God’s Mind on: The Vote

I am going to vote today. I will be traveling on November 4th so the Sweet Thing and I are going to vote early. I didn’t even now you could do such a thing till recently. It caused me to take some time to pause and pray this morning asking our father how he wants me to vote and on what does He wants me to make that decision.

I guess I am pretty sure who I will vote for, but I have been asking myself why. Frankly, neither ticket has really inspired me. Truly this is an incredibly tumultuous time on our nation’s history. Does God care who is president? But my biggest question is “why don’t we as American Christians pray more about this?” Be Honest with yourself. How much time have you really prayed about God’s will being done in the selection of this President as well as House of Representatives and Senate, and a host of local officials?

I must confess…I haven’t prayed much at all. I apologize to you my brothers and sisters for that neglect and sin. So what does God’s Word tell us about our citizenship responsibility? Let me share just a few things.

1. Rom. 13:1 ¶ Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. 

We are to obey the laws of the land in which we live. We are certainly a people with two citizenships. We are Americans and yet we are citizens of God’s Kingdom as well. As there is no authority in Heaven except appointed by God, there is no authority on earth except that which is established by God.

We must be a people of prayer….asking God to accomplish His purposes on this earth through our next Leaders. Perhaps it is because we failed to pray that we can no longer pray in our Schools, that we can no longer display God’s truth publicly, that millions of babies are being slaughtered yearly, that we are living in the greediest period of our countries history, that divorce is at its all time high, that injustice prevails everywhere.

2. Rom. 13:6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. 

Rulers are the servants of God. They may think they are their own man or woman. But they have no real choice but to serve their creator. When we vote…we get to participate in choosing God’s next servants. What a responsibility! few in the world ever actually get that privilege. It is a privilege that most of us take quite lightly.

3. Ezra 6:10 that they may offer acceptable sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons.

Here we see a simple plea by Ezra. Pray for the King. As I close this note I ask you to do a simple thing. Pray for the President. Pray for the next President.

a. Pray that they will serve this nation with righteousness

b. Pray that they will restore justice to those who have been denied it.

c. Pray that they will uphold the Constitution on which this nation was built.

d. Pray that they will honor the right for all people to worship God without hindrance.

e. Pray that they will give the unborn a voice and let them live.

f. Pray that they will walk with wisdom and uprightness in the matters of economy, not giving preference to any particular industry, that they will help create an economy that will create jobs that all may work.

g. That they will be a man or woman who will listen to God’s voice concerning our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. That they will be a man or woman of Peace.

That is my hearts desire as I go to vote today. And by the way, if you are not planning on voting you are probably wrong already. It is a privilege we have as Americans….let’s use it.

And for heavens sake…..PRAY!

What stirs your affection for Christ?

The other day a mentor of mine sent me a short article online by a man named Matt Chandler. In this article Matt begins by saying that he has begun to ask himself a different question to gauge where his walk with Christ is rather than the old question. I too have an old question. I think for years I gauged my walk with Christ by how good my quiet time was, how I treated people, how my thought life was. Frankly, it was a very non-christian way of viewing my life. That is the world’s way of evaluating success. In a sense when we evaluate our lives by standards such as that we are being expressly non-christian. You see what differentiates us as followers of Christ from every other religion is that we do not achieve success as a child of God by what we do. We achieve success as a child of God by He has done and is doing. By the way, that is the heart of the Gospel message. God so loved…. that He gave. Yes, we must believe, but even that is given by him. The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus himself is the author of my faith.

Let me pose a thought to you. When you are tempted to evaluate your life by what you are doing, stop and ask yourself if you are being guilty of suspending your belief in the Gospel for that moment in order to believe that way. Others believe that they are good therefore God loves and accepts them. The Gospel tells us that God is good therefore He accepts us and then we follow Him.

That brings back to Matt’s article. Matt’s personal evaluation question is not how good he has been, but “What stirs my affection for Christ?” What when I am doing it. when I/m around it, or dwelling on it creates a greater hunger for, passion, for and worship of Christ and His mission?  I would propose to you that when you ask the wrong question you will always get the wrong answer. Matt is asking the right question. I confess that when I read that I had to stop and ask myself once again…..”what stirs my affection for Christ?”  My list was a little different from his but similar in ways. My list includes: talking with a few close friends about Jesus and God’s Word, newborn babys, long walks alone, seasons of silence, a well written book. Those are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head.

What stirs your affection for Christ? Can you list a few things?

Now he went on to ask the next logical question. It was logical to me anyway. “What robs me of my affection for Christ?” ie What when I am doing it, or spending time around it created in me an unhealthy love for the world? Wow! I must confess that when I started thinking about that list honestly I came to several uncomfortable conclusions. 1. Most of the things that robbed me of my affection for Christ were not  in and of themselves either morally or ethically wrong. They were pretty neutral. 2. They were things I have been doing for quite a long time and have been a part of my life forever. 3. I have become so used to doing them that their subtlety is deceptive.

These things are usually associated with excess in one form or another. Things that I listed as that which robs me of my affection for Christ. Things like: over-eating, watching mind-less movies, spending excessive time cruising the internet, sleeping in, laziness.

This is not rocket science is it? We do what we want to do and it can rob us of our intimacy with Christ, often without our even being aware that it is. I am sure that you, like me know when what you are doing is stealing our zeal for our Savior.

I am going to commit myself to concentrate on being engaged in the things that stir my affections for Christ and less on the things that rob me of that affection. How about you?

The Calm in the Storm

Does there seem to be some kind of doom looming on the horizon? The world’s financial markets are crumbling. The US politico machinery is once again going thru its quadrennial Election boogie woogie. Our culture is more socially and politically polarized than ever. The human crisis in Darfur continues to worsen. The Russians are flexing their muscles again. The Middle East is poised to erupt yet again into a new wave of sectarian violence. Pakistan is on the verge of exploding or should I say imploding. China is beginning to push its ideological agenda across Africa. Europe is in a deep identity crisis. India is in an internal crisis as well. The environment is rebelling against us. Energy prices are higher than ever. The housing market is screaming in the throes of strangulation.

The entire world seems to be standing at a precipice just waiting to either step off into oblivion or jump off into a mirey morass of chaos.  Ought we not be concerned? I am….. but maybe differently so than you might think.

You know what I am most concerned about. I am mostly concerned about the apathy I see in the Christian Church to all that looms ahead of us. I find it interesting that in the midst of all that is happening most Christians I know are not seeing beyond the boundries of the stresses and messes in their own lives.

Here are a few things  I am seeing (right or wrong)

1. We are in a war. That is right! Our nation is at war and most of the Christians I know are in agreement that our armed forces should fight terrorists abroad so that we do not have to fight them here. While steeped in admiration, there is little thought given to actually serving their country themselves because it simply does not fit their personal agenda for their lives. And we will justify ourselves by saying that “God is not calling me to do that.” I personally don’t understand that level of complacency. Did I mention that there is a war going on. It is a real war, a war being fought by real people. My question is where are the young Christian men and women who are prepared to lay down their lives for what they believe in?

2. We live in a tragicly suffering world. Everywhere I travel I see levels of poverty that only transcend the levels of poverty that I have previously seen. Why are we as Christians continuing to build our own little comfortable lifestyles and ignoring those who are in bondage to injustice, who suffer egregiously from disease after disease, who are hungry, who are homeless? How can we go on building our castles while there is a terribly hurting world around us? Read Isaiah 58 and 1 John. Is there really any possible justification for our ambivalence? Why are we not spending or live in behalf of the hurting in the world today? We wonder why the world is ambivalent towards the church today. It is because the world listens to the message that we preach and then looks at the lives that we live and concludes that there cannot possibly be any power in that message by the evidence of our lives.

3. We toy with sin as if it were some kind of hot potato game. We know we shouldn’t play with it but we do nonetheless because “it is fun,” “it feels good,” and that is my inalienable right as an American…. to feel good. Somewhere along the way we stopped seeing sin as an affront to a Holy Creator God and started seeing it as something to be avoided when it was not too difficult a thing. We toy with sin at our own peril. We simply must regain a biblical understanding of sin and its cancerous effects on our lives. Sin is killing us. It is not our friend. It is eroding the tissue of our lives slowly, but be for certain it is there doing its nefarious work on our lives.

Ok, there I said it. I got off my chest a few of the things that have really been heavy on my heart lately. There is more, but I don’t want to go on right now. Why? because hear me say this…. amidst all that is happening in the world today there is one thing I am certain of. “Jesus loves me…. this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” To a hardened world out there that will sound silly and trite. My dear brothers and sisters never, never, ever let that message become silly or trite. Our father loved us so much He sent his one and only son to die a horrible death on the cross for us…. that is you and me.

With all that is going on in the world we must never lose sight that we serve a sovereign King who is still on His throne and what separates us from everyone else is that He loves us first and because He loved first, we are freed to love Him and serve Him back.

20/20 Vision

I have been traveling a bunch lately so I have been absent from my blog. Sorry! But today I have a treat. It may not be a treat to everyone but it certainly has been to me. Do you ever wonder why it seems that so many are doing ministry on what appears to be a shoe string budget? I certainly have! As a matter of fact it has been something I have thought much about over the years. Why? Because I have been one of those people on many occasion. Not always though. Why sometimes does everything seem tight and at other times it seems like resources seem to come easy as pie. Here are a couple of observations on why I believe that may happen to us.

One, it may be that our father is just trying to teach us a lesson concerning trust, faith, faithfulness, stewardship, patience, etc. I would never say that the only reason you are not getting all you want is because God is punishing you, but I do believe that God uses money and its availability as a tool to teach us many lessons. Some of my best lessons have been during times of what I considered to be paltry supply.

Two, and this is where I have been thinking lately. Often our lack of resources is simply because our vision does not match up with God’s vision. You see, God’s abundant provision is for His will, not ours. When we pursue a vision that is only 25% of what God desires is only able to provide us with 25% of the resources. Why would he give us the resources to reach a nation, when our vision is village size? Consider Paul’s exhortation to the Church at Thessoloniki  “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.” 1Th. 5:24 He tells them that God is faithful to bring to pass what he calls them to. He is not interested in our partial obedience. He desires, no demands our full immediate obedience. That “immediate” is important. Never forget that delayed obedience is immediate disobedience.

If you are wrestling with the reality of what seems like limited resources to accomplish God’s purposes in your life. Just ask yourself….is the vision I am living totally consistent with the vision God has for me? Do a quick gut check. It may be that you are only planning and executing a fraction of what God has in store for you. The shortage of resources may be a sign that there is more that God has for you.

Don’t misunderstand me….this may not always be the case, but it may be the case more than you realize!

Who are you?

I read a great quote this morning from a lady named Anais Nin, a Cuban-French author and actor, and it got me thinking. Here it is: “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” This is so true. All of our lives we view reality through the lens of our experience, education and culture. We see nothing apart from our culturally shaped world-view.

My question is this: If you do not see things as they are, but only see things as you are, then who are you? I know that sounds like a bunch of existential hulabaloo, but really….. who are you? What are you seeing that reveals who you are?

When you look at the poor, what do you see? When you look at human beings inflicted with HIV/AIDS, what do you see? When you see people who are victims of injustice, what do you see? When you see people who are homeless, what do you see? When you see people who are being abused, what do you see?

Do you see the world around you as Jesus saw it?….. as Jesus sees it?  Do interactions with hurting, inflicted people leave you numb or somehow deeply moved to do something? Jesus’ heart was pretty transparent on these matters. Take a look at how John understood the heart of Jesus. 1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” You can’t be much clearer than that. When Jesus saw those around him in need, he was compelled to help them. I bring them up because so often I walk by those who are hurting, those who are abused, those who are under great injustice and I simply do not see them as Jesus does. How about you?

How you see the world is reflected by who you are. What we do with what we see is a reflection of who Christ is in us. What are you doing with what you are seeing? Who are you?

Simple Update

Boy have I been busy lately, so I have not been writing much. Sorry. I have been traveling from Orlando to Atlanta to Memphis. My Dad is in the hospital and the Sweet Thing and I have been helping Mom and Dad to get their things in order and move into the city.

In the next few days I will be writing on several issues. I will be writing about “rest.” A tough one for me. I will also be writing about “compassion.” I am looking forward to that one.

I am writing a book right now on “Discipleship.” I am most excited about this project! What can we learn from the scriptures on the matter of Discipleship? I have been learning so much from this time of study.

My Christology

The other day I was reading an article online about an archeologist who discovered some ancient manuscripts from just before Christ’s day describing someone who talked about a man who would die and rise from the dead three days later. It interested me that his interpretation of that manuscript was that there was a pre-existing resurrection motif already in existence that somehow Jesus and his followers co-opted for their religious purposes. I scratched my head as I read that article wondering how many so called christians would receive that little bit of new information.

It made me stop for a second and do a gut check on my personal Christology (understanding of Jesus Christ). So here in this public forum I am laying out briefly what I believe about Jesus Christ, just so there are no doubts on which side of the fence I come down on.

Firstly and foremost it is important that I state that I follow the historically tested “scriptural principle.” The unfailing scriptures are the superlative and final test for my beliefs and understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what he has done, is doing and will do.

So the basis of my beliefs are contained within the pages of the Word of God as I seek to be as faithful to the written word as I possibly can under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. I believe that Jesus is the very incarnation of God himself in human form, born of a virgin, come to live a perfect life and die a terrible death as a ransom for the sins of mankind.

Key to my understanding of Jesus is that I believe that we can only understand the revelation of the person of Jesus through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus confronted Peter about who he thought he was Jesus said this… “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.”

It simply seems to me that we can only understand as much of Christ as the Father thru the working of the Holy Spirit reveals to us. There are so many whose hearts are closed to the things of Christ today, all the while he stands prepared to reveal himself to those whose hearts are made right by Jesus himself. I am not so sure I can say I fully understand it, but I am convinced that Jesus acts, we respond. I would never ever on my own turn to Christ apart from his drawing me. (John 6:44) I believe I have a free will. I just also believe that on my own I would never choose to turn to Him unless he did something first. I have no righteousness of my own that would commend me to the father.

Well that is a start. I have a friend who refers to many people’s understanding of Jesus as a “minimal Jesus.” My prayer for us is that we will have anything but a minimal Jesus. May Christ have pre-eminence in our lives.

Christ Enough?

I was reading thru my post of yesterday and realized that I am early in my writing career and I am already using ambiguous Christianized jargon that nobody (*and often including the writer) really understands. How often have you read something and right after reading it wondered “what in the world was he talking about?” I may have taken you to those heights (or lows) yesterday with several of the things I wrote about.

What I am not sure I was clear on is what I will coin a new term for,…. “enough-ment.” Is your life a life of enough-ment or not enough-ment. I will define as enough-ment as the state of having enough. I will define not-enough-ment as the state of never having enough. That begs for a clearer definition of what exactly is. According to the dictionary, enough is defined as have “all that is adequate or all that is required.”

So having now defined exactly what I am talking about, let me ask the question of us (you AND me); are you living in a state of all that is required or all that is adequate. or are you never seeming to be in that state?You always seem to require more, everything seems to be inadequate.

Don’t let this moment pass without seriously dealing with this question. We let ourselves get off too lightly sometimes when it comes to important spiritually ethical questions. We pander ourselves convincing ourselves that this just a cultural issue and not a deeply seeded spiritual problem enticing us away from a total commitment to serving our king.

Jesus was not being simply metaphorical when he said “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Where is your treasure? While we are looking at the definitions of words, what is a treasure? It is “something that has incredible precious value.” What are you valuing in your life? How do you demonstrate value? That is a good question…How do you demonstrate value? Do you treat something valuable with contempt, or for that matter do you treat it like any other thing? Or do you cherish your treasures, keeping them safe and well cared for?

This could devolve quickly so I will wrap it up with just a few more thoughts. Simply put, we need to re-define what is enough for us. If we do not, then nothing will ever be enough and our lives will continue o spiral out of control with the acquisition of things and we will never even realize it has happened.

What did Paul mean when he wrote to the Church at Colossae, when he said, Col. 3:1 ”Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Col. 3:2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. Col. 3:3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Col. 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Col. 3:5  Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.”

Paul seems pretty clear here, if your head is not in the right place you are walking a pretty narrow road to idolatry thru the gateway of greed; which by the way could be a synonym for “not enough-ment.” I implore you dear brothers and sisters, take seriously your propensity for “not enough-ment” it is a slippery slope to idolatry, which is as we all know an affront to our living King.

So what does it mean that Christ is enough? It simply means that you are satisfied in Him. You don’t need more stuff to fill the emptiness in your heart. You don’t something else to satisfy you. For me it could be something as simple as food. We use lots of things to satisfy our souls, our boredom, our loneliness, our discontentment, other than Christ.

From a practical perspective how do I deal with this”not enough-ment?” It is simply by occupying your life with something other than your flesh. Occupy your life with prayer, Bible study, compassion ministry rather than with TV, movies and eating out. Not that those are bad, but for many it is a staple to spending the precious minutes of their life. Hang out with friends, bring lost people into your fellowship, love them, serve them, do something redemptive, something reconciliatory for a searching generation.

Meditate, contemplate, serve. We would all do better by spending our lives on things which will out last it. We would all do better by setting our minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. That is the only way I know to defeat consumerism, materialism, discontentment, boredom, self-centeredness and not enough-ment in my life.

The Allure of More

I have been packing this week getting ready for a move. As I pack I am noticing something. I really have a lot of things, some of it I don’t even remember buying. It seems that I acquire stuff naturally and even without thought. Most of it I could do without. A trinket here, a small doodad there. It takes up space, it takes up my time…two very precious commodities in the life of a disciple of Christ.

I am feeling determined by God’s strength to straighten out this area of my life. It seems almost like gravity, this acquisition disposition. My consumeristic tendencies are alarming. Here’s why… After a while the possession of things can actually create discontentment. We all know that stuff by itself is basically not wrong, but the fact is that they don’t matter either. The question in my heart is, why spend so much time, money and energy on things that do not matter. Things require me to maintain them, clean them, dust them, oil them, fix them, pack them when I move, even just getting rid of them when they wear out takes a major effort these days.

The moments of our lives are one of the most precious treasures we possess. When I spend them on things rather than people I feel somehow that I am cheapening their worth. Somehow this inner child that wants more and more has got to be brought under the control of the Holy Spirit in this matter. It seems like such an insignificant thing. Even as I am writing this my inclination is that I am over stating the case.

But deep down inside I know that at the heart of my greatest failures lies my propensity to satisfy myself with worldly possessions rather than with the person of Christ. That sounds like a pretty heavy confession, but I mean it. The desire for things is constantly pulling at us, alluring us to acquire more and more. All the while our flesh is telling us it is ok. It is not a problem to store up possessions which will only rot and decay someday. It is a problem. It is a problem that is so subtle that it hovers around us 24/7 seeking to draw us in without even the slightest hint of struggle.

Paul told Timothy in 1Tim. 6:6 But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. Paul was telling Timothy to find his gain in life in seeking to be like Christ, in throwing off his want of things and being content.

I am going to learn to live with less. I somehow believe that the spirit of this age knows that if he can get us to be more concerned about what we have than who we are becoming he knows that we will simply fall in line with the host of others who have fallen into that trap. I adjure you my friends beware of the allure of more.

Forgiven?

I have been thinking…. sometimes I live like I am not REALLY….forgiven. I know cognitively that I am forgiven. But sometimes I live as if I am not forgiven. Sometimes I live as if deep down inside I really believe that God is keeping tally on my sin and that somewhere there is a book with all my sin in it and one day I am going to be called into reckoning. Do you ever feel that way? Let me give you an example so that you won’t get off the hook so easy. You see, saying you believe something and really believing it are really two different things.

Let me give you a couple of examples from my own life that might help jog your thinking as well. Sometimes when I am on a long trip, and let’s say I speed in my car, (and sometimes I do, even though I try not to). I ask God for forgiveness. He forgives me. A few hours pass and I find myself speeding again. So I pray, and I say, God I am sorry for speeding again. I am wondering if the insertion of the word “again” is confusing to God. Here’s why…. in Psalms 103:12 the Psalmist writes “ As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” If I understand that the way it reads, when God forgives my sin he casts it about as far away as it can go.

Here is my dilemma. I remember my sin, but I am thinking that God’s forgiveness is quite unique. He chooses not to remember it. He literally takes it and tosses it eternally away. He is not tallying up my sin. If he did, we would all be in trouble…..big trouble. So why then do we continue to approach God as if he were keeping track of our sin?

There appears to me to be only one reason. “Unbelief”, bold faced unbelief. As a matter of fact, it almost seems to me that in order to believe that God may somehow hold onto my sin I would have to temporarily suspend my belief in the Gospel to do so. The Gospel is really a lot about forgiveness ya know?

It all comes down to this. Do we believe that God’s forgiveness is perfect forgiveness or not? Do we believe that Christ’s payment was sufficient or not? Do we believe that I approach the throne of Grace because of who he is, not because of who I am…. or not?

Take stock of how you approach the throne of Grace. We approach the throne perfectly clean because of the blood of Christ. That ought to be the major compulsion to walk in purity alone. Because of who He is and what he did for us on Calvary.

Are you thinking lightly of God’s forgiveness? Let’s commit together to stop it right now. Let’s walk in joyful thankfulness allowing that lead us to walk in righteousness in Christ.