Maneuvering

 In his book, Shattered Dreams, Larry Crabb says, "We're more prone to maneuver our way through life than abandoning ourselves to Him." I think he's right. In my own life, I can think of too many times when faced  with a pressing need or problem, my first response was to try and figure a way out. What could be wrong with that? Didn't He give us minds to think and wisdom to make choices? He did. Our problem is that we tend to do so apart from Him. Far apart. We relegate Him to a kind of "interested observer." We do this at great risk. Someone said, "Whatever parts of our lives that are not invaded by Him, we invite the enemy to wreak havoc there." We've experienced this, yet we continue our maneuvering. Why? Crabb says that churches are filled with "worshippers" who've reached the conclusion that there's no real help in God. "He's left them to make it on their own, as best they can.

How can such a conclusion be reached? A reason could be that we tend to see Him as some kind of vending machine. If we put in the proper "currency," be it formula prayers or formula living, we'll get from Him what we want. It took me time to learn He can't be known or reached through formulas and 5 steps to abundance programs. He can only be known through faith, and real faith works best in the dark. In places where there is no light to maneuver, or no space if there was. We can only abandon ourselves to One we trust and believe. You can't have that kind of relationship with a vending machine or through a formula. We'll never see Him on those roads, but we try. After all the disappointments, we come to the conclusion Crabb speaks of; God may have great power, but He doesn't seem much interested in using it on our behalf. We have to make it as best we can.

Throughout His Word, He tells us that He is cloaked in mystery, but it's a mystery He longs for us to enter into. When we do, piece by piece, the mystery becomes knowledge. Formulas will never work and neither will manipulations and maneuverings. We'll only discover Him by abandoning ourselves to Him, casting both our cares and ourselves upon Him. Upon His mercy, goodness, and love. He promises that He is these things and more, but we can only know it through abandonment to those virtues. 

Paul said that He knew who it was that He'd believed upon. That He was completely convinced that He was fully able to keep all that he'd committed (abandoned) to Him, until that day. For Paul, all maneuverings were over. Are they over for us? Or, do we go on maneuvering and manipulating through life, doing the best we can? Darkness and mystery may be all around. Don't fear it. He's in the midst of it. He calls us to enter into it, to abandon ourselves to Him, and discover that all He has promised to be, He is and will be. He will keep it all. To that day......and beyond.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Trying Or Trusting?

 In His book, In Pursuit Of His Glory, Gerald Fry writes of the difference between trying and trusting. He says, "Believe me, it's the difference between heaven and hell." He says that each of us must come to a place of surrender where we say, "Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I'll no longer try to do it." This is the place of consecration, where we really place all things into His hands. It's a decision for life and a decision for each day. Have you made this decision, or are you still trying?

In Mark 9:23-24, Jesus tells the father of a demon possessed boy that, "Anything is possible if a person believes." The father, struggling to do that, says, "I do believe. Help me in my unbelief." How like him are you and I in our life matters that require the deepest trust? Those things that are precious to us; marriages,  relationships, children, futures, finances, ministries. All that makes up our lives. We do trust Him, but we also can't let go. Pastor Mark Buchanan says that we tend to trust to a degree....and then we don't. We just can't let go. Somehow, we feel that if we're given enough time, we'll figure a way through or out. We'll work with and manipulate the circumstances and people involved to bring about the result we're looking for. We feel if we just have enough time, but time is running out, or already has. In my prayer journal, in response to Fry's words, I've written, "I know I can't. Help me to put all my trust in Your, 'I can!' " 

The father of the demon possessed boy pleaded with Jesus. "Do something, if You can." Jesus, in effect told the father, "I can." Here was the father's struggle. He'd been trying to find deliverance for so long. Could he stop trying now? Could he trust? Could he believe? Can we? Where in our lives have we been mightily trying....and failing? Trying to straighten what's crooked? Repair what's broken? Make right what's wrong? Yes, there are definite steps we can take in this, but the response of people or circumstances, and the dealing with the impossibilities involved, is not in our hands, but His. They have to be given over to Him. We must cease trying and simply trust. 

Today, where are you trying but not really trusting? Your answers are found in where the stress, anxiety, and fear is found in your life. The father believed, but desperately desired help in where he struggled to believe....and trust. Jesus took his despair and defeat and turned it into joy and victory. He gave his son back to him whole and free. Can you bring that thing, that situation where you've been trying so hard, to Him, and then trust Him? Will you say at last, "I can't do it anymore. I won't try to. I put my trust in Your 'I can?' " We can't. Jesus can. This is truth. This is freedom.

Blessings,

Pastor O

When Jesus Dies

 Pastor and author Erwin McManus asks a penetrating question; "What do you do when Jesus dies right before your eyes?" All four of the gospels relate in some way the response of the disciples when Christ was killed. They fled. They hid. They prepared to go back to the life they had lived before knowing Jesus. They had invested all in Him and He was gone. What else was there for them to do?

If we profess to be a follower of Jesus Christ we believe that He has risen from the dead, that He's alive. What happens though when, in the midst of our following Him wholeheartedly, He "dies," and right before our eyes? Think about this question. You have a deep sense of the rightness of your path and of your being in His will. Your life, ministry, marriage, and livelihood. Or you've made a major life change, fully believing He is leading you. You're convinced of the rightness of the path and His call to you. He's been leading you step by step with a real and powerful presence. And then....suddenly, everything collapses around you. You can't sense His presence, He seems totally absent. He has "died," and right before your eyes. What do you do when the dream dies, when visible hope dies. Do we, like the disciples, have an overwhelming urge to flee? To hide? To go back to what we came from and out of?

I began to follow Him in August of 1979. He led me from a life that was all I'd ever known to a distant Bible College sitting at the foothills of the Rockies. Then, into a marriage I was sure was from Him and into a ministry assignment I was sure was His will in West Texas. There were difficulties, mistakes, and failures along the way, but there was no doubt that He still went before me, leading me to a ministry in a small town in Virginia.Then, in August 1989, almost exactly 10 years from when it all began, everything collapsed. My marriage failed, and soon after, my ministry was lost. Nothing was as it had been. Where was my Lord? My Jesus, so real and alive before, had "died" before my eyes. I now knew what must have been in the hearts of His disciples 2000 years before. I had countless questions but no answers. Yet in it was a ray of great hope. God is not put off by our questions. As McManus states, "Your questions will lead you to God." 

The Gospels relate the death of Jesus and the disciples' reaction. They also relate what followed. Jesus, risen and alive, appeared again and again. Like Thomas, they all had questions and even doubts. He may not have answered all as they had hoped but He did give them one indisputable truth. He was not dead. He was alive and still with them. He would continue to be with them all along their way. Where one dream had ended, another had begun. This is what I discovered in my own life and it's what I continue to discover.

That August of 1989 was not the last time I would experience the seeming death of Jesus in the midst of my following Him. But, and this is the victory that overcomes, neither was it the last time that I would experience His sudden appearance in the midst of all that seemed lost, giving new hope, a new dream, and a new life.He restored the years the locust had eaten. He continues to do so. Questions always arise, but I have found, as McManus says, they lead me to Him. 

Has Jesus died before you in some way? Have you deep, heart wrenching questions? Ask them, and without fear, for they will lead you to Him. The Jesus who still lives. Who will always live.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Home

 The late 60's and early 70's were a time of upheaval in America. I know. I was there. Morals and values that had been ingrained in the culture were being challenged and in many places, overthrown. Rebellion was a favorite word and activity. I know. I was a part of it. In the midst of all of it was something that seemed totally out of place and one would think would be ridiculed by most. Yet it wasn't. I'm speaking of a TV program called "The Waltons," about a 1930's depression era family living in Virginia. It centered on family, home, integrity, and very traditional values. Somehow, it became a hit series, and was so even among those who were railing against those very things.

At that time, I was in college, living in a notorious place known as the Edinboro Hotel. Every room was occupied by long haired, drug and alcohol partiers and counterculture wannabes. I had friends there that went by the names of Nutso, Monkee, and the Shark. We lived above the only bar in town but on many a Saturday night, the manager had to send notice to us that we were making too much noise. The crowd in the bar couldn't hear themselves. We called ourselves The Sewer Rat Mob, and we sought to live up to our name. Yet in all of it, there was something going on that would make no sense to those who knew us. On the night that it came on, almost all of us would gather, usually under the influence of some substance, and watch the Waltons. We loved a show that depicted a life none of us claimed to want. A show built upon love, safety, and the wonder of a real home.

I didn't think of it then, but I do now. In all of us is a desire and longing for home. A real home. The home we were created for. The home found only in the Father's heart. A home reached only through His Son, Jesus Christ. God speaks to this longing in Zephaniah 3:18-20, "I will gather you who mourn....I will save the weak and helpless ones; I will bring together those who were chased away....On that day, I will gather you together and bring you home again." 

Home. The place we've been looking for all our lives. It can never be found here though we seek it with desperation. Only through Christ can we enter into it. Abraham, father of the Jewish people, knew this. Hebrews 11:10 says, "He went out confidently looking for a city with eternal foundations, whose maker and builder was God." He found it in the heart of the Father.

In the midst of my rebellion my heart was longing for home. How I was living just took me further and further away. For my friends and me, the closest we could get was a nostalgic TV program. Yet, all the time, that home we longed for was standing before us in the Person of Jesus Christ. It took me five more long and painful years before my eyes were opened to "see" Him. I finally came home to Him. Have you? Will you? Wherever you are, no matter where that is, if you are without Him, you're wandering, homeless, yet searching for home. Are you ready for the search to be over, for Him to bring you home? Reach out to the One who is always reaching for you. Come home...to Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O

The Cross

 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24....."We must do one of two things about the cross; flee it, or die upon it." A.W. Tozer

Tozer speaks some hard words, but Jesus speaks even harder ones. Both speak as to what makes up Christ's invitation to come and follow Him. It makes me wonder, what's involved in the invitations we give when encouraging someone to come to Jesus Christ? Just what kind of a relationship do we invite them to? Does it bear any resemblance to His invitation? In our particular fellowships, when people are called to come to Him, does the centrality of His cross ever come up? Is there really a cross in our walk with Him?

Jesus drew great crowds in His ministry. People loved the good bread and fish He gave out. They loved His miraculous healings and the wonders He performed. They followed Him wherever He went, but when He told them in John 6 that they must surrender all of themselves to Him and His Lordship, the crowds left. Not long after, the crowds that cheered Him were screaming for Him to be crucified. And He was. He went to His cross and He died there. It was His mission from the beginning. Yet His death led to His resurrection and this unleashed the power of His risen life to all who would come to Him. We all want that kind of life, but not many of us desire the cross we must also die on that comes with it. His resurrection life is only ours by way of His cross. 

I think we hear so little of His cross because of the truth of Tozer's words. Those who would follow Him must do something with the cross and there can only be one of two responses. We will either flee from it or embrace it and die upon it. Paul said He had been crucified with Christ and that it was no longer he who lived but Christ lived in Him and through Him. Paul was completely Christ's. His will was to do Christ's will. He had died to himself so that he could live fully for Him. Paul understood what was involved in the Lord's call to follow Him. We must as well. To truly be His disciple and follow Him, we must do business with His cross. Everything that constitutes life is nailed to it. Hopes, dreams, past, present, and future. Every desire and attitude is nailed to the cross. That's all involved in the invitation. Have we accepted it? Do we proclaim it?

As Tozer said, we must do something with the cross. Flee it or die upon it. Lloyd Ogilvie said one of his theology professors once confronted him about his commitment to Christ. He said to him, "You cannot sneak around Golgotha." Golgotha was the place where Christ was crucified and died. Many of us are trying to sneak around, flee from the cross that is there. Too few of us are willing to die there. Which marks your life and mine today? Do we flee our cross, or do we die upon it?

Blessings,
Pastor O

The City

 Many things spoken and written by blind writer and speaker Jennifer Rothschild have ministered to me. What she relates here does. 

After losing her sight as a teenager, she began to be instructed in the use of a cane. She said she had to learn to live, not by what she couldn't see, but by what the cane told her was there. In the same sense, we need to learn to live not by what we feel or fear, but by what He says. By what He says is there. What is there is Himself. His total faithfulness and His abiding presence. This is the walk of faith.

In Hebrews 11:8, it says of Abraham, father of the Jewish nation, "By faith, Abraham when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place, which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going." I began my walk with Him in 1979. I thought I knew where I was going, but I had no clue. He kept leading me to places that I never thought I'd be. Physically for sure, but even more so in the realm of the Spirit. Too often, I wanted to stay in the realm of the known, but He kept calling me, leading me into the unknown. I didn't always go easily, but He continued to call, to lead, and to invite me into my own inheritance. To trust not in what I think may be there or even see that is there, but in what He says is there. Himself. His life. The land that He has for me. This call doesn't stop with age and it will not stop in death. The path He leads us on stretches into eternity, and though I've never "seen" that place, He tells me it's there. The fullness of my inheritance lies there but I can begin to live in that inheritance now. So too can we all.

Today we may be feeling like Rothschild must have when she was being taught the use of the cane. Our world may have been turned upside down, with circumstances, needs, and challenges that have rendered us, in a sense, blind. We can't "see" what to do next, but His call to us is to not live afraid of what we cannot see, but by what He says is. He IS, and He always will be. We may not know where we're going, but we know that we're going with Him. Faith is knowing that we're always going onward with Him.

Hebrews 11:10 says that Abraham was "looking for the city which has foundations, whose Architect and Builder is God." This is our destination as well. We are born with a yearning for it. We'll never find its fullness here, but here is where the journey starts. All along the way there will be places where we'll be "walking blind," except that we won't be blind at all. He's with us, leading us along. Our having to know all the details doesn't matter. He knows. He'll lead us into His city, to our inheritance. Designed and built by the Father, led there by His Holy Spirit, Home at last.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Baggage

 Anyone who's ever flown knows the ritual of checking your baggage at the flight counter. Since 9/11 this has gotten to be a very intrusive process as our bags are now opened and searched. I know few people who like this as it makes us feel our privacy is being violated. All of this puts me in mind of a spiritual reality.

All of us who have experienced life in this fallen world have accumulated "baggage" that we take with us wherever we go. This baggage can not only be cumbersome, but dangerous. To us, and to those we come into contact with.....and to those we love.

Sheila Walsh asks the question, "What would it look like right now if all your baggage became visible?" Few of us would care for that. Just as we don't like the idea of unknown agents rooting through our private things, so too do we not want the eyes of others seeing the invisible but very real emotional, mental, and spiritual "baggage" that we carry. Even if that someone is God. In fact, we can go to very great lengths to try and hide it from Him. Denial is usually our favorite means. Yet God, in His goodness and love is willing to violate all our privacy, or more correctly, secrecy, in order to bring it to light. Believe it or not, the means He uses to do so bears some resemblance to our airport experiences.

Our baggage can be very toxic. He knows this. If we're going to journey forward in Him, we will need to submit our baggage, check it if you will, at His "counter." His counter is His altar. We bring our baggage to His altar and we place it, all of it, in His hands. As He opens it up, He examines each "piece," and with His handling of it, heals and cleanses it. Wounds, failures, bitter experiences, disappointments, broken dreams, these and so many more are found to varying degrees in our bags. We carry these wherever we go, and  continuing to hide them only makes them heavier and more burdensome as we go. In truth, because of our baggage and the harm it does, we never really make progress in our journey. Our baggage blocks the way.

What's the extent of your baggage and mine? What has it cost you and what does it continue to cost you? Scripture tells us that everything about us is laid bare before His eyes. He knows what's hidden and He wishes to bring it to His light. Our flesh will see this as a violation, but in truth, it is His healing. Too many of us are "stranded at the airport." We're not moving in the direction He has for us. It's a baggage problem. How deep a problem is it for you? How weary are you of carrying it everywhere you go but always trying to conceal it from everyone around you? Jesus calls you to His altar of surrender. Release it all into His hands. Be healed, be whole, be free.

Blessings,

Pastor O