Heart Tracks - Good For Nothing

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

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

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - If I Be Lifted Up

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

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

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

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Traveling Light

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

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

Blessings,
Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - Potted Plants

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

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

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

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Nameless

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

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

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

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

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - The Gravestone

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

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

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

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Ouch!

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

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

Blessings,
Pastor O