God Holds Horses

I got home from work the other day to find my wife exasperated. My son is 3, and well… He’s a boy. It had been a rough day. Dinner wasn’t any better. Josh barely touched his food and had to be sent to his room for repeatedly messing with the water jug on the table. After a little while I went to talk to him and told him that he still had to go back and finish his supper. He was still sitting with virtually untouched stir fry after everyone else was done. I was standing at the sink with my hands in soapy water, listening to Andrew Peterson’s “After the Last Tear Falls”. The line, “And in the end, the end is oceans and oceans of love and love again…” set me thinking.

It would be easy to righteously execute judgment on my son for his disobedience. It is often the very thing that I want to do most. But as I stood there, scrubbing a plate, I found myself longing to go and patiently feed my boy and tell him stories. He needs to learn to do things when he is told, and so this line of action may be counter-productive. It’s easy for him, and all children really, to borrow a parents will. I want him to eat, and I know that if I go to him and distract him from whatever seems unpleasant to him about the meal, I can get him to eat. It can actually be quite fun. He was once having a hard time with some peas. I told him that they were little clams trying to snap his tongue, and so he had to crunch them up and send them down into the pit before they could disable his mouth. It worked great. He borrowed my will. He made it his own. I didn’t coerce him at all.

But learning to stand on your own two feet is important. We need to be disciplined to do things for reasons other than simple desire. If someone always stepped in to help us along, we would be crippled in many ways. This is just what happens so often in life. We all know people that carry these handicaps. They can’t go into a new situation because someone they know and trust won’t be there with them. They suffer from emotional malnourishment because they won’t share their lives with anyone. And you could go on.

Back to Josh though, as I watched him stubbornly sulking in his seat, I got one of those glimpses into God’s heart, I think. I’ve so often heard that God restrains his great anger toward sinners and needs to hold back his holy wrath constantly or the lightening bolts would never stop flying. There is some truth to that I think, but his longsuffering is not merely or even mostly due to his anger. I think he has a much harder time with his love. He holds back his immense tenderness and kindness much more. My mind went to the story of the lost son in Luke. He was off with Daddy’s money with holes in his pockets and bankrupt of gratitude. But I saw that father, watching every day for his son’s return. It was “while he was still a long way off” that he ran to meet him, falling on his neck, kissing him and interrupting that carefully planned speech. I wonder how hard it was for that father to not set off himself to town and hunt down his prodigal.

This may sound strange, but I think Jesus is God running. I think that Christ is the personification of a sprinting God, while we are still a long way off. He ran to the cross to meet us. He is waiting there for us to come to our senses. He could come further, but will not force our love. His great love needs restraining, which is surprising when we see what that love has already done. To take our garbage, our sins, on himself. To take the blame, to take the fall for my wasted life, and then to bring me through death with him into resurrection and promise me everything. It’s hard to imagine more love.

So, sometimes I’m going to tell my kids stories and distract them a bit to get them through the lima beans of life. But other times I’m going to hold back a little. That’s love too. I can’t wait until I need no more growing or maturing and I can be a full recipient of God’s thunderous love. If you listen real carefully, you can hear the hoofs off in the distance…

BJ

Making Sense

Apparently, dogs have an astounding sense of smell. I read in the paper the other day about how one tracked a man who had stolen some cigarettes, right to his house. The only more incredible thing about that story is that the police search of the house ended when they found the guys feet sticking out from under his bed. But it’s a well-established fact that canines have this great olifactory sense. I guess the question I have is, if they smell so great, why do we so often find their noses in the same places? I can smell better than that.

Sensitivity is an underrated thing. People often use the word “sensitive” in a derogatory way. “Oh, she’s just sensitive.” Guys get called sensitive and it’s somehow an effeminate thing. But there are other words that mean the same thing, that are used to more positively praise someone. Quick, perceptive, even “kind.” Sensitivity is being able to receive small impulses and respond accordingly. I invited some people to my house the other night to watch a movie. I tried to pick one that was “clean” with good morals, and all that. We tend to remember films differently than they really are. This one was not so good. Sure, it had some good values in it, but was laced with innuendos of all the wrong kinds. About 20 minutes into the movie, I noticed that one of the guys had left. In another few minutes, his fiancé was gone too. At that point another sexual insinuation occurred and I turned it off. I went to go apologize to the two that had left. They bore me no hard feelings and understood this phenomenon of selective memory when it comes to films.

They were sensitive to wrong, to sin. They weren’t going to let it into their minds and hearts – even at the cost of getting something possibly good. They counted that cost. It wasn’t worth it. Where was my sense? People sometimes talk about Jesus often being found with the tax collectors and “sinners”. They talk about him “fitting in” with that crowd better than with the Pharisees and Scribes. I don’t think he fit in at all. I think he stuck out like a dove among crows. But that was why they liked him! He wasn’t with them doing what they were doing. The Creator-King was among the outcasts of his fallen creation to BE a message of repentance to them. What did he say to the woman caught in the “very act” of adultery? He said, “Go and leave your life of sin.” But he was there because they were receptive to him. He said to the religious types, “the sinners and tax collectors are entering the kingdom of heaven ahead of you.” He went where he would be received. He came to his own, the Jews, and his own did not receive him. No receptivity there. He then had to say, “Your house has left you desolate.”

People who lose one particular faculty of sense often find their others sharpened. A blind person can hear better than one with sight. A deaf person can see better than one with hearing still intact. I learned from my young friends who left the room, that sometimes you have to close your eyes to hear better. Bombardment of the senses can drown out the signals God sends. I want to be more receptive. I want to be more perceptive. I don’t want to miss what the Lord is telling me right now…

Christ never gave in to sin, and so has the greatest sensitivity to it. My sense of it has gotten dulled by giving in. This is yet another area where I have to trust something that he has and I don’t. I love the benediction in Jude… “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” That’s what Jesus is up to. I have to be tuned by him, like a virtuoso does his instrument - like a trainer does his sniffer-dog.

BJ

Refrigerators and Wineskins

My fridge door doesn’t close well. I discovered this one day after pouring some funny smelling milk onto my cereal. The bottom seal on the door doesn’t stick. Well, it does. You just have to give it a little nudge with your foot. We had to get used to doing this for the first week or so, but now it’s a reflex. When people come over to my house and help themselves to something in my fridge, they close the door, and I nonchalantly walk by after them and give it that little nudge it needs to keep my food serious… you know, not going funny.

This little reflex is just there now. I go over to my in-laws and I nudge their fridge door too. I treat all fridges equally – no favoritism here. Every refrigerator door I come in contact with gets a little kick from me. Sorry if I’ve kicked your fridge. It’s hard to change something like that. We get used to doing certain things that started for a good reason, but become unnecessary. I used to have a car with a door that needed a little tough love to close it. But my father-in-law doesn’t appreciate when I exhibit that love on his new Honda.

Jesus said, “New wine must be poured into new wineskins.” New situations call for new approaches. I can’t keep kicking the fridge if the door works. That would actually produce the opposite effect eventually. Counter-productive. But it’s more than that. Humanly speaking, some habits are necessary. Spiritually though, we need to think “new”. Growth is the idea here. When new wine went into a new wineskin, the wine fermented and grew. The wineskin had to keep up with this and got stretched. It was made of leather and had some give. I need to have some give. There is a new life inside of me – a life no less than the life of Jesus himself – and it’s growing. It’s occupying more room all the time, and it’s pushing the envelope.

I’m being stretched. It’s something I have to keep in the forefront of my mind because if I don’t, the experiences I am having will seem more like chastisement, or that I just haven’t gotten it right yet. Jesus is growing my spirit, and it’s not always a very comfortable thing. I love the way Psalm 119 puts it, “I will run the course of your commandments, for you will enlarge my heart.” There is purpose in it! There is something to be done. We are not just saved FROM things, but we are saved TO things also. True, we are saved from hell, death, sin, fear, the world, the devil, self – but also to life, good works God foreordained for us to walk in, heavenly citizenship, conformity to the image of the Son of God, and more.

I don’t want to dig myself into a rut. I don’t want to strap myself to the old contraption of tradition. Jesus was always stupefying people by doing things like picking grain on the Sabbath. That actually infuriated the Jews! Such a small thing, but they had sold themselves to something that was actually a gift to them from God. Jesus said, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.” I don’t want to get it backward like they did. I want the life inside me to dictate the form I take, and not vice versa. I need to listen to mature and wise believers, but wisdom doesn’t always come with age. Jesus was the wisest man alive when he was just a boy. Didn’t he say, “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?”

The Father’s business is life, and more specifically resurrection life. I am taking shape according to HIS life in me. I long to be changed, but He has to do it. I don’t want to go around kicking fridges for the rest of my life.

BJ

Method Is The Madness

Work begins each day with me standing at the coffee urn, thankful for the nice lady in the office who always puts it on. She doesn’t drink the stuff herself, but knows we do. The rest of us sure do. It goes fast. My brother wanted a cup one day, and finding the pot empty, came to me. He wanted me to make him some. I started to give him the old “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day…” speech. Nope. He still insisted that I make it for him and being not only my older brother, but also technically my boss, I complied. The soil from the fern pot in the foyer did the trick.

But making coffee takes a little skill, I guess. You don’t really want it too strong or too weak. We learn to do things and eventually have it down to a science, so to speak. Whether it’s the water to coffee ratio, when to apply the solder on a pipe, or when to stop sucking on the hose as your siphoning gas from your older brother’s van… We learn the method. “That’s not how you do it…” we find ourselves saying. “Let me show you how it’s done.” We seem to apply this thinking to everything. My brother had a method too. It was simply to get someone else to do it for him. Delegation is a funny thing. It needs to be learned by those who don’t know it, but it needs to be restrained by those who do. Anyway, we are methodical, generally speaking. We are Methodeers. Spellchecker didn’t like that one (it liked the name for itself though).

So, where does Christ come into this? I love Paul’s determination with the Corinthians, “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified”. Jesus always factors into the equation, doesn’t he? He brings “all things… together under one head”. Well, he didn’t rely on methods much. Take his healings for instance. He gave sight to many. Sometimes he simply touched their eyes. On one occasion he used his own saliva to apply to a man’s eyes, and on another he mixed his spit with clay for the same purpose. The outcome was the same (slightly altered with the man who saw “tree-people” at first), but the method was different. I think that was intentional. When was he not intentional? He did this to show us that God’s ways are not our ways. We think we can get it down to 3 easy steps, 5 simple guidelines or 7 days to victory. There is no method when it comes to the Lord. You cannot confine him. He lives by truth and righteousness and cannot lie or sin at all, but that’s hardly confinement. Like Lewis says, “He’s not a tame lion.”

This makes us rely much more on him. We lean harder on him when we realize that Jesus did not just come to “show” the way, but to “be” the way. He said, “I am the way…”. Change is what we all want, but it always eludes us. We chase self-improvement like the junk food that it is. It abates the hunger for a little while, but you end up worse-off. Think about it for a second; when did you experience the most change in your life? For most people, the answer to that question is at conversion. You meet Jesus and find him to be the cure, the ransom, the wings, the key, and the life that he is, and it drastically alters you. There are many amazing stories of broken addictions, transformed tempers, and infused unshakable joy accompanying that first confrontation with the cross. But from there, the common continuance of the story finds people looking out for the next book or the next speaker, or even the next doctrine to get them through the dry spots. A return to the cross and to Christ himself has no comparison. That was his rebuke to that great church in Ephesus, “You have left your first love.”

Madness may have method sometimes, but do not be dictated by a form or a pattern. Don’t give in to the temptation of doing something because people say “it works.” Jesus isn’t a means to an end. He’s both the means and the end. Let him be both. People may call you impractical or even mad, but they called Jesus that too. Do something out of the ordinary today. Make somebody some coffee.

BJ

Be Served

I am about to include a quote here that sometimes I wish I never read. It goes this way:

“You know how far along you are to becoming a servant by how you react when you are treated like one.”

Great. That means, whenever I squirm under someone’s thumb, I show how much less like Jesus I am. He is the greatest servant that ever lived - not only because he stooped so low to be one, but because he squirmed the least. He came to serve (he said so himself) and we find him not only washing his disciple’s feet, but healing multitudes, feeding thousands, teaching all who would listen, and inevitably giving his very life for the whole world. He didn’t resist the betrayal, the punches, the flailing, the lies, the mockery, or the nails. He never squirmed.

So what about me. How does Christ’s servant-hood help me to be a better servant? Well, I’m going to try to shock you and say – it doesn’t help one bit – at least as far as an example goes. It would be like trying to imitate Donovan Bailey (100m Gold). I’m not made of the right stuff to do it. Once again, the Christian life is ultimately not to be imitated, but to be reproduced. What’s the difference between imitation and reproduction? One is not real, while the other is. That’s the difference. An imitation can fool a lot of people, but the money is always on the genuine article. Christ is the servant. I will become more like him not because I’m good at emulating him, but because I let him serve ME. Read that again if you have to. When Jesus went to wash Peter’s feet, Peter said, “No Lord! May it never be!” He realized in part what Jesus was doing. The King of planets and atoms was bending down to clean up his filthy feet. But the Maker of water and wool replied, “unless I wash your feet, you have no part with me.” That’s an absolute statement. No part with Christ, unless he serves you.

The truth is, believers stop allowing Christ to work in their lives all the time. All the while, they wonder why he is not working. When we try to simply imitate the Lord, we undermine the cross. The cross says, “there is no possibility of human effort to achieve spiritual ends.” It’s a hard lesson to learn because it is the exact opposite of our nature. When we are treated like a servant, we feel it don’t we? We chafe under it. It is grating to us. We want to rise up and smite the oppressor! But to find the cross to be the operative agent in our lives, we need to be submissive to the very factors that led Christ to it.

The cross goes to the root of the problem. We want to be more like Christ, but WE are unable. But HE is able. The only way you will ever be more like Christ, is to trust that the cross took the best man that ever lived – and somehow made more of him! I don’t think that’s blasphemy. What I mean is, Jesus himself is the grain he talked about in John’s gospel, that went into the ground, died and REPRODUCED itself. The cross was the means by which the Lord Jesus Christ grew. His Body is growing. We are that body. It’s a strange thought, I know, but I have to continually submit to this idea – this truth – that God is not forming some kind of club or institution. He is supernaturally, super-organically growing the Bride of Christ. Just as Eve was taken out of Adam, made of the very same stuff (woman means “taken out of man”), we are made out of Jesus – not that we share in the “I AM” divinity or “become God” or anything like that. It’s hard to put into words, but the Word has been put into us.

So let Jesus serve you. He doesn’t get tired of it. We really don’t even test his inexhaustibility do we? Let’s try. Watch him work. He does all things well, you know. Trust the One who both could not do more and would not do less. Isn’t that a good definition for a servant? He’s waiting…

BJ

The Death Sentence

If today was your absolutely, positively last day on earth - what would you eat for breakfast? Sounds like an ad for “Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs” (thank you Calvin & Hobbs). But really, what would you do? Would you skip that morning meal in favour of rushing around madly to tell the ones you care about how much you love them? How would each moment go down in history? People would be interested to know how the person who knew the precise moment of his death actually lived that last day.
7:45 am – hugged parents for an hour
8:45 am – apologized to neighbours for never telling them about Christ
9:03 am – began giving away all earthly possessions to the less fortunate
10:12 am – begged passersby in the street to not waste one more second living as if they deserved their lives….

I think we all have a list similar to the one above. The question is, why is that behaviour only excusable on our last day? Why are we waiting? Well, we don’t know the hour of our demise. We just know that we’re dying every day. That thought should help us, really. Paul writes to the Corinthians, saying:

“We had the death sentence in us that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”

In essence, he's saying, we’re dead already. Our independent lives died with Jesus on the cross. If you have been reborn through faith in Jesus, this is reality. Haven’t you found that so many things you pour yourself into come to nothing, while circumstances beyond your control seem to come through time and time again? Life is NOT what you make of it. We make death. That’s what we’re good at. We conjure poisons and then trick ourselves into drinking them. No more. The life of Christ is not something we fabricate or legislate. It is summed up in the word “resurrection”. Born of ashes. Dry bones growing flesh. The tomb is the front door.

What does this have to do with living your last day, every day? Don’t be fooled into believing God is limited. We think he actually needs us most of the time. You see, it’s better than that. He doesn’t need us, he wants us. Anyone who has children understands the pleasure of having your kids “help” you. It’s a joy to watch them fumble around, trying their best, doing something in a half an hour that you could have done in 3 minutes. But still, God wants us and includes us in his work. Live as if God will fill in every hole, bridge every chasm, quench every blaze, and move every mountain. Look impossible situations that open up in front of you right in the face – and don’t turn away.

Jesus knew precisely when he was going to die. He shouted, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” and then he died. The centurion overseeing the gruesome affair couldn’t believe it. No one hanging on a cross that long has enough lung capacity to shout like that. Your lungs begin to fill with fluid due to a collapsed diaphragm and there’s just no way you can shout. But Jesus shouted. This information was enough for a roman soldier to say, “this was the Son of God!” Jesus knew the moment of his death and lived for years in that light. He knew it would be the cross, he knew Judas would betray him, he knew Peter would deny him, he knew the world would not understand, and still he did it. If you think the Lord isn’t able to use you, where you are, this very day, then you actually have the perfect situation for God to be glorified in your life. Thank him for it. Get ready for it. Oh… and save me some Sugar Bombs.

BJ