Everyone wants to go to heaven...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel that endures the cross for the joy that is hidden on the other side.  The cross precedes the resurrection.  There is a death between old life and new life.  I am reminded of a song by David Crowder, The chorus says, "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. "How can we invite people to believe in a gospel that we don't believe in ourselves?

Every Christian I know wants the joy of the Lord, the fruit of the Spirit, the power of the resurrection in their lives.  The irony is that as we long for these realities to manifest in our lives we do our best to avoid the pain, the suffering, the cross.  The problem is that suffering is an unavoidable part of the journey. So, we veer off the path that would bring us to our desired destination.  Death is interwoven with life and process of growth.  

This was brought to my attention recently through my garden.  I have never been a gardener.  I mowed the lawn when I was a kid, but that's about as close as I have ever come to tending a garden.  When we moved into our current house, we inherited a wonderful garden.  It had been thoughtfully planted and arranged so that in every season there is something new blooming and sprouting throughout.  It has been a wonder for me to observe, and a steep curve for me to learn how to care for it.

It is a very low maintenance garden, but still it requires some work from time to time.  The most nerve wracking part for me is the transition between seasons.  That is when the cutting happens.  I am a far cry from a horticulturalist and have a hard time telling flowers and weeds apart.  I can pick out the familiar ones but do get confused.  Some of the weeds here actually have pretty flowers, and some of the flowering plants look suspiciously uninviting until they bloom. Then there is the real danger that I will kill a bush or plant when I am trying to help it. I might prune too much or too little and actually cause more harm then good.

We have now been here a year and I am please to see the results of the pruning that I did a year ago.  It appears that I have only significantly damaged one bush, the rest of the garden is really healthy.  Last summer when I was brutally hacking away at the garden I was pretty sure that I was doing irreparable damage, despite the guidance and advice of my expert gardening neighbors.  When I finished with some of the bushes they were all knobs and bare branches.  They continued to look ugly and bare for most of the year, but in the last month they exploded with life and are now full and beautiful.  The new growth more covers for the old wounds and would never have happened without the cutting.  The new blossoms push the cutting and death of the pruning to the distant recesses of my memory.

There was real cutting.  There was real death.  There were wounds and barrenness for a season.  These painful realities where not only unavoidable, they were preferable.  So it is with us.  It is not by accident that scripture is full of agricultural metaphors.  The life of the Spirit, in the Spirit, is organic.  We must choose to enter into and endure the pruning, the suffering, the seasons of death in order to experience the joy that comes only on the other side.  This requires an unnatural and patient faith.  A faith that trusts the gardener and that looks beyond the season of ugliness, trusting that there is a purpose to the pruning and that beauty will follow brutality.

Another fine mess...

How did I get into this mess?!  I have chosen a profession that requires me to engage wholeheartedly in striving to accomplish something that is ultimately beyond my ability to do.  I have chosen to spend my life reaching for goals that are impossible.  I am a minister.

My job is work for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  My tasks are people.  My vocation is to seek the transformation of souls.  No one can accomplish this except God Himself.  So, every day I pray and I work, I talk and I preach, I write and create, I strategize and struggle for revival and renewal.  I can write a sermon or organize a meeting, but that is nothing.  The real purpose for the sermon or the meeting are beyond me.  There's the rub.  I cannot revive a single soul.  It is not up to me to change a life.  I can feed a man, house a child, love a woman, but I cannot touch their hearts.  Only God can do that.  What kind of fool am I to struggle and agonize to accomplish something I know is impossible.

I wrestled with this as I stood on the cliffs near my home yesterday.  As the wind howled, the ocean roared, and the clouds skidded across the sky I was simultaneously filled with faith and frustration.  I know that God is Almighty.  He can do anything that He wills.  He can change lives.  He can transform churches.  He can save nations.  He can fall upon a person, a church, a town, a city, a nation, and make Himself known.  He has done it before.  So, I stood there on the cliff telling Him about what is wrong with me and the world and begging Him to pour out His Spirit.  I looked at the sky filled with dark clouds and I wondered why He wouldn't break through.  Why doesn't He do what only He can do and burn through the clouds of darkness that engulf our world!?

Then I saw something I have never seen before.  I noticed another thing happening in the sky.  I saw another layer of clouds beyond the dark storm clouds above me.  The storm was rushing toward me and over me, but all the while there were bright white wispy clouds moving the opposite direction above and beyond the darkness.  In that moment I wondered.  I remembered.  God too is always moving, always working.  His work is often shrouded and is more subtle than the darkness.  It can go without notice and get lost in the noisy evil of our world.  It doesn't make the news, but it is there.  It is ever flowing, ever moving, inexorably proceeding forward.

So, I choose to attempt the impossible.  I preach and I pray knowing that if God doesn't "show up" then it is all in vain.  I launch myself into the abyss of failure and shame knowing that if He doesn't catch me I am lost, a fool indeed.  I have no hope in life or death apart from Jesus Christ.  I expect to swing out into eternity on that.

The One Fixed Point

I have never had any desire to be a nomad. Nomads have no fixed home, instead they move from place to place taking whatever they can carry with them as they travel. Most nomads are pastoralists, driving their herds to the places where they can be find food and water and shelter from whatever weather is threatening them. My family and I are nomads, but we're not the ones doing the driving or choosing the next location, or even the time to move. We are nomads being driven along by God.

During the exodus, the Israelites left their homes and the only life they had ever known to follow God out of slavery and into the Promised Land. But, before He took them to the promised land, He trained them to follow Him and to trust Him. He appeared to them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Whenever the pillar would move on, they would follow. Whenever the pillar would stop, they would stop. This has been something like my experience. Sometimes we have lived someplace for years, the longest has been 6 years, and sometimes for just days.

For the last 10 months we have been particularly nomadic. It is really wearing on us. Even after more than 10 years of a generally nomadic existence we still long for stability. We long for a little patch of earth with some kind of structure on it to be "our home". When we don't have this we feel unstable in our souls. I wasn't raised to be a nomad. It just doesn't feel right to me. I want a stable place that belongs to me; my own personal castle and private domain. Ah, there's the rub! God wants all of me, and He wants to be the Lord of every part of me, which leaves me know personal domain, no private fiefdom.

In the second book of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, Paralandra, the one command that God gives to the perfect couple is that they live on the ever moving islands of paradise and never spend the night on the fixed land. As the protagonist struggles to understand the command he realizes that it is because God wants to remain their one fixed point. As long as they are on the moving islands they have to totally trust in Him. Their obedience demonstrates their trust in Him.

God is training me like the Israelites of old to trust in Him, to follow Him, o rely on Him. And like the Israelites of old I resist the training. I fail to trust, I fail to rely, but I can not fail to follow.

The Stations of the Cross

I walked the stations of the cross today. I am staying at a monastery for a couple of days of spiritual retreat. This morning I took a prayer walk along a path that was puncuated periodically with stations to remind one of the various things that Christ endured surrounding the cross. The first one is his judgement by Pontious Pilot and the last one is being laid in the grave.

As I walked this dusty dirt path I found my mind being drawn into the story. I found myself asking Jesus what it was like. What was it like for you, the Righeous King of the Universe to be judged and falsely condemned by a governor of a small provence in a small empire on a tiny planet on the fringe of a small galaxy? What was it like for you to be abandoned by your friends. How did you do it? How did you endure the scorn, the shame, the unrighteous judgement, the beatings, the mocking, the hatred the scourgings, the crown of thorns, the weight of the cross, the nails, the debasement of the cross, the objectification, the vilification.

As I reflected on these questions it occured to me that Jesus endured it all because He trusted His Father. Even in the midst of the chaotic evil that surrounded Him, He trusted the Father. We know that He didn't want to go to the cross and that He begged His Father to take it away, but then He submitted to the will of the Father. He believed that He is and that He is the rewarder of those that earnestly seek Him.

The cross was not just a victory over sin and death, but also the victory of faith over flesh. Jesus, fully man, was obedient to death, even death on a cross. He fought the fight against His flesh and His fears and He showed us that it is possible. He showed us the way of victory over the flesh. Then, the Father showed us that it was worth it. After Jesus endured the cross scorning it's shame he was exalted and seated at the right hand of the Father. Absolute surrender and trust does not mean a glorious or peaceful life in thie world, but it does mean glory for God and life with Him eternally. At His right hand are pleasures forever more. He will not fail to reward those who earnestly seek Him. Jesus showed us the way.

On The Road

I have been traveling for the last couple of weeks, thus the lack of blogging. Actually I am not just traveling, I am in the process of moving. I have packed up my household and have entered into a type of nebulous and nomadic existence. I feel like the Lord has asked me to leave where we were living and working and to follow Him to the place where He will show us. At this point we have no solid idea of where that will be, but we have left our home behind in an attempt to follow. We are trusting that He will guide and direct us in His good time and that He will not abandon us along the road.

This is definitely a faith journey as well as a physical one. If I am honest there is a niggling fear at the back of my mind that having pulled up stakes we might find ourselves wandering in a desert without a guide. I hear the desperation in Moses prayer, "If you do not go with us, please don't make us go!" There is the fear that perhaps He has led us out into this wilderness and will not lead us to the other side. There is also a real fear that perhaps we have misheard or misunderstood. I want to know the destination and how to get there, but He refuses to tell me. I find myself longing for a road map more than for a pillar of fire and smoke. Instead He is with me on the journey and assures me of His presence. He asks me to trust Him and to simply walk with Him day by day.

I am comforted by the fact that He has never abandoned us. He has been faithful to guide us and direct us every step of the way. It is true that this guidance was not always with manifest presence, but it is clear in hindsight. Looking back I can see that He has been ever present and has been guiding me in paths of righteousness for His Name's sake. He will not abandon me because He promises never to leave me or forsake me. He promises to be with me always, even to the end of the age. His honor and glory are at stake.

So, we have ventured out into the unknown, not knowing what is before us and trusting that He truly has spoken to us and beckoned us to follow Him into this wilderness. I trust that He has many lessons to teach us on this journey as He taught the Israelites in the deserts of Sinai.

Submission

Submission is not something that we generally emphasize in the West. We emphasize initiative, action, planning, creative solutions, etc... All of these are good things, but I am realizing how hard, and how unnatural, it is for me to submit. Perhaps this is just human nature, but it seems to me that submission is particularly difficult for those of us raised in the West. In America in particular, we are raised to be strong individuals who look out for ourselves. In the scandalous era in which we live, we have learned cynicism and distrust rather than submission. Authority is something to be questioned, power is something to be balanced, kings are to be overthrown. In this context how can we look on submission with anything short of incredulity and skepticism.

I am very much a product of my culture. Living and working overseas for roughly a decade has stretched my horizons, but has also shown me how much my own culture has influenced me in ways that are subtle and often hard to identify. I find myself struggling with submission. I praise God that He has taken me through a training school of hard knocks to teach me to submit to the leaders that He has placed over me, and yet, deep in my heart there lies a lack of submission to God specifically. I am finding submission especially difficult lately because it seems that He has assigned me a particularly odious task.

It seems like God's marching order for me these days is to wait. He continually draws me to passages with this emphasis and the quiet witness of the Spirit in my heart is to wait, to be still. Just this evening I was reminded of Is. 30. The people of Israel would not wait for the Lord and His plan for them. Instead they made plans to save themselves. The Lord responds in verse 15: “In repentance and rest is your salvation,in quietness and trust is your strength,but you would have none of it." I find so much of my own journey reflected in the attitudes and actions of the Israelites.

I am a man of action. I need something to do, a mountain to climb, a challenge to overcome, a task to accomplish. I want to move things along, to drive things. Sometimes I think I would rather move in the wrong direction rather than just sit still. So, the Lord is asking me to wait, to be still and know that He is God, to rest in quietness and trust. This is among the toughest assignments He could give me. Waiting on Him is contrary to my heart, my culture, my personality, my training. Everything in me screams to get moving, to plan the next steps, to think my way out of the doldrums; but He tells me to wait, to be still, to trust. So, here I am waiting, praying that He will speak and release me from the prison of stillness, learning to submit to the King of the Universe.

The Boy and The World

There once was a boy who thought he could change the world. It was natural for him to think so as he had been assured of that for as long as he could remember. He was raised in a good family in a land of opportunity. He was told that he was special, that he was gifted, and that he had a strange and wonderful thing called potential.

He wasn’t sure exactly what potential meant, but it must be important because people kept mentioning it and assuring him that he had it. Sometimes it was a compliment, but other times it was barbed more like a criticism. He wasn’t sure he wanted to have potential, but it didn’t seem like he had much of a choice in the matter.

As he grew he began to realize that perhaps he really did have gifts. Perhaps he really was special and it wasn’t just the bias of his mother and father. What parent doesn’t think their child is special after all? Doesn’t every parent tell their child that they are the most beautiful and wonderful child in the world? And so the compliments of parents are always suspect. But as he grew and went to school he started to see that when graded on objective standards he really did have some gifts. He got good grades without really trying, and people seemed to look to him for leadership. He was a leader even when he tried not to lead. He was captain of the team and president of the school. It all came so easily, so effortlessly. Maybe, just maybe he really could change the world.

It was around this time that he started to notice the darker undercurrents, the subtle (and sometimes open) attacks. He was called names and ostracized by his peers. Perhaps they were just trying to drag him down to their level, perhaps it was because he was different. He also noticed that leaders, teachers, people in authority sometimes treated him badly for reasons beyond his comprehension. He didn’t like being the target of attacks and he wondered how to overcome, how to stop them, how to get away from them. He started to become angry and hard inside. He had to learn how to keep the attacks from hurting him.

Occasionally he would find leaders or others in authority who would notice him and be kind to him. They didn’t attack him. But then he started to realize that they too wanted something from him. They wanted to use him. Some even wanted to abuse him. They invited him in to their world. They honored him. They recruited him. They wanted him. Then, they used him for their own selfish ends and discarded him when they were done, or when he would no longer submit to being used. He tried to hide his potential, to not be noticed.

What about changing the world he wondered. What about the gifts and the abilities. What about his potential. Potential is a terrible burden to carry. You only have potential until you realize it. Potential is one of those things that is consumed in the use of it. Like a catalyst in a chemical reaction. Once it is used, it is gone. Those who change the world don’t have potential, they have realized their potential and it is no more.

And so the boy started to look for ways to use his potential. He looked for a master who would train him, who would help him to use his potential. He wanted to learn. He wanted to realize his potential. He wanted to change the world and to be a good steward of the resources that had been entrusted to him. He would gladly be consumed in the process if he could just be free to be who he was created to be.
He still knew somewhere inside that he was special, but over the years doubts had been sown in his heart, and bitter fruit was now ripening. He decided to try again. He knew there must be a good master, someone who could be trusted to lead and not to use, to free and not control, to empower and not wound. Finally, he found someone.

He found a man who talked the talk and by all appearances walked the walk. He decided to trust against trust. He decided to believe the unbelievable, that here at last was the good master one who would help him to realize his potential. They talked, they dreamed, and he was set free.

Then one day, they talked again. From the beginning of the conversation he could tell that something was wrong. Something in the tone of his voice was different. He tried to understand. He tried to submit. As the blows began to fall again, he didn’t even defend himself. He just let them come.

When it was over he picked himself up, wiped the blood from his face and tried to ignore the pain in his heart. He now understood. He was alone. There are no good masters. There are no trustworthy leaders. They all have their own agendas. Even those who recognized that he was special, that he had “potential” only wanted to use him. If he was ever going to change the world, if he was ever going to realize his potential, he would have to steer clear of those who would be his master.

Some have defined insanity as repeating the same action but expecting a different outcome every time. He realized now that he had been insane. He had repeatedly sought out leaders, masters to whom he could apprentice, and every one had wounded him. Perhaps the most painful thing was that they often blamed him for his own wounding and justified their actions with scripture, or by pointing to his weaknesses; weaknesses of which he was all too well aware. He was sick of being used and abused and then blamed for it. He was sick of being despised and rejected after having been used.

So, the boy was faced with a dilemma. “What to do? What to do?” If there were no good masters, then how do you move forward, how do you change the world? Was the answer to become a master himself? The question scared him because he had seen masters who used and abused and if that is what it means to lead then he wanted no part of it.

So, he walked out of town. He had to get away. He had to isolate himself, even if just for a moment. He couldn’t take the thought of another attack while he was so bruised and battered from the last one. He walked the bridge on the edge of town. It was over a deep chasm and he walked to the edge and stared into the abyss. Was this the answer? Was this the end of the line? Was there no chance to change the world? Was he wrong all along? Were they just delusions of grandeur? Is it possible then to be a leader, to be a master who serves? How could he be a master like that? Where could he find a master like that to learn from?

Then, he knew the answer. Jesus. Jesus is the master who was despised and rejected. Jesus stood like a sheep before His shearers and did not defend himself. Jesus accepted the authority that His Father gave Him and was unconcerned about the authority structures of His day. Jesus was the very model, the perfect model, maybe the only model, of a servant leader, a good shepherd. All others had let him down. All others would let him down. Only Jesus can be trusted. Only Jesus is the good shepherd.

As he stood on the bridge he heard footsteps behind him. He cringed at the thought of another attack. He stood still hoping that the approaching person would leave him alone. He grew apprehensive when rather than passing him by, he heard the intruder approaching him from behind. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt a hand close on his shoulder. As he turned to face his accuser he found that before him stood the one good master. Jesus had come to meet him on the bridge. Jesus had tears in His eyes as he searched the face of the boy. They stood facing each other for some time. Neither spoke. After a while Jesus simply beckoned for the boy to follow Him. And so the boy followed the Master back towards town.