Heart Tracks - One

 "Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?"  Song of Solomon 8:5....."My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as You and I are one Father - that just as You are in Me and I am in You, so they will be in Us, and the world will believe You sent Me."  John 17:21

This week at a denominational gathering in central Virginia, I was impacted by a lovely, elderly couple that I saw several times on the grounds of that gathering.  Both were in their 80's, and as I saw them walking and sitting together, I was moved by the oneness that I saw in them.  When they were walking, I saw her, while using a cane, leaning on the arm of her husband who walked at a pace she was able to accomplish.  As they walked, they leaned into one another.  Later, I found myself sitting directly behind them during the service, and I noticed her several times wearily dropping her head upon the shoulder of her husband as he held her firmly, his arm around her shoulders.  As I looked upon them, I thought of how they had come to that place together in Him.  Once they had been two young adults who met, married, and likely raised a family. Though obviously loving one another when they embarked upon their journey together, they were likely, as all are, to have been more two individuals than they were one living union.  Yet through their journey together in Him, they had come to this place where now they were truly "One in the bond of love."  They were one in Him.  They were a beautiful portrait of not only what marriage was created by Him to be, but even more, a picture of what every follower of Christ is to be in relation to Him, His Father, and His Holy Spirit.  One.

As I watched that couple, seeing his loving care for her, supporting her, holding her, being her strength when her own was so lacking, I was put in mind as to how that is exactly what Christ seeks to be in the lives of those who are His.  We lean on Him as we go on in the journey, and as we lean, He brings us forward at the pace of which we are able.  Never driving, always leading.  When we grow weary, as we so often do, He allows us to press into Him, while all the while He holds us in His gentle, comforting, but always mighty strength.  That couple had so become one in Him that they could no longer be seen as two.  They were one.  In the same way, our journey with Him should look the same to a world that is surely watching us.  When they see we who profess to be His, they should not be able to see us apart from Him.  For you and me then, the question is, is that our reality?

How do we enter into such a life, relationship and walk?  That couple came to that place with Him and each other by coming to the place of trust and surrender.  They trusted in and surrendered to one another, but even more, they trusted in and surrendered to the One they worshiped and called "Lord."  Such a union bears witness to a watching world, and we do not have to be married to bring forth that witness.  As we journey with Him, through both wilderness and plenty, if we will walk in surrender and trust, the world will behold a life, lives, that are yielded, obedient, powerful, and One.  With He who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  May such intimacy, power, witness, and life be mine, be yours, be ours.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Overturning Tables

 "Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the merchants and their customers.  He knocked over the tables of themoneychangers and the stalls of those selling doves.  He said, 'The Scriptures declare, My Temple shall be called a place of prayer, but you have turned into a den of thieves.' " Matthew 21:12-13....."Zeal for My Father's house consumes Me."  John 2:17....."Knowing that we are His Father's house makes that verse (John 2:17) very profound indeed.  Jesus will zealously pursue communion in you, even if it means overturning some tables.  There are to be prayers and holy fellowship in that holyplace."Chris Tiegreen

Heart tables.  Where have we set them up?  Where have we cluttered the house of our hearts with the things, attitudes, values of this world?  Whose business is "transacted" there; that of the Spirit, or the flesh?  What outrage does this "business," these treasures bring to the heart of Christ?  In that heart that is to be His Home, His dwelling place, what tables have we set up that rob Him of His glory, adoration, dedication, and true fellowship?  What "good things" have we put on display that rob us of He who is best, and rob Him of the worship He not only deserves, but commands?

Since we tend to live on the surface spiritually, we think of these verses as pertaining to selling things in the church sanctuary. No cookies, Mary Kay or Avon, and no raffle tickets.  We can be rigidly diligent in these.  Yet, in our inner lives there can exist no end to the amount of tables of idolatry we have set up.  Ambition and advancement.  Materialism and pleasure.  Ministry.  We can find ways to justify these and don't have a great problem with them being up front.  It's the unjustifiable tables that we have to try to hide in the back.  Greed, lust, unforgiveness.  An obsession to control, be it spouse, child, all other people, even God.   They're there, and they're holding all the "goods" connected with them.  All of them keep us from His fullness, His Life, and the worship due Him.  All of them have no place in His home, our hearts, and all of them will He seek to overturn.  

What are our tables?  Can we confess them?  Can we allow Him to be set loose in our hearts, His home, that He might cleanse His Temple, our heart?  And after He has done so, will we, by His grace and power, refuse to allow them to be set up again......ever?  If you have truly entered into a saving, transformational relationship with Christ, He roams your heart today.  What tables will He find and overturn?  What hindrances to worship and fellowship will we bid Him to remove?  He cannot abide the presence of those tables.  He must cleanse our heart Temple.  Will we have it?  Will our hearts really be His house of prayer?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Since Or When?

 "If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth."  Colossians 3:1-2 NAS Translation....."Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God's right hand in the place of honor and power.  Let heaven fill your thoughts."  Colossians 3:1 New Living Translation

This is not a controversy about translations of the Bible.  Both of these translations are saying the same thing, but it is how we understand what they're saying that makes all the difference.  This was brought home to me just the other day as I got together with a pastor friend for our weekly prayer time.  He brought up these verses saying the the Greek word used in the beginning could be translated as either "if" or "since."

He then made the point that how we understand them can make all the difference in the way we live in and for Him.  The word "if" leaves room in our hearts to question whether or not we are really living in the resurrection power of Christ.  The teaching of His Word is clear that all those who truly receive Him are now partakers of that power.  The witness of so many of those who profess to be His followers says something much different.  The possession of His resurrection Life should bring to us a hunger for even more of that Life.  That Life is to fill and empower our lives.  We're called to the high places with Him, but too often we stay grounded in the valleys and low places of this life.  We're always looking for the "better country" here, and never completely grasp that He is the better country.  That His Life is real life.

If we're living in the "if" translation, then it seems that there is always some nagging question or doubt as to the reality of the life He created us for and calls us to.  The things of this life on earth weight heaviest on us, and garner most, if not all of our energy and attention.  Heaven life, Kingdom life is a far off reality, and not really much of a reality to us at all.  We believe we will "live" there one day, but that day is not this day.
So we live in the lowlands, and His reality is not ours.  When Christ gave the blind man his sight, he at first told Him that he was seeing the people before him as "trees" but then he saw clearly.  For so many, our spiritual sight never gets past the tree stage.  We never really see things as He intends us too.  They remain spiritually blurred.

This is not so for those living in the "since" translation.  We not only know about His resurrection life, we're experiencing it, living it right now.
We tend to the affairs of this world, but always with a conscious awareness of His world.  A world that is now ours as well.  One day we will enter into all of its fullness, but we live in all the fullness of it that's possible right now.  It's the risen life of Christ.  The vertical life.  Far too many live a horizontal spiritual life.  All we see is what's happening around us, and so are immersed in the circumstances of that life.  We're focused on the need, the problem, the lack.  The vertical life sees past all that to the Source, the Father.  We face all the problems and dangers of this life with a sure confidence and real presence in and of Him.  We walk in His risen life, and so the "death power" of this world cannot keep us from all the fullness of His life here.  His resurrection life has conquered death, and so we live as "more than conquerors."  In Him.  Are you and I living such a life?

Since or If.  Which "translation" do we live in today?  Horizontal or Vertical?  Which spiritual reality is ours?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Surpassing Greatness

 "More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord...." Philippians 3:8

Loss.  Discouragement.  Defeat.  Failure.  Suffering.  All of these are very much a part of the life of us all.  Those who believe and follow Him are in no way immune, and are in fact, in many ways more challenged than anyone when they come into our lives, and always uninvited.  In a church culture that too often likes to "sell" Christianity as a ticket to happiness and fulfillment, as defined by the flesh, these states have no place or part.  Their presence in our lives can disable, even destroy our walk with and faith in Him.  They are the "low places," the valleys of trouble and darkness.  We can become consumed with those places, and so become crippled, even paralyzed in our journey with Him.  I know, for there have been so many times when I have been consumed with the low places of life.  Mourning, grieving what has been lost.  Focused on what has been, and so, unable to see what yet remains.  To see and move toward what He still calls us to, and who He continues to be.  The "valley of the shadow of death" will come to all of us, but we are to go through it, not remain in it.  Yet so many of us do.  Why?

Scripture says that He created us with eternity in our hearts.  This means that He created us for something more, far more, than this life and world.  Without Christ, we are blind to this.  The fact that so many who would profess to be His continue to be blind is a tragedy beyond words. We walk according to our senses, and not by the leading of His Spirit.  T. Austin-Sparks wrote, "The disciples were bold when He was with them, weak and afraid when He was gone.  They'd depended on their senses.  When their sense of Him ceased, so did their power.  We will be on trial for our belief in the resurrection."  We too depend on our senses, and when the deep spiritual crisis comes, our flesh is overwhelmed.  If it can't have visible proof of His presence, then despair is the only option.  We're trapped in the valley of the shadow of death.

But I'm finding, and increasingly, that there is something more to be known here than just that He is with us.  That He will get us through.  Even that we will see victory.  We can know all that, and still be anchored to the world and its "things."  There is a place He calls us to, the place where He lives.  That entering into makes the loss of anything pale in comparison to the knowledge of knowing and being with and in Him.  This doesn't dismiss the pain of losing a loved one, or of divorce, or the waywardness of a troubled child.  That pain is real, but its power over us is broken by His presence and power over all of it.  If we will live a life consumed with Him, we can never be consumed by what seeks to destroy us in the valley of the shadow.  We know there is something far greater.  We know that everything here is passing away, but He and the Life He calls us to will never pass away.  He created eternity in our hearts, and bids come live with Him there right now.  No, we cannot have its fullness here, but we can have it to the fullest extent possible right now.  It is His resurrection life, and that life is available to us now.  He conquered sin and death in all of its forms at and on the cross.  Therefore sin and death in all forms is powerless against His life when it is freely at work within us.

Whatever loss, heartache or valley we may be walking in today, know not just that He is greater.  Know Him.  Know His Life.  Live in it.  We were not made for this world, but for His.  We are passing through this world even as it passes away.  He will one day wipe every tear away, but in the meantime, He will not allow the very real tears of this life to conquer us.  Bring it all to Him.  To His cross.  Yield it up to Him.  Let Him minister His Life to you.  The reality of the loss will be there.  The reality of Him will be greater.  The loss is in the moment.  He is forever.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - To The Uttermost

  "So Elijah did as the Lord had told him and camped beside Kerith Brook.  The ravens brought him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he drank from the brook.  But after a while, the brook dried up.....Then the Lord said to Elijah, 'Go and live in the village of Zarephath......there is a widow there who will feed you.  I have given her my instructions.'  So he went to Zarephath." I Kings 17:5-10...."(He) is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all we ask or think according to the power at work within us." Ephesians 3:20....."He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him (Jesus Christ) since He always lives to make intercession for them."  Hebrews 7:25

To be God's man or woman is to not be your own.  To be His means we have been bought with a price....the blood and life of Christ.  We are no longer our own.  A question for us then is, are we still trying to be?  Elijah was a man given great power and anointing by the Father.  He told the evil King Ahab that there would be no rain in the land of Israel until Elijah commanded it.  Ahab's response was to seek his death.  God then directed him to go and live by a brook in the wilderness, and trust in His provision through ravens that the Father would use to feed him.  Now, picture that for ourselves.  How would we respond to such direction?  Told to go to a nowhere place, live by a brook and wait for ravens, who are not particularly attractive creatures, to supply our food.  A great challenge to our trust and obedience, yet Elijah obeyed.  Then, in the very place that the Lord had put him, the brook dried up.  What would Elijah do?  I believe that he had the power to speak it, and the rain would come, and the brook again flow.  Yet he didn't.  His voice was not his own.  He stayed at the brook as it grew more and more dry.  How long he stayed there we don't know, but we do know that he did not move from it until He heard the Lord's word to go.  He didn't try to manufacture His own deliverance or provision.  He obeyed.  He trusted.  He waited.  He did not listen to his own voice or reason, but for the Father's leading.  Would we have?  Would you?  Eventually, His word came to go to Zarephath, and Elijah, who had witnessed the miraculous provison of God at the brook, would do so again through the life of an impoverished widow who had nothing.  If it made little sense to go Kerith Brook, it made even less to go to Zarephath.  Yet he obeyed and he trusted.  God, who had been at the brook, would also be in Zarephath.  So it will always be.  At every dried up brook, and we will have them in this life walk, He will have for us a Zarephath.  For all who sit at that brook today, we need to believe, know, and trust that this is so...for it is.

As I contemplated this writing, He brought to mind those wonderful truths from Ephesians 3 and Hebrews 7.  He calls us to believe that He will do exceeding abundantly beyond all we could ask or think.  That means that no matter how high, wide, or deep our expectation of His work in our lives, He will go beyond it.  Infinitely beyond.  That when He saves, He saves to the uttermost....and beyond.  His salvation is only limited by our willingness and capacity to receive it.  It is salvation that will fill every area of our lives, of our being.  When we live in this truth, no dried up brook, no setback, no failure, nor all the power of hell that comes against us can stop Him from leading us from that place to Zarephath.  The Christ who led us to brook, will lead us to Zarephath, and beyond.  He who showed Himself all powerful at the brook, will do so at Zarephath, and every other place He leads us in journey into the depths of eternity.

Has your brook dried up?  Are you tempted to step out in your own strength and understanding, or will you wait upon Him.  He will not leave you, or me at the dried up brook.  He will take us to Zarephath, but it must be at His leading and initiative, and not ours.  Can we trust?  Can we wait?  Will we obey?  Jesus told His disciples that He had "food" to eat that they didn't know about. It was the "bread" of His Father's life.  That food is available to all who are His and no dry brook or impoverished place can keep it from us.  He saves to the uttermost.  Will we allow Him to do so in and with us?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Wildfire

 "I have come to bring fire to the earth.  And I wish my task were already completed.....Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to bring strife and division."  Luke 12:49, 51......"If you and I are going to be men and women of the Spirit, we are not going to have an easy time.  Hell will see to that.  At once the clash arises and it is true that the more the Holy Spirit is able to have His way in us and to lead us in all the will of God, the more we find this opposition, this antagonism.  And it not only comes between us and the world, it sometimes comes in the circle of the Lord's own people......this thing.....the Lord's doing....will not allow for neutrality....it will be the one thing, or the other."  T. Austin-Sparks

Mark Jesus' words in Luke 12 as among those we don't really care to hear these days.  A Jesus that walks along the shore, or along the dusty road doing good works, loving everyone He comes into contact with is very acceptable to us.  A Christ who brings fire, fire that is determined to burn away all the power of hell and the world, not only around us, but in us, that Christ is markedly less acceptable.  To not only the world, but much of the professing church as well.  The first aspect of His character is real, but it's where too many want to stop.  We will embrace the Jesus who is easy to get along with.  We don't much care for the Jesus that author Mark Galli calls, "mean and wild."  He most certainly is a Savior comprised of love, but it is a ruthless love.  A love that "will not let me go" as Wesley wrote, but also a love that will not leave me as I am or am content to be.  It is a love that, as Sparks said, "will undeceive us" and there is a great deal that we in the church have been deceived about in these times.

Many are praying for the fire of revival and spiritual awakening, but I often think that in our prayers, we think more in terms of that being a corporate awakening, one that lays hold of the church, but not necessarily us.  It changes what's going on around us, but leaves what's going on within us alone.  I've a friend who says we always think of "lust of the flesh" being that of sexual sin, but that we rarely think in terms of how we can lust after recognition, affirmation, position, possessions, and even blessing.  When the fire of Christ is burning, these things cannot stand, but they are things, attitudes, desires, that we cling to, even fight to keep.  When His Holy Fire starts burning in our, their direction, we can be sure that the enemy, through that flesh, will rise up against it.  When Christ the Lamb becomes Christ the Lion towards us, as Sparks said, hell will see to that.

Anyone who has ever seen the effects of a wildfire upon a field knows that this fire exposes all that had been hidden in that field, unseen by all who may have walked there.  The wildfire of Christ not only exposes what even we may not have known was in our hearts, but burns it up as well.  Do we desire that such fire come our way, to our lives, our homes, our fellowships?  If it does, we will not, as Sparks says, have an easy time of it.  The ruthless love of Jesus, mean and wild, will love us to death.  The death of all that is not of Him in our lives.  Most certainly the worlds idea of peace and unity will be shattered, but it will be replaced by the true peace and unity of the Kingdom.  He has brought the holy wildfire of the Kingdom.  Has He brought it to us, and all that is "us?"

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Out Of Chaos

 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over its surface.  And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.....then He separated the light from the darkness."  Genesis 1:1-3....."The first thing God creates out of chaos is light.....God makes beautiful things out of chaos."  Danielle Strickland

Chaos.  Darkness.  We fear both.  We fear many other things as well, but I think all of our fears flow out of the chaos and darkness of this world system.  A system our flesh can so easily become enslaved to.  In the comfortable, ease loving western church, we have no place for the presence of either.  Our impulse is to be as far from them as we can.  Indeed, our expectation is that the Father would keep us as far and protected from them as He can.  The fact that He did not do this with Christ, the apostles, or any of the surrendered followers of Christ throughout the Bible and history is lost on us.  Our thought is "That was then. This is now."  And "now" bears little resemblance to "then" in our minds and thinking.  We're thankful that the Lord Jesus walked a path through that very darkness and chaos for us, but we never think that our walk will in any way resemble His. His path led to Golgotha.  We believe ours will lead to the fulfillment of what the western culture calls "the good life."

I recently heard it said that William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said to those who served with Him, "Find the place of deepest darkness in your world and go to it."  Once there, they were to be His great light in the midst of it.  His order in the midst of the chaos.  Does that sound anything like our heart purpose?  A.W. Tozer said, "Churches cannot deny that they are too comfortable, too rich, too contented!  We hold the faith of our fathers, but it does not hold us."  We're happy to be where God is, so long as where He "is" is pleasant, rewarding, and holds no pain.  Our flesh has always been so.  Exodus 20:21 reads, "As the people stood in the distance, Moses entered into the deep darkness where God was."  All the people saw was chaos and darkness.  Moses saw God.  He knew that not only was He in that cloud of darkness, but that He was in complete control of all of it.  This knowledge delivered him from the fear and paralysis that gripped the people.  Do we live in such knowledge?  Or, does life always find us standing off in the distance, never really encountering the God of Light?  Never beholding Christ who is Light. Never discovering and living in the freeing truth that in Christ, "all things (do) hold together."  Even in the deepest darkness and most intense chaos.

Genesis 1 says that the Spirit "hovered" over the darkness.  He still hovers over all darkness and chaos.  Darkness is not darkness to Him, for He is pure Light and there can be no darkness where He is.  Darkness and chaos may be hovering over your life, but it is not hovering over Him.  His Light, as His Word promises, always breaks through the darkness.  His Light pierces that darkness.  Not just from the outside in, but inside out as well.  Out of the formless void and darkness, He brought forth a beautiful creation.  He is and always will be, The Creator, and He will create beauty out of the ashes of darkness, and be glorified for the wonders He does in the midst of all chaos.  You may see darkness and chaos everywhere today.   Indeed, such is already upon us.  He would have you, us, see Him in its midst.  Behold Him in the midst of it.  I read somewhere that to behold Him is to be changed.  When we truly behold Him in even the darkest most turbulent place, we really are changed, and the power of those places is broken.  The cannot hold Him and they will not hold us.  No amount of chaos can shake Him, so it cannot shake we who live and abide in Him.  The deepest darkness cannot hide Him from us, for He will always reveal Himself in it to all those whose hearts long to behold Him.  In the encroaching darkness, let's not flee from it, but run to Him who is already there.  We will find, contrary to all the enemy would have us believe, that He is Lord there.  That He reigns.  And in Him, so do we.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - The High Ground

 "Those who trust in the Lord are as secure as Mt. Zion; they will not be defeated but will endure forever.  Just as the mountains surround and protect Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds and protects His people, both now and forever."  Psalm 125:1-2......"If the enemy can get you onto his level, he has beaten you...he must pull you down......he must get you to accept something less than God's full place and mind for you and then he will undo you....(This is what he has done to the church) he has pulled it down to this world level, reduced it to the level of things here....The church that is revealed to us in the New Testament is always on high ground....It is a great power to be on high ground...the enemy can do little with you if you keep up there and refuse to come down.  Nehemiah found that to be so when they said 'Come down and let us confer,' and he said, 'I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.'  It is a principle operating"  T. Austin-Sparks...."My heart has no desire to stay where doubts arise and fears dismay; though some may dwell where those abound, my prayer my aim is higher ground."  from the hymn Higher Ground

I think we tend to see Psalm 125 in terms of our lives being surrounded by the mountain of God.  He is high and mighty and all around us.  But we see ourselves as living at the foot of that mountain, not at the top, which is where He has called us to be, but so often, not where we are really living.  As a result, as Sparks says, the enemy of our souls is able to have his way with us.  Though we know the mountain of God is all around us, we somehow believe we can live a mountaintop life spiritually while continuing to live in the spiritual lowlands.  Small wonder than that the "doubts and fears" of the hymn assail us endlessly, and, sadly, successfully.  In Philippians 3, Paul spoke of living his life in response to "the upward call of Christ."  He lived on higher ground, so that though the enemy assaulted him constantly through shipwrecks, prison, and eventually death for the cause of Christ, he, like Nehemiah, never came down to the level of his enemy, and so, was never overcome by him.  Try as he might, the devil could not get Paul down to his level, and so, could not defeat him.  In the same way that he failed to do so with the Lord Christ in the desert, in the garden, and on the cross, he could not  with Paul, with Stephen, with Peter, with John, and with all who had and have determined that they would live on the high ground of the Father.  Is this the ground that you and I are standing on today?

Sparks makes the point that when the Lord led the people of Israel into the land He had given them, He had them build their cities on the mountains.  Their enemies were peoples who possessed iron chariots, which made them unbeatable on the level ground, but the chariots were useless upon the mountains.  So are all of the devils weapons that are "formed against us."  But we'll only know that, see that, from the perspective of higher ground.  Are we living today from that perspective?  Be sure.  Without that perspective, we will surely be overcome by the growing darkness that is everywhere around us today.

When Moses was at the burning bush with God, the Father told him to remove his sandals, for the ground on which he was standing was "holy ground."  Wherever we stand with Him, that ground is holy, and the ground of God is always the high ground. Will we stand there with Him?  Or, will we settle for the lowlands, and the fear, discouragement, and defeat that come with them? His upward call is upon us.  How do we answer?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Two Words

  "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am."  John 8:58....."The Lord's ability to crowd vast ranges into small phrases is amazing.  He compasses the whole range of human need and answers every heart cry in a simple sentence of two words; 'I am' "  T. Austin-Sparks

If we're asked to list our needs, likely we could come up with a fairly long one.  But if we're asked to put down what is our heart cry, I'm much less sure we could.  We may be aware of what many of our felt needs are, but largely unaware of what our deepest need is.  Yet aware or not, we spend vast amounts of time and energy seeking the satisfaction of those needs, yet so often, never finding it.  Like the old song, we not only look for love in all the wrong places, we look for life in those places as well.  After the resurrection of Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the apostles daily ministered in the Temple to a people who were desperately looking for the coming of their Messiah.  A Messiah, Christ, Who had already come.....yet they didn't know it.  In the midst of all their lesser needs, and there would have been many, that was their heartcry.  To that heartcry the apostles said, in Acts 5:42, "The Messiah you are looking for is Jesus."  What is truly your heartcry today?  Who, what, is the Messiah, Deliverer, Healer, Answer, that you are really seeking in the depths of your heart and life?  Do you know, have you really experienced, that the Answer in all of it is Jesus Christ?  In that vast range of need that Sparks speaks of, that Christ speaks in response to it all, "I am."  Nothing more, for He need speak nothing more.  He simply tells us that He, the I am, the same two words that the Father used to reveal Himself to Moses at the burning bush, is......the Answer to the deepest need of our souls, hearts, and lives.  He is, and there is no other.

Jesus said of Himself, "I am the resurrection and the life.  I am the bread of life, the water of life."  In His proclamation, there was always an invitation to come to Him, to all of Him with all of themselves, and discover that His word was true, that He was true.  Those who sought life in religion, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and those who followed them, couldn't accept this, so they never experienced His truth.  They just kept on looking, and looking every place but to Him.  How like them are we?  We may have learned all the promises concerning Him, even agreed with them intellectually, but it's not how we know Him.  Like those Jews in the Temple, we're still looking for our "Messiah," living lives that may agree in our heads that He's come, but our hearts continue to cry out, staying as empty, thirsty, hungry, as those who have never heard that truth.

Like the father who sought from Christ His healing for his dying child, we may say, "Lord I believe, help me in my unbelief."  There can be so many pockets of unbelief in our lives.  This does not scare or put off Christ.  All He asks is that we bring them to Him.  We believe that He is the I am to all our need, but fear to enter into the depths of His Life in order to know it for sure.  Yet if we will come, as we are with all we are, He will receive us, and we will receive Him.  All of us, for all of Him.  It's a day by day journey of faith and life.  Two words; I am.  He speaks them to us.  Do we hear them?  Do we receive them?  Do we receive Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Waiting, Looking, Or Filled?

  "The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."....."Are we waiting for life, looking for life, or filled with life?"  James Robison......"The end will begin when the church says 'yes' to the Kingdom of God and begins to discover it, declare it, and demonstrate it."  Jack Taylor...."Someday someone will pick up the Bible and believe it, and amaze the world."  John Stott....."God has people going to heaven, He just can't get them to live heavenly lives on earth."  Tony Evans....."You live what you believe.  Everything else is just religious talk."  Peter Lord

I think all of us, whether we consider ourselves true followers of Christ or not, are living in one of the states described in James Robison's question.  We are either waiting for life to happen, seeking to have what we consider true life, or, living a life that is filled with His.  Life that His Word calls full life, abundant life.  Real life.  The simple question for us is, in which category do you and I presently reside?

I think the first two groups will be the most heavily populated.  A great many of us are just waiting for life, good or bad, to happen.  Like the old song, we sing, with resignation, "Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be."  This is not a trusting in the sovereignty of God, but rather a defeated outlook that has no real expectation of realizing His joy, peace, and spiritual riches. This life doesn't just not "run the race" of faith, it never even begins it.  If there is a relationship with the Father, it's of the very weakest sort.  Then there is the one who seeks life.  A life they would define as a "good life."  It may be a life as defined by the "American Dream," of a great home, family, job, income, even ministry.  It is a life they are determined to get, even feel He has promised.  All their energies are directed into securing it.  If they are a follower of Christ, then His role is to guarantee that they lay hold of it.  He's a tool to help them, us, to have the kind of life here that we believe we've been promised and deserve.  It's a life centered on entitlement, though few if any would see it as such.  It is not a life centered on Him.  He's around, but only on the fringes, and only comes in when emergencies or blockages to the desired life arise.  In both of these lives, self comes to the forefront and stays there.  The Father is not magnified or glorified.  He's either absent, or only brought in for special appearances.

The last kind of life is the least lived.  It is the life that if filled with His Life.  For this state to be lived in, we must be emptied of our self-life, which can only happen at His cross.  The cross where death to self worship dies, and life and worship of Him begins, and grows ever greater.  When this happens, His Word is not something to be read, memorized, or used to manipulate for desired results.  It is something we both live and experience.  We don't just believe the words, we live them out.  We live in a way that, as Taylor said, "discovers, declares, and demonstrates" the Kingdom of God.  His Word is not just something we know, but a living Word that enters into every area of our life.  We're Kingdom people living Kingdom lives.  Our lives aren't modified by His Life, but transformed by it.  We don't wait for life to happen, we're overcome by His.  We don't seek the good life, we lay hold of His, because His Life has laid hold of us.  We have, as His Word says, "Life that is really life."  Do we have it?  Do you, and I......have it?

Waiting, Looking, or Filled?  In which condition are we living?  In which condition will we live?  In the end, the "thief" Jesus speaks of lives in the first two.  Only Christ can live in and give the third.  Three offers are on the table.  Which will we take?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Contagious Righteousness

 "And a woman who had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His of His cloak; and immediately her hemorrhage stopped."  Luke 8:43-44

A friend shared recently on the above account in scripture.  He talked of how the woman's condition would have rendered her unclean in Jewish society, and anyone she touched would be made unclean as well.  She was considered spiritually "contagious."  To touch someone like Jesus, who was considered at least to be a great teacher by all, would have been unforgiveable.  Yet she dared to do so.  My friends point in this was that the one who was considered defiled was made clean by He who was righteousness in the flesh.  The very opposite of what the Jews would have expected to happen, happened.  She did not defile Him by her touch, but she was instead made clean and whole as a result of laying hold of even a part of Him.  My friend called this "contagious righteousness."  This is what Christ walked in.  It's what He walks in still.  Do we walk there with Him?  Do we live in a state of contagious righteousness?  When others, trapped in the bondage of sin, come and touch our lives, does His Life flow out of us?  James Robison said something to the effect that if we are filled with the Living Water of His Life, than a river of that Life must flow out of us.  Is the river of His Life flowing out from within us?

I think the church is living in basically three conditions.  There are those, too many, who view this lost and fallen world, and those souls held captive in it, much like the Jews viewed this woman.  As something, as people, to be avoided, who will defile us. So we fort up in our churches, home groups, and other acceptable "Christian" gatherings as a means of protecting ourselves and our families from them.  Then there is a second group.  These are the ones who wish, with very good desires, to reach those trapped in that fallen world.  With great zeal they go out and seek to bring them in.  This is called ministry and outreach.  It is worthy ministry and outreach.  The problem lies in that they go out, we go out, in our own strength and power and bring these ones into fellowships that are moving and ministering in their own strength and power.  In a sense, souls and people come in, but they never really come out.  Out of the captivity of sin.  They have laid hold of us, but they have never laid hold of Christ, because we ourselves have never fully laid hold of Him.  This is so, because so few of us seem to be really living, moving, and ministering in the cleansing, healing, freeing Life of Christ's contagious righteousness.  Only this kind of life, flowing freely and fully in the midst of the Body, and the individual parts of that Body can bring that kind of cleansing, healing, and freedom.  It is the kind of Life I want to have.  Is it the Life you wish to have as well?

This is what the church, particularly here in the west as darkness grows ever deeper, must be moving in.  A righteousness that is contagious.  A light and purity that the world at it's darkest cannot extinguish or defile.  A Life so filled with Him that all that darkness and sin can do upon contact with it is either to flee from or lay hold of it, and so be made pure and holy.  May I, we, be such a man and people.  May our church fellowship, and yours, be such a Body.  May we live contagious.  In contagious righteousness, where His Life is spreading in every direction, outward from within us.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - Two Journeys

"Then the Lord told Abram, 'Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you.'....So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed him, and Lot went with him."  Genesis 12:1,4....."Our journey into Christ is, at the same time, His journey into us.  You see, we are His promised land.  We can be assured that the giants in our lives, though they may have humiliated us, they will never humiliate Him.  He shall be victorious over all our enemies and dwell in us forever."  Francis Frangiapane

We tend to understand, at least to some degree, that to follow Him is to journey ever deeper into our knowledge and understanding of Him.  Into an ever deepening intimacy with and in Him.  Frangiapane's words though remind us of something we tend to not see, and that is His ongoing journey into the depths of our hearts.  In fact, if He is not doing this in us, we will never be able to travel deeper into Him.  The evidence of this can be seen not only in the life of Abraham, and in the nation of Israel, but in the life witness of all who have heard His call into their hearts, and with their hearts, took up His cross and followed Him.  The journey begins, and it goes on forever.

A.W. Tozer said he took great comfort in the fact that before a man could seek after Him, that man must first be sought after by God. Throughout His Word we see this Truth.  Humankind, lost in sin and darkness, was sought out by the Father through and in the Life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  He journeyed to us so that He might live in us, and we in turn might be able to journey with and into Him by His grace. By the power of His life, He invades us, and now, as we receive His life, we can now "invade" all the fullness of His.  His is an ongoing journey that goes ever deeper into the fullness of who we are, and as He does so, He opens the door of His heart to us that we may go ever deeper into the fullness of who He is.

To be sure, there are obstacles all along the way.  In Genesis 12, the Father told Abraham that he was to leave everything, including his family, and go with God to the new land that He had for him.  Yet he took his nephew Lot with him.  He didn't fully obey, and there would be painful consequences for his disobedience.  But it did not stop either Abraham's journey to the land the Father had for him, or the Father's "journey" into Abraham's life and heart.  Abraham would fail again, and more than once.  There would be more painful consequences as a result, but still the mutual journeys of both the Father and Abraham would go on.  Abraham, imperfections and all, is known in His Word as "the friend of God."  The Father did not see only Abraham's weakness.  He saw his heart.  A heart that despite his failures, even his sins, desired to follow after Him.  And he did, and as he did, he went, as the old hymn goes, "Deeper, deeper, in the love of Jesus."  And as he did so, the Father went ever deeper into the heart of Abraham.

This same pattern can be seen in the lives of Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and every traveler of the heart road of God, both known and unknown to us.  Is this pattern showing forth in you and I?  As we go with Him, do we abide in Him?  With every life challenge, obstacle, and need, do we face them in the power of His Life?  All of these will grow greater as we go deeper.  Only constant awareness of Him, and surrender to Him will enable us to go onward in Him.  It will also be all that will allow Him to go onward within us.  There will surely be stumblings.  We will fail Him.  But if our hearts, like the hearts of those who've gone before us in this journey, are truly open to His, they will not be able to keep us from all of Him.  Nor Him from all of us.  We confess.  We repent.  We go on.  And He goes on in us.  This is what marks the tracks of the journey.  His and ours.  Does it today mark yours and mine?  Two journeys.  He has begun His.  Have you begun yours?  Will you begin now?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Heart Clutter

    "The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful."  Matthew 13:22....."Have you ever found yourself considering a certain ministry or service, only to realize it's impractical because it would require too much a change in lifestyle?  Or wanting to give more to ministries of the church, but realizing you can't; you owe too much to other people, or have too many plans about how to enhance your own environment?.......Many of us are there.  The deceiver keeps us striving after an elusive contentment in status and things.  He keeps us thinking that an adequate lifestyle is just around the corner.  But it never comes."  ChrisTiegreen....."Our whole life is taken up with preparations for living, so that we never really live at all."  Leo Tolstoy....."He brought them to border of His Holy Land."  Psalm 78:54

     So many of us live driven, distracted lives.  Few of us seem to really live His life.  We are constantly surrounded by, mired in clutter of all types, but the greatest problem is the clutter within.  This clutter grows by the day, and though we don't want to admit it, is our master.  We spend great amounts of time sifting through it, trying to find just what we think we most need.  But in the end, all we have is more clutter.  Tolstoy's words become more true every day. We are constantly preparing for life, but we are not living it.  Not the life He created us for and calls us to.  Instead of living our lives on and in Christ, we build our lives upon what amounts to nothing more than clutter. Heart clutter.  And this clutter offers us no real support or life at all.  We live a life in the midst of debris.  Spiritual, emotional, physical.
     Tiegreen wrote of how all the stuff, the cares and desires of life, keep us from His life, and this is true.  They keep us from bearing the fruit of His Life in the world of which we're a part.  The stuff, the clutter, gets our attention, our energy, and our loyalty.  The fruit of His Life is not flowing out of us.  Worse, it is not flowing within us either.  Our attention, even obsession with this life, keeps us from the knowledge of His.  The result is a life that collapses under pressure.  Sometimes even the weakest pressure.  The church is filled with people who go into panic mode when the slightest interruption of their "life plan" takes place. Everything that gets in the path of where we want to go becomes a crisis.  A crisis we are not prepared to overcome.  Jesus said that in the world we would have trouble, but that we were not to fear, because He had overcome that world.  Yet we do fear, and just about everything.  So we are not overcomers, but overcome.
     Anyone who knows the experience of having a cluttered work area, knows the frustration of trying to find something we need in it.  We who live lives filled with the rubble of this world, seek in the time of need to find and lay hold of Him.  It's not that we can't lay hold of Him, but that the clutter we have allowed to accumulate to soul threatening levels blocks Him from our sight and touch.  The only result for us is panic, fear, despair.
    Psalm 78 says that the Father brought Israel to the border of His Holy Land.  He meant for them to enter into its fullness, but they had gathered far too much mental, emotional, and spiritual clutter for that to be.  As a result, they didn't know Him well enough, or live in Him deeply enough, to trust Him, abide in Him, and enter into that land He had already given them.  So, they turned back into the wilderness and the "clutter" they treasured, only to wander for 40 years until He had purged them of it.  Are we standing on that border with Him today?  Has He placed before us His Land, which is also ours?  Will we step into it by faith, leaving all our clutter behind, and lay hold of the riches He has for us in Christ?  Or, will we continue to cling to it, and once more turn back?  Clutter or Christ?  Which will we choose?  Which will we serve?  Which do we really call Lord?

Blessings,
Pastor O