, he would be missing out.  What he heard was that he wouldn't be a "hit."  He reasoned that if 30 minutes was good, an hour was even better.  Eventually it grew to 3 hours each day.  He took an evangelism class which required that he go out each Friday and spend 6 hours witnessing to total strangers about their need for Christ.  On Monday, they were to report the number they witnessed to, and how many prayed to know Jesus.  High numbers meant you were a hit, low ones that you missed, struck out.  An introvert, this was very hard for Frost, but he pushed himself, going out each Friday, determined that his numbers should rise.  Eventually, he went into the ministry, and each month he needed to report his church numbers.  Good or increasing numbers were a hit, low or decreasing ones a definite miss.  So, he threw himself into the work, and in his first year, though exhausted, he reported the fasting growing church on his region, and was duly recognized as such. One year and three months later, burnt out, he was out of ministry.

     As Frost told this story, he had brought a young man to the front of the church.  The man came with empty arms and hands, but as Frost described each step of his journey, he would put a potted plant in the mans arms.  Eventually, he was completely hidden by the plants, and could no longer hold them, or have any added to them.  He had to have someone come and take them from his hands.  He was immobilized as he tried to hold all of them, which was beyond his ability to do.  I wonder, after hearing this, does it speak to you and I about how we see our life, our walk, our relationship with Him, and our living out that relationship for Him?  Does a life in Him, meant to be full and rich in freedom, instead end up making us feel like "hits," when we succeed, as the rules define a hit, or like "strikeouts," when we miss the goal that the rules say we must reach?
     I don't mean that we in the church purposely teach these "rules," only that somehow, this is how we hear the teaching, and all our efforts go into getting a hit, which will please Him and His people, and so avoid striking out, which will surely displease them.  Paul said that it is by grace that we are saved, by grace that we are kept, and by grace we can go on.  Grace doesn't add more and more potted plants to our walk.  Grace doesn't require that we get a hit, and doesn't condemn when we strike out.  Grace brings us to Himself, and makes us more and more like Himself. Dudley Hall said that Christ not only lives in us, but lives for us.  That's what Paul meant when he said that the life he now lived he lived in Christ. That Christ was his life, and his life was Christ.  No more potted plants, no more obsession with getting a hit.  Just a life lived out in Him, doing only what we see Him doing, saying only what we hear Him saying.  Why do we accept that we can be saved by His grace, but cannot be kept by it, live in it?  Why do we so easily end up living by "Christian Law," always trying to work harder in order to please Him, and others, more?  Why do we insist on adding more and more potted plants to our lives, to the point where we can not only not be seen, but we can't see Him?  Today, will you and I reach for and hold in our grip our potted plant(s), or Him? The Law requires the plant, grace blesses us with Christ.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Nameless

      Clint Eastwood rose to fame in the 1960's through the "Man with no name," Italian westerns.  It's kind of humorous that a character who had no name, gave rise to a previously obscure actor suddenly "having" one.  I see a parallel to that in the church.

     Jesus made the promise "If you ask anything in My name, I will do it."  The number of those who claim this promise is beyond counting. Yet, how many have found that this promise "works."  Just what does "anything" mean anyway?  

     Perhaps the answer lies in our understanding just what it is to ask in His name.  For many, it is the spiritual equivalent of rubbing a lamp, uttering the words "Abbra Kadabbra," and Jesus, like Aladdin's genie, grants our desire, no matter what the desire might be.  We open our Bibles, find a scripture that we think can help us realize our desire, and then "claim" the promise before Him.  The difference between us and Aladdin is that we don't rub a lamp, just our Bibles.  I don't think this is what Jesus had in mind, but if we're honest, some element of this has been in ours. How often have we seen Christ as some kind of magic genie, who doesn't limit us to 3 wishes, but grants us unlimited ones, the only limit being on what it is we can think to ask for.
     I've a friend who says that to truly ask for anything in His name means we must be surrendered to being a people, a person, with no name of our own.  Asking in His name then means we have become so one with who He is, that the desires that flow out of our hearts are the very desires that flow out of His.  We ask of the Father what He would ask of the Father, and we do this as pertains to every aspect of our lives, our families, our professions, our ministries, and His church.  To do so leaves us open to the very real possibility that what He asks for is in direct opposition to what our self-absorbed flesh would ask.  Indeed, He may ask for what, in every way, appears to be harmful, even destructive.  It may give the appearance of failure.  It certainly will require deep sacrifice, perhaps even the sacrifice of our very lives.  Aladdin would never ask for such.  Yet to be one with Him means a willingness to not only accept the cup the flesh would never accept, but to ask for it if that is what pleases the Father.  Only a life that is fully in Him can do this, and at the same time cry out, as Christ did, "Abba, Father!"

    Not many of us are wanting to live in such a place with Him.  In fact, none of us can in our own strength and will.  It requires a total dying out to our agendas and desires, so that we can come alive to His desire and way for us.  A desire and way that will always lead in a direction that the flesh doesn't wish to go.  It's a way that looks like death, and is, to the flesh, but the yield is life, His Life.
    T. Austin-Sparks said that Satan, through our flesh, "gets us focused, preoccupied with self to the obscuring of Christ.  The Holy Spirit seeks to preoccupy us with Christ, to the obscuring of self....Occupied with what we are, not who He is."  How close does that come to where you and I are living?  How much of what we seek from Him will, at root, benefit us more than anyone else?  We can, pastors or laymen alike, ask for many things that benefit others, but will benefit us as well, maybe even moreso.  The motive, and it can be buried very deeply, lies in self, in the advancement of our kingdom, not His.  As one who prayed those very same types of prayers throughout much of my life and ministry, I know the truth of this.  How true is it for you?
    In the end, who really lives in obscurity; we, and our flesh identity, or Christ and His Kingdom life?  John the Baptist, upon truly beholding Christ, said, "I must decrease so that He might increase."  With you and I, one or the other is always decreasing and increasing.  It just comes down to who that "one" is.  Who is it?

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - The Gravestone

       In Christ, we are called to resurrection life,which is His life.  He calls it abundant life.  Simply put, it is the life He calls us to, that we were created for.  So, why is it that so few of us really know or possess it?  You think me wrong?  Why then do we have so many in the professing church who live in defeat, discouragement, and despair?  Why, when Jesus said that "He who is free in Me, is free indeed," do so many live a spiritual life that is decidedly NOT free?  I believe there are answers to this, but so many of us are not willing to ask the questions that will receive the right answers.

     John 11:38-44, addresses, I believe, a great deal of this.  It's a familiar passage to most who have been "in the church" for any length of time.  It's the story of Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead.  There is so much beautiful truth in this story, but there is one part of it in particular that I'd like to explore.  

     Jesus has come to the funeral a day late, as we count time.  Though He'd received word of the need, He chose instead to stay where He was and didn't come until the 4th day after Lazarus had died.  For the Jews, this meant that there was no hope at all of bringing Lazarus back to life. The 4th day of death marked the death as final.  Into this situation Jesus came, and into this situation Jesus spoke.  It is in the words He spoke as He stood before the tomb of Lazarus that hold the key, I believe, to the lack of abundant life, resurrection life, in His people and in His church.  It's a key that will open four locks.
    As He stands there, Jesus first tells them to "Remove the stone."  This would be the large stone that sealed the tomb and the body within.  The gravestone.  I think so many of us remain in our spiritual lives within the tomb, because we have never heeded His call to remove the gravestone before it.  This is not something the Lord will do for us, and that gravestone will consist of any and all things that keep us sealed in the grave of death.  Habits, attitudes, sinful patterns, disobedience, fear,insistence of a lifestyle of victimhood, the categories are endless.  What they have in common is that they are stones that keep us sealed in a life far beneath what He has called us to.  They can be stones of immense weight, but though He could with a word remove them Himself, He leaves that to us.  He will give us all the strength we need to do so, but in the end, we, not He, must remove that stone, willingly yielding it up to Him.  Our tomb, our grave, is now open.
   Next, we have to come face to face with the smell of death.  Lazarus' sisters did not want Him to have the tomb opened because the stench of death would be overwhelming.  For us, if we are to really enter into His life, we must come to grips, in total honesty and openness, with the smell of death in our lives.  A smell that is indeed a stench.  It is not a pleasant thing to have to face the truth about ourselves.  To have to face our own sins, failures, and destructive patterns.  The stone has served nicely to keep them covered.  Once it's gone, the stink of death is there, and the only solution is to give that stench to Him, in Whom lies healing and life.
   With all this done, Jesus now does the impossible.  He calls forth to life, a man that all present had considered past all life, all hope.  He does the same for you and I.  He is doing the same right now.  The gravestone, large as it may be, cannot stop Him.  The presence of death, no matter how strong its smell, doesn't deter Him, and the power of death, dissolves in the Presence of the One who by His words and life alone, has fully conquered it.  When He calls us forth, all the power of hell, death, and darkness cannot stand against Him.  All that can stand against Him is our own will, our own unwillingness to come forth.  He calls us forth.  Do we come?
  Last, as Lazarus, in his resurrection life, stands before them all, he is bound up in his graveclothes.  This is the spiritual state of so many.  We may have come forth to Him, but we remain bound up in the clothes of our graves.  The power of the grave has been conquered, but somehow we have been tricked into believing we must still wear our graveclothes, and so, we live in fear, despair, anxiety, and countless other "masters" that keep us in chains, in our graveclothes.  Christ simply says, "remove them."  This is an act of faith.  We must believe that His resurrection life is exactly what He says it is, that He has not only conquered death in some future way, but in the present as well.  The gravestone cannot hold us, the tomb itself cannot hold us, and the graveclothes the enemy has bound us in cannot hold us.  Will we believe this?  Will we, by His grace and power, remove our gravestone?  Will we by His grace and power, face the stench of death in our lives, no matter how painful that may be, and yield that to Him, and behold Him to make us a fragrance of His life?  Will we hear and obey His voice to come forth, and go forth in and with Him, with our graveclothes stripped away, by Him, captive only to Him, free?  Free to live as His.  Knowing now what it really is to be "free indeed."  We start at the gravestone.  Are you ready to start?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Ouch!

      A friend recently remarked, "It's occurred to me that if I can be humiliated, then I haven't really been humbled."  His reasoning was that if there were areas of our lives in which we could suffer humiliation before others, than in those areas, pride was still at work, and we have not really been humbled.  I could only respond with an "OUCH!"  That may be your response as well.
      I Peter 5:6 reads, "Humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in His good time, He will honor you."  Another translaton reads that He will "exalt you."  Honor, exalt, I, we, like both of those words, and the sooner they happen, the better.  When we read that scripture, we may have a certain, limited acceptance of the concept of being humbled, as long as we can be assured that in due time, a not very distant "due time," we'll be honored, exalted.  And we would especially like to be honored before the watching eyes of many others.  We want that to happen in our "now," but the Father, who lives in the eternal "now," has His own ideas as to just when that will be.  The thing is, only He can bring humility into our lives and hearts.  All we can do is place ourselves upon His altar in order that He may do so.  We can have a willingness to live in humility, but only He can bring true humility, Christlike humility into our lives.  The pathway for that to happen will certainly not be painless, and we have the words of Christ, and the lives of the disciples and so many others who have already gone before us as proof.

     In Luke 22:31, Jesus says, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to have all of you, to sift you like wheat.  But I have pleaded in prayer for you Simon, that your faith should not fail."  Notice that Jesus did not spare Simon from the sifting, because there was much sifting that needed to be done.  Peter could write the words of I Peter 5:6 because he had lived through the humbling process, controlled all the way by His Lord.  Before he could become Peter, Simon had to die.  So too does our "Simon," our flesh, the source of all our pride.  So it was for Simon Peter, and so it was for the rest of the disciples as well.  So it must be for you and I.
     So we go back to the beginning of this writing.  Where can you and I still be humiliated?  What aspects of our lives, families, ministries, do we still take great pride in, and if made to look foolish in, or worse, a failure, does our flesh, our pride, literally cringe at such a possibility?  I am painfully aware of where many of mine are, and He's being faithful to reveal, in His time, the ones I'm not aware of.  He will sift us.  Is He sifting us, you and me, now?  His "due time" is in His hands, and it may never happen in this physical life, at least for others to see, but I think, no, I know, that it can happen in His eyes right now, with every step we take more deeply into the humility and life of Christ.  The passing, fickle honor of men means nothing, though our flesh and pride struggle to believe that.  The honor of God is everything.  May we seek it, with all our hearts, in humility.

Blessings,
Pastor O