Paupers?

Jesus said, "My Father in heaven has revealed this to you.....Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means 'rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church." Matthew 16:17-18.....Acknowledge who Jesus is, and you will hear Him acknowledge who you are." Chris Tiegreen Jesus' above words came directly after He'd asked His disciples who both the people and they believed Him to be. They could answer who the people said He was, but Jesus pressed them; who did they say He was? Peter, as usual, took the lead, He stated, correctly, that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Jesus told them this was true, then He said something that was surely unexpected. He called Peter "Rock" and said that upon him, and surely the others as well, He would build His church. We must be able to acknowledge and live in the truth of who Christ is. It must be central to our being and is a question we must be able to answer. Yet in this passage there is something else. Yes, we need to know who Jesus is, but we also need to know who He says we are. What He says concerning that will seem as unlikely to us as did being called a "rock" was to Peter. He had just shown himself to be anything but. I see His asking us who we are as having two answers. The first is our acknowledging who we are in every area of life where we're seeking to live apart from Him, knowingly or not. He will not heap condemnation upon us, but we cannot either know Him or how much we need Him, until we know how far from Him we may be, and how unworthy of Him we are. This brings us to the second part, for once we know what we are not, He can begin to show us who and what we are when we bring all of ourselves to Him. All of our mess, our failings, our sin, to Him. We bring this in confession and we bring this in repentance. He then takes all this and "files" it under "forgiven and made clean." Now we're ready for Him to begin to tell us who we are...in Him. Who He created us to be. What our giftings and callings are. What He has named us and called us in contrast to all the "names" the world and the enemy has put upon us. Many have freely acknowledged who He is, and done so in brokenness, but somehow, they have never been able to fully grasp that they are made wholly new in Him. We lay the past down and enter into His new life. The infinite inheritance we have in Him is ours. The name He has given us fits who He has made us to be. It is a terrible tragedy to live out our lives and never really understand the depth of this. I could write much more on this, but I'll close with something from A.W. Tozer. He said that he feared that despite the infinite riches that were his in Christ, he might come before Him on that day as "almost a pauper," having failed to ever fully enter into all he'd been given and had in Christ the King. May we, as the old hymn says, realize we have a "new name written down in glory, and it's mine, oh yes, it's mine." May none of us be found as paupers on that last, great day. Blessings, Pastor O

Touching

Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from Him, so He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched My robe?" His disciples said to Him, "Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can You ask, "Who touched me?" Matthew 9:30-31 Have we ever taken the time to ask the same question that His disciples asked? It was not a foolish question. Jesus was being pressed by, thronged by the crowd. Many people were touching Him, yet He asked specifically who the ONE was. Why? The crowd that followed Him had many motives for doing so. He was something of a celebrity. There was also the expected excitement. A lot happened wherever Jesus went. Many came with a desire that He do something for them, much more interested in getting something than getting Him. There was something much different about the woman who had suffered from menstrual bleeding for so long. It had rendered her unclean by Jewish law. Yes, she wanted healing, but I believe what set her apart from all the others is that she sought not only His healing, she sought Him. All the years of being shunned by the priests and people had left her desperate for the contact she felt she had lost with her God. I think the healing was secondary for her. She didn't want to just touch Him as all the others were doing. She wanted Him. She didn't want to just press in on Him, touch Him, and then move on. She sought an intimacy she must have felt she'd lost in all the years of being barred from public worship. She realized there was a great difference between touching Him for a moment and then moving on. She didn't want just the blessing. She desired the Person. Many commentators have agreed with this. It's what set her apart from all the others. Jesus knew it as well. He sensed a deep desire for a personal encounter with Him. Such passionate seeking can never be, will never be ignored by Him. So what's the lesson for you and I? When we come before Him, especially in what we call corporate worship, do we simply "press in on Him" for a few moments and then go on our way? Do we have our scheduled "touching base with Jesus" moment(s), or do we seek, deeply seek, to encounter Him as He is? As He longs for us to? There's a difference. The latter is what true worship is all about. Is it what we are all about....or do we just crowd around Him briefly and then move on? Jesus knows the difference. Do we? Most reading this will count themselves as His followers. If so, what are our motives? That of the crowd, or that of the woman? I believe most of the crowd that day went away from Him unchanged. Not so the woman. In our times with Him, individually and corporately, how will we emerge? Who will we most resemble? Blessings, Pastor O

The Cost

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." Matthew 16:24 When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.....He calls us to love, forgive, and sacrifice to the extreme. Chris Tiegreen I am drawn to the love, comfort, and abundance that is found in Christ. I think most of us are as well. Certainly, the majority of those who listened to the messages of Christ were. Yet in John 6 when He called His listeners to a complete commitment to Him, Scripture says that many turned back and followed Him no more. The above Scripture and the quotes associated with it offer little in the way of comfort and abundance, at least not in their immediate understanding. They give us pause. They give us pause even after we have made that initial choice to answer His call in Matthew 16, but He is always calling us into His deeper ways, and in so doing, we're invited to deeper sacrifices, deeper trust, and deeper obedience. Tiegreen says He calls us to love, forgive, and sacrifice to the extreme, but the truth is that we cannot do this apart from our choice of taking His cross, denying ourselves on every level, and following Him wherever He leads and whatever the cost. To live the cross-style life you must die out to the self-style life. Too many of us will not do so. Many of us are pastors. The "option" of drawing lines we will not cross in our following of Him is not an option offered to any of us, but for one who is called to a life of full-time service to Him and His church, it should never be an option at all....but it is. Early on in my preparation for ministry, I had a friend who was due to graduate and was exploring the possibilities of where he might serve. Even as a still young believer, I was dumbfounded when he told me he'd taken a map showing his home area and drawn a circle about it with a 150 mile radius. That's where he was willing to serve. He didn't feel he could be any further from family than that. Several years later, another classmate, in full time ministry as I was, resigned his church when his mates parents, serving in the same district, resigned theirs. They followed them, with their help, to the new district. His wife thought it too painful to be so far from her parents. These are not the only examples I could cite. I hear too many in ministry saying they will follow His lead "unless." Unless it involves pain for their family, or danger, or great risk. I get this. Our humanity sees those things, but can that be the deciding factor? Do our brethren in Nigeria, Tanzania, China, the Middle East, and more, draw a circle on a map and tell Him that's where they're willing to go? I am not saying this is where all within the church are at. I know of so many who have given all of themselves to His cause, pastors and laypeople alike, counting the cost and going forward anyway, but I return to Christ's words. And Tiegreen's and Bonhoeffer's as well. Will I live a life for Him that takes me to the extreme in sacrifice and cost? Will you? I believe we in America are moving towards the kind of cost our brethren in so much of the world are already experiencing. It will cost everything to follow Him. I think if we wait until that time comes to decide, it will be too late. The costs involved will terrify us. May we, you, me, us, make that choice now. No lines, no circles, no boundaries. Where He leads, we will follow. No turning back. No turning back. Blessings, Pastor O

Sacred Slow

Those of us who are children of the 50's and 60's can remember the first appearances of what came to be called, "fast food restaurants." I remember the first MacDonald's in our area. It was located on a secondary road, close to a main highway, but unseen by those who traveled it. Even so, it became immensely popular and it wasn't long before it moved up to that highway, to be joined soon by seemingly innumerable others offering varying kinds of "fast foods." It didn't happen immediately, but at a steady rate, people more and more found themselves eating even their main meals from their menus. Fewer and fewer people made their own dinners in their home, but instead bought meals at these fast foods eateries. More and more often, "home cooking" became a fading memory. Alicia Britt Chole said that it seemed like we forgot how to prepare a meal from just the bare ingredients. Transferring this thought to the spiritual, she said we have opted for "fast" to be a prerequisite for most everything we did or entered into....including our spiritual lives. She calls that, "fast faith." We want our spiritual growth to be fast. We want our faith lives to develop rapidly. We know little of what she calls "the sacred slow." Years ago I knew a young lady who felt she had a call from the Lord upon her life. I remember her telling me once that God had her on "the fast track" for ministry. I told her that it was my experience, both personally and by observation, that God didn't put His servants on such a track. He used what Chloe termed, the sacred slow. It's the way He worked in and through His choicest servants. It's also how He worked for them. It's how He prepared them for what He'd called them to, and also for what He'd created them to be. It's seen in the life of Moses, Joseph, David, Paul, and countless other heroes of the faith. It's also how He worked in His Son, Jesus Christ, who spent the first 30 years of His life in quiet preparation for the cosmic task He had come for. It's how He will use you and me as well....if we will submit to it as He trains us and raises us up for that which we were created for. It is a mark of immaturity to desire everything now. It's the spirit of the prodigal son. Only as we grow in Him do we recognize the beauty of His "sacred slow." In that process, He fits us for eternity. May we embrace it. He's working His masterpieces in the process. Blessings, Pastor O