Heart Tracks - No Confidence

        "We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."  Philippians 3:3  Commenting on this passage, Watchman Nee wrote, "Circumcision was a sign that marked out the Jew from the rest of mankind. What is the corresponding mark of our Christian life before men?.....What distinguishes God's own is that their confidence in the flesh is destroyed and they are cast back upon Him."  If you consider yourself a believer, I think that you would say that you believe this verse, and Nee's thoughts are true.  Can I dare to ask you, as I dare to ask myself, what does the witness of my life show to be the source of my confidence?  The Father, or ourselves?  Before we answer, can we allow His Spirit to search our hearts and lives to see just how we've "conducted business" in our choices, decisions, relationships, affairs, and perhaps most importantly for we in the church, our ministries?  Where does our true confidence lie?

     Nee says that "The spiritual man walks humbly, always aware that he may be wrong."  Do you and I walk in such humility?  Are we open to being wrong?  When it comes to the conduct of our lives, the pathway we're on, that we've chosen, do we forge ahead totally sure of the rightness of the way?  So sure, that if there be any dissenting voices, no matter how lovingly spoken, we see them as opponents, even enemies, getting in the way we wish to go.  Many a person, perhaps many more pastors, have had such an approach to life and ministry, only to find at some point, and with much sorrow, that they were wrong.  They'd put their confidence in their own abilities, understanding, wisdom, and intellect....the flesh.  If there was a confidence in God, it was more likely in the thought that they were "confident" that He would bless and add onto their lives in the course of the journey.  I have seen this in the lives of many, just as I have seen it my own.  Families, marriages, lives, ministries, and churches, that have suffered spiritual shipwreck, all because we saw a "way that seemed right to us," only to find that it's end really was death.
     We live in a culture that worships the power of the individual, and we in the church have been heavily influenced, in some ways, conquered by that culture and mindset.  We live in the place of "presumption," presuming that we know the best and right way. Just as we presume that the Father is totally on board with us in that way.  The Word calls living in such a place of presumption sin, yet somehow, we keep missing that truth.  So we go on with our affairs, laying out our plans before men, but rarely before God.  We spend months formulating a strategy, and mere minutes laying everything before Him in prayer.  We may build something, but it is nothing more than wood and stubble.  The eternal is missing, because it was built in the power of self, and not the power and life of Christ.  Chris Tiegreen says that "Living in the power of the flesh is perpetual futility.  It accomplishes nothing eternal.......We are promised success, but are delivered nothing that lasts."  That will always be the final result of a life lived in the confidence of self.  Nothing.  The Father said of His people Israel who were living apart from His life and power that in the end, they were living lives that "amounted to nothing."  Hard words.  To what degree do they apply to us?
     May we, in whatever places we live in the power of the flesh, renounce those places, and come instead into the fullness and power of a life, His life, that Hebrews 7 says, "cannot be destroyed."  Lives, ministries, fellowships, walking in a way, that yields not wood and stubble, but the silver and gold of His Kingdom.  Living with no confidence in ourselves, but ever abounding confidence in Him.  May we, but will we?

Blessings,
Pastor O
     

Heart Tracks - Entombed

        "It must be unnatural for Jesus to leave anything dead."  Beth Moore  How does that statement leave you?  In anger or joy? Agreement, or denial?  I ask those questions because death is a part of life.  We can be sure that in this fallen world, we will suffer loss. The Father has never promised that we wouldn't, or that we would not suffer or know the deep pain of losing loved ones, marriages, prodigal children, jobs, or ministries.  There will be many "tombs"in our lives.  His promise is that they do not have the power to keep us "entombed."  In each and all of them, like Lazarus, He calls us forth.  Christ, and Christ alone, offers to us, in every "dead place," His resurrection life.  From every tomb, from every grave, He calls us forth.  Do we come to Him, or, do we remain in the tomb?

     Acts 2:24 holds a powerful promise for us.  Do we believe it?  Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost, and announcing the victory of the Father's Kingdom over all the power of death, said of His Lord's death and resurrection, "However, God released Him from the horrors of death and raised Him back to life again, for it was impossible for death to keep Him in its grip."  Today, there are countless lives, both within and outside of the church that are being held in the grip of death.  Might you be one of them?  There has been loss, terrible loss. Our enemy satan, working through the power of death, has managed to entomb us over the pain and suffering of the loss.  To that tomb Christ has come, and He calls us forth, into the fullness and power of His resurrection life.  Satan has convinced us of his lie that there is no future, no hope, and no chance for escape.  He has us in his grip, and has persuaded us that it's an unbreakable one.  Christ has destroyed the power of that lie, and of every lie.  He calls us forth.
     Oftentimes, we think no one understands the depth of the pain and suffering of our loss, but we're wrong.  He does, and He does completely.  John 3:16 has familiarity with even the most hardened unbeliever, yet few of us really understand the pain of the Fathers loss in those words.  "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son......that (we) might not perish, but have eternal life."  Beth Moore says that a clearer meaning for "His only" might be, "His one and only."  God gave up His one and only Son.  Loss, terrible loss.  What might be the "one and only" person or thing we have lost? How deep is the pain over it?  Can we believe that God knows it, has experienced such pain as well?  He knew that death could not hold His Son.  Can we believe that through His death and then His raising, that it cannot hold us either?

     Moore says that sometimes the miracle is that "we live through" the horror of the loss.  That may sound empty to you, but she does not say we exist through it, but that we live through it.  Live through in and with His resurrection life.  His abundant life, which at root means "life unbound."  When Jesus called forth Lazarus, He bid those who were there to "unbind" him from his graveclothes.  Loss is not what defined, defines Christ.  Life is.  Does it define you and I?  To all those entombed, He calls us forth....to life.  A life free of the graveclothes.  He calls us forth.  Do we come?
    Mark Batterson has a wonderful title for his newest book; Graverobber.  That is exactly who and what Christ is.  A graverobber. Through the power of His life, a life the word tells us cannot be destroyed, He calls us forth from all that seeks to or has entombed us.  Sin and spiritual death, and the separation from the Father that they bring.  The horror, pain, and suffering of what may have been lost to us. From the grip of the pain of that loss, He calls us forth.  The enemy may have robbed us of life, and managed to place us in a grave, a tomb, but He calls us forth, robbing death, the tomb, of its power.  It could not hold Him in its grip, and in Him, it cannot hold us.  I know the loss is real, in my own life I do.  I know that He is more real.  Is He real to you?  Let Him rob death of its power over you, and enter into the power of His life that He will prove to us, cannot be destroyed.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Pathway

        Some years ago, on a trip home, I had the desire to revisit some of the places I had known and walked growing up there. Among these were the paths that ran all through the woods that surrounded our home.  These had been well known pathways, much walked and used by people of many ages in that area.  I had used them so often that it was no problem to walk them even on the darkest night, so familiar were they to me, and so many others I'm sure.  Yet, when I went into those woods, I was saddened and disappointed to find that they had vanished without a trace.  Those well worn paths were now covered by wild trees and bushes of every variety.  So overgrown with this "wildlife" that they were impassable.  They were now just a memory.

     I think of that experience often when I see where we are in the church.  Please, I am not making a plea for the keeping to tradition, and all the kind of thinking, some of it wrong, that goes with that "label."  Change can be very good and very healthy, but not all is change is good and healthy.  More, I am not talking about overreactions to new methods of church life, or an insistence on our keeping to a church culture of past decades.  No one who really knows me would believe that.  The pathways I speak of are not much to do with what we "do" but who we "are."  Especially as to who we are, and what we have in Christ. Pathways that were walked by men such as the apostles Paul and Peter.  By Luke, Matthew, John, and through men such as Wesley, Spurgeon, Moody, Chambers, Tozer, Sparks, and Nee.  Men who walked the pathway to and into the heart of the Father. A pathway blazed by our Savior, Jesus Christ.  A pathway that I fear, is becoming more overgrown with the wild each day.
     In the modern message of "hyper-grace" where, intended or not, a message is growing that pathways such as the "discipline" of prayer, seeking His face and heart, abiding in Him, speaking with Him, and listening to Him, are being laid aside with the belief that these are all "works of the flesh" and that His grace negates this.  He's done everything, and so, the message, again intended or not, is being heard that therefore, we don't need to do anything.  The joy that Paul and all those others spoke of, of knowing Him more, loving Him more, of dying to self, and seeking Him, is being lost and replaced by a "me" centered gospel.  Jesus came for and died for me, so that that "me" could have all the blessing that His life and sacrifice bring.  Everything is on Him, and nothing much, if anything, is on me.  The greatest tragedy in it all is not the bad teaching, but that so many are missing out on the joy and blessing of a life that hears Him, sees Him, knows Him, and abides in Him, and all of it more and more.

    T. Austin-Sparks said that beginning with the prophets, and continuing on through His Word, the central message was that we are called to know Him and love Him, and increasingly so in our lives.  It's a knowing that goes on throughout all eternity.  It is the "one thing" Paul spoke of in Philippians 3; the pressing on into the fullness of the "upward call" of Christ.  Paul "strained forward" to answer that call, and enter into that place.  No, it is not a "work" but it is a movement...to and into Him.  A pathway. Are you, we, on it?  Has it gotten overgrown by the wild?  Begin anew, and He will clear it.  The footsteps of all those who have gone before, including Christ the King, are there.  It will take us upward ....and all the way home.

Blessings,
Pastor O

    

Heart Tracks - Name-Droppers

       Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."........"Are you a religious name-dropper?"  Eugene Peterson

      I realize that it's very easy to become legalistic in our faith lives, but it may be even easier, so to speak, to be labeled as such by much of the western church.  I know that we can take a scripture and build a kind of "law"out of it, a law devoid of His mercy and grace, but there are just far too many scriptures that cannot be softened, and many of them were spoken by Jesus Himself.  The above scripture is surely one of them.
      I have to say that my spirit is deeply troubled by all I see of those who proclaim His name so often with their lips, yet deny Him even more often with their lives.  I'm willing to risk being labeled both judgemental and legalistic for saying that.  Let me say that I also believe deeply in the mercy and grace of the Father.  I have a friend who likes to say that the one prayer we can be sure that the Father will answer is the one prayed by the tax-gatherer in the Temple, "Lord, have mercy on me."  He is a God of unlimited grace and mercy, but He is also a God who is pure and holy.  A God, a Father, who calls us in Christ, to a life of purity and holiness.  Not just in outward behavior, but in inward condition and reality.  Indeed, unless the inward is our reality, the outward is nothing more than show.
     The question Jesus asks in Matthew 7 is as relevant, powerful and convicting now as it was then.  His Words always are.  It's a question that to some degree will be spoken into our hearts on some level each day.  Are we calling Him "Lord" while all the time seeing to the carrying out of our own wills in opposition to His?  Do we want to walk in "our way" or "the way," His way, of which He clearly says in the Word, "there is no other way."  At least no other that will lead into the Kingdom of God.  There are various interpretations of what Jesus fully meant when He said that no one could enter into His Kingdom unless they did the will of the Father, at least as concerns eternity.  But there can be no denying that it is impossible to live in and out of Kingdom life apart from living in, abiding in, His life and will.  To call Him Lord, while living a life in opposition to His will for us is to live a lie.  There is no way to soften that.  If we don't wish to have His will in our lives, than the clear truth is that we don't really wish to live or have His Kingdom life either.  Our lips may say we do, but our lives say we don't.
     I close with this prayer Peterson wrote in his devotional, One Year With Jesus, "Lord Christ, when I use Your name, keep me honest so that I am expressing a relationship with You and engaging in a response to Your will.  I want my whole life, not just my mouth, to speak Your name." It has been said of some politicians, that if their lips are moving, they're lying.  Sadly, it may well be said of many who profess to be His as well.  May not only our lips, but our lives speak His name to a world that needs to hear, see, and know Him, through a people that call Him Lord.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Even if.....

      Things were looking bad, very bad for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Nebuchadnezzar, king of the mightiest nation on earth, Babylon, had commanded that all in his kingdom bow down to a golden idol of himself.  The aforementioned three Jews, refusing to recognize any God but the One true God Jehovah, would not.  Nebuchadnezzar then threatened them with a horrible death by burning in a furnace.  A threat he would make good.  Their reply to him was, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power Your Majesty, but even if He doesn't, Your Majesty can be sure that we will never serve or worship the gold statue you have set up."  

     Scripture tells us that the three were indeed thrown into the furnace, and that the king himself saw them walking about in the fire, joined by a fourth, who he said, "looks like a divine being," for it was.  It was the very Presence of Christ with them.  They emerged unhurt, delivered.  It was a glorious deliverance, and there is so much teaching in this, but it is not their deliverance that I want to dwell upon, but rather, the words of faith and trust they spoke prior to being thrown into the furnace of death.  Telling the king of their complete trust in His ability to save them, but showing an even deeper trust in proclaiming, "but even if He doesn't......"  These are words spoken with the same faith and trust seen in Job as he proclaimed that "though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."  My question for each of us is, what will be our response to Him if, in the midst of our greatest trial or need, He doesn't do that of which we ask?  Can we live, in Him, in the place of "even if?"  There are so many who find themselves living with Him in the place of "if only."  We would give ourselves to Him wholeheartedly "if only" He would do all that we ask, or fill us in on all the details of the journey He calls us to.  If only He would do all that we require, we would gladly give to Him all of our hearts.  If only is an easy place to live, but it is the place of denial.  Denial of Him.  Many can live there, but there are so many less who are able to live in the place of "even if."  We will be His completely, follow Him fully, worship Him only, even if He doesn't seem to meet what we feel our are deepest needs, or bring about the deliverance or healing we cry out for.  Even if this is our reality, we will not turn back from Him.  We will not give ourselves to something else, something that is not Him.  In the "even if," we will worship Him, and Him alone.  Even if He does nothing, He will still have our everything.
     I am so thankful for the many "fiery furnaces" He has delivered me out of.  He gave grace to trust Him there, but He gave, I think, an even greater grace to trust Him in those furnaces that He did allow me to "burn in."  Those places where He did not do those things my heart longed for Him to do.  A grace that enabled me to trust Him, worship Him, even when He didn't save me from the flames.  Flames that I found only served to burn more of the dross from my life.  That may be the greatest gift He gives us when He doesn't give us what we ask for.  A better us, but more, a better, deeper realization of Himself.  We win, are delivered, even when it seems we are not.  Delivered into a deeper place in Him, winning a more abundant life with Him.  Abundant life is ours, even when He doesn't.....So much dross remains, which means more furnaces lie ahead.  By His grace, may we trust Him,

.......even if.


Blessings,

Pastor O
     

Heart Tracks - Joy Unspeakable

      "God whispers in our pleasure and shouts in our pain."  C.S. Lewis   "I will praise Him in the pain, though the mystery remain."  Jennifer Rothschild  There are so many things we seem unable to understand in a walk with Him.  Pain is one, and joy is another.  We don't understand why the first is in our life, and even more, why He would allow it.  Rarely do we see Him in it, and even more rarely do we feel we can have any joy, His joy, in the midst of it.  We know that we're to be overcomers, that we have "victory in Jesus," but we don't feel like overcomers, and our lives don't look to be victorious.  The only thing that seems real is the pain.  The pain from the death of a loved one, the break-up of a marriage, the on-going sickness of a mate or child.  There are the daily disappointments of life, both large and small, and all the frustrations that go with them.  There is the appearance of failure, in our relationships, our jobs, our ministries.  Pain, be it excruciating or just a dull presence, is there, and seeks to steal all joy from us.  Maybe it has stolen all joy from us.  Yet we read, hear, that we are to "rejoice always."  How?  How may we live in His joy in such painful and hard places?

     I came across something Watchman Nee wrote that I think speaks deeply into this.  He said that when he first came to Christ, it was his belief that to be a Christian was to walk through life with a constant smile upon his face, to never shed a tear, or feel even the slightest fear.  To do so meant he was not victorious, that his relationship with the Father was flawed.  In response to those "ideas" he wrote, "But the Christian life I soon learned is very different. It is a paradox of power in weakness, joy amid pain, faith triumphing in the presence of doubt.  When the Christian is strongest in the Lord, he is most conscious of inability;  when he is most courageous, he may be profoundly aware of fear within, and when he is most joyful, a sense of distress readily breaks upon him again.  It is only the 'exceeding greatness of the power' that lifts him on high"  There lies the key I think.  It is choosing, moment by moment if needs be, to live in the "exceeding greatness" of His power, of His life.  We live in a fallen world, and pain, loss, sorrow, are all very real.  The glory is that the joy of His Presence is even more real.  Writer Margaret Feinberg spoke of how the pain of her treatments for breast cancer were so intense as to drive her to her knees at times, yet that in those times, she received the fullness of His power and life, and so, His joy.  The pain was real. He was more real.

     Jennifer Rothschild lost her eyesight at age 14.  The Father never told her why, but He also never stopped speaking into and moving in and through her life.  In the mystery of "Why?" she could and did praise Him.  In her loss, she received the fullness of His joy.  C.S. Lewis who wrote the classic, "A Grief Observed," knew and experienced that though the pain of loss spoke so loudly, that the comforting voice of the Father in Christ spoke even louder. And with that voice, came joy.  Not an escape from the circumstances, not some kind of euphoria, but the all consuming joy and sense of His Presence in the midst of it.  This was the "all joy" of His Word.
    Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4, "But this precious treasure - this light and power that now shine within us - is held in perishable containers - that is, our weak bodies.....Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen"  We do feel the pain of life, but if we will yield to Him in its midst, we will also experience the wonder of His glory, and "joy unspeakable."  In our time of pain, whether it is upon us now, or yet to come, may we enter in the unspeakable joy of the Lord in its midst.  A joy greater than all our pain.

Blessings,

Pastor O  

Heart Tracks - Going To See......What?

       In Matthew 11, Jesus asked His listeners this question concerning their interest in John the Baptist, "What did you go out to see.....?"  That question has been finding a place in my spirit as concerns my, our, reasons for, interest in, going to both the Lord, and His "church."  Why do we go to Him?  Why do we "go to church?"  What is it we're after?  What do we expect to see?  A blessing?  A show?  A social event?  Jesus obviously thought this was a legitimate question to ask.  Can it be any less legitimate that He ask it of us today?

     Lots of people are "interested" in Jesus Christ.  As I heard it put, interest in Him does not make for a life lived in Him.  Many things may have our interest.  They don't have our heart.  Could Jesus very well be just one more of our "interests?"  Someone we're willing to invest some time in, perhaps even to the point of going to a place, "church", where we can hear songs sung about Him, and hear men and women talk about Him?  It can interesting.  He can be interesting.  Very interesting.  But too many never have any more than an interest, and interest in Him will never transform a life.  And no matter how many efforts we might undertake to make Him interesting enough to others, all will fall short because only the power, life, and grace of God in Christ can take a person past interest into real knowledge and experience of Him.  Has that ever happened to you, or, are you still living in the place of interest?  Interest that may be fading by the day.
    When that question is asked of we who would consider ourselves true believers in and followers of Christ, how do we answer? Week after week we "go to church."  What are we going for?  What are we seeking to experience?  What do we wish "to see?" Are we there because it's what we were brought up to do?  "It's Sunday.  I, we, need to be in church." Are we there because the atmosphere is generally positive, and we like the feeling we get from that?  Are we there because the social support system and friendships are highly valued by us?  Are we there because the church helps us establish good values and morals in the midst of a culture sorely lacking both?  Are we there because we like the preacher, the worship leader, the programs?  None of these are bad things, but none of these are Christ.  None of these ever will be.
     I think the answer to Jesus' question is found in Luke 1, when Zechariah, father of John the Baptist gives this prophecy concerning his son.  "You will prepare the way of the Lord.   You will tell people how to find salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.  Because of God's tender mercy, the Light of heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace."  Jesus told His listeners that there was nothing John did that could bring any attention to Himself.  Nothing bombastic, or stimulating to the senses.  He just pointed people to the burning light of Christ, trusting in the power of the Father to bring to them a sense of need for the forgiveness of their sin, and the fullness of the hope of the Kingdom.  In this day of the cult of personality in the church, and all the special effects we think we need in order to "do church," I think we have strayed far from this.  We are to be the manifestation of His Light, pointing people to Him, wherever we are.  We offer no show, no perks, and no lure, and we don't need to, because we offer Him in all of His fullness. We are no longer curiosity seekers, or even regular attenders, but fullhearted pursuers of His Life.
     So, today, each day, Jesus asks us, "What have you come to see?  If it is anything but Him, we may likely find it, but will have missed Him, and so missed everything.  If we have come to behold Him, His Life and Light, He will pour both out upon and into us.  Why are we here?  What have we come for?  Will we receive all He longs for us to have?

Blessings,
Pastor O