The Journey | Discipleship at Messiah

Joy’s Paradox

Posted on 4/30/13 by On the road with Jesus.

I Peter 1:3-9 (6a) Rejoice in this

Helen Logosy placed an ad in the Suterlin, Oregon, Umpqua Shopper. She had a bed, complete with cover, to sell. She was overwhelmed with calls. The ad read: “Like new, roll-a-way bed w/lover, $50.”

How you advertise often has everything to do with whether you sell the product or not. Knowing that, in our eagerness to “sell the product” of the gospel, we emphasize the things that “sell” and end up distorting, diluting, misrepresenting the product. No way is that more true than when we talk about joy.

To live as Christians in the world creates some strange paradoxes—two things that seem to be mutually exclusive are true:
–IN the world but not of it (apart from but not aloof)
–Loving the world but loyal to Christ.
An ancient description said of Christians, “They take their share of all responsibilities as citizens, and endure all disabilities as aliens. Every foreign land is their native land, and every native land a foreign land….They pass their days upon earth, but their citizen ship is in heaven.”

It is often at these paradoxes, where we have trouble. We have one of these in this text. One of the characteristics of these “strangers” in the world, the New Testament clearly affirms, is joy—a great selling point. However, when it becomes a selling point, we easily slip into a distortion of the reality of the Biblical idea. It then becomes, “all will go well, and you will never have any problems.”

The Christian idea is something quite different as illustrated by the sample verses:

v.6, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” (NIV)
I Corinthians. 6:10- “always sorrowing, yet still rejoicing.” Another translation says, “be glad when you are sad.” (TEV)

In other words, joy and grief (suffering/sadness, etc.) co-exist. Neither one “obliterates the other” (Alexander McClaren).

The notion that Christian joy, gladness means a life of ease, comfort, drifting with current is flatly contradicted by the New Testament in general and this text in particular. To think that to be happy is to remove all pain, all stress from my life is a deception of hell and if pursued will create a place in hell for us.

Many of our debates/differences, struggles with issues like suffering, discipline are because we try to remove the paradox, to not see or accept the co-existence.

One point often missed in any discussion of joy is the Biblical principle that joy is not only a gift but also a duty. (another paradox). Most English translations of verse 6 don’t reflect that this is an imperative tense and literally could be translated “rejoice in this.” Or, as the Good News translates it, “be glad.” It is a choice.

But it might be objected we are often victims of circumstances, events, things that we don’t control. That is true but we can choose what we think about most, what we focus on. “Rejoice in this” we are told. WHAT?

born anew to a living hope
an inheritance
salvation.

Joy is “in our control.” Think about Jesus and what He has done for us. Where your attention is concentrated determines either your joy or discouragement.

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (vv 8-9)

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Loving Life

Posted on 4/26/13 by On the road with Jesus.

Whoever would love life… -I Peter 3:10

          How important is life to you; to most people? Who wants to die?
The rather normal and expected answers are that everyone (unless something is wrong with them) believes life precious and clings to it.
        So the text which says “whoever wishes to love life” seems strange to us. The suggestion that ordinary, normal, healthy people may not love life is met with disbelief.  Is Peter so out of touch with reality? Or, is he talking to people for whom life is so painful and difficult that anything would be better?
          At first glance, the latter seems to be a likely explanation—these people are in the midst of, or at least facing terrible persecution. This is an underlying theme of the whole letter. Certainly that would be an important message for people for whom life has dealt a cruel hand.
          However, giving that its due credit, when you see the solution he suggests, it becomes clear that this applies to everyone not just a hand-full of persecuted first century Christians.
          It is a fact that not everyone loves life. In the Bible, the writer of Ecclesiastes is direct: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecc. 2:17)
          Peter wrote in a day of much cynicism about life and it is a growing attitude in our time. Earnest Hemingway expressed it when he said, “I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.” For many, life is characterized by frustration and boredom.
Do you love life? I don’t mean do you want to live as the better of two alternatives. It is one thing to say we love life in the abstract and quite another to love the particulars of our life.
          The pursuit of satisfaction in life is major preoccupation of an affluent society. Some seek it in success. Others believe possessions, things deliver what they long for. Years ago I read this story:

A wealthy man moved into a new house, next-door to a Quaker. Quakers believe in plainness and simplicity. The Quaker watched as the moving company unloaded a great amount of furniture, clothes, and decorative things.
Finally, he walked over to his new neighbor and said, “Neighbor, if thee hath need of anything, please come to see me and I will tell thee how to get along without it.”

To those early Christians, persecuted and suffering, Peter tells the secret to loving life whatever one’s circumstances: “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.”
In short, do good. Goodness is not just what you ought to do, it is also the best way to live. It is living in tune with God and His ways, it is living the way we were intended, the way we work best. What you say and do, the way you relate to people is the key to loving life.
The kind of goodness called for begins with love for Christ. “In your hearts give Christ a unique place.” I Peter 3:15 (Barclay)
Do you want to love life? Make Jesus Lord of your life.

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Living In the Present—For the Future

Posted on 4/12/13 by On the road with Jesus.

“Wait.” “Now is the time…now is the day.” -Acts 1:4, I Corinthians 6:2

Do you remember the Fram oil filter commercial. A mechanic tells about a major repair job on a car, and suggests that if the owner had spent a little more on a Fram filter it could have been avoided. And then, he holds up a filter and utters the ultimate advertising wisdom, “Pay me now or pay me later.”

It is a classic human dilemma—tension between having it now or later, living for the present or the future. For almost all of our early lives, there is someone telling us to wait for something:

            wait until you’re old enough to go to school
            wait until you’re in High School
            wait until you’re married
            wait until you’re through with your education
            wait until you have a good job
            wait until you have some security to get married

There are right and wrong times to wait. Some years ago this story appeared in Reader’s Digest:

An Air Force TAIL-GUNNER was being court-martialed. “What did you hear in your headset?” demanded a superior officer. “Well,” replied the airman, “I heard my squadron leader holler, ‘Enemy planes at five o’clock!'” “What action did you take?” persisted another officer. “Why, sir,” replied the gunner, “I just sat back and waited. It was only 4:30.”

There are some people who live their whole lives in the waiting mode. They never seem to “experience life.” Totally goal oriented, so much so that when they get there, satisfaction, fulfillment seems to allude them.

On the other hand, there are competing voices saying do it now. Our desires often want it now, want immediate gratification. Our environment, advertising says, “Have it now, buy now, pay later.” “Grab all the gusto you can.”

When life is lived on this basis—pursuit of immediate gratification, we are robbed of the most important things in life, like character, meaning, joy. These things only come with time.

Some might suggest that this is a non-issue from a Christian perspective. All Christian living is future oriented, is lived for future results/rewards. And in one sense that is true but it is short of the whole truth. You will find both “wait” and “now” in the Bible:

The problem is that we are inclined to want to put off what we ought to do now and to want now what can only come in time. How can we live making the most of the present but also building for the future?

Know that life as God intends it is both an experience to be appreciated/ enjoyed/ lived now and a goal, destination to be anticipated. The living now and the future are part of the same parcel. The secret is trusting God and living with sensitivity to God’s timing.

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Jesus Is Alive

Posted on 4/4/13 by On the road with Jesus.

If Christ has not been raised then your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
–I Corinthians 15:17

This story is told about T.S. Eliot: “A literature student, upon graduating from Harvard, went to ….Eliot to get advice. For a while Eliot said nothing. Then he said, ‘40 years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford. Now you are going from Harvard to Oxford.’ Then he paused some more. The student was anxious to hear his famous words that he would remember for the rest of his life. Finally, Eliot put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and said, ‘Don’t forget your long underwear.’”

Sometimes I’m afraid people come to church wanting to hear something to sustain them for the rest of their life and are disappointed with the trivial. Even with Easter, the Resurrection, we can trivialize it by talking of budding flowers, butterflies, and Easter eggs.

Last week, I said that we sometimes seem to minimize Jesus’ death in order to emphasize the resurrection. To do that is also to minimize the resurrection.

One of the reasons we may not appreciate the resurrection as we should is that we avoid death, evil, refuse to acknowledge it in our life, our world. Philip Yancey reminds of a scene from the novel, Watership Down:

A colony of wild rabbits is uprooted by a construction project. They begin to wander and encounter a new breed of rabbits, huge, healthy, and beautiful, Their bodies show no signs of scars or struggle. They are asked how they “live so well.” The answer: “Someone provides for us. LIFE IS GRAND!”

The displaced rabbits are impressed but suspicious. One day they notice one of the fattest and sleekest tame rabbits has disappeared.

They are told. It happens regularly. We don’t understand, but we don’t let it interfere with our lives.

Then they discover a trap with a noose.

The gullible rabbits ignore the imminent danger of death.

The more you are aware of evil, death, the more you understand its pervasiveness, the more it enters your experience, the more important the resurrection, hope, a new beginning becomes. In fact, we are not prepared to experience resurrection until we have experienced crucifixion, until what we hold dear has been “put to death.” Only then can it be raised to life, eternal life.

When you have lost all hope in your intelligence, physical energy, cunning, hard work, education, security in things; only then does resurrection, new life come.

It comes as you place your trust in the living Christ.

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The Power of the Cross

Posted on 3/26/13 by On the road with Jesus.

the message of the cross…is the power of God. -I Corinthians 1:18, also Mark 15:22-39; Romans 5:6-10

The Cross is the power of God. The NT says there is power in Jesus’ death! Let me repeat that. Maybe I need to say it a third time. But no matter how many times it is repeated, there is dissonance, an incongruity.

It is not that the words Death/power don’t belong together. Death has power. It is pervasive, it is inevitable, it is unavoidable. In fact I think Saul Bellow was right when he expressed the philosophy of this generation by saying, “Death is God. This generation thinks—and this is its thought of thoughts—that nothing faithful, vulnerable, fragile can be durable or have any true power. Death waits for these things as a cement floor waits for a dropping light bulb.”¹

The New Testament denies that. It is says that God took the enemy’s biggest weapon, his most powerful and most destructive act and not only experienced it but used it to accomplish his own purpose. It is through death that Jesus entered Satan’s stronghold. Jesus’ dying, the event, the act, has power to effect you, me, all of creation, then, now and for all time.

We are inclined to minimize the cross, the death in order to magnify, the resurrection, Easter. In the gospels, in contrast, the “spotlight is on the passion”. The New Testament exalts the cross as the central act of our salvation. Malcome Muggeridge called the cross the intersection of time and eternity. Paul, the apostle makes explicit what all the New Testament breathes: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (I Cor 2:2).

The good news is that Jesus died for you. His death has power and it becomes effective when we, by faith, surrender our lives to Jesus. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, struggling with faith and life found that true one night. He described what happened:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while the leader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

“I did trust in Christ” is the telling fact. That is how you can experience the power of the cross. For help click here or contact me.

¹Christianity Today, 9/18/87, 20).

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The Awful Gift

Posted on 3/19/13 by On the road with Jesus.

I have set before you life and death….Now choose life. –Deuteronomy 30:19

We all probably have received a gift of something which we didn’t really want. That ugly picture which Aunt Sally gave us, she expects to see hanging on a wall every time she visits. Some gifts, ugly or useless in themselves we cherish because our son or daughter (or grandchild) made it. Usually, a gift is appreciated, valuable or not, if we know the motivation is one of love or care for us.

Did you know the most awful gift you’ve ever received came from God and was motivated by pure and perfect love. It was also incredibly expensive. That’s crazy you say. We know “every good and perfect gift comes from God.” God doesn’t give bad gifts. However, awful is not the same as bad. In fact, the awful gift is also a wonderful gift.

What is this awful but wonderful gift? It is the freedom to choose against God, to reject God, to choose not to believe God, to trust God, to love God. In fact, it is the freedom to choose death. It is wonderful because it means we can also choose for God, to love and serve God. You can’t have one without the other. To freely choose God is greatest of all choices, but that means it is possible to make the awful decision to “go it” without God.

And make no mistake, ultimately it is always a choice. What’s your choice? Click here for help on choosing.

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Too Good to Be True

Posted on 3/7/13 by On the road with Jesus.

The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ,…The people were all so amazed. Mark 1:1, 22a

A computer lease we were looking at “seemed too good to be true.” It was.

We all know the feeling—something is so wondrous so great, so joyful, that it just couldn’t be true.

Such things just don’t happen in a mixed-up, disappointing, sin and sorrow-filled world. And that is exactly the feeling created in anyone who really begins to “breathe” the atmosphere of the New Testament. The news about Jesus seems almost too good to be true.

To be sure, the watered-down version that many have heard from their youth up and which the church too often seems to teach isn’t so hard to believe. This collection of religious sentiments somehow (we’re not quite sure how) built around the person of Jesus who was a very good man, is not hard to believe and creates no feeling of wonder and amazement and certainly had little power to transform lives. But the unedited biblical version is a different story.

Get this—Jesus is the Son of God. Even the demons recognized they were not dealing with just another human being, exclaiming, “You are the holy one of God!” As Jesus came to John for baptism in the Jordan river, there is an accreditation, an approval expressed by God the Father: “You are my son, and I am delighted in you.” God among mortals! And we think, “That’s too good to be true.”

But notice the impact Jesus had on those who heard him, those who walked with him, those outside as well as within his circle. As they heard his teaching, saw him in action, it seems Mark “ransacked” the Greek dictionary trying to express their amazement, astonishment, wonder, awe in the presence of this person. It’s too good to be true!

In what is said to be representative of a typical day in the life of Jesus, he casts out demons, heals Peter’s mother-in-law who was sick with a fever, reaches out to touch one legally untouchable and cures the incurable leper. His loving compassion and power which heals, and his wisdom which enlightens are amazing.

Then it begins to dawn on us what the NT is trying to say, “that is what God is really like.” This Jesus, whom the whole world looks to as the epitome, example of love, concern, the best in human kind, is what God is like! He is not just a man but God among men! It’s all too good to be true!

Just like the man who saw Jesus heal his son of a spirit which caused him to fall into the fire and go through horrible agony, when Jesus asks, “Do you believe?” responds, “I believe, help my unbelief.” We begin to understand a little of what the man was trying to express. I do believe! I want to believe! But it’s too good to be true!

While we’re trying to catch our breath, get our minds around the idea, “God is like this,” we are brought to our knees by the this: Jesus is one of us. His life becomes a pattern for me/you. As surely as Mark will not let us forget that this is God’s own son, so likewise he will not let us escape the fact that He was a real human being.

He sets the pattern for every true disciple (Jesus follower). A decision to trust God, acceptance of a calling/mission and dedication to it, set the boundaries of life. And with that, there is the equipment, power of the Holy Spirit descending on Him, to give Him the ability to perform the mission. So, we make our choice, dedicate ourselves, and God fills us with His spirit and empowers us. But we think, “it’s too good to be true.

In his powerful book, A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken tell how he and his wife, became Christians.

They considered themselves pagans. They began by believing the Christian gospel had nothing to say to them. Over a period of time, Vanauken and his wife began to consider the meaning of the gospel. Not taking that way easily, He said,

“we discovered much more than we had expected: The personality of Jesus emerged from the Gospels with astonishing consistency. Whenever they were written, they were written in the shadow of a personality so tremendous that Christians who may never have seen him knew him utterly: that strange mixture of unbearable sternness and heartbreaking tenderness.

What was happening seemed to happening against his will. But as he read and thought and talked with these Christians what seemed almost too good to be true was becoming harder and harder to escape. Vanauken saw the issue and saw it clearly:

Christianity had come to seem to us probable. It all hinged on this Jesus. Was he, in fact, the Lord Messiah, the Holy one of Israel, the Christ? Was he, indeed, the incarnate God? Very God of very God? This was the heart of the matter. [Did] he rise from the dead? The Apostles, the Evangelists, Paul believed it with utter conviction. Could we believe on their belief? Believe in a miracle?

He goes on to describe his growing excitement. As he began to think that it all might really be true, it began to dawn on him that the highest aspirations and deepest longings of his life came together at the person of Jesus Christ and the gospel. And almost against his will he is driven to Jesus.

As he read the New Testament, the incredibly good news broke through—and hoping against hope, for it was just too good to be true: Vanauken them came to a turning point: “I could not go back….I had encountered Jesus….It was a question whether I was to accept Him—or reject. (When I saw that) I could not reject Jesus.”

When you really meet the Christ in the pages of the NT, the sheer excitement of it all makes it seem too good to be true. Mark’s whole gospel is predicated on the conviction that once he tells you what Jesus did and said you will know who He is—God’s own son, but also one of us; our savior but also our example.

HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT JESUS?
IT IS TRUE, YOU KNOW!

If you do not know Him, you can invite Him into you life now. click here for how.

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This Is True Grace

Posted on 2/27/13 by On the road with Jesus.

After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,…will himself RESTORE (PERFECT) you. I Peter 5:10

One evening, G.K. Chesterton and some writers were discussing what single book they would choose if they were stranded on a desert island. One writer quickly said, “The complete works of Shakespeare.” Another responded, “I’d choose the Bible.” When Chesterton was asked, he replied, “I would choose Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.”

Now what Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding would be to a person stranded on a desert island, the Bible is to those whom Peter says are “strangers in the world.”

All through this letter of 105 verses Peter has talked of what it means for them to live as followers of Jesus:

Joy in midst of sadness,
holy,
submissive,
loving life,
and stewards of the grace of God.

He sums it up in a final and wonderful encouragement to stand firm, because God will “exalt you” (v 6).

Then he adds one more basic necessity for spiritual victory, to come out of a world like this intact: v10- “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,…will himself RESTORE (PERFECT) you.

It is not easy to live as strangers in the world. There are pressures—our internal weaknesses, circumstances, others, even persecution. Most of all Peter reminds us of the enemy of souls, who like a roaring lion prowls looking for victims. Living in a world where we are strangers and which is often hostile can take its toll—deterioration, wearing and tearing.

Who of us have not retreated from engagement with life, the worse for wear—wounded, damaged, broken. What congregation has not known conflict, division, in the struggle to be God’s people.

But Peter reminds us, restoration is God’s special work. God is not a throw-away God. He puts things back together, restores, perfects. Frazzled, at loose ends, in pieces? God will repair to perfection.

What is special here is the emphasis—it is God’s personal work. God does not leave this to instrumental means, but it is His own “personal active ministry to His people.” And it is true grace. Peter was exhibit A. This could not have been lost on those to whom he wrote. They were too near to it.

When the struggle, the battle has taken its toll, God’s word to us is not just “try again”, “try harder” but grace, “true grace” which is all we need.

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)

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Be My Valentine

Posted on 2/14/13 by On the road with Jesus.

For God so loved…that He gave…His son…. John 3:16

Today, Valentine’s Day, love is on everybody’s mind, everywhere you look and crosses lips where it’s seldom at any other time mentioned. We are told by retailers to say it with flowers, chocolate, jewelry and anything else they’re trying to peddle.

But we have a problem with the word “love.” We say, “I love ice cream, my house, baseball, to swim, listen to good music and my wife” (not necessarily in that order). We can really get confused about what love means. I once heard Stuart Briscoe say we think love means “to like an awful lot.” However, it is possible to love someone and not like them at all.

The benchmark, the standard of love’s expression is found in these words: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) And that provides us with the clearest idea of love. It is not in words but deeds. It is not about how we feel (as nice as that might be) but what we do.

Even in the church we are not always clear. I heard someone say that Jesus came to show us God’s love. It is as if our only message to the world is “smile, God loves you.” It’s great to know that but the real message is because of God’s love Jesus died on the cross for my sins (yours too).

Then Jesus really set the bar for us when He said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) Nothing less than to love the way God loves will do. The only way that can happen is to receive God’s love and let God express that love through us.

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“Why Does God Permit Evil?”

Posted on 2/7/13 by On the road with Jesus.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. -Romans 8:28 (NIV)

Some years ago, I sat in a doctor’s office and he told me he was an atheist because of the evil in the world.

There is perhaps no problem, no question which troubles more people about the Christian idea of God that this one: “Why does God permit evil and suffering?

A couple of months ago, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, there was a lot of discussion of this. A full range of opinions from those like the doctor to those who suggested that somehow God willed this event were expressed.

Some people deal with this question by explaining it away—nothing is really bad. It’s just that we don’t have enough knowledge. If we knew all we would see that really it wasn’t evil at all, just shadows that add depth to a beautiful picture. In our world it is increasingly difficult to hold to that idea.

For others it is God’s will. We may not understand but we must simply accept it. Whatever will be will be. It is punishment for sin. He sends it for trial or testing.

More than 30 years ago, a Jewish Rabbi, Harold Kushner wrote a best selling book—Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. Churches all over the country studied it. His answer to the question was basically that God is limited in power and cannot prevent some things.

While it is true that many find comfort in some of these ideas the Bible says something different.

God is the creator and all powerful. So, in one sense, it can be said that God is responsible for evil in that He created a world in which it is possible. He gave human beings a choice and they made the wrong one. Since all creation is woven together and interrelated, as the weaving of a fine fabric, those choices affect everybody and everything. It is not just a spiritual flaw but even the natural order is affected. Read the creation account about how humans’ relation to the earth is changed. In short, we blew it and ruined everything.

But there is good news. God did not give up, abandon creation, us. He set in motion a plan to do it over, even better than before. The key in this plan is Jesus Christ. Through him God gives us a second chance to make the right choice—that is to trust God with our lives.

The good news is not that it is a cure for suffering and evil in this world but that God has a means for using suffering and evil to defeat itself (signified by the cross). God’s great power is shown in, not that everything that happens is good but, that God uses even evil to carry out His great plan.

Evil and suffering are a reality in this life, but God is not pleased, in fact, suffers with us. And He is doing something about it. A new age has begun, a new creation described by John (Rev. 21:1-4). The whole creation, Paul says, has been groaning, as in pains of childbirth…as we wait eagerly for…redemption. In the meantime: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ…(Romans 8:35-39).

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