ࡱ>    !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~Root EntryZ O2CONTENTS |Object 1YnL -Contents@ t thing you realize as you ascend in Jesus Christ into heavenly places is this: Everything that looks so big down here, looks so small from up there! The giants of sin, failure, and fear suddenly appear as but specks on the landscape beneath you. That is the key: beneath you. You might put it this way: Heavenly places = new perspectives. We are with Him where He is, seated in victory, seeing everything from His vantage point. And it is amazing how different things look when you view them through the eyes       !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~of your Lord! THE GREATNESS OF CHRIST "The greatness of Christ" was on my heart and mind today. Luke in his gospel records the meeting between Gabriel and Mary. Gabriel told her, "You will have a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great..." What an incredible statement - "He will be great!" But what a different concept of greatness we humans had to learn! This very issue arose among Jesus' disciples once, concerning which of them would be the greatest. And the interesting thing is that JesCHNKWKS |zTEXTTEXTVAFDPPFDPPDFDPPFDPPFFDPPFDPPHFDPCFDPCJFDPCFDPCLFDPCFDPCNFDPCFDPCPFDPCFDPCRFDPCFDPCTSTSHSTSHVhSTSHSTSHhWSYIDSYID ZSGP SGP ZINK INK "ZBTEPPLC &Z(BTECPLC NZ@FONTFONTZTOKNPLC [bou. That is LIFE IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES The gospel is essentially an invitation to life in the heavenly places. More than that, it is a proclamation - a flat announcement - that we who are in Christ have indeed been raised to those heavenly places, and made to sit together with Him there. "Heavenly places" may be a bit King James-ish of a term for some, but it does well to convey the thought of rising above. Above the world, above sin, above circumstances, above all the powers of darkness that would otherwise seek to pull us down. We sit with Him there, above the storm, above it all. A man named J.B. Stoney said that we cannot be a force for the Lord here on earth until we have been with Him there in heaven where He is, and then to live our lives out from that place of exaltation with Him. "Many try to be heavenly," he said, "through prayer, devotedness, or reading the Word. But the only way to become heavenly is to be brought by the Spirit to realize union with Christ. You are heavenly by union" (being one with Him where He is). This is the life we have been called to share. The practical effect of the revelation spoken of in Romans 5 for those who receive the "gift of righteousness" is a life of reigning and dominion. Not a life without its fair share of trial and weakness, mind you, yet always, in Christ, somehow, rising above. There's just so much that could be said about the gospel in this connection. For instance: Have you ever flown in an airplane? Have you ever looked out the window and wondered at how little the houses and trees and hills appeared beneath you? Well, being seated with Christ in heavenly places is just like that. All of life takes on a new perspective. The good, the bad, the people, the happenings - all of it is looked upon in a new way. The firsus did not rebuke them for their ambition to be great, He only corrected their view of what true greatness really is. It is in the child; it is in the servant. It is in he who is least and servant of all. This is the greatness of the One we have been called to follow! JUST SOME THINGS THAT WERE ON MY HEART TODAY We are trying to get somewhere in our day, and we sense very strongly the Lord's blessing to take us there. Where is that? To a fuller, deeper, larger place in Christ. To places in Him that no one has yet gone. To know Him in ways that none of us have yet known Him. I recall the first semester of my second year at Zion. It was just after a guy's devotion in the basement of the Caleb dorm, and I went over to Tyler. I had been seeing some new things, things that were shaking to the very foundation everything I believed, everything I thought I knew so well. And I said to him, "Brother, we talk so much about missions, and about going to the nations. But for all our activity and talk, there seems to be very little of any real, lasting fruit being accomplished. Don't you think the nations would come to Christ sooner if we stopped focusing on the nations and evangelism and started focusing on knowing our Lord?" He saw what I meant, and we shared the most amazing hour or so of fellowship after that. Where we are trying to get is out into the clear with the Lord. Away from all the limitation that comes by institutionalism, ecclesiasticism, tradition, and mere religious form. We wish to be found in a place where the Holy Ghost has free way in us, where there is no question of things like deferring to policy, "submitting to authority" (please understand me), having to do things a certain way because that's the way they've always been done, or any of the other many considerations that keep men and women from going on with God. We may be swimming in a different stream, but it is true to our Lord - it is all within Christ - and it is a stream that is flowing out toward the great expanse of the ocean, to the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose in Him. What are the issues facing us as we walk this way? Many. But they all come down to one thing: knowing the Lord. And knowing Him in a way that is beyond the talk, beyond the rhetoric, but that is real... one that is embracing the cross, that is owning the suffering that comes from misunderstanding, and that is letting all things go to the dominance of His life within us. It will take an enormous daring in our day to go on with the Lord. It will take faith. But where else can we go? The Lord has shown us the path of life; we need only take it. We have been dreaming of a better way for years - it is time to awake and do. Why? "That I may know Him." We have all been Pharisees in our own right at one time or another. But all that is a pile of garbage. We are not living for positions, security, acceptance, or for a nice place in the social order, we are living for Christ. To know Him is all there is. It is not that we give Him the pre-eminence, or the first place, in all things, as if it were ours to give and we're doing the Lord a favor. No. In all things, He has the pre-eminence. It is already His. He is all there is. Nothing else has meaning. The centrality of the scriptures, the centrality of everything, is Christ and His church. That's the revelation. This is the only reality. This is the life we will pursue, now and forever, whether or not it ever amounts to anything for us in this life, but rather for His glory. THE CIRCUMCISION MADE WITHOUT HUMAN HANDS Paul used the phrase "made without human hands" in reference to the cross, to the work of Christ. "In Christ we have been circumcised with the circumcision made without human hands..." (check Colossians) What does that little phrase "made without human hands" mean? It means that we had nothing to do with it. God and God alone did the work. He did it without our help. It was a perfect work (the cross), and it is a finished work. Nothing can be taken from it, and nothing need be added to it. Once for all, you and I were perfected by the offering of Christ. "Once for all." There's another phrase to think about. Get before the Lord and reflect on that phrase. Say it aloud a few times. Let its meaning sink deep into your heart. The cross brought an end, an absolute end, to everything fallen. The resurrection marked the dawning of a new day, in which all the old things of sin and death and law have passed away and there is a new creation. This is the day in which we live. We are part of a new creation in our Lord. Think about that! TURNING TO THE LORD We all spend our lives turning to someone or something. Whether it's to deal with pressure, to find comfort, to seek answers, or whatever, we are all the time turning to something. Some turn to food; some turn to alcohol. Some turn to entertainment, and some to the affirmation of others. Add to this list about a hundred other items and you have an idea of the things we turn to throughout our lives. For instance: Sometimes when I'm feeling down, discouraged, or overwhelmed by the situation I am in, I get the urge to go out and buy something. I know it sounds strange, but it is true. Many times I've turned to Wal-Mart instead of to the Lord when the situation called for me to turn somewhere. Do you see my point? Regardless of what it is for any one of us, we are all the time turning to something to ease the pressure, to soothe the pain, or to quiet the storm that rages around us. The Lord desires that we turn to Him. It's not always the easiest thing to do, nor the most immediately gratifying (at least it doesn't seem so at the time), but something amazing occurs deep within us as we turn, again and again, to the Lord. Our questions may not be answered and our circumstances may not change, and we may not "feel" any better, but somehow we ourselves are changed. We are weaned from the very things that trouble us, not so much outwardly but inwardly. Pressure situations, trials, the daily stress of life in general - all these things come to us by the will of God. Call it what you like - permissive will of God, perfect will of God - it doesn't matter. These things come, one way or another, that they might drive us deeper into the Lord we love and long to know. The very situation you are facing, that one which you hate and despise and only wish would go away, is your best friend in disguise. Somewhere along the way you prayed to know your Lord better and to experience His life in a greater way, so take a look at what is before you. Your tough situation may very well be His answer to your prayer. Every burden in life that is too great for us to bear is there to cause us to turn to Him. THE TOGETHER-NESS OF THE BODY OF CHRIST Have you ever thought about the fact that a couple thousand pilgrims who were born again in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost never went home after their experience? I know, I know. That was a heavy thought. Let's take a step back and think about it. 3000 people, as we say, "got saved" on the day of Pentecost. Most likely, a lot of those people did not live in Jerusalem. They were Jewish pilgrims from "every nation under heaven" who came to Jerusalem for the annual feast. Only this year it was different. They encountered twelve men surrounded by over a hundred others who were literally intoxicated with joy and claiming that their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, had risen from the dead. Under Peter's preaching, these folks were born from above. Then Peter told them a lot of things about the new life they were about to embark on, and those who chose to embrace it were baptized. So began the ekklesia (the church) in Jerusalem. But my focus for the moment is on one little word: "together." As the record goes goes, in those first few years of the church's life at least, "all that believed were together." So, I ask again: Have you ever really thought about the significance of the fact that a couple thousand pilgrims who were born again in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost never went home after their experience? Maybe some of them wrote back to their families. Maybe some of them returned for visits. But, until a few years later when persecution would scatter them across Judea, they all remained and lived in Jerusalem... together. (As a quick side note, think about the hardships these people must have faced in beginning a new life in this kind of unplanned, unorganized way! They had packed for a short trip, not a lifelong stay! So they had to find housing, find work, sell their possessions, relate to new people, and God knows what else! These people knew what it meant to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of knowing the Lord!) So, "together". The together-ness of the body of Jesus Christ, of all those who are alive to the Lord and desperate to know Him, is the first essential ingredient to fullness. Interesting, isn't it, how creation itself in so many ways reveals the wonder and the wisdom of God and His ways? Have you ever considered how every species on this planet possess a natural instinct to habitat together? As the old saying goes, "birds of a feather flock together." So it was (is) with the church. You'd not be far off to say that Christians are a new species, or a new race of people. Scripture bears this out. Many Christians referred to the church as the new race, or "third" race (that is, not Jew or Gentile), up till the second and third century of our faith. The "new man" that Paul refers to in certain places in his writings could rightly be understood as "the new humanity." This is what the new creation is all about. You are not a Jew or a Gentile or a slave or an American or a Baptist or a Pentecostal. You are simply, for lack of a less familiar term, a "Christian." Anyway, this is getting off the point. My point is, check the record. "All that believed... together." We are only coming to apprehend all the depth and width and length and height of God's love, which is the doorway into His fullness, as we do so, as the scriptures say, "together with all the saints." We are only coming to full stature, attaining to the depths of our Lord, as we do so within the living expereince of His body, with "every member supplying." There is just so much that affirms this, though I can't recall all the scriptures right now. The issue is making this practical. Making the togetherness of the body of Christ practical. Is there a desire for something deeper burning inside of you? Are your spiritual instincts leading you to long for something more, even if you don't know what that "more" is? If so, then the issue becomes making this practical. It involves seeing this all worked out and realized in actual experience. Those who want to know the Lord will find a way. That's why we're here. That's what we're trying to find out. NEEDED: A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF OUR NEW TESTAMENT Obviously this isn't the biggest issue in the world, but I do believe it's important, nonetheless. Our present arrangement of Paul's letters is as follows: Romans 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians 1 Timothy 2 Timothy Titus Philemon As far as I can tell, this arrangement is based on nothing more than length of writing (longest to shortest). Here is the actual chronological order of Paul's letters: Galatians 1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians Romans Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians (these four were all written around the same time) 1 Timothy Titus 2 Timothy Notice any difference? Obviously, there is some difference. Could a rearrangement of the order of Paul's letters - inserting them within their historical context and reading them that way - improve our understanding of the New Testament? Might it aid us in seeing things from the scriptures that we may have never seen before? Possibly. It's up to each of us as individuals to find out. Here are a few things I've been learning, for anyone who cares. Maybe they can be beneficial to you, too: 1) When you approach the scriptures, do whatever it takes to shed the chapter/verse mentality. A good way to do this is to copy and paste scriptures off the internet in paragraph form, print them out and read them that way. 2) Make a little note in your Bible stating at which point in the book of Acts certain epistles were written. (Paul wrote only six during the time period covered in Acts - the rest were written later.) This way, you get a really good background to the letters as they were written. This helps a lot. 3) Start paying attention to the greetings and personal references made in the letters. I used to view the greetings in Paul's letters a lot like I did the genealogies of the OT. I pretty much just skipped over them. But there's a great deal to be gotten out of those sections of the scriptures, believer it or not. 4) Do some research and get a good idea of the dates the letters were written. Consider how much time passed between each one. Consider what all transpired between them. With a little work you can also pin down some dates to certain events and seasons in the book of Acts. It can be surprising to see when certain things occurred (for example: how long the church in Jerusalem existed before persecution scattered them out, or how long a time Paul spent just getting to know the Lord who lived within Him before entering the work of the Lord. There's just so much we never consider.) Ok, this is getting long. Hopefully it helps you if you're interested in what I've been saying about NT chronology. Again, it's not the only thing in the world, but I do believe it could help us a lot in understanding our New Testament. It's one of three things at this point that I believe are key to really grasping the scripture. First is Christ. Second, reading the scriptures corporately (Because Christ lives within us we each have our own unique insight into Him; therefore, when we read the scriptures as a body we can grasp its meaning - which is Christ - better.). Third is chronology, a grasp of the entire NT story. Ok, enough said. What do you think? A SINGLE EYE What a freedom it would be if we stopped seeing two powers in the world. Yes, there is an enemy. Sure, there is the presence of evil. But sovereign above it all, transcendent beyond it all, somehow, in some way that we can't understand, there is our God. And though He is not the author of evil, He is nonetheless Lord of all. What a freedom it would be to us if from this moment on we regarded everything that came to us for the rest of our lives as the will of God. Permissive will of God, perfect will of God - call it whatever you want - but everything that comes to us in life, including injustice at the hands of other people and suffering of many forms, passes first through the hands of our Lord. A guy named Norman Grubb once said that through the fall we got a divided outlook, seeing two powers, good and evil. But back in Christ we see only God, who is working in all things - whether the appearance of it is "good" or "evil" - for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We may see nothing but a dark cloud of circumstances, but even if it be only with the eye of faith, somewhere behind that dark cloud we know there is our Lord, who we also know is good. Thus, we know that this dark cloud, even though it appears very bad, will actually turn out to good. Explain this to Joseph, who suffered untold injustice at the hands of other people, even those of his own family. Somewhere along the way he became able to see God behind the dark cloud, so that when it was all said and done he could say, "they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." Joseph needs no explanation. He understands. Think of it like this: In the garden, Adam knew a wonderful simplicity and a singleness of vision. He saw only God. There was an enemy in the universe to be sure, but Adam knew nothing of Satan (I'm talking about before the temptation). Though there was an enemy, Adam was not conscious of his presence. Adam only knew God. And there were two trees in the garden, the tree of life and the tree of death. The tree of death happened also to be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam ate of that tree sin invaded his body and he died. But now we who are in Christ have been made to eat of the tree of life. And being in Christ, we now have the glorious privilege of enjoying that simplicity and singleness of vision that Adam forfeited in the garden. We may know only Christ and see only God. Thus, no bad report can frighten us, no evil deed can harm us, and no injustice or suffering can destroy us. These things serve only to lift us higher into God. When we see only God we have the faith that overcomes the world. Also, being human, we have a built-in illusion that we are in control of our lives. But this is just an illusion. The fact is that we re not in control of anything. We may make plans and a lot of them may even come to pass, but that doesn't mean we are in control of life. The man whose plans have just been put on hold because of an out-of-the-blue diagnosis of cancer can testify to this. So then, if we re not in control, why do we labor under the illusion that we are? Why not just rest in the love of God, knowing that nothing comes to us outside of His good will for us? Am I saying that God hand-picked that cancer and sent it your way? No. Am I saying that He personally caused those people to lie about you and slander you and ruin your reputation? No. But the fact remains that these things did happen. So what will your response be? Will you blame the devil and leave it at that? Will you become angry, bitter, resentful? Will you give up on relationships? Will you stop trusting? Will you fight it tooth and nail and resist it till the day you die, so much so that you miss out on all the beautiful moments of life between now and then? Or, will you let go of all your plans and expectations, embrace His will in your present circumstance, and be transformed? What a freedom it would be to give up this illusion of control we have. It doesn't mean we can't make plans and pursue them, and it doesn't mean we won't decide on our own what flavor of toothpaste to use in the morning, but it does mean that we open ourselves up to really discover what the will of God is for us, to the point that we won t be hindered from embracing it because of certain expectations of ours which we find frustrated along the way. God has called us to trust in Him, not to hold tenaciously to certain expectations we have of Him. In this way, a traffic jam on the way to an appointment may be a blessing. An unexpected visit from friends may be a wonderful break from the routine and a much needed time of life-giving fellowship. Three days in bed with the flu may turn out to be three days on the mountain with God, basking in the wonder of His fellowship, even though your outward man is suffering. "If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light." WHAT IF& What if those things which are written in the old testament are written for our learning? (2 Kings 7:3-15) What if a couple of needy saints today got hungry enough to venture out to the enemy's camp, and what if they, like these lepers before them, discovered that there is in fact no enemy? What if they found instead unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ that have been made available to His people? What if they searched enough of these riches out that eventually they got the desire to share these riches with the rest of the world? What if they went back to their friends within the city gates and told them the news? What is God liberated the entire city through the witness of a few saints who got hungry enough to venture out past their fears? What if the gospel is true? What if you and I are wholly righteous, alive and well in Jesus Christ? What if there is nothing to fear? What if the power of the enemy is a lie? Come and see! THE LIFE THAT IS WITHIN US Imagine something with me. Imagine yourself in the center of God before the world began. An amazing event is taking place and you are there to view it - that which the scriptures refer to as predestination. Look inside of God. Thousands of millions of innumerable portions of the Lord are beginning to glow and become distinct from one another. One by one He is marking them off for some very special destiny - that which He has purposed: for them to become His very own bride. Take special note of that one portion of God glowing right now. That portion of God has just as high a destiny as the rest, but its destiny is related personally to you. Now think back to the time you first received the Lord, when you were born again. Perhaps you experienced a great flood of emotions in that first encounter with Christ, perhaps you did not. Regardless, something quite extraordinary happened the moment you first believed. Had your physical eyes the ability to see the unseen, I imagine you would have seen a great door open above the altar, or bed, or wherever it was that you gave your life to the Lord. Then you would have witnessed that glowing, marked-off portion of God from before the world began flow through the door separating the unseen from the seen, and enter you! The moment God's life entered you, your spirit, which had been dead from the day you were born, rose to new life ("born... again!"). Your soul, stained red with sin, was washed white as snow in the blood of the Lamb. The eternal life of God - His Holy Spirit - became one with your own. In one moment, all that the Lord Jesus accomplished through His cross and resurrection was made real in you. Old things passed away and all became new. You were given entrance into Christ, the new creation, even as He made His entrance into you. You became part of a new species, a member of the new humanity. Suddenly a foreigner in this world, you became a citizen of another country. What's the point? The point is this: the very life that was in God before the world began is now inside of you, inside of me. I can't imagine we've even begun to fathom a fraction of what that means. Yet it's true, a reality which can never be reversed. The eternal life of God is within us. Paul spoke to Timothy of "laying hold of" this eternal life. This life is within us, and we may lay hold of it. Whatever that means, it means there is more for us in the experience of Christ than we dare dream. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, "Jesus Christ calls men, not to a new religion, but to life." So there is endless possibility. Together, we are the counterpart of God Himself, the bride of Jesus Christ. My calling, and your calling, is to give practical expression to this reality in the life we live together. And this we call "church." Well, I'm afraid I used too many words with this one, but hopefully you're able to see what I'm getting at. It amazes me to think that the life that is within us now existed in God before the world began. We have within us at this very moment eternal, uncreated, indestructible Life. WHAT I LEARN WHILE CHANGING DIRTY DIAPERS& ...That all of life can be made rich simply by being in fellowship with Christ; that we can know true peace, even joy, in the midst of any circumstance, no matter how much that circumstance stinks (Get it? J). Think of your best friend. How did the two of you become so close? Simply by doing lots of things together. You and I may have been taught growing up that the presence of the Lord is confined to certain places and certain times (like Sunday morning from 11-12 in a big building with stained-glass windows, perhaps), but the reality is that Christ is overflowing within us every moment of every day, and we can know Him simply by sharing all that we do with Him. When you walk, walk with the Lord. When you sing, sing to Him. Instead of just thinking thoughts throughout the day (our thought life is really no more than an on-going conversation with ourselves), speak to the Lord within you. Take whatever you are feeling, whatever you are facing, and whatever comes up throughout the day and find some way to turn it into fellowship with Jesus. All this sounds so familiar, I know. "Whatever you do, do it unto Him." That's the secret to fellowship. I remember one night standing in my back yard. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the realization that the glory of God was right there in my back yard, within me and all around me, though most of the world was ignorant of the fact. Is it possible to possess such an awareness of Christ every moment of every day for the rest of our lives? I say it is. I say that is just what our Lord died to make possible. WHEN THE WAYS OF GOD SEEM SLOW Sometimes I think Isaiah left out a verse. "God's ways are not our ways and God's thoughts are not our thoughts. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so God's ways are above our ways." After that I think it should go, "as a snail upon the ground, so are the Lord's ways slower than our ways." J Do you ever feel like that? That the Lord's ways with us seem to be very slow in the making? Oh well. I think it helps to joke like that. There are times when I believe that I've seen something of the Lord's will. So I pray for Him to fulfill it, and I expect Him to do so immediately, because it is what He wants after all. But then to my dismay it seems like forever before any sign of it even begins to appear. It's kind of like planting a seed in the ground. From our point of view it takes a long time for it to even look like anything is going on. But beneath the surface of the earth a lot of action is taking place, we just can't see it. It takes a lot of time, maybe the passing of a season or two, before anything visible begins to break through. Personally, the Lord is just now bringing to pass something I first spoke with Him about nearly two years ago. Two whole years! Sometimes His ways appear to be very slow in the making, but they are still the best. They are the highest quality and the only ways that really work. If you're like me you often forget this, but maybe this will serve as a reminder. Our Lord's ways may be slow, but they are perfect for what He is after. MORE ON NEW TESTAMENT CHRONOLOGY I'm learning that the NT letters, especially those of Paul (and especially his first six), have a certain background to them. And that background figures greatly into a more complete understanding of many of the things contained in those letters. For instance. The other day I was reading through 1 Corinthians 3. I used to think that here Paul was talking about the individual Christian and his works, and how that on the day of judgment the fire would come and try our works, and what remained through the fire would earn us a reward. But reading 1 Corinthians 3 in light of its particular background sheds an entirely new light upon the meaning of the passage. Set 1 Corinthians 3 against the backdrop of Acts 18:18-19:10, and you see clearly that Paul is referring, not to the individual Christian life of devotion, but to the labor of the Christian worker, the guy who goes about to build up the body of Christ. That man's work will eventually be tried, whether by the threat of division or by some other crisis, and in that "day" it will revealed whether or not He was building with Christ. (Anything less then Christ - wood, hay, or stubble - will be lost.) Again, its like listening to both sides of a phone conversation in order to get the whole story. I hate to sound like I'm endorsing yet another method, it's just that I'm learning so much by reading the NT chronologically. Yes, we must approach the scriptures prayerfully, and of course we cannot understand any of it without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. But reading the NT letters within their historical context, in the order in which they were originally given, only makes sense. Why read it any other way? Just because we've had handed down to us an arrangement of the New Testament that is based on nothing more than length of the writings doesn't mean we have to stick with it. This fresh approach to the scriptures has helped me to see things I never saw before, though they were right in front of my eyes the entire time. A LESSON FROM MY LITTLE BOY How was everyone's Christmas? Fun times with family and friends, I hope. Sarah and I spent the holiday in Indiana with her family. It was a great time. Lots of laughs, love, and one heck of a monopoly game, I might add. As we were preparing to leave to return to Kentucky I found myself alone in the bedroom with little Joshua. I had stepped out in the hall for a moment or two, and when I walked back in I saw him laying there all by himself and my heart was overwhelmed with love. I had this tremendous desire to share my heart with him, and to assure him beyond any shadow of a doubt that he never has to worry about being forsaken or left alone. I got down on the bed next to him and said something like this: "I know you can't understand me now, but you can be sure that I will never leave you. You never have to worry that I will leave you alone. I am always within reach. One call and I am at your side. My eyes are always on you, watching out for you. My heart is too full of love for you to ever even imagine leaving you." And as I sat there tearing up I realized that my little boy was helping me to realize my Father's love for me (His love for all of us!). It was wonderful. An Upton song came to mind where he just kept repeating, as if the Lord Himself were speaking to us His children, "You're not alone. You're not alone. I never leave. I'll never leave you alone." How awesome it is to be loved by God. I once heard a man say that in heaven our only claim to fame, so to speak, will be that God loved us. He referenced the verse in Revelation where God says that He will cause those who are of the synagogue of Satan to come and bow before our feet, and to know that He loved us. The love of God will be our testimony in that day, you see. It will not be our great works, nor our great service to God, nor our crowns or our rewards. It will simply be this: God loved us with an everlasting love, and that love of His brought us through to glory. All that we are, and all that we have come to inherit in Jesus Christ - all the riches, all the glory, and all the wonder... we have come to share in it all simply because God loves us. LISTENING TO BOTH SIDES OF THE CONVERSATION Have you ever listened to one end of a phone conversation and tried to put together the whole conversation based on what you were hearing? For myself, I'm discovering that trying to understand many parts of the NT without knowing the chronology behind it is just like that. Can you really know the whole story behind that phone conversation without listening to both sides of it? You can know some of it for sure. Other parts, you are left with only your imagination to decide what is being said. The result is, without knowing both sides of the story, you have to insert your own. Here's where 1700 or so years of religious tradition, cultural change, and a misapprehension of the Lord's purpose come in. These things have given us plenty of imaginary fill-ins to account for what we lack in understanding of the historical context of our NT epistles. For instance, consider the letters written to Timothy and Titus. These letters are generally referred to as the "pastoral epistles." But were these men pastors as we know them today? Did they fulfill their ministry in the way that pastors do today? Well, at first glance we might say yes. Especially if we have already been conditioned to believe that. But a closer look at the letters themselves, the men, and the historical context behind them may reveal a little bit different of a picture. Anybody interested? A lot has been said in the past century about the practice of the church. For thousands of years the structure and practice of the Roman Catholic church went on unchanged. In the 500 years since the reformation, practically nothing of the structure and practice of the traditional protestant churches have changed, either. But men like Watchman Nee, T. Austin Sparks, Bakht Singh, and the Christians among whom they labored a generation ago, have left a testimony to our day that things can be different, and that we can know the Lord Jesus in a far deeper, more powerful way than we know Him now. But there is more, for the work of the Lord - what might be called "the ministry" - goes hand in hand with the church. Perhaps there exists in the mind and heart of God, and in the experience of those whom the Lord would lead down such a path, a way of ministry that is also different from the traditional mindset. Perhaps this too is one of the "old paths" that we are called to rediscover and explore. Reading the NT with an eye to chronology has helped me see these kinds of things more clearly. GOD TAKES THE LONELY AND PLACES HIM IN A FAMILY Have you ever lost something, but didn t even know you d lost it until you found it again? That s exactly how I feel looking back on my experience at Mt. Zion. I stumbled onto an experience at Zion that changed me forever. It changed my outlook, my spiritual taste, my focus in ministry, everything. What is this experience I speak of? Just this: the experience of the body of Christ. Let me try to explain. The Lord called me to follow Him in 2000, during my senior year of high school. At that time I came into contact with the personal Christ - living inside of me, speaking inside of me, working and transforming inside of me. It was amazing. But it wasn t until four years later that I came into contact with the corporate Christ. (Don t misunderstand me. The personal Christ and the corporate Christ are one and the same Christ. And it is God s design that we come to know Him in both these ways right from the start of our relationship with Him, but for some reason things today are very far removed from the Lord s original intention. Something, somewhere along the way, has come into the place of the living experience of the body of Christ and substituted it. And oddly enough we call the substitute by the same name -  church! ) Well, over the years I did have a good deal of interaction and fellowship with other brothers and sisters in the Lord, don t get me wrong. And a lot of it was very fruitful. On a few brief occasions I even had small touches of real body life among a small group of friends who spent a lot of time together talking, studying the Bible, praying, or whatever. But those times were brief, and they lacked a lot in depth compared to what lay ahead. Then the Lord brought Mt. Zion to my attention. It looked so cool. Little did I know exactly why the place would turn out to be such a blessing to me, though, as well as to so many others. This brings me to the fall of 2003. Before coming to Zion I see myself as one who was stumbling through the wilderness of modern-day, individualist Christianity, as good ole brother Sparks would say,  without a glimmer of light on the Lord s fuller purpose. I was sincere, I was longing for more of the Lord, but at the same time I was completely unaware of what was missing. Then I found it! Or, should I say, God shoved it right in my face and said, here it is! (When I say  it , I really mean Him. What I encountered at Zion, though it took me till my second year there to recognize it, was the corporate Christ.) I had no idea at the time what was going on, but the day I first passed through those lovely black rod-iron gates and met bald-headed Ed Carpenter and crazy Roy Evans on the front patio of the Caleb dorm, the Lord did something remarkable for me: He took the lonely individual and placed him in a family. (Psalm 68:6) By the sheer grace of God I stumbled upon something at Zion that was to forever change me. That something was the daily, practical, living, breathing experience of the body of Jesus Christ. It was an experience that was to last for three wonderful years, in the midst of which I became, not a lonely little brick with no place to call home, but a living stone built together with a host of others into a spiritual house. No longer the lone individual Christian trying his hardest to attain to heights of spiritual life that the lone individual was never meant to attain, I found myself part of a spiritual family. And I ll thank God forever for opening my heart and eyes to this marvelous experience. I realize this may not mean anything to you. You may or may not relate. Or you may feel that the traditional practice of "going to church" equates to this. That's ok. I am only telling you what God has done in me personally. Sometimes I wish (God forbid) that I had never seen the church in this way, as hard as it has made things for me since (it can complicate things a bit). But then I remember some flash of glory I beheld in Jesus Christ through my experience with His body, or I taste again some fresh wonder I had in knowing His cross and sharing His life through three years of daily fellowship with others whose passion to know Him either matched or exceeded my own, and I laugh with joy, and I think, how could I ever desire anything but this? How could I settle for anything less? There is nothing greater! AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO US ALL TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THE LORD There was a woman once - young, alive, beautiful. Betrothed to her Lover. He went away for a time, promising to return soon to take her to be with Him. And O how she longed for His return! So blind was her love that she forsook all other pursuits, so abandoned her passion that those who once knew her now considered her a stranger. But she didn t care. The same cross of misunderstanding, rejection, and abuse that her Lover bore to win her love she too embraced with all joy. Because of her radiance, her very presence impacted wherever she went. She didn t have to tell others about her Lover - the world soon came to associate His name with her, simply because she was so different. Still she spoke of Him, though, and spoke often, but not out of obligation or a sense of duty. She just couldn t help it - her heart overflowed. Daily she yearned for His return, though not passively& every moment she spent pursuing Him in her heart, pouring out love and affection, ever deeper, ever more beautiful. Many saw this display and despised her for it, but even her enemies had to confess: wherever she went she turned the world upside down! And yet, turning the world upside down was never her goal! Her greatest ambition was simply to know her Beloved. All these other things just happened as a result of her abandon. But then time passed. She began to forget His love. Her single eye she sold for a thousand other pursuits. Thus the light began to dim. The passion of those early days waned as she turned to embrace the ways and loves of other men. She who once was the church began to  go to church - there playing a man-made game that was something akin to the format of the religious systems of her day, the very system her Lover had drawn her out of. She took the new wine He had sent her shortly after His departure and began to pour it into old wineskins. After each bottle burst and the wine was spilled, she would take what little she had left and try it all again. Year upon year this sad cycle would repeat itself. Then finally, utterly exhausted from all her efforts to restore the life, power, and joy she once knew to the full in simply pursuing Him, she fell asleep. Presently, she still sleeps. But her heart is waking, finally, after so long a time& waking once more to the sound of her long-forgotten Lover s voice. It seems He is returning soon. The Spirit within the bride is crying out, and soon she too will lift her voice in response:  Come! Come Lord Jesus! Our generation stands on the brink of endless possibility. So I say, let all who are thirsty come, and though we sleep, let our hearts awake! FIRST STEPS IN STUDYING THE NEW TESTAMENT LETTERS Imagine yourself as a brother or sister in the church at Galatia in the summer of A.D. 50. Everyone is abuzz, for you ve just received a letter from Paul in Antioch. Rumor has it this letter is no holds barred. They re saying that it has to do with the men who have come into the assembly of late who are teaching things that contradict the message Paul brought you when he and Barnabas were here. When you first received this letter you heard it read aloud in the assembly. You may or may not be able to read yourself, so maybe all you ever did was hear it read to you. Eventually, copies of this historic letter were made. Some leading brothers in the church intended to spread its liberating message to all the saints in other cities and regions. These were words that everyone had to hear. The point is, when you read the letter you read it as just that, a letter. It was not a  book to you. It was not divided into chapter and verse. Nothing about it resembled a textbook, or a manual on  how to be free from the law and live the Christian life. Never once was it suggested to you in any way that you had to dissect it, analyze it, and cross reference it with other of Paul s letters in order to find the  key to a victorious life. In fact, looking back on the first century from our present-day vantage point, such a thought is ridiculous. The early believers to whom these letters came, as in this case with the churches of Galatia, were themselves immersed in the actual conditions and circumstances that gave rise to the letter. Nowhere did they stop and think  what does that word mean, or  what is Paul referring to there? They never asked these questions because they were fully aware of the context surrounding his words. The messages of the new testament epistles, whatever they were, were messages that were given rise to by certain circumstances, and that dealt with very specific issues. Fast forward to our day. Joe Christian has just gotten saved. At the altar or in new believers class, he has been told that one of the best ways to get to know God s will and to grow as a Christian is to, of course, study the Bible. So he sits down, eager to begin, and flips open to the book of Galatians. He reads some things that inspire him, some that convict him, but mostly a lot that confuses him. He is forced to look over most of its meaning, or to consign his own meaning to the text (you ve never done that?). If he is anything like this brother, it will be years of conventional Bible study and topical/expositional sermons preached by his favorite preachers before he really begins to understand his New Testament. This does not mean that conventional Bible study is incapable of yielding any fruit at all, or that all those sermons were bad or wrong, or that the Holy Spirit inside of me was not enough to help me understand the scriptures. It only means that it took this brother a good while to begin to get a grasp on the first century story. What might help us avoid this whole predicament? Perhaps by returning to what we first pointed out: Those first believers, to whom these letters first came, were themselves immersed in the conditions and circumstances that initially led to their writing. They had a handle on what was going on around them, you see. They knew the context. It may be advisable to us, then, that our first steps in attempting to understand God s story begin much the same way, by immersing ourselves to the best of our ability in the actual conditions and circumstances that surrounded the initial writing of those letters. Perhaps then all those hard-to-understand verses with their obscure references will begin to light up and make sense to us. We may even feel the need to throw out those verse divisions altogether. But above all, we may catch a glimpse of Christ and His church, and of God s eternal purpose concerning Him, one that we never had under the old way of studying our Bible, that will excite us to a fresh pursuit of Him. ENJOYING THIS LIFE GOD HAS GIVEN US This morning I awoke, and the will of God immediately began to present itself to me in the circumstances of life. However, I believe the will of God is not to be found in the simple, mundane affairs of everyday life, so I looked beyond what He offered me to something bigger and better out there on the horizon. And I missed the joy of the moment. Later in the day I realized that my wife and I have less money in our bank account this month than what makes us comfortable. I began to worry and fret and plan for the future, not stopping to realize that God chose less for us this month so that we might be free to pursue other, more valuable things. And I missed, in that moment of worry, the wonder of His fellowship. Then in the evening I attended a local church service. "God is not moving in the denominations," I believe, so when offered a handshake I gave in return no more than a smile and nod, and a few seconds of small talk. And in that moment I missed beholding the beauty of Christ my Lord in the face of another brother. Then tonight in a quiet moment I was faced with the seeming emptiness of my life in the face of all the dreams and ambitions I once held. "You are a failure," I heard an unseen presence whisper in my ear. "You are wasted potential," came his further reply. "There is so much about your life to regret." But I didn't respond one word. Instead I turned my heart to look upon the face of my God. And I saw Him dancing over me. I heard His song filling the night air all around me. I recalled the words of the Lord saying He "rests in His love" over me, and a picture filled my mind's eye of a father rejoicing in pride over his son, despite that son's many disappointments and failures. Another unseen presence, but one much more welcome than the first, whispered His words into my ear: You are loved. All that I have is yours. Do not regret this life I've chosen for you. Drink in the joy of every moment to its full. See nothing but Christ. Enjoy your brothers and sisters wherever you find them. You are all so precious to me. Embrace your failures. Hold tight to those I've placed around you. Come join me in my place of perspective, where all of life takes on a different shape and a different color. And when your adversary tells you that your life is a waste, know that the words are true. But in such a different way than one might imagine. Like Mary of old, your life is being wasted at my feet. Many may see this spectacle and despise the very sight of it, but it is precious to me. At last, I am finding a people whose natural lives - all their dreams, all their potential, and all their desires - are being wasted on me. At last, through you and through all those like you - my Church, my chosen bride - the world is being shown the glory of my Son, and just how worthy He is. This is the purpose of my anointing, so different from what men teach: to be poured out upon my Son, Christ Jesus the Lord of all - in order to show the world that He is worthy! Worthy! And in that quiet moment of intimacy, I understood the purpose of the Lord. I saw it being worked out and accomplished all down through the ages of time. I saw the angels looking on in wonder. And I wondered at it myself, how through the cross of Jesus Christ God has gotten for Himself a people - a people wholly righteous, wholly given, and wholly His. And in that moment, with no one else looking on, with the cares of my unpaid bills a million miles away and worries about life and death an ever-distant thing, I rejoiced in the fellowship of the Son to which I have been called. And I revelled in the joy of it all. And I sensed very keenly the oneness I share with all those who are also a part of this fellowship, whether near or far, and whether they think like me or not. In that moment I became, as I always have been since the day I first believed, one with Him. One with Him in His resurrection, out there beyond the tomb where death can no longer come. Only this moment, I enjoyed it. A NEW WAY TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT Romans 16:3, 5 - "Greet Priscilla and Aquila... and the church that meets in their house." 1 Corinthians 16:19 - "Aquila and Priscilla greet you, and so does the church that meets in their house." What is going on here? Romans 16:3,5 shows Aquila and Priscilla to be in Rome. But in 1 Corinthians 16:19 Paul says they are with him in Ephesus (1 Corinthians was written from Ephesus). How can this be? How can Aquila and Priscilla be in both Rome and Ephesus at the same time? Obviously, they cannot. Obviously, these two letters were written at different points in time, which accounts for the two different locations of this first century Christian couple. But.... What location were they in first, Rome or Ephesus? How long did they spend in each place? How many years are represented between the writing of these two letters? What were the circumstances that gave rise to Aquila and Priscilla moving from place to place? Was it the same church who met in their home in each place, or was it a different group of believers in Rome than it was in Ephesus? These are things you won't discover using normal Bible study methods. So I suggest we need a new way to read and study our New Testament. I strongly believe that the New Testament, as well as the whole Bible for that matter, is much more than a textbook on "how to live the Christian life" from which we pull verses and construct systematic theologies. I believe that instances like these, which we read of in Romans 16 and I Cor. 16, reveal that beneath the surface of the "chapter-and-verse", textbook-like way we view and study our NT exists a wonderful, exciting story... a story which, as we come to better understand it, will totally reshape and excite our passion for Christ and His church. Until two weeks ago I never considered that reading the New Testament in chronological order (that is, reading the letters at the times and places they were actually written during the course of the book of Acts) would do me so much good. But it has. I'd heard a few people mention it before, and I knew there were a few Bibles out there that are set up in this manner, but I personally never considered the importance of it. In what ways do you think this could improve our understanding of the church, and of our Lord and His purpose? Perhaps, like me, we'll never know until we try it. THE WONDER OF JESUS CHRIST Amidst all the confusion of our generation, one thing rings out loud and clear: the love of Jesus Christ, and the wonder of His cross. The message is simple, it is clear, and it is glorious! While my wife and I were talking about some things tonight the conversation turned so completely to the Lord Jesus that my heart was totally overwhelmed. He is so amazing. Together we beheld Him. Have you ever really taken a minute to be still and look upon Him with the eyes of your heart? It was a very precious time for us, and a precious time for Him, too, I believe. In a day when men everywhere are seeking to rediscover the church, there is only one message that will lead us back to the fullness of life that we all desire. That message is Christ crucified. There is no other gospel. Our Lord was more than just another man bearing another philosophy on life. He is Life itself. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had some nice ideas (and some not so nice), but this Man - our Lord - bore the fullness of the Godhead within Himself. All the far reaches of eternity reside within His being. He is all wisdom, all knowledge, and all virtue. And we are inside of Him, and He is inside of us. This is the mystery of the gospel. For centuries it was a secret, kept hidden from our sight, but now it is being openly proclaimed and enjoyed: Intimacy with God through our Lord Jesus Christ! Fellowship restored! Can I take just a minute to tell the whole world that I love this Man, my Lord Jesus Christ? "What is the will of God?" many people are asking. "What is the purpose of God?" "What is it that God wants?" I say it is this: God wants to be passionately, desperately loved. Do this, right now, wherever you are at, and you will find yourself swimming in the very center of the will of God. These are deep waters indeed, but they are simple waters. Don't let any man steal your heart and mind away from the simplicity of this gospel. OUR UNSEEN PURPOSE We have received a high calling. We've been invited into the fellowship of the Godhead - one with Him and with one another. I may ask you why you're here and you make ask me the same thing, and our answers may sound similar and they may not. But one thing I do know is this: We are all searching for the reality we've been told is in Christ alone. We're hungry for God - hungry to know Him in His fullness. And some instinct inside of us says, "you will come to know me best and experience me the fullest as you do so together." Such a thought is entirely biblical. It is just what Paul wrote. In the fellowship of the body of Christ we find His fullness (Eph. 1:23). It is only together with "all saints" that we really begin to comprehend the awesome love of Christ (Eph. 3:18,19). This love is the doorway into His fullness (v.19). Look around you. We each have friends and people we know, brothers and sisters, whether from Mt. Zion or elsewhere, in the traditional churches or outside of them, who are like Lazarus raised from the dead. Alive from the dead, yes, but still bound head to foot with grave clothes, still clung to by the touch of the old life. How often have we ourselves been like this? How often have we found ourselves in the same condition? God's child, yes. Beloved of God, yes. The righteousness of God in Christ, yes. Yet lacking in the full experience of these realities. We have heard the voice of Christ and come forth from the tomb in the power of that voice, but where is the fullness? Where is the life more abundant? And what I know of each of us is this: We desire God. Above all else, we seek His fullness. We want to know Jesus; we desire His presence and His power to be the greatest reality of our lives. You, brother, and you, sister, and myself - we all came to know the Lord apart from one another. It was intensely personal. We each know Him for ourselves, for He met us alone and found us alone. Yet God's will goes on from this to something higher. Now we are finding ourselves drawn together, desiring something more than just the personal, private relationship. Naturally, organically, and spontaneously. Check the record in Luke 15. God deals with individuals, yes, but He never stops with the lone individual. He always has in view in His dealings with each individual the corporate man, the whole body of Christ. We know that one member is not the whole body (1 Cor. 12:14), and that the fullness of God is found in the body (Eph. 1:23). So we see in the parable of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son, that God does what He does with each individual in view of and relation to the corporate. He brings the coin back to the rest, the sheep back to the flock, and the son back to the family. We are beginning to see a little of our purpose as His church. So, for however long our paths remain parallel, and we find ourselves walking with the Lord together, and with whomever the Lord might add to us, let us take full advantage. Let us drink deeply of the experience of Christ we find with one another. Let us disregard all conventional wisdom if need be and no longer be conformed so mindlessly to the patterns of the world around us. Let us watch fall every wall that divides us. Let us give to one another what revelation and experience we each individually possess of Christ. And let us remind one another, and always consider that even here in our little corner of the world, where there's no spotlight and no great thing going on, that we are here as His body and we have received the highest of all callings. That calling is this: to know Jesus Christ, and to express His life wherever we are... at the bookstore, on the streets, on the jobsite, and in our homes. Whoever comes among us, let them leave saying, "There is no doubt about it. I may not like them, I may not agree with them over every little detail, but there is one thing I cannot deny: God is in them (1 Cor. 14:25). This is our purpose, seen of angels and not understood by the world. Genesis 12:1 - "Now the Lord said to Abram: Leave your country and your kindred and your father's house. Leave them and go unto a land that I will show you." Abraham was called to something very great, but you might have had a hard time getting anyone else to agree with that at the time. Can you imagine what it looked like to his family and friends in Ur? To see Abraham suddenly pack up everything - his wife, his possessions, his flocks, and whoever wanted to come along with him - and leave home? And even more, to not even be able to tell anyone exactly where he was going, only that God had called him to leave? How foolish! How stupid they must have thought he was! And what a waste, too! Abraham probably had so much natural potential, to be the great head and leader of his tribe one day. Yet he left it all; he died to all his natural potential in order to follow the call of God he heard in his heart. You see, this is just like us leaving the system of this world. Its sins, its future, its careers and promises, hopes and dreams, all to follow the word of God, Christ. And how stupid our lives look, how much of a waste - even to some of our Christian peers - for doing what we are doing. It is an unseen purpose. Unseen by everyone but the Lord, that is, who is leading us on by faith into something higher and more glorious than this world could ever imagine. So we will not fall to the voices that say turn back. A comfortable, 21st century, western Christianity is enough, why all this talk about the cross, and the body of Christ, and knowing God? We will endure reproach, always encouraging one another. We will help one another when we fall, remind one another when we forget. We will not gather around any name but the name of Christ. We'll be bound together by no commitment but our commitment to Him. We'll find our unity nowhere else but in His presence dwelling within each of our hearts. We'll forgive when we hurt one another. We'll go to one another and walk together in the light. Forget titles and positions, this is the highest of all callings - just to be a Christian. Just to stand as Christ in the midst of a dark, hateful, selfish, striving world, and with our deeds and our words declare, "there is a better way!" Questions about "full-time ministry," or what job/career should I take, or "what is God's will for my life" go out the window in a life like this. Already we are realizing that we don't need that much after all when it comes to material possessions. Especially when we share what we do have. We can live in this world very simply and be free to pursue the Lord, not on the side, but as a lifestyle. I'm interested in a life in which I "go to church," not once a week, but every day. Every day surrounded by the body, knowing Christ through the circumstances of life. I'm interested in a life of real passion, where it doesn't take missions trips and conferences and revival meetings to get me stirred up, but where every time I even go to the gas station or grocery store I am there with a sense of being sent out into the world, always looking to invite someone else into this fellowship of life, and always open to be God's way of setting someone free. I want to be forever rid of familiarity, where I get sucked into the routine of the day and become trapped by its limitations. And together we can break out of these narrow ways of living! It is why God puts us together, to "provoke one another to love and good works," and to remind one another to "stir up the gift of God that is in you, brother!" This is how we help one another into His fullness, in a way we never could on our own. I am staking everything on the promise of life in Jesus Christ. We all mean something very special to Him, and He means something very special to each of us. Together I believe we can know Him better than we ever could alone. So let us pursue this life together. Amen. "God takes the solitary and sets him in a family." (Psalm 68:8) "Two is better than one..." (Ecclesiastes) "All that believed were together..." (Acts 2:44) HOW TO BECOME SELFLESS The only way to become selfless is to fall in love. My wife taught me this before she ever became my wife. During our third year at school I realized that I liked to think about her more than I did about myself. It was because I was falling in love with her. I'm convinced that it works the same way in the spiritual realm. God's intention for us is not that we struggle through life trying (and always failing) to be like Christ. It is that we cease from our own efforts, realize that we are dead men and women (crucified on his cross), and by the grace of God be moved out of His way so that Christ in all His glory may live in us. For instance, you know you are supposed to be selfless before the Lord, living life not for yourself but for Him and for others. But do you really possess this virtue in Christ, or are you just trying to force it because you know you should? What's the source of our living? Is it the natural man in his strength, or is it the living Christ within? Like it was with my wife, so it is with our Lord. You and I are nothing like Him by natural birth. Some of our most painful experiences in life are those that come to teach us that we are nothing like Him (that's why they're so painful - they deal tremendously devastating blows to our ego). We are the ever-selfish ones. He is the meek and lowly one who never speaks of himself but pours out his life for the sake of others. The only way to possess the selflessness of Jesus is to fall in love with Jesus. Then, like I did with my wife, we'll realize that we like to think of Him more than we do of ourselves. Naturally then the desires of His heart will become the dictates of our life. Only a heart captivated by His beauty will forget about itself to serve the One it loves. This is the natural way. This is the way that leads to a holiness that is spontaneous and true. CHRIST CANNOT BE CONTAINED WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY Last night I was holding my little boy and reading through John 14-16, listening to Jesus speak as if I were right there among his disciples that night of the last supper. He seems so real to me in approaching the scriptures that way. This morning I woke up with a desire to go right back to where I left off and listen to Jesus speak more. Only this time it was while lying in bed with little Joshua at my side. Later I was out cutting grass and some thoughts began to come to mind. Jesus Christ cannot be contained within the framework of systematic theology. Not yours, not mine, not anybody s. It is all man's feeble attempts to wrap his mind around the inconceivable& shallow efforts to harness the uncontainable. Christ is not meant to be studied about in some library, He is meant to be followed in practical, everyday life. You can't box him in. He is the undomesticated Christ. He'll turn the tables and break the cages and let the dove loose every time. Don't turn His Father's house into something it is not. He cannot be systematized, doctrinalized, or institutionalized. Yet in our minds this is just what we've done - we've so systematized and doctrinalized and contextualized Christ that there is nothing left to follow, only ideas left to be speculated over and debated. This is not what God intends for us. The real Jesus is touchable, livable and experience-able. He is tangible. He is follow-able. We ve taken His teachings and so contextualized them that they have no bearing upon our lives now. Apparently His teachings are all meant for other places, other times, and other cultures, or so we are led to believe. This thinking has reduced following Jesus to attending a religious service on Sunday and possessing an intellectual grasp of certain doctrines. This is now what it means to be a Christian. Forget everything but the four gospels for a minute. Watch Jesus walk among the people. Listen to His words. Taking them all into account, whose theology would you say they conform to? The Pentecostals? The Baptists? The Catholics? The house churchers? Yours? Mine? I think none of them. Why is it that there are so many denominations? Why is it that there are so many sects within Christendom? Because each group has taken one little aspect of truth, one little piece of the pie and magnified it out of all proportion to the rest. We have reduced Christ to our own limited apprehension of the truth. This has produced within our ranks endless divisions, pettiness, and spiritual weakness. As long as the system of Christianity exists it will go on splintering, dividing itself along more and more doctrinal lines. What s the answer then? Another reformation? Better creeds? Develop finer points of theology over which we can unite? Doubtful. I say we hand our systematic theologies and our pet doctrines over to the cross. Let them die the death. If any of it is really essential to our faith and worthy of the Son of God then let God raise it from the dead and give it back to us. I m not against sound teaching and I would never want to deny the good that can come from honest study of the scriptures, but what I am saying is this: Let's follow a Person - Jesus Christ - and not any particular theology. Christ defies every limitation that man would place upon Him. He is not a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, a Baptist or a Pentecostal. He is Christ. THE SUBJECT OF EVERY NT SERMON EVER GIVEN When I was a young Christian I had an intense desire to show everyone the way. I was full of zeal for the Lord. Misdirected though it often was, the passion I had was genuine, a very precious gift the Lord had given me. But I was young and eager to do something with it. So it wasn't long before I was preaching in every pulpit I could get my hands on. The only problem was that in all my earnest desire to show people the way, I didn't yet know the way myself very well. But I preached anyway. I preached against sin, I talked about revival, and I said a lot of radical things about not compromising with the world. One time I even used the verse out of Genesis where the Lord commanded everything in the creation to "be fruitful and multiply" to basically tell a whole congregation of God's people that if they hadn't led anyone to Christ lately, and if they weren't leading people to Christ on a regular basis, they probably weren't saved. (They loved this message by the way. After the service they asked me to stay on as their pastor!) Anyway, my point is this: I knew very little of Christ, so I preached very little of Christ. And while I won't deny any good that God did through my life or preaching during those early days, to be honest I still have to admit that the fruit that resulted from my many activities - the lasting fruit, that is - was small. When I read the scriptures I m amazed at how real Christ was to the early church. I m amazed at how alive He was in their midst. Yet I know in my heart that we can know Him that way, too. This leads me to a question: What was the subject of just about every New Testament sermon ever given? Acts 5:42 - "...they ceased not to preach and teach Jesus Christ." Acts 8:5 - "...preached Christ to them." Acts 8:35 - "Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached to him Jesus." Acts 9:20 - "And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God." Acts 10:36 - "That word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all!)" Acts 11:20 - And some of them... when they were come... preaching the Lord Jesus." 1 Corinthians 1:23 - "We preach Christ crucified..." Colossians 1:28 - "Him we preach..." It was Christ. May God give us more of Christ today. May the Holy Spirit reveal Christ in us today in a deeper, richer way than we have ever known. And may we be changed into His image. May our hearts so overflow with the Son of God that when we go to open our mouths and speak it is Christ that comes forth from the abundance of Him that resides there. A MESSAGE SO GREAT WE CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT That is what the gospel is... a message so awesome, so vast, and so good that we can hardly bring ourselves to believe it. The writer to the Hebrews called it "so great a salvation." So great, he implies, that we would be fools to let it drift by us, like a boat out on the open sea, without taking hold of it. Acts 13, starting at verse 14, sees Paul and Barnabas arriving at Antioch in Pisidia to preach the gospel. After sitting through a synagogue service and being given the opportunity to speak freely, Paul takes his audience through the history of the Jewish nation, highlighting God's work among them and leading all the way up to Christ. Then He presents Christ as the fulfillment of the promises God made to their fathers. He summed up his message like this: "Be it known to you all that through this man (Christ) is preached to you the forgiveness of sins. And by Him all who believe are justified from all things, from which you could never be justified by the law of Moses." Justified... from... all things. What we could never do on our own, what we could never earn on our own... God has given us freely! It's a message so great we can hardly believe it. It seems too good to be true. We're tempted to believe it must surely involve more work on our part. A number of the Jews on hand that day must have believed this, for on the following Sabbath Paul, who had obviously discerned the hidden causes for their rejection of the gospel, spoke this to them: "Seeing that you judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." (Acts 13:46, italics mine) They heard the good news and said basically, "No, take that nonsense away from us. We are not worthy of such a gift." Let's not be among that number. Let's humble ourselves and receive God's awesome gift of eternal life, now and everyday. The message is so great that Paul had this to say, quoting from the prophet Habakkuk: "Beware then, lest that which is spoken of in the prophets come upon you: Behold, you despisers, marvel and perish! For I will do a work in your days, the likes of which you will not even believe, though a man declare it unto you." A work so awesome that most people will not even believe it. This is the gospel! A LETTER FROM ONE FRIEND TO ANOTHER ... Hopefully we will see each other soon. We can have some old-fashioned koinonia. J Honestly, there are some things I'm very excited to share with you. Some time ago a new understanding came to me about how God Himself is our righteousness. A whole new view of the good news. Freedom poured in like water over the Niagara. It has changed everything for me. Anyway, one night I was sitting together with another brother. We were talking over some things, sharing our mutual struggles, and I shared with him this understanding our Lord has given me. Just the good news... no strings attached, no frills and fancy "revelation," as we say. The light poured over both of us and we rejoiced in it together for a good couple of hours. Since then it's been like a wildfire around here. It's changing everything. I've had no sin-consciousness in months. The stumbling block to me before had always been in believing that I am no longer two people. At best, I always viewed myself as both a sinner and a saint. I could mentally acknowledge the fact that I was the righteousness of God in Christ, after all it was right there in the scriptures, but I still had this tremendous fear of things like "issues of the heart" that I felt would destroy me and those closest to me if I wasn't quick to deal with them. I could never bring myself to believe that that old man had been circumcised off of me, and that I was now one new man. One man, not two. Well, all that is past now brother for the redemption in Christ was a complete work. He left nothing more to be done. The bodily resurrection will be the consummation of it all, the bringing into full manifestation the glory of it all, but it will not be any addition to the work that has already been accomplished. Does that make sense? It is finished! Now I know that I do not have two natures inside of me wrestling for control. I do carry a body of flesh but that flesh is not me. We're not identifying with the old man anymore, so we're not coming under condemnation and the power of sin. God has done more than just clear us of guilt and excuse us from wrath, He has gone to the root of our fallenness and ripped it out. Not just my sins but my old man as well (he who was under the sway and power of the sin nature), Christ crucified. I have one nature now as a son of God and that is God's own nature. To confess that I have two natures inside of me - both God's and Satan's - is to say that both God and Satan are my Father. But it just isn't so. I always stumbled at this because when I heard the good news I judged it immediately in the light of my own experience (this kills faith). But one of the first things God shows us man is that we cannot bring our own experience - the good or the bad - to bear upon the truth, for if we do we'll be discouraged and rendered incapable of believing the unbelievable. (This is a holy, awesome realm, and our imperfect experiences have no place in it! Christ is our experience before we ever walk in it!) I am one man (1 Cor. 6:17). Look for me and you will find me in Christ. Look for Christ and you will find Christ in me (and in you!). By God's grace we are in Him, and this is more than just some theory. By God's gift I am as righteous as He is righteous, a sharer of His own divine nature. This may sound outrageous, even scandalous that such grace could come to people so undeserving, but it's the only way that works. This is the only thing that breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets the prisoner free. I know you have glimpsed this before man. I know you've wanted to believe it. So believe it! Abraham was made righteous because when God spoke the word, Abraham did not stumble over the apparent deadness of his flesh. He believed even against experience, then experience followed. Well brother what do you say? PERSONAL REFLECTIONS We are all in pursuit of something. Whatever it is, it is what we pour most of our time, focus, energy, thoughts and dreams into. Tonight I am sitting in a room hearing a lecture on anatomy for EMS training. But as I stop to look for my heart I realize it is not in this room. It is off somewhere with Jesus. Where, I don't know. Just wherever He is; wherever He is leading me. All I know is that tonight it is not here. I'm a simple person. God has made me into this person. I cannot be other than what I am. I cannot pursue other things to the neglect of Christ. I just cannot. He is calling me, I can hear Him. The voice still seems distant to me, but I know He is calling me to a simpler way, one that fits the path He is leading me down and compensates the desire He has given me to pursue Him. I can do nothing less... it would make me a miserable man to pursue anything other than this, other than Him. I know I have to work. I want to work, actually. I know I have a family now to provide for. And I will, till the day I die. But over the years I've gone to put my heart into a number of things, most of them having to do with money, education, and "success" according to the world's standard. But each time I've found that my heart wasn't in them. Eventually I just had to quit; I had to drop those pursuits, one by one. I just had to. If I continued in them I would run out of gas. I'd lose the will to go on. I found no life in them... no power from outside myself compelling me to go on in those directions. I would sense God's call - deep unto deep - somewhere within me. And eventually, often looking like a complete fool and a failure to those around me, I would follow. You are the source of Life And I can't be left behind No one else will do So I will take hold of You I need you Jesus to come to my rescue Where else can I go? There's no other name by which I am saved Capture me with grace - I will follow You. (from the song, "Rescue") I'm sitting in class and my mind is wandering, though not in the normal way. It is distracted by something else. Something more beautiful to me than the things I'm hearing about. Jesus. I realize - the big issues of life, the big decisions and the turning points, are not matters of right and wrong to me, as if I would condemn others for taking a path that I myself may not take. Rather, the issue is simply one of "what is Jesus speaking to me?" "Where is He leading me?" "Where is He taking me in my heart?" It is very personal, much like Peter talking to Jesus about John, and Jesus saying to him, in effect, "It doesn't matter to you how I am leading your brother... all you are responsible for is following me in things that I put on your own heart. Don't consider what other men are doing and saying. You must walk the path I have chosen for you." So whatever the answers to these questions are, that is what I must be true to. I have to be true to my heart and the desire of my Lord that I discover there. It's more than an obligation and something much more beautiful than a duty... it's what I desire and what I long for. I want to be one with Him where He is. I want to follow Him wherever He leads me. I want to simply be His sheep - one of many, nothing special in myself but chosen by Him - hearing His voice, finding comfort and direction in that voice, and knowing Him as my shepherd. I would give everything for this, even my life. THOUGHTS ON THE GREAT COMMISSION AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE To whom was the great commission given? Was it given to the entire church, the whole body of believers? No, it wasn't. Not according to context and good hermeneutics, at least. To whom was it given then? At first, it was given to eleven men. (Matt. 28:16) Only eleven men. Now, according to 1 Cor. 15:6, after Christ rose from the dead He appeared at various times to over five hundred of His followers. Five hundred. Yet it was not to all five hundred, but only to the eleven that He gave the charge, "Go into all the earth..." Later, when the Holy Ghost was ready to start a full-fledged work among the Gentiles, how many did He choose to send? Ten thousand? Twenty? An army of intercessors? Try two! Only two men. (Acts 13:2) At first glance it seems like something is amiss here. Present-day methods in Christian work and ministry don't line up with this curious picture we get from the scriptures. The best conclusion I've been able to make of this is that when our Lord says, "the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few," He is speaking not of quantity but of quality. In other words, it's not the number of laborers He's talking about but the kind of laborers. Conclusion: We need men who are full of Christ, who have had quality wrought into them over years of quiet waiting and secret experience with the Lord, who have a burning vision of the Lord's way and are willing to pay any price and suffer any loss to take that way! THE GREATEST SIGN OF THE TIMES What do you know about the conditions that will exist in the last days? What will be the greatest sign of the times? Will it be earthquakes? Fires? Famine? Floods? What about racial wars? Economic collapse? Or any number of other things that might scare the wits out of people? What about this one: In the final hour of this age there will be a body of people in the earth - a bride - whose greatest longing will be for the Lord Jesus to come back. This, I believe, will be the greatest sign of the times. The Bible is an interesting book. It begins and ends with a wedding. It's full of romance from beginning to end. It reveals God to be above all else a Lover, and we His chosen bride. Verses like Proverbs 17:9 show the whole motivation behind the cross to be that God desires a counterpart - one to love and be loved by. The Song of Solomon ends in an exchange of love between the king and his beloved. It ends with her calling to him to come quickly and take her to be with him. So too ends the book of Revelation, the final letter of the scriptures, with the Spirit and the bride crying out, in one voice, a single word - "Come!" And we see the Lord Jesus, the One to whom she calls, replying, "Behold, I come quickly!" The whole creation has its origins in the cry of love that once existed in the heart of God. (This cry existed before anything else existed, and it drives God still today.) The whole process of life in between that beginning and the end of this age - that of redemption, sanctification, and glorification, to use Paul's terms - is the process of a people being transformed into the image of Christ, being made like Him. It only follows then that at the height of this transformation the bride of God will bear within her being the same desires, same passions, and the same cry as He does. The cry that had its origins in eternity past, the cry that will mark the end of this age, the cry that will move the Lord Jesus from His place at God's right hand to return to the earth with a shout... "Come!" There will be many outwards signs of the times, yes. Our Lord Himself said so. But here may be the greatest indicator that the end is soon to come, for those who are really concerned: When you feel within your own heart and see within the hearts of your brothers and sisters, few though they may be, a deep, deep longing for Christ... more than mere devotion, more than mere sentiment, but a deep, continuous yearning to see Him face to face, with the veil of the flesh forever laid aside... Then, I believe, He will come. When He is longed for more than life itself, He will come. Where is the practical side to a word like this you may ask? As lovely as it sounds, how does this help us live our Christian lives now, in the day to day, until He does come? And to that I respond with something I once heard my best friend Travis say while preaching: Just fall in love with Jesus, and everything else will fall into place! AN OVERFLOW OF CHRIST IS THE RESULT OF THE PENTECOSTAL EXPERIENCE Why do men today who claim the Pentecostal experience witness to the event itself while the men who originally experienced it witnessed, not to Pentecost, but to the event that <i>preceded</i> Pentecost? Note the apostles. Note the 120. As far as I can tell they didn't go around Jerusalem talking about speaking in tongues, the baptism of the Spirit, or the mighty rushing wind. Their testimony was not about "when the fire fell" and they were filled. Their testimony was not about <i>them</i> at all. Their testimony was about the Lamb who was slain! Did they receive power? Yeah, sure. But that fact was never their message. Their message was Christ crucified and raised again. The purpose of the power was, and still is, to point to Jesus. (see Acts 1:8... Jesus told them "you shall receive power and you will be witnesses unto me.") A baptism of the Holy Spirit that takes away from Christ rather than adding to Him is not worthy of the Lamb who was slain. Consider this: "The baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues" is a major doctrine in some Christian camps, even a defining doctrine you might say. But we may yet come to see, even those of us who do speak in tongues, that this after all is a man-made doctrine. A true Pentecost issues out of Calvary, and it points back to Calvary, not to itself. If you still wish to have a doctrinal stance to put with your statement of beliefs on this matter, ok, but may I suggest you use the one given by a dear brother, Mr. Andrew Wehrheim: "We believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by much speaking about Jesus!" Isn't that beautiful? This doctrine is far more biblical than the one that prevails today, being true to scripture and true to the nature and mission of the Holy Spirit, who came not to "speak of Himself," but to point to Christ and glorify Christ. JESUS IS NOT ASHAMED TO CALL US BROTHERS AND SISTERS Often in life I will think things are a certain way and the Lord has to teach me they are not. For example, I have this notion that before I can receive love I must be worthy of love. Yet God tells me this isn't so. This goes against the grain of my natural thinking. Sometimes I don't even feel like it's right. Especially on days like today. Today has been a rough one for me, inwardly at least. I've felt crappy most of the day (still do at the time of this writing), and I've failed at about everything I've been faced with. On days like today it's hard for me to believe that God is not ashamed of me, cause I really feel like somebody should be. Yet Hebrews 2:11 rings through loud and clear even in the midst of my failures. I want to share with you something the Lord showed me through my wife one day while we were out on a lake. I'll just give you what I have in my journal from that day: June 17, 2007 We're in Minnesota vacationing with Sarah's family. It's beautiful up here. Their cabin is right on a lake and the only other man-made thing within sight is a cell phone tower on the hill. Sarah and I went for a ride on the paddleboat this afternoon and had a nice time. It was there through my wife the Lord taught me that He is not ashamed of us. We are free to konw Him and enjoy Him. This freedom comes by the cross. His work inside of us is just that - His work, not ours, and it is to be left that way. No one can make real in a person the promises of the gospel but God. And one big thing that Jesus was always doing in His earthly ministry was lifting the shame off of people so they could be free to embrace His Father. As long as we are loaded down with shame, even feeling that God too is ashamed of us, we will never come to Him. We will never embrace His love. Thank you Jesus for setting me free. I'm so amazed that you are not ashamed to call me your brother. Praise God for the cross! He is not ashamed of me. Jesus is not ashamed of me. You, Lord, are not ashamed of me. The cross has made less than a memory of everything that would bring shame. No more. It's all no more. There's nothing left for You to be ashamed of. You took my shame and you bore it on your own shoulders and you crucified it once and for all! "For He who sanctifies (Christ) and they who are sanctified (us) are all of one (they both are born of the same Father). Because of this, He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters!" - Hebrews 2:11 THOUGHTS I once heard someone say, "If any man continues to go on with God he will eventually be driven to the issue of the life of the church." In other words, in order to know a greater fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ, he will have to begin experiencing Him not only personally (within himself) but corporately (within the body of believers). Lately I've been thinking, one day last week in particular, about the awesome potential there is in the body of Christ. Together we can be something that we cannot be on our own. We can be something so entirely different than anything the world has ever seen. Consider the world system, how oppressive it is in all its ways. Especially consider it here in the west, where the world system is so much more developed than it is in most parts of the world. Men are slaves to the clock, slaves to the routine, slaves to moral and financial debt, just to name a few. But within the body of Christ is the potential to be a place of freedom. A place of love and new life, where men encounter the reality of God and Christ. Where men are accepted for who they are... where they are shown the possibility of becoming something new. Where they are met with love,grace and kindness in the midst of world swirling mad with hate, murder, and religious intolerance. My own very small measure of personal experience teaches me that the way to this kind of revolution is not by "just doing it" or merely "trying it out" to see if it works. If we go that route we'll run out of gas long before we make it to the finish line. We may adopt all the practices of the early church and still be as lifeless as a corpse. Merely returning to outward observances will do nothing for us, at least that's what I believe. Rather, the way is to dive deep into the Lord Jesus Christ. To really know Him. To drink deeply of the revelation of Christ and His cross and His church, putting what we see into practice only as we are compelled to by sheer force and glory of what we see. Let the way be organic; let it be one of Life, with the Spirit moving us, the Spirit driving us on. Let us go on knowing Him until every other voice and every other influence and consideration is crowded out. Let us do what we do on the basis of it being a life or death matter, one of absolute necessity that we might know the Lord Jesus more. The way is to be overwhelmed with a life-altering, paradigm-shifting revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ! Each of us have come to know the Lord Jesus a little (emphasis on "little"). We've known small measures of His life and of abiding victory over sin and self as a by-product of that knowledge. But there's surely more to come. There's more to be had, and more of Him to know. So let's dive deep. Today let us pursue Christ, and as much as is possible, let us pursue Him together! THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE BURNING HEART Here is what church is... Two disciples on a dark lonely road, their hearts ablaze with light and life. They carry on their lips a single message, a testimony - "He's alive!" Hours before they were despondent. Not just close to giving up, they already had given up. Their Lord was dead, or so they thought. Therefore, His promises carried no weight. His words bore no hope. His life was no more than that of any other man's. Thus His followers remained dead in their sins, with no light at the end of the tunnel. And as for the revolution, the fellowship, the coming of the kingdom, it was no more. It was all a dream. An imagination. Not to be expected any longer. So they trudged along, faces low. Then a man appeared at their side. He wondered about their sadness. They talked. He spoke of things they had never considered, shed light on facts they'd never seen. It was late. Would he stay the night with them? Surely the road was no place for a man at nighttime, full of thieves and robbers. The table was set. Bread was brought out. The stranger blessed God, took the loaf, and broke it before them. And suddenly they knew. Suddenly they saw him. There was a moment's pause, certainly no more. A look of wonder spread itself across the face of each disciple. Then, before either of them could speak one word, He vanished from their sight. The Lord! It was Him! An hour earlier they'd been apprehensive at the thought of travelling at night. Not anymore. Immediately they rose and took to the streets. Jerusalem lay sleeping under the cover of darkness, just fifteen or so miles to the east. Peter and the others were there, just as confused and brokenhearted as the two of them had been earlier that day. They had to know. They had to be told, now. The whole world had to know this! Death could not hold Him! The Lord Jesus was risen from the grave! They ran, then walked, then ran again. Along the way they talked among themselves. They shared the wonder, the joy, and the burning they felt within their hearts. "Remember when He talked to us along the way and explained the scriptures to us. Did not our heart burn within us as we listened to Him speak?" Did... not... our... heart... burn. "Our" is plural; "heart" is singular. I love that. Here we see two people, sharing one heart, and it burns for Christ. Welcome to the fellowship of the burning heart! This is what I'm longing for. This is what I'm seeking. This... is church! HOW GREAT IS YOUR CHRIST? Every Christian by right of birth is priveledged to enjoy an open heaven. The very thought of an "open heaven" signifies a direct line between us and God with nothing standing in the way. Nothing hindering, nothing upsetting, nothing stopping our fellowship with God. Biblically, the open heaven is just this: An ever-growing revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His greatness. Does that mean anything to you? It meant something to Paul. It meant something to Peter and John, and the other apostles. I dare say it meant something to every man and woman in those early days of our faith who ever entered into the Christian life, which is the pursuit of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth drew twelve men to his side and began to travel. Wherever He went they were with Him. In the temple teaching the people, on the streets playing with children, out on some mountainside just enjoying God's creation, or on the shores of the sea of Galilee at night, cooking fish and enjoying one another's company. Before ever the word came to be on their lips, this is what those twelve men knew "church" to be. It's my own personal belief that after Pentecost, when thousands of others came into the fellowship, this continued to be what "church" was to them... Fellowship with Jesus Christ. Spending as many moments with Him as possible. Watching Him, talking to Him, listening to every word He had to say. Knowing Jesus Christ... this is church. This is what church is all about. It's our purpose, it's our calling, it's our vocation (our job). So back to the open heaven. For the biblical definition check John 1:43-51, especially the last two verses of that passage. In the Old Testament Jacob had a dream and saw a ladder. The reality of it was veiled to men at the time, but now in the New Testament we have come to see that the ladder was (is) Christ. The angels of God ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. He is the meeting place between God and man. In Christ God comes to us; in Christ we go to God. The open heaven is a continually growing revelation of Christ to our hearts. There's a promise connected with the open heaven as well. It's this: Every new revelation of Christ comes with the assurance that no matter how awesome we see Him to be at present, there are always "greater things" to come! "Do you believe now? Surely I tell you, you shall see greater things than these!" (John 1:50) As we go on knowing Christ more and more of His riches will take focus before our inner eyes. Every new view will seem to eclipse the one before it, not diminishing it, but rather enhancing it and bringing it into greater light. His greatness goes on forever! Isn't that awesome? There are few things in the scriptures that excite me as much as that right there. Every new touch of Christ carries with it the assurance that there is far more to come. In effect we might say, there's more where that came from! So how great is your Christ? There's a lot of marketing out there these days about discipleship, Christian growth, and things like "spiritual formation." Lots of methods floating around. It is my conviction that we grow along with our view of Christ. As our apprehension and embrace of Christ enlarges, so do we. Our inner man takes his rise from how great Christ is to us. So let's know Him today. Let's run after anything and anyone who can show us more of His greatness. Let's cast aside our own spiritual problems, forget tinkering with our own "personal" relationship with God, and behold Jesus Christ! Let's ask the Father for a fresh new view of Him that strikes us down and melts our hearts and draws us up higher into the purposes God has for us as His church. Amen! CHRIST IS THE HEART S GREATEST PLEASURE Christ is the heart's greatest pleasure. Though our flesh is fallen beyond hope and will always gravitate to lesser things, and though our minds still sometimes cling to the old ways of thinking, we know this to be true. I know it to be true in the deepest part of my being. Sin is being preached against from nearly every pulpit in America. This in itself is not a bad thing. But where is the ministry that is revealing the riches of Christ to God's people? Anyway, credit this insight to Mr. Andrew Gartshore. He's the first brother I ever heard make the connection with this scripture to Christ. Psalm 16:11 - "You will show me the path of Life. In Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I think it's safe to say that a lot of people have come to see Christianity as a very boring, dry, sterile thing. Another religion at best. One that does not stir passion but rather stifles it in the name of things like "holiness" and "righteousness." We've done well in denouncing sin. But I fear from an honest heart that we've done oh so little of showing forth the revelation of Christ to the world in which we live. Look at this verse, Psalm 16:11. Do you see Christ in this verse? The part I am looking at is the part that says "at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore." Now, who sits at the right hand of God? Christ! And what exists at the right hand of God, in Christ? Pleasures forevermore! I think we are kind of afraid to leave the topic of sin and focus more wholly on Christ. We fear that the people will cast off restraint and there will remain no moral compass. But that fear is unfounded. It carries no weight. Christ is the heart's greatest pleasure, greater than any sin. We have turned to sin because we missed out on the glory that was originally intended for us. Something had to fill the void. But let people now taste of the glory (the glory which is Christ) and sin will soon lose its taste to them! Maybe we have grown up with a very dead view of religion. Ok. Maybe we've inherited a form of thinking which says that anything reeking of God or Christianity or church is dull, lifeless, and boring. Alright. But let's get one thing straight. The fact of the matter remains, and that fact is this: In Christ - in the experience of life there is to be found in fellowship with the Son of God - there are endless, unimaginable, indescribable pleasures waiting to be enjoyed. The scriptures are drenched in expectation of this, virtually dripping with anticipation of the fulfillment of this promise. Christ is our treasure. He is life's highest, best joy. And He is to be known. He is to be experienced. He is within us even now, as individuals and as a body, there to be encountered continuously... to be held in intimate embrace and gloried in as our greatest pleasure. To every hungry heart the Holy Spirit calls - "Come, taste and see that Christ is good!" CHRIST IS THE END OF BOREDOM TO ALL WHO LIVE IN FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM It was sometime while I was at work doing road construction. Maybe it was the ten whole hours I sat on the hood of my car staring down the belly of a manhole, making sure the water level didn't rise beyond a certain point (how exciting!). Or maybe it was while I was out flagging cars all day long by myself, when there were any cars at all, that is. At some point the realization began to dawn on me: through fellowship with the Lord I could overcome my boredom. That's a pretty neat concept, huh? A simple turning of the heart toward Christ within you is all it takes to maintain a touch with the Lord. For me it's been pretty hard, and it's taken a long time just to begin learning this ability. But it is there to be found. And enjoyed. I often wish that the church would preach more as a living reality the fact that Christ indwells us. The indwelling of Christ is not just some theological thing. It is a fact, meant to be known and enjoyed in actual experience. He is really there. There are so many many practical ways in which to know Christ. And then, in knowing Him, to find our lives, our behavior, our entire outlook on life - everything - completely transformed. God hasn't left it up to me to change myself. God knows it's beyond my ability. What He's done is given to me a perfect righteousness which sets me free from the burden of myself to pursue Him. He has made His home within me and invited me to walk with Him every moment of every day in the new Eden of my born again spirit. There I encounter the indwelling Christ. And as I daily know Him, not stopping to look to the left or the right at sin, at the future, or at any other thing, I find aspects of my outward life - like this one (boredeom) - being drastically transformed. Fellowship with Christ in you defeats boredom! How's that for practical! All of this holds true to the scriptures. It is only my own little way of saying what I believe Paul was getting at in 2 Corinthians 3:18: "Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord." It is in knowing Christ that we find our deliverance and our life. Every question finds its answer right here, every problem finds its solution here. There is no other method and no other secret. REMEMBERING ZION I'm gonna let some stuff right out of my heart in this one. There's a little verse in Psalm 137 that goes, "we wept when we remembered Zion." This, to me, is one of those verses that is packed full of meaning. I may be able to point out all the places where the "church" has gone wrong. I may be very eloquent in my deploring of all the faults and failures of the "institutional" church. And I may also be able to pick out some examples from the scriptures and show how "church" should really be done. But I've come to see that this is a cheap gift. It's not hard to do. But I would ask this: When you think back to early days of our faith, when you remember Zion in the midst of all this captivity we are surrounded by today in the Christian church and ministry, do you weep? Have you ever wept when you remembered Zion? The way things once were? The beauty, the majesty, the simplicity, the effectiveness of then as compared to what has become since? Do you carry the heartbreak of God within you? Do you feel the pain of God's people? Is every ounce of you yearning for God's own satisfaction, for Him to get what He is after? "If I forget Jerusalem," the man said, "then Lord let my right hand forget her cunning." In other words, let me be good for nothing. Let me be useless, for I am. When have you ever heard someone say to you, that one of the prime qualifications for a man or woman to enter the work of the Lord is, "do they weep when they remember Zion?" On a personal note, I would ask any friend of mine this one thing: if you ever see me working the work of the Lord on any other grounds than this, please stop me and tell me. Tell me to take a vacation or something. Force me to take a step back and re-evaluate why I am even involved. If my heart does not really and truly break over the things that God desires then I am not fit for ministry. here, every problem finds its solution here. 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