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

Tables

Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And He declared to them, "It is written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer. But you are making it a den of robbers.' Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus will zealously pursue communion with us even if it means overturning some tables. Chris Tiegreen Many look at this Scripture and only see the outward understanding. They'll make it about reverence for the House of God, about behavior "in church." The church is indeed holy ground, but anyplace where we stand with Him is holy ground. He makes it so. Jesus was offended by the presence of worldly practices in His Father's House. His House of Prayer. Ungodly things will always deeply offend Him and will never have a place on His holy ground, and there is no more holy ground than the heart of a true believer and follower of Jesus Christ. So many of us can be so diligent about the physical ground of our church while completely neglecting the ground of our heart. Into the holy ground of our heart we can bring so many unholy things. We accumulate our own personal tables piled high with things that should not be there. Things that take our attention, our desire, worship away from Him and onto something else. They can be good things that have become so important to us that our desire is for them, far more than it is for Him. When this happens, Jesus is going to overturn some tables. The money changers and the merchants did not all "show up" in the Temple at once. It was a gradual thing. A little opening for one or two. A little compromise, a little less guarding of the heart of what the Temple was to be, a house of prayer. Gradually it became what it was, a courtyard meant for prayer and worship that had become anything but. It deeply offended the eyes and heart of Christ. He overturned the tables and drove them out. He cleansed the Temple of their presence. This is what happens in our hearts. The rivals to Christ and our love for Him don't all arrive together. They come in pieces. They come with our compromises. They come with our permission. As they keep coming, our awareness of Him dims, as does our love. Jesus will not be shy in His confrontation of it all. He will violently confront and overturn the things that have taken us from Him, that have taken up space that must belong to Him alone. Tables will be overturned and it can be painful, but oh, the cleansing that is the product of it all. Where have the tables of the world gained entrance into your heart and mine? Tables piled high with our earthly treasures didn't become so all at once. We've made compromises. We've given permission, and in our doing, have muddied our hearts and compromised our affections, blinding us to all that has happened there. What tables exist in our hearts today? We've likely grown so used to them that we don't even "see" them anymore. Jesus will bring us to reckoning. He'll begin overturning tables. Will we allow Him to cleanse our hearts as He cleansed the Temple courtyard? Or, have we grown attached and in love with our tables? Blessings, Pastor O

Destroyed

My people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge. Hosea 4:6 As Jesus hung dying on the cross and the onlooking crowd hurled abuse and mockery at Him, He cried out to the Father, "Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing." That's a perspective that's unnatural to us apart from Christ, and even in Christ we often struggle with forgiving those who treat us unjustly. Yet, when we see as He sees, think as He thinks, know as He knows, we begin to understand, and He can then take us ever deeper into that understanding. The hardest aspect of my ministry over these past 40 plus years has been that of watching friends and family being destroyed "for lack of knowledge." They lack true knowledge of Him and of His ways and words. They know of Him, but they don't know Him. As a result they make choices and decisions based on their own understanding and perception. The Bible defines that as their living according to the flesh and not of His Spirit. This way of life will always, I repeat, ALWAYS ultimately lead to destruction. In Hosea 4, God was speaking to both His priests and people. They did not know and believe the God that they claimed to believe and follow. Destruction and catastrophe would be the price they paid. In the church today, I see people of all ages leading lives based on the flesh and not on His Holy Spirit and His Word. They are making choices that feed the flesh and self-life. Choices that cost those around them, and ultimately themselves. It's a heavy price they will pay. Husbands and wives abandoning their marriages and families. Men and women pursue desires that cause them to neglect the very ones they have been charged to love, lead, and nurture. This is the way of the flesh and is never the way of the Spirit. As a result marriages, families, lives, and even churches, are being destroyed because they don't really walk in the knowledge of God and His Way. One of the prayers found in Scripture is that He would "teach us His ways." The need that He should, is desperate within the church. May we, every husband, every wife. Every father and every mother. Every pastor and every professing believer, come before Him and allow Him to root out every place in our lives that is being destroyed because we are following the impulses and desires of the flesh over that of His Holy Spirit. We have allowed the enemy to destroy far too many of our marriages, families, and churches. That destruction has to stop, but it will only stop when we say "enough." Are you ready to say that, or will the destruction go on? Blessings, Pastor O

Worst Day

Evangelist Stuart Olyott said, The very worst thing that ever happened was the death of the Son of God. The very best thing that ever happened was the death of the Son of God. If God can bring good out of this, what can He not do for us in the midst of our deepest losses? This is truth, though few of us are able to see it in the midst of our worst days. I certainly could not, but He has proved to me over and over again that it is. Though our worst days can greatly differ, I think they all contain this in common; they take us by surprise, and they leave us devastated and in emotional and spiritual shock. We can't think or act clearly and we experience a wide range of emotions and thoughts. We cry out to God. In pain, in anger, and with the plea that He undo what has happened. Like the disciples after the crucifixion, we run, often to Him, and just often away from Him. We know the promise of Romans 8, that He will work all things together for our good, but we cannot see how He can do so in the midst of this day. The devil mocks us through this promise. We hear the liars voice, but we seem unable to hear the Father's. He may not be speaking because He knows the turmoil will keep us from hearing, but He is working. Always He is working. My worst day, the collapse of my ministry and marriage, led to many more days, weeks, and months of journeying with Him on a road that always seemed dark, and with many unexpected twists and turns. I often wanted to quit, to turn aside and just die, yet each time a sense of renewed hope would come, and I would get up from my self-pity and keep going along, even if it seemed an inch at a time. His road led me from ruin to resurrection. His road always will. Piece by piece, He rebuilt both my life and ministry. In losing what I thought was everything I gained everything in Him. John Wesley once said of his life that he was "an amazement to myself." He was amazed by what God had done in spite of his life deepest challenges and losses. I feel the same. The pain of my losses was real, but the wonder of what I've gained in Him is more real. In the journey I learned the truth of something else Olyott said. Don't grumble about the road He's leading you down because it's the road by which He's leading you home. He is not the cause of your worst day, but He is the solution. If you're in the midst of your worst day, don't listen to the lies of the enemy. He will not abandon you. At your weakest, He will be your strength. He knows the way home. Trust Him to get you there no matter how many "dangers, toils, and trials" you may encounter. In the journey, you will discover riches in Him you never thought possible. He will turn your worst day into your best....as you trust Him. Blessings, Pastor O