The Church

 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."  Ephesians 2:10....."The church is God's evidence before the universe of His very high character."  Ray Ortlund..."To live above with saints we love, O Lord, that will be the glory. To live below with saints we know - well that's another story!" Unknown

I love the old hymn's lyrics, "It's a glorious church without spot or wrinkle, washed in the blood of the Lamb." It's true as to who and what the church of Christ is in Him. When the Father looks upon His church, that is what He sees, because He sees a Body that is under and washed in the blood of Christ the Savior. 

Christians, the people of God, are a flawed people. We have imperfections, sometimes glaring imperfections. We make mistakes, we react when we should respond. We don't always do the right thing. Sometimes we sin. In all of this, He looks at our heart. At the heart of His church and at the hearts of His people. What He looks for is a deep love for Him and desire to live for Him. A deep desire to love His people and the souls of those who don't know Him. That we sometimes do this imperfectly is covered by both the blood of Jesus and that He does see our hearts and our perfect desires that we seek to live out through imperfect lives. But we need to understand a very sobering truth. We, His church, are to represent the very perfect character of God even through our imperfect lives. We are to be His portrait to a creation, a human race, that He desperately loves and desperately needs Him. As we allow Him to examine us, how are we doing at that? How does the fellowship we belong to "look" to the surrounding culture? What do they say about us? Do they even know we're here? What does it say about us, you and me as individual parts of the whole? Do they know whose we are? Do they see Him in us? Do they even know we're here? Sobering questions indeed.

The politcal and religious systems of the day in the early church were aligned against them. Persecution was increasing all the while. Yet Scripture says that even the unbelieving pagans around them spoke highly of the integrity and character of the followers of Christ, and they were amazed by their love for one another. The world system and the enemy that empowers it will always be aligned against the church. Against His people. But that cannot, will never stop the witness that we are to give it in the midst of all of its darkness. Are we doing that? Or, does the world know more about our scandals, our fallen celebrity preachers and the luxury lifestyles some of them live? Do they know more about how we criticize one another, focusing on minor differences of doctrine and theology than upon the calling and mission of our Lord and Savior. When they see us, when they see our churches, what is it that they see? Are we verifying for them what the enemy would have them see?

As I said, we're human, and on this side of eternity we will never live out our witness perfectly. But we can have a perfect motivation and desire to do so. We may have and live out a burning desire to bring Him glory. We can confess and repent of what have been our failings, and we can invite the power, healing, and wholeness into our fellowship and lives anew. We can be, to the fullest extent possible, His glorious church without spot or wrinkle. God is moving, even as I write this, doing that very work among His people. May we, you and I, and the body of Christ be swept up in it all. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Joining Him

 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.  Matthew 23:37..."Ask God where He's grieving in your life and in the world and join Him there." Alicia Britt Chole

The portrait of Christ standing atop the heights and looking down upon Jerusalem always moves me. I can sense His broken heart over the rejection of the city, nation, and people He came to save. I can't help but think of eternal tragedy experienced by those who rejected Him and the consequences of their rejection. I can almost feel His sorrow. The thing of it is though, I tend to always keep this portrait of Christ in a kind of compartment. I know He still grieves over the nations and their ongoing rejection of Him, but somehow, it doesn't seem so personal. Yet the quote from Chole written above pierces me as I contemplate it. When Jesus looked down upon the city, He didn't just see the crowds of people. He saw the individuals as well. The nation of Israel and its religious and political leaders had rejected Him, denied Him. So too would, at least for a moment, His disciples. Again, I can contemplate all of this from afar, but it still doesn't bring me into understanding the depths of His sorrow.....until I realize He continues to look upon this world, and my place in it, and grieves over how we continue to reject and deny Him in so many different ways. That's not a realization we come by easily. I can understand His sorrow over the sewage of our culture. I can also understand His grief over the waywardness of those around me. I am too often blind to how my ways may so often grieve His heart. But if I am to be all He saved me to be, I need to know, and I need to be made new in all of those places.

We're told in Scripture to not grieve the Holy Spirit, but that may be one of the most ignored commands in His Word. We grieve Him all the time and in so many ways. We don't notice and sadly, we're not much concerned about it. We figure His grace and love will cover it. They do, when we confess and repent of it. Someone said that we can't really enter into the fullness of His salvation until we truly experience sorrow over our sin. That is key to experiencing the fullness of His grace. For that reason we will not become truly conscious of our grieving Him until we begin to understand how deeply our indifference, our cold hearts, our selfish living, wounds His heart and Spirit. 

Chloe exhorts us to join Him in His grief over the world and over us, but we can't and we won't until we feel and understand that grief ourselves. That means we need to invite Him, cry out to Him to open our eyes to see and our hearts to understand. When we do, we can join Him in those places as He brings healing to us, and then through and with us, healing and salvation to the human race He came to save and deliver.

We may know what's wrong in the world, and even in His church. Do we know what's wrong in us? Do we know where we're grieving His Spirit? Can we join Him in those places? Can we grieve with Him and then rejoice with Him as He works in us and then through us to minister healing and wholeness there. As He offers His healing grace to us, may He not say any more, "but you would not have it."

Blessings,
Pastor O

Eternity Amnesiacs

 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11...."We are so focused on the opportunities, needs, responsibilities, and desires of the here and now that we lose sight of what is to come. You cannot make sense out of life unless you look at it from the vantage point of eternity." Paul Tripp

Not long ago I wrote about us having amnesia when it comes to remembering who our God is and who we are in Him. In his devotional, New Morning Mercies, Paul Tripp writes about our also being "eternity amnesiacs." That is, we live without any real perspective on eternity. If we're honest with ourselves and with Him, we know how true that is.

A simple question for each of us is, where do our thoughts about eternity enter into our daily lives? What is eternal life anyway, and if there is such a thing, what determines our place in it? As the above Scripture says, God placed a sense of eternity in the human heart when He created us. Indeed, He created us for eternity. The fall of the human race in the Garden destroyed that sense and yearning as He intended it, but it still remains, though we've found, believer and unbeliever alike, a myriad of ways to dull and diminish it. 

Satan, the enemy of our souls has blinded us to the reality of eternity, convincing us that everything centers on life in the here and now. Our culture underscores this more deeply each day. Our senses and cravings are appealed to in every way possible. The old commercial that proclaimed, "You only go around once in life. You have to grab for all the gusto you can," is still shouted at us, though the proclamation of that message may change in the delivery. Some do live "going for the gusto," and others live just trying to survive. Most of us live somewhere in between. Yet eternity is real, and all of us will be spending it in either the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or in the presence (and torment) of the hater of the human race. What we do with Jesus is the deciding point. What have you done with Him?

It will be a tragedy beyond words to enter into eternity without Him. It is also a tragedy beyond words that so many who profess to believe and follow Him live just as oblivious to eternity as those who don't. We too are going for the gusto, or struggling to survive, or just trying to make it through with more good in our lives than bad. Moreover, we are as confused by life as those who don't believe at all. We measure and weigh events in much the same way as the world. We lack an eternal perspective because we lack His wisdom and discernment. We lack men (and women) of Issachar, those who know and recognize the days we live in and what we need to be doing. We're often as overwhelmed and confused as those in the world without Him. 

The worst part I think is that we spend so little time living in such a way as to prepare ourselves for what eternal life will be for us. How we live for Him here determines how we will live with Him "there," in eternity. It should not be that it is not until we grow old that we begin to give any thought to eternal life at all. So we go on living as eternity amnesiacs. We must awaken and come to our senses. One day, it will be too late. And none of us know when that day will be. 

Blessings,
Pastor O

His Fellowship

What I write today may offend some. That is not my intention. It is my intention to address what I feel He is prompting me to speak to. I write with a soft heart and pray all will read with a soft heart. 

That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

Philippians 3:10....."When Jesus calls, 'Come, follow Me,' He does not spare us a Via Delarosa, 'The Way Of Sorrow.' " Mark Buchanan

Of late, I've been writing a lot about suffering, something we all have or will experience to some degree. The death of a spouse, a child, or the failure and collapse of a marriage. The losses of life can devastate us, and we certainly need Him to lead us through such awful times. In these sufferings, He will certainly join us, comfort us, and lead us through, but I think Paul writes of a different, perhaps more intense suffering that Christ calls us to. It is the suffering that comes from simply being a totally devoted follower of Christ.

Here in America, we know little of that. Our nation was founded on biblical principles. While we have never been a "Christian nation," the culture was at best, friendly towards the faith, and at worst, at least tolerant of it. Tolerant of we who call ourselves His people. That is changing, and at a pace few of us are prepared for. 

In the last few weeks alone, I have read accounts of men and women who have either been fired from their jobs or forced to resign due to their Christian beliefs. Police officers, teachers, football coaches, small business owners, and a wide spectrum of people have been attacked and have experienced attempts at silencing them simply because they are expressing biblical views that run counter to what the culture deems acceptable and feels must be acceptable to all members of that culture as well. Even when to do so violates the basic belief system of those members. Christian football coach Tony Dungy recently expressed his views on abortion and did so in a very Christlike way. He was attacked and told he needed to apologize. A professional hockey player refused to participate in a pregame ceremony honoring the gay and lesbian community because he believed doing so would compromise his Christian beliefs. He made no hateful statements about it, and in fact, made no statement at all. He just declined to participate. When the media and activists found out, he became their target. The instances of this are growing by the day, and the followers of Christ will be faced with the choice of whether we will join Him in the fellowship of His sufferings over these things, or will we not?

Someone said that Christ was not crucified because of the great works of love and compassion that He carried out in His earthly ministry. He was not killed because of the blind He made to see and the lame He made to walk. He was killed because what He preached, said, and lived, ran against the grain of the religious and secular culture of His day. He did so from a heart of love, but that did not save Him from those who wished to silence Him. They failed to do so, as He continued to speak through all those who believed upon Him and came to believe upon Him. His words and voice will always run counter to the popular culture and that culture will always seek to silence His voice. That is what is happening now, and it is going to get worse. We need to know that. We need to go deeper in Him than ever before if we are going to stand and prevail in the midst of it.

Let me say that I have spent a lifetime in ministry committed to preaching and proclaiming His truth without compromise. Never did I do so from a heart that sought to condemn those I was seeking to bring Christ to. I have ministered to homosexuals, married couples who invited a third person into their sexual intimacy, physically abusive and abused men and women, drug addicts, alcoholics, and former prostitutes, among many others. All were welcomed. All knew they were loved by our fellowship. All knew that while we would never condone or promote their lifestyles, that we would not reject them but offer His transforming life and love to them. I always treated them with His love and dignity towards their lives, but I also always made clear the sinfulness of their choices and the consequences of continuing in them.

I know countless other pastors and believers who have done the same. All of us have paid a price for it. We cannot leave off now, even as the cost of doing so increases. Accusations of being members of a faith based on hate will increase. Hostile opposition, at times violent, is likely to come. We must persevere, and as we do, realize that He walks with us on our Way of Sorrow, because it is also His Way of Sorrow. We have joined Him in the fellowship of His suffering. Unless.....we haven't.

Jesus said He was "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." He offered Himself and His resurrection life to all who would believe upon Him. He never sought to force anyone to come to Him but invited all, regardless of their lifestyle or sin to Himself. He did not compromise His message and did not allow the culture He came for to change it. Neither can or will His church. We, His Body, continue to offer His message of resurrection life. We do not force that message upon anyone, but neither will we be forced to compromise it. Christ paid the ultimate price for it, and if we continue to proclaim it, we will pay a price as well. Perhaps even the ultimate one. It is the Way of Sorrow. Believers in so many areas around the world are walking and have been walking it for some time now. We must be ready to walk it as well. Are we? Are you, and am I?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Blessings,

Pastor O 

The Limp

 "Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh." Genesis 32:31 ....."The eternal question is, 'What is God trying to do in and through me by way of suffering?'.....Our 'pearl of great price' may be evidenced only when men see us walking with a limp." Jamie Buckingham

People have been trying to come to grips with the question of suffering for as long as the human race has existed after its fall. None more so than those who follow Christ. For the believer, the one who follows and believes in a good and loving God, trying to understand why God allows it into our lives is perhaps the greatest question we will ever have. Why does He allow the wilderness of suffering to come upon us? Perhaps we need to ask a deeper question. The question Buckingham asks. What is He trying to do in and through us in the wilderness of suffering?

Scripture says that rain falls on the just and upon the unjust. Believer or unbeliever, we will not escape the reality of suffering in this fallen world. Nowhere has He promised those who follow Him that we would. Indeed, Christ promised us that we would join Him in the fellowship of His sufferings, and that He would use our wilderness sufferings to transform us and draw us ever more deeply into Him. He is the "pearl of great price," and we lay hold of Him best through our time in the wilderness and the pain we may experience there.

Genesis 32 contains the account of Jacob's wrestling with God at the place he named Peniel. Jacob was ever a trickster, a schemer, and a manipulator. He'd tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance, and now after many years, he was returning to his homeland, and his brother Esau was coming to meet him. Terrified, Jacob formed a plan to try and appease a brother he believed was intent on killing him. He sent everyone ahead of him while he remained at the stream Jabbok. In the place, the Lord appeared to him, and he wrestled with Him till the dawn. In the midst of the struggle, God touched his hip, and it was dislocated. Jacob continued to cling to Him, crying he would not let go until He blessed him. At that point, the Lord changed his name from Jacob to Israel, saying, "You have striven with both God and men and have prevailed." He prevailed by losing, In his wrestling, he was wrestling with himself as much as with God. Jacob, who sought to control all of his life's happenings, surrendered to God all that was his life. In surrender, he prevailed. So will we, and most often, our surrender will only come about as we walk the path of suffering...in our wilderness. That is where we find the pearl of great price. That is where we discover the deep places of who He is, and who we are. Almost always, it is the wilderness alone that kills our "inner Jacob."

When that happens, it is then we display to the world the evidence of having found that pearl; the "limp" that we now walk with. The limp that offers proof of our surrender to Him, of our total dependence on Him, of His having full hold of our lives. Many have mocked our faith by calling it a "crutch." In a sense it is, but not at all in the way that they seek to demean it. He is the One we lean on, depend on, and trust, to bring us through every wilderness and every degree of suffering. Our Lord Christ called Himself "the man of sorrows," and walked in surrender to His Father. In all of His sorrows, He triumphed, and His resurrection was the proof. He bears the scars of His suffering and they are proof of His prevailing. So shall our scars in this life be as well. They lead us to our pearl of great price. They are the limp that lift us up and make us victorious in Him. Do you and I walk with such a limp this day, or do we still give in to our inner Jacob, scheming, manipulating, being the tricksters like him? Knowing Him as He desires us to know Him, will always come by way of our limp.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Journal Thoughts

 Some more "gold" from my prayer journal.....

"We don't have to worry about being misguided when our greatest passion is knowing Jesus." Chris Tiegreen So many of us stumble about terrified that we're going to somehow make a choice that causes us to miss His will. This is a bondage we don't need to live in. The Bible tells us that we're to love Him "with all our strength, mind, and will." When He is the object of our passions, we become ultra-sensitive to His Holy Spirit. We can depend upon His checks of our spirit. Jack Hayford wrote a wonderful book on knowing His will that blessed me deeply. He said that when our heart is set to follow Him, to have His will in our lives, we can rest in Him. He is always looking at our heart and its motives. When He sees that within us, even if we should mistake where He's leading, He doesn't allow the mistake to alter His leading. He alerts us to the wrong choice and leads us back to where He wants us to be. We don't fall victim to a mistake when our motive was to seek His will. We're human. We will "miss" Him sometimes, but it will not be out of willful rebellion or insistence upon our own way. He will always redeem our honest but mistaken choices. He sees our heart and is blessed by our devotion. He will keep us on His path.

"The Christian faith begins not with a big DO, but a big DONE!" Watchman Nee.....Jesus' three final words on the cross may be His best known. "It is finished!" So few of us seem to understand just what those words entail and how they affect our lives and our walk of faith. Jesus said that He came that we might have life and have it abundantly. His death and resurrection broke the power of sin and death and opened the door to living in victory. Yet so many of us continue to live as if we have to "work" our way into living in that victory. Instead of receiving the fruit of His death and resurrection, we continue, by our own efforts and works, to strive to enter into it. Jamie Buckingham said that the Holy Spirit is a spring of flowing, living water. He is not like a cistern, that is hewn and then filled with water by our hands. Neither is He a well which we must dig in order to reach the water deep in the ground. He is a spring, which flows naturally from a source that we can't reach on our own, but which He is always sending to us. We spend our lives trying to secure what He already gave us on the cross and in His resurrection. Our faith walk is not a matter of "doing." It is a matter of receiving by faith, and following His voice and will, and so living in the riches of our inheritance in Him. Everything begins with His DONE. May we cease striving to get into the "room" that in Him, we've already gained entrance to.

"It is finished! Christianity begins from a place of rest." Watchman Nee.....Tying this into what is written above, if we truly believe that in Christ, "it is done," why do we experience so little of His rest in our lives? Why do we live, not from a place of rest, but from a place of anxiety, stress, and worry. We live in a fallen world. We will experience trouble. Jesus promised it would be so. Jesus also said that we're to take courage, because He has "overcome the world." Because He has, our lives in Him can and have as well. Too many live overwhelmed by their circumstances and needs. They are always focused on the lack and not the Source. They are always looking for answers rather than focusing on the One who is the Answer. Jesus lived in the peace of His Father. In His life, death, and resurrection, He has given His peace to you and me. It is not peace as a result of the absence of outer troubles and conflict. It is His peace prevailing even in the midst of them. It is the peace He lived in all the way to the cross and beyond it. It is the peace He gives us. It is where He wills that we begin and end our walk here in Him. The place of rest. Are you living in and from His place of rest right now? If not, isn't time that you did. Freely He has given it to you. Now freely receive it.

Just a few more journal thoughts......

Blessings,

Pastor O

Amnesiacs

 David replied to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies—the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. I Samuel 17:45......"David knew who he was....It was not little him against this huge warrior. No, it was this puny Philistine warrior against almighty God." Paul Tripp

In his devotional New Morning Mercies, Paul Tripp asks why the Israelite army cowered in fear of one Philistine soldier while David, a shepherd boy, didn't? He said the answer was simple; they were "identity amnesiacs." They forgot who they were in their God. David didn't. Sadly, and to our shame, we more often resemble the trembling Israelites than we do the confident youth. We too often also suffer as identity amnesiacs. We forget who we are in Christ. Indeed, too often, we have never known who we are in Him to begin with.

The Bible is filled with examples of this. Moses had to be persuaded by God that he could carry out God's will for freeing a nation of slaves. He could do so because his Almighty God would be with him. Gideon, whom the Lord came to as he hid in a wine press, needed several "proofs" by the Father before he would agree to lead his oppressed people out of their bondage to the Midianites. This was so even after He greeted him with the title, "valiant warrior." This is how God saw him in relation to Himself. It was not how Gideon saw himself. Countless men and women have stood with these through the centuries. Men and women who never fully realized who they were, are, in Jesus Christ. Where might you and I stand with them today? Where have we fallen into the trap of being "identity amnesiacs?"

Scripture tells us that we can "do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens us." He has proven this again and again through people like you and me. Jesus started with a group of very flawed disciples and in Him, they took His message of life throughout the known world. He is still taking very flawed people and doing the same. He is able to do so because though they know how flawed they are, they also know how empowered they are in Him. The problem for so many of us is we can't get our eyes off of our flaws and onto His perfection. The Israelite army, including their king, Saul, could only see the size of the warrior Goliath. They lost sight of the infinite grandeur of their God, along with all of His promises to them of being victorious over their enemies. David, as he looked upon the giant, remembered how his God had enabled him to prevail over the bears and lions that attacked the sheep he guarded. He knew this same God would give him victory over the giant. He knew that even a giant has limitations. His God had none. He still has none, and we who are in Him, really can do all things that He places before us and brings us into.

Where in your life has identity amnesia taken hold of you? What giant, mountain, obstacle, and yes, impossibility lies before you? Where has the view of them blocked your view of Him? Where have they caused you to forget who you are in Him, and who He says you are? Those suffering from amnesia live in a kind of fog, but the fog lifts when they regain the memory of who they are. For all of us today who suffer in any way from spiritual amnesia, may the fog lift. May we remember who we are and what He has promised. May we look past the giant, the mountain, the impossibility, and see the One who leads us and is with us. David ran to the battle and won. Let us run to our own battle as well....because in Christ, we have already won.

Blessings,
Pastor O