Heart Tracks - Kingdom Maniacs

       Sometime ago, I heard a pastor describe how he met his wife.  He was a committed follower of Christ on a very secular college campus.  One of his friends, very much a non-believer, told him of a girl he needed to meet.  He told him, "You'll like her.  She's weird, like you."  The friend meant that she too was a follower of Christ, and, that she was, like him, "weird."  It put me in mind of a book collection of comic strips featuring one of my all time favorites, "Calvin and Hobbes," by Bill Watterson.  The collection was entitled, "Weirdos From Another Planet."  To be a full hearted disciple of Christ, is to be, truly, a "weirdo from another planet."  That "planet" being the Kingdom of God.
     There is much discussion, and much of it good, in the church today about understanding the culture we are in, and knowing how to engage it.  This can be very healthy, but I think in doing so, we, consciously or not, can slip into a mode of trying to look like them, talk like them, and to some degree, act like them, in order to win them.  But "win them" to what?  We're in the age of the hip and cool church and pastor.  I'm not trying to paint everyone with such strokes, but so often, it seems like we want to apologize for who we are and what we believe, in the hope that our approach will make them "like us."  I don't think Jesus was ever concerned with this.  In fact, scripture reveals that He went out of His way to discourage people from following Him unless it was to do so with a fully dedicated and surrendered heart.  More, He was very willing to appear very "weird" in their sight as He proclaimed to them who He was, and the Kingdom that He came from, and lived within.  Scripture abounds with such examples.  He spoke, acted, and ministered in ways never before seen.  He said things that dumfounded, amazed, and most of all, angered people.  People were drawn to Him, and also repelled by Him.  Sometimes they were both.  In John 6, many were following after Him, in large part because He had been supplying them with "good bread," but when He told them that to really be His, they had to partake of His life completely, and doing that meant partaking of His cross.  John 6:66 tells us that at that time, "many turned away and no longer followed Him."  Jesus then asked the disciples if they too would leave.  Peter answered for all, "Lord, to whom would we go.  You have the words of eternal life."  The disciples struggled with what they saw and heard from Him, but their hearts responded to Him, were drawn to Him, and couldn't turn away.  The strangeness to their flesh of what He said, was overwhelmed by the beauty of who He was, and is, and this hasn't changed.  Jesus had no problem with appearing to be a "weirdo from another planet."  Yes, He was willing to be found IN and at the places where the lost were, but never was He OF those places.  His holiness and purity shined just as brightly there as it did amongst those who fully believed, and hearts would "feel strangely warm" because of it.  It won't be any less so today.
     I've a friend who spoke of what it is to be a "manic-depressive," or, as commonly labeled, bi-polar.  This is a person who experiences wild mood swings.  Very high, highs, and very low, lows.  The definition of manic is "showing wild, and apparently deranged excitement and energy."  They appear to be out of their minds.  My friend said that more and more, he wanted to live a "manic Kingdom life in the midst of a fallen, depressed world and culture."  Jesus was accused often of being demon possessed, deranged.  So was Paul.  Why, because they lived with an energy, joy, and power the world could not comprehend.  Lives of Light that prevailed against all the power of the darkness of the culture that surrounded them.  It is what marked the early church, and it is what must mark us now.  Scripture says that believers were called a "peculiar people," and so must we always be.  Living in the fullness of the Spirit is always going to look weird to the world.  It will to much of the professing church as well.  Dare you and I seek to have and live such lives?  Lives so lived in Him that when all hell breaks loose, that life breaks through hell.  Fools for Christ, as Paul put it.  Kingdom maniacs might be another way to say it.  Weirdos from another planet to be sure.  Residents of His Kingdom.  We pray "Your Kingdom come," but its coming will make "weirdos" of all who are His, for His glory and the good of a world culture in desperate need of Him.  Your Kingdom come Lord.  Maranatha.  Come Lord Jesus.  Come quickly.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Shipwrecks And Snakebites

       I heard not long ago of a book entitled, "The Insanity Of God."  Now, before you pull back and label that a blasphemous statement, I challenge you as to whether there has ever been a time in His dealings with you where you thought that maybe, just maybe, God had lost His mind?  A time where nothing made any sense, where He seemed to not so much be absent, but to be literally working against His own interests, allowing things that seemed to be destroying the very foundation of His kingdom.  
      I've no doubt that if we were asked as to our belief in His sovereignty, infinite power, and many promises of victory, we would affirm that we believe them.  We would quote the scriptures that tell us that "all things hold together in Christ."  We would say that we believe Revelations 19:11, that He who sits on the throne is always faithful and true.  We would say we trust in I Peter 3:22, that all angels powers and authorities must and do bow before Him.  We believe that, but then, in one of those "sudden things" His Word speaks of so often, everything, and I mean everything, collapses, and life becomes, as Mark Batterson said, like that of Paul, "a pattern of shipwrecks and snakebites."  Shipwrecks and snakebites orchestrated by the Father, and which to those who were looking upon the events of Paul's life, must surely have indicated that the Father had indeed, "lost His mind."  It may have seemed so to them, but it didn't to Paul.  Was he perplexed, yes, and he wrote that he was.  Were there times that he was discouraged, again, yes.  Cast down?  Crushed?  He admitted as much.  But he was never beaten, and indeed, said that he was "more than a conqueror," through and in Christ.  He was so because though he may not have understood at all what His Father was doing, or know just where and to what He was leading, He knew His God.  He knew His heart, and that His heart towards Him was one of goodness, mercy, and love.
And so, even in the midst of the seeming insanity of His God, He lived at and in His rest and His peace.  Why?  How?
     The answer is seen in Ephesians 2:6, where Paul said that God has "raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realm." Amidst the pattern of shipwrecks and snakebites, the prison cells and the suffering, Paul lived in the heavenly realm with Christ, in His presence, partaking fully of His life, peace, joy, and strength.  The snakebites and shipwrecks were real, but life in Him was more real.  So much of what was happening to him made little or no sense, and to the flesh, it would certainly appear as if the Father really had lost His mind, butseated, not running about, in panic, composed, at peace in His presence, Paul knew that what appeared to be was not what mattered.  It was what was, and what is.  The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.  This was his real "reality," and the chaos and insanity of life could not move him.  Neither, if we will live in that place that Paul did, will it move us.  
     Are you living the pattern of shipwrecks and snakebites?  Does it look like God has lost His mind, at least in His dealing with you?  If we wait for Him to explain Himself, we will wait for a very long time.  If we will choose, as Paul did, to live not at the mercy of our circumstances, but in the power of His presence, in the heavenly realm, we will, in Him, be raised above them.  Shipwrecks and snakebites may continue, but we live in victory in their midst.  They can only serve to take us more deeply into Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Heart Tracks - The Lord's Prisoner

      Brother Yun, known as "the Heavenly Man," is a follower of Christ and has one of the most powerful testimonies of the life of Christ working within Him.  Having suffered for years in various prisons in China simply because he would not renounce His Lord, he eventually was freed and embarked upon a wider ministry outside of China.  During this time, he noted how he increasingly became wrapped up in the work of the Lord rather than the Lord Himself.  His heart had grown cold.  One day, while at an airport in Thailand, he was detained by customs, as they found problems with his passport.  He was arrested and once more, found himself imprisoned, and he would be in that "place" for 2 long years.  In relating the story, he said that as His life and heart had drifted from His Lord, the Fathers response was to "give him a holiday in prison."  A holiday.  Does that sound like madness?  Most certainly it does to our flesh, but beyond the cell, Yun saw what His Father was doing in his heart, a heart that had wandered from Him, and what He meant to do through his time in prison.  Equip and make him a man who could bear even more fruit for His God and His Kingdom.  For most of us, our response to such a condition would be to cry out for release, Yun's was to cry out to God, not for His release, but for His Fathers purpose in all of it to be made full.  He didn't see himself as a prisoner of the Thais, but of Christ.  In that, he found a common place with the heart of the apostle Paul.

     Twice, in Ephesians 3:1 and 4:1, Paul referred to himself as "the prisoner of Christ."  He said that it was for his testimony of His Lord that he was there, but he never saw himself as a prisoner of Caesar and of Rome, but of Christ, and because he was a prisoner of Christ, he knew that he was free from being a prisoner to anything or anyone else.  He lived so deeply in Him that his reality was always Christ.  The cell and the bars may have been real, but Christ was more real.  He didn't see himself as a victim, but a victor.  He knew that if the Lord had allowed him to come to this place, that He had a purpose in it, and so he didn't bemoan his circumstances or seek to enlist a prayer movement to get him out of that cell, but instead sought His God and His will and purpose for him in that place.  We see the beauty of that purpose in Ephesians and in the other letters known as the prison epistles.  Out of the seeming ashes of his prison cell came a beauty that continues to speak to and enrich lives and the life of the church 2000 years later.
     I've a friend that wonders if Paul could ever have written the rich, Holy Spirit filled words outside of that prison cell?  There is no doubt that his flesh suffered in that cell, but his spirit soared with Christ.  The result was an encounter with Him that he couldn't have had outside of it.  Yun called his experience a holiday.  The root meaning of holiday is holy day.  Could you and I dare to believe that our present circumstances, which may be hard, seemingly impossible to us, can be used by Him, indeed are purposed by Him, to be for us, and those we are to impact, holy days. Days of bringing forth fruit for the Kingdom?  Could we dare to believe and see ourselves as not being prisoner to our circumstances and conditions, or the opinions and esteem of others, but of Him, and Him alone?  Could we dare to have the courage to be "prisoners of Christ?"
What fruit will come forth from our lives if we are?  What will be the result of our own holiday in prison if we see ourselves not as prisoners of what is happening around us, and truly live in chains, but instead the prisoner of He who lives and reigns within us, and so, free of all chains? Can we embrace our holiday, our holy day in Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - The Beholder

       "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  Likely you've heard that saying, and for sure it's a true one.  Everyone has their own definition of beauty, but I've been thinking of late as to just what the Father's definition would be, is?  We live in a culture obsessed with beauty, and the church has not been immune from the obsession, at least not here in the west.
       Our flesh is drawn to what we consider "beautiful," but is His?  His Word speaks a great deal about the relationship between Christ and His church, of His love for her, His bride.  That love is one that penetrates to the very depth of her being, to who she is, and the beauty of who she is moves His heart.  His eye doesn't stop at the surface of her being, but goes to her heart, and it is to her heart that He is drawn.  That "glorious church without spot or wrinkle."  There are depths to explore here beyond this short devotional, but I'm wondering today just how far our definition of her beauty may have drifted from His?  In the life of the church, wherever you or I are placed in it, who is it that we most long to attract, men, or Christ?  Is it our deepest desire to be beautiful in His eyes, or theirs?

      Writer and pastor Donald Rumble said, "The church has been impressed with has attracted men.  If our goal has been to attract men to the church, than what they think will govern our actions."  This is hugely convicting.  In the "planning" of our worship, our outreach, our "strategies," how much prayer and thought goes into what will please men and women, the flesh?  Do we hope to attract more people, or more Holy Spirit?  Do we want to make our fellowships a place where people want to be, or a holy place where He truly dwells?  Yes, we need to be a "welcoming" place, but it is a welcome that is extended from His heart, and not ours.  It is a welcome that says "Come to Me," and such a welcome brings with it the command that we come not just as we are, but with all that we are.  I think we worry so much that people might be "uncomfortable" in our fellowships that we do everything we can to see that they're not.  No, we cannot have a legalistic, judgemental, rules and behavior oriented church, but the simple fact is, that if Christ is truly present in a manifested way, our flesh will be decidedly uncomfortable.  It can't be otherwise.  Jesus told His disciples, "The world hates Me because I convict it of sin."  This will always be so, and I think if we try to lessen this reality in the desire to be more acceptable to the flesh, we may be "attractive" to it, but not to Him.  Whose favor do we really want?  In whose eyes do we really wish to be beautiful?
     In Acts 7:20, it is said of Moses at his birth that "he was beautiful in the Lord's sight."  Not because he would be perfect, without sin, or that he would do everything right and never fail, but it was because he, like David after him, had a heart and life that was set to pursue the Father with all its might.  This is what is beautiful in His sight.  Yes, this heart wants to reach people for Him, but the overwhelming, the all encompassing desire of that heart is to know and worship Him.  Nothing can take the place of that desire, nothing can get in its way.  There will be the desire that others come to Him, but the desire for Him will never be compromised by a desire to reach them.  When we become such a person, and our fellowships are comprised of such people, we will truly be beautiful in His sight, and He will truly dwell among us.  Others will be drawn to that beauty that only He can possess.  We no longer have to come up with plans to reach men because He is so powerfully in our midst that hearts are being drawn to Him through His beauty in us, and if they are not, then no plan is of any value anyway.  May it be our deepest desire that we be beautiful in His eyes as He beholds us, forsaking the favor of men, for the favor and glory of God.  Beautiful in the eyes of the Beholder.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Skylight Theology

      I heard a passionate young preacher speak of what he called "mirror theology," and "window theology."  He said the first was the theology that is most prevalent in the American church, a theology that sees itself before it sees anything or anyone else.  Everything is about "me" and all things, people, the church, and God, exist to make "my" life experience, and that of my loved ones, better, complete, and happy.  The second, window theology, was that which focused outwardly, to those in need of Christ, who are suffering, dying, and all without the life of Christ within them.  I liked his points, and don't disagree at all, but I think he missed the "theology" that is most lacking, as well as most needed in the western church today, and that is what I call a "skylight theology," that which looks first and foremost, to Him.  

     Oswald Chambers who established a training school for missionaries, said something that I think is lost on so many of we who sincerely wish to reach a world without Christ.  He said, "The central thing about the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men."  Jesus said in John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world," and we say we know that, but I think we are seeking to bring His Kingdom to the world in our own strength and according to our own understanding.  We may reject the mirror "all about me" theology, that which looks inward, and embrace the window theology, one that gazes outward, but neglect the deepest, most needed, that which looks upward, that fixes its eyes upon Him, and then all that is seen, is seen through kingdom eyes and understanding.  Revelation 4 says that John "Saw a door standing open in heaven,"  and the Fathers voice saying, "Come up here and I will show you what must happen."  Before John could be truly used of Him outwardly, He had to first come up to Him and, as Chambers puts it, "soak in His presence."
     Chambers told his students that they had been placed in his school to "soak before God."  He said that to fail in this was to invite failure in their lives, that they would break under the strain, no matter how noble or good their desires.  So it is with you and I.  We must renounce our obsession with the mirror theology, and our eyes must be opened to the deep spiritual need that is all around us, but before any of that can happen, we too, like John, must "see" the door He has opened unto us of the very throne room of God.  We must hear and obey His voice as He call us upward, to Himself.  Only this will break the power that mirror theology has over us, over the church, and only this will empower us to take His life and ministry to all those we see outside the window.  The "skylight" is always above us, but we will only see through it to Him if we look up.  So.....look up, and soak in His Presence.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Faith Is The Victory

    I recently heard a friend describe faith as "living in the victory before the victory comes."  He said that means we "live in the realm of 'nothing is impossible," instead of the realm of "possibilities."  Think on that for a moment.  In the 80's and 90's, the term "possibility thinking" was a much used phrase in the church.  On the surface, it sounds great, but if we allow the Spirit to illuminate just what it really means, well then, not so much.  If we live in the realm of possibility thinking, then we are really living in the place of seeing what it is we think is possible, and that will always fall far short of what God says is possible.  When we bring our concept of what we think the possibilities are, they will always collapse when they come against the "wall" of the truly impossible.

    I heard author and speaker Christine Caine recently say that the first thing the Israelites encountered when they began their entrance into the land promised them by God were the walls of Jericho.  She said that "the promise" lay beyond those walls, but that they could not enter into that land, that promise, until those walls fell.  By faith, they obeyed His leadings, and in faith, they saw those walls collapse, and the pathway into the land was open.  The victory however was not won when the walls fell down, but in their obedience and trust in Him before they fell.  They were living out my friends definition of faith, living in victory before the victory came.  Living in the reality of the fallen walls, before the walls actually fell.
    I'm not promoting some teaching of "name it and claim it" faith, but I am saying that when we are truly living in, abiding in Christ, having more and more of His mind, heart, and sight, we can begin to see and understand what He sees and understands.  We see this in Jesus speaking of the rich man and the Kingdom.  He said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven.  The disciples were dumbfounded and asked then how could anyone be saved?  Jesus replied, "With men, this is impossible, but with God, nothing is impossible."  The disciples saw everything from the perspective and limitations of the flesh.  Their "possibility thinking," had very real limitations.  Jesus saw everything from the perspective of the Kingdom and the eyes and understanding of the Father.  So, no matter what was happening around Him, even when all betrayed Him, He lived in victory even before the victory of His resurrection actually came.  We can as well.  I don't mean that everything we want or envision will come to pass, but I do mean that no matter what happens, good, bad, or worse, we can, and must, live in victory whether that victory has come yet or not, or even if it may not come until after we have left this realm.  Hebrews speaks of this kind of life when it talks of those who saw the victory, the culmination of His promise from afar, but died without realizing it in their lifetime.  They lived in victory before the victory came.  All the walls that the enemy raised up to try and keep them from that "land" He had promised had fallen, and they had entered in.  Circumstances, difficulties, everything being against them, still they lived there.  Will we?
     One of the great lines in the great old hymn is "Faith is the victory......O glorious victory that overcomes the world."  I want to live in that victory, before the victory comes, even if the fullness of that victory doesn't come in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my ministry.  I will never do that by living in the realm of possibilities, but only by living in the land of "nothing is impossible."  May I, you, we, truly enter into that land, trusting that as we do, all the walls before us will fall.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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