I was overwhelmed.
I found strength in the presence of Christ’s people who were gathered in His name.
So, in Week 19 of 52 Weeks of Gratefulness, I give thanks for the victory that Christ provides.
I’ll repeat this nugget from Alan Hawkins again:
“Victory is in the Lord’s communion.”
When faced with challenges, sometimes all we need is to get in formation -we need to run to the Lord’s communion, that is, the fellowship with others in Christ, especially over a meal.
Sometimes, we don’t even have to share our problems or solve that of others.
There’s a transmission happening just being in the midst of Christ’s people who are being attentive to His Spirit.
“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”
—2 Corinthians 2:14
But the greater the intimacy, the greater the power.
“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
— Matthew 18:20
So, there’s even more strength to be had if we do share our problems with those we discern love God, love us and have His Spirit.
“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”
— James 5:16
Are you a believer that’s struggling? Burdened? Overwhelmed?
Originally posted on Facebook on Wednesday, May 10, 2023.
There is a difference between faithful and religious.
Both involve work -exertion of effort to achieve an end.
But the difference is why it's done and who it's done in service to.
As I learned through a dark night of the soul, I can claim the things I do are for God but that are actually and ultimately for me.
This was evidenced by my nearly walking away from faith because I was doing "good" things but bad things were still happening in my life. It violated my expectation of "wages", that is, if I do good things, I should get good things –a payday.
It's like working for a company. Ultimately your work is in service to yourself, not the company. If they don't pay you, you will no longer work.
It is do to get.
Contrast this with doing something for a loved one.
I recently traveled hundreds of miles to help my beloved nephew (son) move out of college for the summer.
It was work. It was inconvenient. It was costly and I was delighted to do it. I gladly went at my own expense.
Why? Because I love him and I want him to know he's loved. I want to help him. I want to contribute to his well-being.
And, like most teenagers, there wasn't any real indication that he got it. But, I was more than satisfied and my heart was full of joy just knowing that I gave.
This is do to give.
A key difference between religious and faithful is who my work is done in service to: an employer (which is ultimately in service to myself) or a beloved.
But the main difference is why I work: doing to get or doing to give.
With religion, I can rigorously observe and follow rules and be just as full of hate and hell as someone who is completely without any moral code or regiment.
But faithfulness springs from love.
There's a reason the Apostle Paul refers to himself, not as a servant who receives wages, but as a δοῦλος –doulos, an unpaid slave of Christ.
It alludes to Exodus 21:5,
“But if the servant plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ “then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever."
The Apostle Paul willingly gave His service because He loved the Master. He didn't just dispatch his duties, he was delighted to do so.
So, as I struggle with maintaining motivation and resenting the daily grind –"what I've got to do today", I ask myself am I being religious or am I being faithful? Who am I doing it for and why?
I earnestly desire to be faithful and live out Colossians 3:23,
"And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men"
So, I call my mind again to my Lord, Jesus Christ. Even though I do it imperfectly, I do sincerely love Him.
When I remember everything I do and how I do it is an opportunity to help Him, contribute to His work, and to let Him know He's loved, my work becomes less about what I've got to do and becomes more about what I get to do.
But above all, I want a heart set on Him so that what I do is based on fealty rather than feeling.
That strength of heart does not come as a lighting bolt from heaven but only comes by way of exercise. I have to do cardio. I must exercise myself to godliness (1 Timothy 4:7).
Just like physical fitness, that spiritual strength of heart is only found through obedience –working out, and often against my short-term will.
Lord, by Your grace and by Your Spirit, please help me perfect my love of You and keep it ever before me that I might do all I do, not for myself but for You, and that I do it not for wages but because I love You that I might be found faithful rather than religious. For the glory of the Father, the purpose of Jesus Christ, I ask these things. Amen.
Something that’s still rippling through my heart is a word imparted by Alan Hawkins that I heard at New Horizons,
“The way of escape is the Lord’s communion.” 1 Corinthians 10:1-21
This coincides with something else burning on my heart: we NEED each other.
It is not enough to have weapons or to even know how to use them, I need HELP!
I need my fellow soldiers because the war we fight is multifaceted and I wasn’t given all the gifts.
I was intentionally given a subset of the gifts; 1. for specialization and 2. so I’d have to depend on my fellow beloved to avert pride -one of the deadliest of Satan’s weapons!
To go into this war alone is unwise.
“A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment.”
— Proverbs 18:1
It doesn’t take many but it definitely takes more than me.
“Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight;
your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.”
— Leviticus 26:8
There are many challenges on this battlefield that different members of the body are especially equipped to handle. Despite personality differences or how I might feel about them, I cannot afford to be separated from these resources.
Did you know that disruption of logistics is a common military tactic?
The way to victory is the Lord’s communion!
But we’ve been disrupted!
Our primary objective as believers today should overcoming the divisions that have cut us off from each other.
We should be laying aside anything that separates us and fight toward each other!
Victory is in the Lord’s communion!
When we are together in Christ, then we can bind the strong man and plunder his goods, taking back from Satan all that he’s taken in deceit. (Mark 3:24-27)
Wake up church! We can win: our marriages, families, communities and the redemption of all things!
Originally posted on Facebook on Monday, May 8, 2023.
And, if Strength is the goal (God is our strength), we should not be doing anything to make any one else weaker.
"Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers." — Ephesians 4:29
"but, speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love." — Ephesians 4:15-16
We'd be many times more effective as a church if we get our minds right about our approach to it. There's a lot we can learn from the gym. Let's help each other get stronger!
It’s easy to focus on what’s wrong or where I believe a person is falling short and completely overlook the areas where they’re growing and making an effort.
To ignore or deny where a person is trying is discouraging and destructive.
I realize how I’ve been guilty of this and I repent.
Very often, we kill the grape vine we’re given because we’re looking for an apple tree (and it might not even be the season for whatever we’re looking for).
I must learn to work patiently with the Holy Spirit within His appointed seasons, to sow what I want (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31) and faithfully attend to what I get, to nurture and cultivate what is rather than railing against what isn’t.
God has placed me in a garden. I have been entrusted with many fields. The goal is that there would be life in those fields and to help them be fruitful.
I must remember that the goal is not to get what I want, but to seek what God wants -fruit: to be co-laborers with God in conforming each person, all the fields He’s given me the great privilege of working with Him in, to the glorious image of Christ.
So, a good question to ask in my frustration about what I’m not seeing is, where else are they trying, where else are they budding, what is needful for Christ to be further formed in them?
Then I can turn that budding seed toward the Son, nurture it, and lean into what God is doing -in them and me.
“[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Originally posted on Facebook on Wednesday, May 3, 2023.
Just this morning, I was in Leviticus 26 where God is making a promise to the people He's bringing into the promised land and says,
‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them,
You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you.
Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.'
Leviticus 26:3, 7-8
What struck me was that even though God promised, they still had to fight.
"He didn't promise easy, He promised power," is an excellent summation.
When I love you with God’s love, I love you, not on the basis of what you do or even who you are, or not even because of my relationship to you, but I love you based on my relationship to God.
The beginning of love is not the appreciation of some virtue in the subject.
Love is like light. There is no virtue in the darkness that activates light. Light shines simply because that’s what light does.
The beginning of love is God. Loves does what love is. Said another way, Love does who God is.
The question is, do I have Him [love], or perhaps better said, does love [God] have me?
If so, love is just going to do what it do and there should be nothing the subject can do to stop that.
The principal thing then, is to know Love, to have Him and Him have me.
Abide.
Only then am I in a position to love.
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
-John 15:9
Hardly anything is more destructive than a bad definition of love.
We do more harm to each other in the name of what we think is love than we do with hate.
At least with outright hate, it’s clear who the enemy is so you can avoid them or defend yourself.
But, I find that most of the harm that people suffer, and the most devastating came at the hands of people we thought were for us and who were actually well meaning (to the extent of their ability), sincerely thinking they were loving when they were doing the opposite.
Examples:
A guy who claims he loves a girl but is defiling her.
A parent who thinks they’re loving a child but is actually teaching them to hate themselves.
A person who think they’re helping the disadvantaged but is only further setting them back.
Me doing something that feels good or seems good that makes me worse off.
Etc.
But, Jesus came so we’d have an accurate definition, to teach us Love that “does no harm”.
If you want to know how to truly love: yourself, your spouse, your child, your family, your friends, your neighbor, God, look to Christ.
“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Matthew 6:23
Originally posted on Facebook on Sunday, April 23, 2023.
Just today I enjoyed fellowshipping with New Horizons Christian Fellowship and received a powerful equipping message.
Guest Pastor Alan Hawkins preached that the church is not as effective as it should be in its mission.
He remarks that we "need to get saved enough" to fulfill the mission of making disciples (Yes, I hear this sermon almost immediately **after** my post this morning about discipleship. Coincidence?)
Pastor Hawkins then starts to draw this out from 1 Corinthians 10. He opens boldly, "I promise you this will blow your minds." Pretty cliche, right?
Has anybody revealed or explained something and afterward you're left wondering what just happened?
A taste:
"No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it."
-1 Corinthians 10:13
"How do you escape temptation?"
"Flee". See 1 Corinthians 10:13.
"To the Lord's communion." See 1 Corinthians 10:14-22
We must push back from the table of the demons of our idolatry and perversions, Pastor Hawkins argues. He continues, it is in communion with Christ that we are able to find "the way of escape" from temptation, and through taking on His life by consuming Him that we are equipped to fulfill our mission of making disciples.
Imagine a firefighter that has to bring a burning house to the fire station before anything that can be done.
Or, an EMT that doesn’t do anything in the field but has to bring an injured or dying patient to the hospital before anything can be done.
There would be a lot of homes destroyed and a lot of people crippled or dying for lack of life-saving care.
Sounds familiar?
The industrial church teaches us to bring people to “church”, that when you encounter them to refer them elsewhere (to a pastor, a service, a class, a program) -to send them somewhere else.
That’s what the disciples said to Jesus in Mark 6:36,
“Send them away, that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread; for they have nothing to eat.”
But, what was Jesus’ reply in Mark 6:37?
“But He answered and said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.'”
We are called to be disciples of Christ, not merely members of a club.
Disciple, μαθητής, means “learner, pupil, student”.
What are we learning?
We are being taught by God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) The Way of the Kingdom of God and to do what our Master, Jesus, does (love: preach the good news, heal and set people free -Luke 4:18).
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
-John 14:12
We should be disciples, learning to do that work, making the Father known through the revelation and ministry of His Son and making disciples –not recruiting people to an organization.
Our Lord has given each of us, every one of us, all of us work to do and gifts to do them. And the greatest gift of all is the Lord Himself, resident in each of us through the Holy Spirit.
Without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5) and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).
We have the bread of life. If you don’t, get it.
Don’t send them away.
Our Lord commands,
‘You give them something to eat.’
The industrial church has lulled you to sleep.
Repent!
Stop being a “church” member and start being a disciple.
