threethirty

No Debating

2007-10-16T14:36:00.001-05:00

I have a penchant for useless disputes. I’ve actually argued that Timothy and Titus were in fact the same person. I once got so swept away with predestination that I brought my dear wife to tears telling her that our kids may not be elect. Extremes entice me. I’m not into rappelling or white-water rafting, but as far my mind goes… Surf’s up! Being prone to the edges as I am, I need the balance that so many offer me in the Body of Christ. They reign me in time after time. The Bible itself does that too, if I let it. It’s amazing – I can spend hours reading each side of some theological slugging-match, and go away feeling so far from the Lord. Then, simply opening my Bible to read a passage totally unrelated leaves my jaw dropping at how ludicrously wondrous the Lord Jesus is. There’s no debating that.

The centrality and supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ is so beyond dispute that I can safely spend all my days enraptured by Him, without a care for whoever might think such-and-such. It’s a freeing thing. Knowing that my personal theology is flawed in countless places, I can rest in the fact that I can’t get Jesus wrong. He’s made it too difficult to do so. “Altogether Lovely” is His uncontested title. What aspect of His life has ever been maligned? Except for the mystifying way the likes of Bertrand Russell may object to the withering of the fig-tree, the Lord Jesus remains the highest example of character the world has ever known. Religions of the world attest to his greatness. He has won the admiration of both the Believer and the Atheist – and the Agnostic. And He keeps winning mine.

Paul said, “To live is Christ.” Jesus is life. He’s a safe place to waste my time. He’s a worthwhile space to clear my calendar (and my head) for. His life began under a magnetic star that drew those thrice-gifted worshippers. All we know of his boyhood was that he baffled Rabbi’s not with answers, but with questions. As Mary searched for Him among her relatives on the road, she was simply rehearsing for the day when He would set His face like a flint toward Jerusalem once again, to be lost in the darkness of death. In both cases, He was found on the third day.

Whether He was getting the Man of the Tombs some clothes, or endearingly calling the Syro-Phoenician woman a dog to draw out her faith in Him – I can’t help being enamored with the Lord Jesus. Mary chose the better part than Martha, and her Lord promised that it would not be taken from her. Christ will defend me when I do the same. Sitting at His feet, I hear Him say the most with the fewest words – “Abide in me, and I in you.” May my reputation be that I am so heavenly-minded (because that’s where Christ is) that I am useless down here. My uselessness is no limit to Christ. “It is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me.” Fixated on Him, I am removed as a hindrance to what He wants accomplished here.

I will be distracted again by various winds of doctrine. I will get caught up in other vacuous endeavours. But at the back of the unrest I will find as I engage in all that has nothing to do with Christ – there I will find a longing to examine the face of Jesus with the eyes faith has provided. An open bible will be curtains thrown wide, tied-together, and climbed down, to escape from the Christ-less confine I make for myself all the time. He’s been throwing pebbles at my window as far back as I can remember. “Behold I stand at the door and knock…”

BJ

Selfish Faith

2007-10-01T10:32:00.000-05:00

Only sinners go to heaven. I can still hear the voice of the preacher who phrased it that way. There was a touch of flabbergast in it and down-right stupefaction - “Only sinners go to heaven!” It’s a crazy thought. But it’s right. Here’s the way Paul phrased it in Romans 4:5 “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” – It’s about believing “on Him who justifies the ungodly” – On Jesus who makes right the wrong. When faith is placed in the one who makes sinners righteous by his death, salvation follows. That means that faith can’t change the fact that one is a sinner. It must be possible for faith itself to be an unrighteous act.

There has been a controversy in Theological circles about whether or not people can believe on Christ in an unregenerate state. I think I might have just glazed your donut. I need a can of Vacant-Expression-Be-Gone. There’s nothing like big theomological words to shut down discussion. Ok, let me say it another way: Faith sounds like a good thing, so how can bad people do that? Well, faith can be a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be. You can place your faith in the wrong object, and then it’s not so good is it? You can believe that the Sock-Gremlins have created one giant knee-high and are planning to slip it over the CN Tower. But even when faith is placed in the right thing – the Lord Jesus – it still might not qualify for being a good thing.

You have to ask yourself, why do people put their faith in Jesus? Well, they want to be saved. It’s a pretty selfish thing, really. You’re looking out for number one. It involves the instinct of self-preservation. They know they cannot save themselves, because they are sinners through-and-through. They reach out with the hand of faith to take the free gift of salvation. Can that be considered a righteous act worthy, even in part, of the salvation offered? Well, if you think a depraved person selfishly taking something that only benefits him or herself is a righteous act, then that’s a strange kind of righteousness, for sure.

Sin has left no part of our existence untouched. There is no little vestige of pre-fall life in us. We are in complete and utter need of saving. Even the faith we would exercise to receive the gift of life in Christ is messed up. Belief precedes life. That’s the Biblical order of things. But faith is not seen by God as worthy of righteousness. The way our verse about puts it is: “his faith is accounted for righteousness”. That’s a re-valuation of faith. It’s like a pre-Euro currency today being converted into gold. It’s not a good deal. But it’s the deal God has offered. His graciousness has made it possible.

So, only sinners go to heaven, and a sinner’s selfish faith in a self-less Christ is the way. Depravity and faith are friends after all. There is more to the story of salvation than this, of course. Is there any divine influence (or wooing) that goes on before a person exercises faith in Christ? There sure is. But we cannot think for one moment that any given person might have no possible chance of being born again. That would negate the words, “God is not willing that any should perish.” Faith is our responsibility, but that doesn’t mean that we have a hand in saving ourselves. God does it all. He gets all the glory. He even uses our selfishness to bring us to him.

BJ

Calvin And Jesus

2007-09-28T08:45:00.000-05:00

Calvin – “I've decided to be a fatalist. All events are preordained and unalterable. Whatever will be will be. That way if anything bad happens, it's not my fault. It's fate.”
Hobbes trips Calvin and responds – “Too bad you were fated to do that.”
Calvin shouts back – “THAT WASN'T FATE!”

Bill Watterson named our favourite 6 year old after John Calvin. Predestination is a hard thing to avoid if you spend any time tinkering with Calvinism. But I have a question for John, or anyone who would call themselves a Calvinist. It’s this: Can you really believe all that you say you do and still say that justification is by faith? Where is that coming from, you ask… OK, I’ll back up a little. (beep, beep, beep…)

Calvinism says that regeneration precedes faith. English translation: You have to get the AC hooked up to the bolts sticking out of your head before you can believe. That appears to be Calvin’s view of us “dead in trespasses and sins” – We’re all Frankensteins. If that’s the case, life begins not with faith, but with, well… life. God must just zap us, regenerating us, and then we start to believe. So, justification, or giving us a right standing with God, is because He regenerated us, not because of faith. Faith then, would be a byproduct, not a cause.

Now don’t get me wrong. Faith doesn’t save anybody. Yes, you read that correctly. Jesus saves, not faith. It’s the object of faith that makes saving faith saving, not the faith. I don’t have to have a certain kind of faith or a particular degree of faith to be saved. I just have to have my faith (or confidence) in the right object – The Lord Jesus. He even saves those with weak faith (Romans 14:1). But if we are honest Calvinists, we can’t say that justification is by faith. We would have to say that justification is by regeneration. Faith isn’t a part of the equation at all.

As much as I appreciate Calvin’s contribution to Theology at a very dark time in the history of the Church, there’s been quite a bit of light since. He was dealing with folks that had stripped the Gospel of grace, and made the shed blood of Christ insufficient to save anyone. We can thank the Lord for the Reformers in many ways. But Calvin believed in infant baptism and Luther thought James should be fired from the Canon like a circus performer. They didn’t have the monopoly on truth, to say the least. They leaned heavy on the Sovereignty of God, and not heavy enough on man’s responsibility. They got off kilter.

We are “justified by faith” (Romans 5:1), and not by regeneration. Jesus asked sinful and utterly depraved people to believe in him, because in fact they could. It would have been an evil taunt otherwise. When Hobbes tripped Calvin, he discovered that even in a predetermined world, there was a little elbow-room. There’s not much, and it’s no “island of righteousness”, but there’s just enough to say, “Lord I believe – Help my unbelief!” You know what, even “dead faith” is a candidate for salvation. That’s how gracious the Lord Jesus is.

BJ

More Than All Of This

2007-09-19T08:40:00.000-05:00

More than seeing harvest moons
Swaying hills of green or seas of brilliant blue
More than seeing snow-capped heights
Dawns give birth to days or stars redeeming nights

More than all of this, is a glimpse of Jesus’ face
More than all of this, is a glance from Him
May this hope of hopes make all else beside it look dim

More than seeing smiles chase tears
Hearts allowed to love or hopes abandon fear
More than seeing foes forgive
Conscience coming clean or life still left to live

More than all of this, is a glimpse of Jesus’ face
More than all of this, is a glance from Him
May this hope of hopes make all else beside it look dim

More than seeing angels fly
Scriptures etched in stone or written in the sky
More than seeing earth made new
Heaven’s golden street or loved ones gone too soon

More than all of this, is a glimpse of Jesus’ face
More than all of this, is a glance from Him
May this hope of hopes make all else beside it look dim

BJR

Have You Seen My Glasses?

2007-08-15T08:46:00.000-05:00

A story is told about a teenage boy who asked his parents for a car, for his birthday. So, on the big day, it was rather disappointing to him to find that his folks had got him a new Bible, with no car in sight. He was angry, and going to his room, he threw the box the Bible was in against the wall, leaving it to lie on the floor where it fell. Some time passed - days turning into weeks - until one day, the boy picked up the box to take a look at his birthday present. As he flipped open the cover of the Bible, he was amazed to find a key taped to the inside flap. Running to his parents’ room, he showed them what he found. They then told him where the car was that belonged to that key. Yes, this is most likely a fictional story, but I think it illustrates the point: God’s Word is the key to understanding all we have in Christ – and that we have all in Christ! The problem is that so often we are unaware of our spiritual resources in Jesus.

You’ve probably been approached by someone looking for their glasses, who is unknowingly sporting them on their head. You almost don’t want to tell them, but with a snicker you finally do. Looking into a mirror would have saved that person some embarrassment. The Bible is a mirror we can look into to see who we are in Christ, and all that we have available to us. We need not look anywhere else. If we are not looking, we assume that God has not given us all we need. When we do look, we find that our circumstances do not bar anything we have in Christ. The truth of what we have in him actually changes the way we handle the things we face in life.

In a German prison camp in World War II, unbeknownst to the guards, the Americans built a makeshift radio. One day news came that the German high command had surrendered, ending the war—a fact that, because of a communications breakdown, the German guards did not yet know. As word spread, a loud celebration broke out. For three days, the prisoners were hardly recognizable. They sang, waved at guards, laughed at the German shepherd dogs, and shared jokes over meals. On the fourth day, they awoke to find that all the Germans had fled, leaving the gates unlocked. The time of waiting had come to an end.* They knew the truth, and lived like it was true! That can be your story and mine. Believe God. Hold him to his word.

The Children of Israel had been delivered out of Egypt. They had crossed the parted Red Sea, and were now in the Promised Land, but the first thing they found was the bitter waters of Marah. They complained to Moses, but God solved their problem. The Lord showed Moses a tree. Moses then tore it up and threw it into Marah, and the water became drinkable – sweet. May the Lord keep pointing us to the tree – The Cross of Christ.

BJ

*Philip Yancey tells this story in an article published by Christianity Today.

Crown Of Thorns

2007-07-20T08:36:00.001-05:00

All the earth is reeling
From the curse of Adam’s sin
Fields are choked with briars
That have made the harvest thin
Then among them like a lily
Jesus Christ was born
Like no other earthly king
He wore a crown of thorns

Innocent but treated
Like he twisted it himself
On his heart was not one mark
Of sin or death or hell
Like the ram that Abraham
Found caught there by its horns
As a spotless sacrifice
He wore a crown of thorns

Being made a curse for us
It sunk into his brow
Wearing on his head the shame
Of what our sin brought down
Hanging on a tree he knew
That all he’d get was scorn
Dying on that cross for us
He wore a crown of thorns

Lost In The Folds

2007-07-10T13:35:00.000-05:00

It was grace from the first, and it's grace to the end
There's forgiveness that even called Judas a friend
Inexhaustible grace all eternity never could spend

From the one who was rich, yet for us became poor
And it's poverty beggaring our grace for sure
Because it was what we would call mercy that Jesus endured

I am lost in the folds of the grace Jesus wears
Stained by his blood because he wasn't spared
In the train of his robe I can hide at his feet
The temple was filled with it, so I know it covers me

God forbid that I might trample Christ underfoot
But if I did the blood on my shoes would be what
Would then plead for me, as right in good standing I would stay put

And the way that I keep from behaving that way
Is to know that I'm covered by that kind of grace
How can I grieve the one that has loved me and taken my place

I am lost in the folds of the grace Jesus wears
Stained by his blood because he wasn't spared
In the train of his robe I can hide at his feet
The temple was filled with it, so I know it covers me

BJR

We See Jesus

2007-03-19T08:09:00.000-05:00

Look at Jesus. See Him. Set your sights on Him. Use the eyes that faith has given you and fix a steady gaze on the Lord Jesus Christ. “Behold the Lamb of God…” John the Baptist said. “Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Wrote the mysterious writer to the Hebrews. Be like those Greeks who said, “Sirs, we would like to see Jesus.” Put yourself in the shoes of Peter, James and John who after seeing Jesus transfigured alongside Moses and Elijah, and cowering under that great voice from Heaven “looked up and saw Jesus only.” See Him in the rock that Moses struck to get water for Israel. See Him in the lamb that was watched for a while, penned off from the others before it was sacrificed. See Him in the tree that was ripped out of the ground and thrown into the bitter waters at Mara to make it sweet. Watch as He makes a man, who on his own saw only tree-people, look up and see Him. Watch as He speaks Mary’s name so that she can recognize His face. Watch as He breaks bread for that couple in Emmaus so that their eyes would be open too. Listen even to Pilate who would say, “Behold the man!” Even in your times of faithlessness, be like Peter who kept his eyes on the Lord - Even after swearing to a little girl that he never knew the man. Hear the words of Paul who in the middle of writing a letter to the Ephesians would pray to the end of having, “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” We need to really see Jesus. Not only in his earthly ministry, but like John who after seeing the glorified Christ said, “when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.” May we have the simple faith to look and live. Be like those who were bit by the snakes, and simply took the Lord at His word, looking up at the bronze serpent for healing. Jesus told Nicodemus that that was Him. May the hope of seeing Christ face to face one day have a purifying effect on us, just as John wrote – “he who has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure.” May we find ourselves changed, not by self-effort, but to know that we “with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” See Christ crucified and know your sin is dealt with. See Christ risen and know you are only alive as life has to do with Him. See Him as the great Vine and yourself as a branch in Him - irremovable. See Him as the great Shepherd and yourself a precious sheep – irreplaceable. See Him seated at God the Father’s right hand and know that you are now seated with him There. See Him standing for our brother Stephen while he was being stoned for his witness that Jesus is the Son of Man. See Him appear before Saul of Tarsus declaring that he who touches any believer touches Christ Himself. See Him. Take a long hard look. Nail-scarred, love-worn, joy-brimming over, and a countenance like the sun shining in its strength. In a world that is distracted by an endless number of useless facades, we say along with all who long for His appearing, “we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus.”

BJ

Mere Men

2007-01-26T16:59:00.001-05:00

Mere Men. It sounds like some aquatic super-race that can’t spell very well. But “mere men” is a biblical phrase that I’d like to rant about for a little while, if you don’t mind. The whole sentence is: “For you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?” The word “mere” was added to the original Greek text that just read, “men”. But I think it helps us to see what Paul is getting at. He was writing to believers in Jesus. Saved people. Born-again, heavenly citizens, who were not acting like it. They were acting like people who had never been quickened by the Spirit of God. They were acting like mere men.

It’s not just that they were sinning. They were. There was some bad stuff going down in Corinth. A guy was sleeping with his mother-in-law. Not good. But it wasn’t just that. It was not all “sin” per se. They were acting like being a Christian was like being a janitor. It was a job. And… they got off work sometimes and took off their uniforms. Or they went on vacation from their little offices, with plaques that read, “Joe Smith: Christian of the Board” or something like that. I guess we would call them “Sunday Christians” today. They knew the lingo, they knew when to show up, but they let their hair down everywhere else. It reminds me of a song by Andrew Peterson, called “Come, Lord Jesus”, where he sings, “I carried my cross through the dens of the wicked - you know I blended in just fine.” That was Corinth. And maybe that’s you. Maybe it’s me.

The truth is that if you have come to know that Jesus died for you, as you, and that you died with him that day – then you are over. You’re done. Kaput. You’re not human anymore. That died with Christ. The bible calls it “Adam”. Jesus was the “Last Adam”, sending him to extinction. Jesus is the firstborn among many – You included. Maybe you don’t know this, but when you got saved, a seed was dropped into what used to be you. Your old life is just fertilizer. Soil. Life like Christ got planted into that ground and the new you (in Christ) is coming up. It’s hard to see sometimes. It’s easier to just act like the old man, because that dirt is still available to you. But the new life is there. It’s the real you. It’s not mere man, it’s “Christ in you”. It’s growing, as the Son shines on it.

There is a new super-race on the planet. It’s not dyslexic half-fish people. Members of the very Body of Christ are walking the globe. There is a unification of believers in Jesus, that makes life – Christ. “To live is Christ…” we read. Singular. Not the plural of “men” with their varying degrees of carnality. But the simple singularity of Jesus. HE is our life. Not US. It’s like it says in the letter to the Ephesians – “You have not so learned Christ.” The words, life and Christ become synonymous. The question is no longer, how should I live? It is, what is the shape that Christ is taking in me? If you are saved, He is taking shape. “I am in birth pangs until Christ be formed in you.” Paul wrote. Mere men is earthly, earthy – dirt. Let is be soil for the seed of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” Grow up and out of it. You don’t see flowers burying themselves.

BJ

Double-Dark

2006-12-19T11:31:00.001-05:00

It gets dark early this time of year. Walking home last night at around five o’clock, it felt like ten or eleven. I found myself looking up at a cloud-covered sky, as if it wasn’t dark enough already. The clouds obscured most of the stars that would normally be visible. You see, darkness is a gift. Without it, we would never be able to see outside our own atmosphere. We have a transparent one, which allows us to see farther than we can ever travel. Nebulae, dying stars and distant galaxies become visible only at night. During the day, the sun in it’s strength paints the sky blue, covering the outer blackness with it finger-like rays. But at night, those fingers are retracted into a fist and we are presented with a vision of the bigness of space. There is no known end to it – even though we know there must be, because God is outside of it. But it reminds us of Him, doesn’t it? Our tiny blue planet should not make us feel insignificant. Our smallness should endear us to the God who would visit us in the person of the Lord Jesus.

But it was cloudy last night. Doubly-dark. No stars. There was another kind of covering over the sky that wrapped the night. It brought the sky closer to me. It was cold, but close. You see, God is a redeemer. He takes things that normally would evoke fear or despair and turns them on their heads. Places that are devoid of hope become new springs of certainty after the Lord has been there. He went to the desert and the wild animals came to Him, turning a place of danger into a petting-zoo. He went into a judgmental synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand, turning a place of cynicism into a house of belief. And He went into a tomb, after turning a garbage heap into a ladder to heaven, and He transformed that dark hole in a hill into a place of rest and peace. For me, He has redeemed clouds too.

When Jesus was taken up into heaven, we read that the clouds received Him. The angels said that He would return in the same manner that He left. That means it will involve clouds. I can’t help but to see clouds as harbingers of hope. So even in the double-dark of a cloudy night, when the stars can’t see me, the faith that gives me eyes will enable me to see the Lord, just waiting for the last soul to receive Him as Saviour. He is the redeemer of hearts and clouds. David of old once said, “Even the dark is light to you.” I can see him even in the black. May I not make the mistake of missing Him when it’s light too.

There is a night coming for the world that will have no hope in it. Those who will not own Christ as the light who has come to pierce their darkness, will remain AS darkness. May the light that He has put into me shine through the cracks of my life and cause a hunger for that light in others. May my upturned gaze be a mirror to reflect Him down here.

I heard recently about a town in the hills of Italy that has no direct sunlight for several months during the year, due to being nestled at the foot of a steep mountain. They put up a huge mirror on a far slope and have brought light to that town. May we see bringing the light of Christ to the lives of all just as important a thing. And may clouds be a reminder to us as well.

BJ

The Great Intruder

2006-12-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

“Despite our efforts to keep Him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked ‘No Entrance’ and left through a door marked ‘No Exit.’ ” Peter Larson

I Asked God

2006-11-06T09:39:00.000-05:00

It's incredible to find from the lives of other Believers, a lifetime of lessons condensed into a few simple thoughts and words. Here is one such example:

I Asked God

I asked God for strength that I might achieve.
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked God for health that I might do greater things.
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy.
I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

Unknown Author (One attributes it to a Confederate Soldier)

Gone Millenial

2006-09-26T08:09:00.000-05:00

Amillenial. It’s a word that might not mean much to you. It may warm your heart or send you on a verbal tirade all the same. My question is, how do you say it anyway? Is it ay-millenial or ah-millenial? The first time I came across it was in print, so I read it with the same intonation as “atypical” or “asymptomatic”. But apparently, I’m wrong. Most people say ah. Open up and say… Sorry, couldn’t resist. So, I’m going to have to say “ah” too or people will be forced to correct me. I could make a good case for “ay” but I’ll swallow my pride and try to speak the same language as everyone else. Whether or not I actually agree with the thinking behind that term is another matter.

Amillenial thinkers believe that there is no such thing as a particular literal period of a thousand years foretold in Scripture. They think that when it is mentioned 6 times in Revelation 20:1-8, it is only figurative. They think it does not refer to an actual one thousand year period of time. They would quote 2nd Peter 3:8 which says, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.” What this actually accomplishes, I’m not sure. It might be helpful though for all of us to back up to verse 4 in 2nd Peter 3. There we find Peter addressing a hypothetical question from a group of folks he calls “scoffers”. This is what they say, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” This is very helpful verse when considering what God has been up to on the planet until now, and what he is still planning to do. These “scoffers” are saying that it’s always been the same. From the time God made everything to now it has been the same day in and day out. They would be quick to quote Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Once again, they would be right, but I’m not sure what that accomplishes either. God is the same, but has it always been the same for us here?

Peter didn’t think so. He said, “OK, what about the flood then? Remember that? Every human on the planet died except for 8 souls.” Does that sound like it’s always been the same here? God judged the planet. He says he’s going to do it again. But the next time won’t be water, it will be with fire. Literally. Not symbolically or metaphorically. Fire. Elements burnt up in a fervent heat, Peter says. It’s going to happen. Before that time, there is going to be a literal period of one thousand years where Jesus is going to literally sit on the throne of David and reign on the earth as King. Did I say literally yet? I think you’re getting the picture. How many literal prophecies where fulfilled in the 1st advent of Jesus? Hundreds. From big ones like being of the physical human line of David, to little ones like drinking gall and vinegar, and riding on a donkey’s colt. These were specific predictions that came to pass exactly the way they were foretold. This should encourage us to no end. God means what he says! He doesn’t play games with us, making us do mental gymnastics to figure out what he is trying to say. The hard thing for us to do is to just take it at face value. We are far too prone to allegorize and spiritualize simple things that God never meant us to alter that way. He makes wise the simple, doesn’t He?

Paul warned the Corinthians to not let anyone lead them away from “the simplicity that is in Christ.” It’s simple. Whenever something is symbolic in Scripture, Scripture will tell you that it is! Let’s not make things complicated. The Bible was meant to be read in a plain, straightforward way that will be the highest blessing to those who view it so. So, if you would call yourself amillenial, don’t call yourself names. It’s not nice. Seriously though, if God can’t be taken literally, how can you be sure of what the figurative sense ever is? The next time someone asks you what eschatological persuasion you are, say “Aye-millenial” – Pirate’s can be theologians too!

BJ

Sin and Singular

2006-09-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

I am going to tell you something that may shock you. After you read it, please read on before you label me a heretic. I’ve chosen my words carefully. Here it is: Sin was not forgiven on the cross. Keep reading. I told you that I chose my words intentionally. I believe that sins were forgiven by the shed blood of Christ on the cross, but not sin. What’s the difference, you might ask? There is a monumental difference between sins and sin. Scripture makes the difference, and therefore so must we. An often misquoted verse is John 1:29 where John the Baptist sees Christ and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Sometimes people mistakenly say “sins” there. John wasn’t talking about forgiveness. He could have said, “who forgives the sins of the world” and that would be true, but he didn’t. The thing is, sins can be forgiven, but sin cannot. By it’s very nature it cannot be forgiven.

Sins are either acts (or thoughts) committed that offend another party, or they are acts omitted that should have been done which offend another party. Sins are lying, stealing, murdering, coveting, etc… Forgiveness is when a person whom these acts have hurt decides to pardon the offender of the just consequences of those actions. But Sin (singular) is the very principle by which those acts are committed. Sin is the driving force behind sins. You can forgive a person for stealing money to pay for their addiction to heroin, but you don’t forgive the addiction. You have that person sent to rehab to get clean of it. Sin is like addiction. You don’t forgive it – you get rid of it. You take it away… “who takes away the sin of the world.”

Sins bring us guilt. We need to be forgiven so that guilt does not cripple us for life. God knows this. He’s been in the forgiving business for a long time. But he has begun a new thing with the Cross of Christ. He has been a Deliverer in the past, but not to the degree he is now through Jesus. Romans 8:3 tells us what he did. “He condemned sin in the flesh.” Sin was condemned. It was put away. It was taken away by the cross. Christians sin still. It’s a sobering thing to see what Believers in Jesus are still capable of, but they don’t have to. Before salvation, Sin was a supernatural force guiding life like puppet strings on a marionette. We danced whenever that nature moved its fingers. But the cross cut those strings. Simple belief in Jesus makes it true of every Babe in Christ. It takes a long time to realize it, after being used to sin having it’s way with us. But when you “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin” you start to see what Jesus was up to when he chose to die for you. He wasn’t willing to simply forgive you and leave you just as prone to earn the right to ask for pardoning again! He wanted you to be free from sin.

You’ve probably had someone at some point in your life come up to you and ask you if you’ve seen their glasses. All the while those glasses are sitting on top of the head of this person, and you just have to laugh and tell them where they are. The truth of our new life in Christ is like that. We need to be told and retold and reminded and refocused on a regular basis. I need it. You need it. We all need it. When we are tripped up with sin, we need to forgive each other and remind each other of how free we are in Christ.

BJ

A Ship Called Disciple

2006-08-16T15:45:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Hard work is the reward for hard work.” It’s usually said by a 70 year old in a stern voice, not sounding very rewarded. It’s like they’re really saying, “I’ve been miserable for 70 years working hard, so you should be miserable too!” Is hard work its own reward? Well, characteristics developed in a person through discipline is a benefit of hard work. But that’s not hard work. It’s characteristics. Not the same thing, clearly. But it wouldn’t be as catchy if it was, “Disciplined character is the reward for hard work.” Discipline, eh?

Jesus called his followers “disciples”. It means, “pupils” or “learners”. He was always teaching them. He is the master teacher, really. He taught using these little stories called Parables. You can cram a lot more instruction and wisdom into a story than you can with just informative speech. It’s really hard to exhaust Jesus’ parables. You can read them again and again and always find something new. He also taught by doing. He was his own instructive illustration. He healed people to teach multiple lessons through one event. The healing of the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath is just packed with wisdom for us. He did instruct his disciples using plain speech, but they didn’t often understand what he was saying even then. But, they were Jesus’ disciples. Sometimes it was a bunch of them, and sometimes just the twelve and the women. They didn’t always (or even often) learn the lesson, but they were trying.

One thing I love about God’s Word is that it is God’s words. Some may think that the Bible is God’s thoughts put down in language, but Theologians have this term, “plenary inspiration” meaning that the actual words in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek are inspired by God. I have come to agree with this whole-heartedly. There is a real blessing for the student of the Bible who believes this. They alone will find treasures there that no one else will. I say all this because of the word “disciple.” Did you know that it is not used even once in any of the Epistles? It’s interesting to find that Jesus, who called his followers “disciples” does not use the term after he rises from the grave. He calls them “brethren” and “children”, but never “disciples.”

Now you might be thinking, “hold on for a sec – Doesn’t Jesus say, Go into all the world and make disciples, or something like that…” Well, lets take a look at Matthew 28:19 for a minute. It’s often called The Great Commission. It goes like this, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them…”(NKJV) That phrase “make disciples” is better translated “teach” as in the KJV. It’s most often found in the NT as “instruct” or “teach”. Why does this matter? If Jesus doesn’t call those who believe in him for salvation, “disciples”, then why do we insist on “discipleship” so much? Are we simply learners? Or are we more? Jesus called his followers, “brothers” only after he rose. Peter, James, Jude, Paul and the writer to the Hebrews drop “disciple” like a stone. We are Saints, Living Stones, New Creations, Brethren, His Body, The Church, Children of God, Joint-Heirs with Christ…. Not just students. Yes, we need to be taught. But it is not simply instruction that we needed.

Through Jesus death and resurrection we have been born from above and that is the thing that every Christian needs to learn more than anything else. The Gospel is good news for Christians. Extra, extra, read all about it!

BJ

Become Who You Already Are

2006-08-11T15:53:00.000-05:00

On my wedding day, a man wearing a wooden tie said something at the reception that I have never forgotten – and not just because he was wearing a tie made on a table saw. He actually told me that he had hoped to wear his tinfoil suit, but it wasn’t ready yet. But, back to what he said, I listened to my friend as he told me to “love as if you’ve never been hurt” and to “become who you already are.” The first statement is profound, for sure. Love without the fear of someone not reciprocating that love. That’s powerful. The second statement didn’t hit me right away. It’s like a hand-me-down sweater. I’ve had to grow into it quite a bit since then. It sounded flaky at first, but I don’t think so any more.

What does it mean to “become who you already are”? The easiest illustration is that of a royal prince who for matters of safety is brought up with peasants. He is of noble blood, but due to his up-bringing, he feels like a peasant, acts like a peasant and thinks like a peasant. “Peasant” is made of two words: “peas” and “ant”. They’re both little things that can get squashed, and some people eat both. I wonder what chocolate-covered peas taste like? Vegetable fondue? Anyway… sorry about that. This princely peasant, not knowing his royalty, goes about his life oblivious to the resources at his disposal. A messenger of the king even comes to him and says, “The King says it’s time to come home now. Take your place as the prince!” But the peasant just laughs and thinks someone is playing a joke on him. The truth is, I’m of noble blood now, because someone who was born a king died for me. I need to live accordingly.

The Queen of England does not hang out at Mac’s, taking the air out of car tires. I do. Kidding, of course. She acts according to her standing right? She lines her state up to her standing. Any believer in the Lord Jesus for eternal life has a position IN Christ. But he or she may have a condition that does not line up with that. I believe that is mostly due to the ignorance as to the standing that Christian actually has. When a person gets a hold of the idea that they are the very Temple of the Spirit of God, a new creation in Christ, a heavenly citizen, a co-heir with Christ, seated with him in heaven, blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and a part of the very Body of Christ, then he or she will begin to have their lives line up with that reality.

It seems to me that very many Christians are like a man walking around complaining about their lack of a car. They have sore feet and never get anywhere on time and they grumble about it. All the while there is a brand new car parked in the driveway and the keys are in his or her pocket! Maybe it’s like they’ve even found the car, but they’re just pushing it around, getting exhausted in the process. The abundant life Jesus offers us is the same one where HIS yoke is easy and HIS burden is light because he does the work. We are just along for the ride, trying to stay out of the way.

So become who you already are. If you have received Christ as your life, then say with the Apostle Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” And then DO all things! Don’t just say it. Be a believer in the truest sense. Hold God to his word. He says these things are so. You really are a new creation in Christ, just as sure as there really is a guy who owns a wooden tie and tinfoil suit (which would come in handy if the tie ever caught fire, eh?)

BJ

My Shoemaker

2006-07-21T11:16:00.000-05:00

I was in the parking lot of a department store with my family and I realized that between us and the front door of the store were two rather intimidating fellows. They were tall, wearing loose clothing and gold chains and were talking loudly, swaggering towards the same door. I felt fear. I clasped my son’s hand a little tighter and walked closer to my wife who had the hands of our two daughters. It wasn’t logical, but I felt this cold dread that they might do or say something to us that I wouldn’t want. What could they do in such a public place? Still, I was a little afraid. What’s more, they were looking at my wife, who is quite attractive, and I didn’t want them to do that either. We entered the store, and they walked in behind us.

We went our separate ways in the store, but it wasn’t a big one, so we met them again in another isle. It was then that something profound happened. It wasn’t that I finally allowed logic to reign and understood that I was quite safe in that location, or that I considered the power of the adrenaline I would have at my disposal if my family was in jeopardy. It was something that hit me from above. It was like a light that shined down on me and I could see then what I couldn’t before. It was this: I am Christ’s Body here. I am His Ambassador, His Representative, and have His Authority and Power. The very Spirit of Christ lives in me, giving me limitless resources of strength and grace. It wasn’t that I asked for this to be so in that particular moment. It was true all the time. It was true while I was afraid. I didn’t make it any more true when I realized it. But knowing it, having this truth revealed to me made all the difference. Immediately, both of those guys lost several feet off their statures.

But there’s more. My fear was not replaced by pride or self-confidence. I wasn’t at all thinking about the safety of my family (or myself) anymore. I felt pity for these guys. They seemed so small and needy now. They thought they needed those outward personas to give them a presence in life. They were sinful people needing to know that Christ died for them – that Christ met all the requirements they were so sorely lacking. The same requirements I was so sorely lacking when I was lost and dead in sins. I think it’s safe to say that I even had some love for them in a strange way. I wondered now if they might say something to me, and what I could say as a Pilgrim and Stranger on the earth to point them to a Heavenly Saviour. I was ready. But the Lord didn’t make things go that way.

When we are told to “put on the whole armour of God” we are told to have our “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” The Lord prepares us to be lights in the world. He cleans our lamps so that they shine brighter. This day was part of that process. As believers, we have the task of reckoning facts to be true. We have the job of counting on things to be the way God says they are. They don’t often appear to be so from our perspectives, but they are pretty limited perspectives wouldn’t you say? From the Lord’s vantage point, all things are clear. His word gives us that clarity. “Perfect love casts out all fear” we read. But we are alive in Christ to do more than just not be afraid. We are alive in him to be “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” I walk with the feet of Christ; dead, buried, raised and ascended with him, in union with Him, He in me and I in Him. He made it so. May I not live a lie. May my shoes be the Gospel, and the Cobbler my Lord Jesus.

BJ

Let God Be True

2006-07-20T14:44:00.000-05:00

“Let God be true but every man a liar.” Paul, from Romans 3:4.

I was reading a blog recently, by a man who no longer has faith in “expository preaching”. I am not about to defend such a thing, because Scripture simply says, “Preach the word” and never uses the word “expository”. But this gentleman did say something that got my attention. He said this:

“In reality what guides interpretation is not individual analysis of the text. It is the broad consensus interpretation for the biblical texts found in the ongoing history of church doctrine.”

Did you get that? He is saying essentially, that individuals are unable to come to a knowledge of the truth without the sum total of all who have tried to do so, individually, over the last two thousand years. So, to understand the Bible, God then intends me to sift through every bit of exegesis (or maybe eisogesis too) that has ever been done? Too bad for Timothy I guess. He was on the wrong side of history. He never had the benefit of 2 millennia worth of bible studies. Why did Paul even dare suggest that Timothy “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” ? We’re all in a boatload of trouble if we have to assimilate all of the hodge-podge of biblical study ever done to get to some idea of the truth of God’s word. Does that sound like a gracious God to you?

I think I understand that writer’s intention. He wants to bring Christians together and have unity. It’s not a bad desire. It’s the heart of God actually. But he’s going about it the wrong way. Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.” We will be “set apart” together when we stand on the firm ground of Scripture. The idea that we cannot know the truth on our own flies in the face of what the apostle John wrote: “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” (1st Jn. 2:27) I guess John was on the wrong side of history too if he couldn’t have known the truth without the “ongoing history of church doctrine.” I don’t want to come down too hard on this blog-writer, because once again, there are some good intentions there and he is just trying to make sense of what he sees around him in the Church today. The problem is that he is not allowing God’s word to make sense of what he sees around him.

I quoted Paul in Romans 3 at the start because it is one of those guiding principles that believers desperately need to get a hold of. God’s word will fulfill its own promises to us, but only when we believe Him above all others – even ourselves. Listen to what the Lord says to us in Psalm 19, “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.” God's word will do this for us! We forget sometimes that we still have access to a carnal mind (Rom. 8). We also need to remember that we can “put on the mind of Christ” and be spiritually minded which is life and peace. Let God be true. He didn’t give us his inspired thoughts word-for-word for nothing. He loves us. He doesn’t want us to be stumbling about in the dark. Open His book and it really will be a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.

BJ

It's A Secret

2006-07-11T14:21:00.000-05:00

I have lived in some big houses in my day. When you are one of 9 kids, it just sort of comes with the territory. Two of the houses I’ve lived in were actually funeral homes at one point. The way that played on a young boys imagination… But these houses were old and had all kinds of character. One had a laundry chute (shoot) from the second floor to the basement. My little brother got stuck in it once… after we enticed him to go in of course. One house had a ‘widows watch’, it’s called. The top of the roof had a flat spot with a tiny iron railing around it. The real purpose of this I am not certain, but it was fun to go up there and see the town from that vantage point.

Another house had a big closet at the top of the staircase. We moved in and my parents set us loose on the place. Finding the closet, we went to the back and found a little door in the side. There was a staircase leading up to the attic that from thence forward became the boys territory. For 6 boys to find a secret staircase to the attic was heaven. My parents knew it was there all along, but they wanted to give us the fun of finding it. And it was fun. My Dad insulated it and we had our bedrooms up there.

Secrets are enticing. Some people are driven to finding out things and they become archeologists and police detectives. But we all enjoy stumbling upon a solved mystery. That is why mysteries are attractive – we want to know what’s behind them. We watch a magician perform some trick and long to know how he did it. God knows all about this, because he made us that way. He gave us the ability to unlock a riddle, solve a mystery and problem-solve our way out of a room where the walls are closing in and water is rising from the floor and we only have a coat-hanger and a piece of gum (thank-you MacGyver). There are mysteries only because we haven’t solved them yet. There are things that God has imbedded into life for us to discover.

One of my favorite phrases Jesus used was, “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.” I think that just means, if you’re willing to listen, then step up and I’ll tell you more. You don’t get it all at once. There is too much that way. You can drink a small lake, but you have to spread it out over the course of 80 years. The Lord invites us to gather at his feet as he trickles out wisdom to us. Sometimes there is mystery in places we never would have looked for it. Sometimes we are given the answer to a problem we never knew to be there at all.

Bible translators have had (and still do have) an immense task. There are times when English translators have not known what to do. One particular time is actually in the most famous of all bible verses. That’s right: John 3:16. Do you know what it really says? It reads this way, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes INTO him should not perish but have everlasting life.” It made more sense to them to substitute the word “in”, but it’s more precise to put “into”. What’s the difference? It may or may not make a difference to you depending on your “ear to hear.” You see, there is a mystery uncovered in the New Testament. But it’s one only the Lord can show you. Here is one more hint though, from the words of Christ: “Abide in Me and I in you.” If you know what that means, you may enjoy John 3:16 in a new way today.

BJ

Moon or Heaven

2006-07-06T15:22:00.000-05:00

What is God’s will? Maybe I’m supposed to be rich. I could do a lot of good with an inordinate amount of wealth. I could pay to have John 3:16 carved into the moon so that it would be visible from space for all to see. I guess it couldn’t just be in English, so I’d get it in all the major languages of the world. Apparently there’s 15 major groups covering 7,300 languages. That would be some fine, fine printing needed there. Ok, then I’d buy everyone in the world a telescope - and a giant fan to blow the clouds away. There. Couldn’t that be God’s will for me?

I think we’ve all, at one point or another, asked what God’s will is for our lives. Especially when those major life decisions are still being made – School, Career, Spouse, Kids. We would love a chart indicating when to choose what. But what if you had one, and didn’t study it well enough to know the times and proper choices? If you mess up one of them, will the rest of the plan be ruined? The good news is that it’s actually easier than that. Easier than a blueprint for my life? You better believe it.

The problem is that we too often see ourselves in isolation. A favorite verse for many is Romans 8:28 “We know that all things work together for good...” but we don’t think often enough about the fact that the Lord is orchestrating ALL THINGS for the betterment of EVERYONE – not just you. Not just me. Also, we are not very adept measurers of “good”. What we may call good, God may know to be an unnecessary evil. So, how do we get around these problems – selfishness and poor judgment of good – so that we can understand what the Lord’s will is?

Well, the Lord’s will is not simply what he would like to do, it’s what He IS doing. So what is He doing? I’m glad you asked. He’s calling people out of the world. What do I mean by that? The Lord is saving souls through faith in His Son who instantly become citizens of heaven where all there hopes are now centered. That’s it. Simple. You can either line your life up with that immense purpose of God, or you can make what other kind of life for yourself you think you need. But it will never measure up to what the Lord will do for you. You will never be whole or fulfilled until you align yourself with His interests.

Forget the chart you think you need to navigate the waters of life. It’s hard, but we need to trade in our dreams for the waking reality of God’s will. What about a spouse? The Lord will give you one if it lines up with his present purpose. Adam didn’t have to go looking. He had his wife brought to him. The same with Isaac. Will you wonder about the details sometimes? Yes. But settle in to the fact that during his earthly days Jesus himself said, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, NOR THE SON, but only the Father.” That did not stop Christ from doing his Father’s will. He was about his Father’s business from the start. Even Jesus had to say at one point, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Paul writes to the Ephesians saying, “Do not be unwise, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” We are supposed to know. Make the Lord’s purpose your own. He will bless you for it in ways you will praise him forever for. And you probably shouldn’t mess with the moon too much. Tides and stuff, you know?

BJ

Thank-You

2006-06-29T08:24:00.000-05:00

Thank-you, Lord. Thank-you for breathable air. Thank-you for that spark of electricity that keeps my heart beating and the unfathomable way you uphold all things by the word of your power. Thank-you for the perfect tilt of the earth and the equilibrium between the mountain heights and the ocean depths. Thank-you for the platypus, a creature that stupefies the rationality of man and simultaneously displays your wondrous and whimsical creativity. Thank-you for displaying in your Son the knowledge that the earth is round, as seen when he said that when he returns, there will be two in bed; one will be taken and one left, and there will be two in the field; one will be taken and one will be left – day and night occurring simultaneously. Thank-you for sending your Son to start a new spiritual creation that will both outlive and outshine this present fallen one. Thank-you that he did not come the first time to judge the world, but that through him the world might be saved. Thank-you for exhausting your holy wrath on Him instead of on a deserving world. Thank-you for raising saints from the dead at the time of Christ’s death to picture the lives that would come to know eternal life through faith in that finished work. Thank-you for raising Jesus from the grave and making a tomb a place of hope. Thank-you for putting two angels in there that day, at the foot and the head of where he lay, to mirror the cherubim on the mercy seat. Thank-you for receiving Christ into heaven to sit at your right hand until we are made just like him at his second advent. Thank-you for giving us your word preserved already through two millennia, and proving to us time and time again that it can be trusted. Thank-you for such a great cloud of witnesses who have been faithfully declaring the good news of sins forgiven by the cross of Christ. Thank-you for the staggering fact that you would ever even desire to make the soul of man your home, let alone the fact that you did it by making us new in Christ. Thank-you for stirring the heart of a mother to simply believe the gospel and then make her resolute in having her children captured by that great love displayed in Christ. Thank-you for using that simple woman to save a young man who but for your grace would have been leagues upon dark leagues from you. Thank-you for sending that young man a young woman, leaving him so smitten that he must discover the source of peace and hope she had. Thank-you for using the same grace that saved him to change him from a babe in Christ to a growing child in the Kingdom of the Son of your love. Thank-you for giving he and his wife three children to continually enrapture, enamour, and endear them, and teaching them that you do not love less like earthly parents, but infinitely more. Thank-you for the presence of your Son in your Heaven as the advocate for the tripped-up believer, and the representative prototype of what all believers will be one day when your grace has finished its work. Thank-you for a salvation that cannot be rescinded, reversed, or retracted, and that because the Saviour is unimpeachable, irreproachable and unquestionable. Thank-you for Jesus. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. Thank-you that his very presence was a welcome invitation to children and that he befriended Judas to the end. Thank-you that he loved Peter enough to rebuke him for having the devil’s mind. Thank-you that he would come to this fallen planet and be called a friend of sinners. Thank-you for making him of no earthly reputation to be the living lesson that whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Thank-you that he was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin. Thank-you for making him who knew no sin to be sin for us to condemn sin in the flesh. Thank-you that he cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” to then say to us after you raised him from the dead, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Thank-you, Great Father, for being just like your Son, and for sending the Spirit of your Son into our hearts by which we cry, “Abba Father!” Thank-you.

Natural or Spiritual

2006-06-28T08:05:00.000-05:00

I’m an easy going guy. Being a middle-child (number 5 out of 9!), it comes naturally. I seem to take things in stride and don’t tend to worry much. At the same time, I’m quite non-confrontational and have a hard time taking charge when I really should. But it’s just my disposition. It’s like the colour of my hair or the length of my earlobes. I have nothing to do with it – which means I can’t take credit for it either. I am like what I am for a wheel-barrow full of reasons, but my natural tendencies came naturally to me. The things about me that may work in my favour at times are nothing I should be proud of and nothing I should even count on. They can be a real wrench in the gears all the same.

Take my wife for instance. She is a first-child. These tend to be go-getters and over-achievers. Her tendencies lend themselves to worry and concern much more easily than mine. She’d turn a hill into a mountain that I’d turn into a bump on a log. Once again that’s just the way she is. She notices things. She hears sounds in our van that I never do. “Did you hear that….” she will say, “Something’s wrong with the van. We should take it in.” I strain my ears as hard as I can and still hear nothing. But I can’t fault her for her natural tendency to be concerned about everything any more than I would want her to fault me for being care-free (careless?) about everything. But it does cause some controversy at times.

I think we confuse good tendencies for spirituality sometimes. We think we are mature when what comes naturally to us is beneficial in our particular life situation. What I mean is, my easy-going-ness can seem like “spiritual contentment” to me, when it really might be carelessness. So how do you know if you are being spiritual or not? Well, it comes down to this: You are the most spiritual at those places where you are the weakest. Think of your hang-ups, your bad habits, your character-flaws… That is where spirituality and maturity begins. Sound strange? I hope so. The Lord, as usual, is paradoxical.

I’ll put it this way: Have you ever heard someone say, “That guy would make an awesome Christian!” Maybe you’ve said it yourself. You see someone with good upbringing and think they have the capacity to be more spiritual than others. It’s just not the case. Take the Apostle Paul for example. He went around “enraged”. He was an angry man, bitter, frustrated, with a chip on his shoulder, and he was a murderer! Ya, that guy would make an awesome Christian! When Ananias heard Paul had been saved, he told God Himself that Paul was trouble. The Lord had to rebuke him for that.

The Holy Spirit has preserved for us in the Word of God a remarkable autobiography of this saved murderer named Saul of Tarsus. He became a spiritual man. Let’s read what he had to say about being spiritual: “He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” He wasn’t just saying that where he is weak, the Lord will help him to be as strong as he is in other areas. He was saying that ONLY at those places where he is weak, will the strength of Christ be seen. The choice for us, as always, is: Would you rather have your own strength, or the strength of the Man who when nailed to a cross said “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”?

BJ

It Wasn't Me

2006-06-22T12:40:00.000-05:00

I remember going to a concert and after it was over, finding myself within earshot of the performer. There was a little group around him complimenting him for a job well done. He was a Christian, as was obvious from his songs, and in reply to these praises he said, “It wasn’t me, it was the Lord.” I know what he meant, I think (my mind-reading skills are pretty good) but it gave me a funny feeling. The kind of feeling that is only relieved when you turn your head and look away – That embarrassed feeling for him after hearing something fairly trite and cliché. It couldn’t have been the Lord. He can sing and write songs much better.

I don’t want to be too hard on the guy. He wanted to divert some of the attention away from him, because sometimes the spotlight is just a little too bright. There must be some kind of defense mechanism in us that, as proud as we are, gives us a shot of humility to counter our crazy egos. Angels seem to have it too. The one John saw didn’t let him worship him, even though he tried twice. Even more incredible is the fact that Jesus himself avoided worship at times during his earthly ministry.

The scene is in Capernaum. Jesus had healed many and cast out many demons. But it was early morning, while everyone else was sleeping, when Jesus got up and went to find a solitary place to pray. Mark says it was “a long while before daylight”. Maybe hours before. But the disciples eventually wake up and go to find him. When they do they tell him, “Everyone is looking for you.” It’s like they are saying, “The masses have arrived! They want to bask in your greatness! They want to crowd around you so they can tell their friends how close they got to you!” But Jesus simply tells them that he must go onto to the next town and preach there as well. He tells them that it is his purpose to preach. In other words, he is telling them that his purpose was not to be a kind of 8th wonder of the world – to be some spectacle for the masses before they go on to the next one… His purpose is to warn people about their great need for sins forgiven and to tell them to have faith in Him. He avoided the fleeting kind of worship we are prone to, so that in the end he will receive the true everlasting variety.

God is praised best when he is found doing something that only he can do. He healed a man who was lame from birth simply because Peter and John were nearby. When the people came to stare in amazement at them, they said “why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?” They were honestly saying that they didn’t do it. That’s different than doing something from our own power and saying it was God’s. I think the Lord is given the credit for doing many things that are actually contrary to his will – as astounding as the events may sound! When Jesus avoided the crowds it was not some kind of false-humility. He had been up praying. He had been receiving the Father’s will for hours before daylight. Sometimes he was praised, and sometimes not, but he was about his Father’s business either way. May the same be said of us.

The next time somebody compliments you, simply say “thank-you.” If somebody doesn’t praise you when you think you might have it coming, be thankful then too.

BJ

Milk & Meat

2006-05-30T11:59:00.000-05:00

My wife and I were visiting the camp she used to cook at, along with our son who was only a few months old at the time. An old friend offered to take Joshua for a little bit so that we could visit more freely. This friend was an older gentleman who was not up to date on what kind of food little Josh should be consuming. We went to look for him to relieve our friend of his baby-sitting duty and he said, “Joshua sure loves chocolate pudding!” Suzanne laughed thinking it was a joke. The man looked perplexed and asked, “What’s so funny?” He had fed Joshua an entire desert dish of chocolate pudding with whipped cream. He threw it up on the way home.

Joshua was still only nursing. He was not ready for pudding! Most of us are not really “ready” for pudding, but that is another story. What Josh needed then was his mother’s milk. His little digestive system could not handle more. All the same, it was just what he needed for that early stage of growth. He wanted the pudding, but needed the milk. The writer to the Hebrews differentiates between milk and meat as symbols of what nourishes new creations in Christ. Baby Christians need the milk of the word but are meant to go on to the meat of the word as well. This may raise the question, what portions are the milk and what portions are meat in Scripture? It’s not as easy as that. It comes down to what many understand as the milk and the meat available in every portion of Scripture.

When Jesus spoke, he offered truth simultaneously on many levels. Parables are the classic illustration of this. But even when saying something very straightforward, there is more to it than meets the ear, initially. Take for example His words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It was during the three hours of darkness that Jesus said this, saying to us that God the Father left him. He was being treated like a sinner on behalf of all the sinners of the world. He faced separation from God the Father for us, so that we would not have to. This is the milk of his words. A child can understand this. At the same time, we know that he was also quoting the first line of Psalm 22, which is a graphic depiction of crucifixion. Prophecy was fulfilled in Christ’s death.

If that isn’t enough, there is more still. It was said at about the ninth hour. The ninth hour was the time for prayer for all Jews. (See Acts chapters 3 & 10) Jesus prays to the Father on the cross at the hour of prayer. As well, it was dark from the sixth to the ninth hour, or from noon to three o’clock. It was dark at the ninth hour. The ninth plague on Pharaoh was the plague of darkness – just before the death of the firstborn. There is symbolism here that is rich and deep. Much to mull over and mediate on. Finally, in asking “My God my God, why have you forsaken me?” we see that it was not Christ that left the Father, but the Father who left his Son for a time. Even in a state of abandonment, bearing the wrath of God, we see our Saviour crying out to the Father. He was forsaken, but would not let go. He held on for us. He then committed himself into his Father’s hands and died.

Josh eats meat now – and pudding. He is growing and maturing. We who are born again need to grow and mature just the same. Feed on God’s word. It nourishes and strengthens your new-creation-life. Then, help feed others. “Feed my lambs” Jesus says to us who can handle meat. Just go easy on the pudding.

BJ

A Coin Has Two Sides

2006-05-24T15:51:00.000-05:00

A coin has two sides. It has a head and a tail. There is a front and a back. You have to flip it over to see the other side. Yes, it is there even when you don’t see it. There are always two sides. A man named Mobius took a long thin piece of paper in his hands, gave it a half twist with one hand and joined the ends together. If you run a pencil down the middle of the strip longways you will eventually cover both sides of the paper. It almost seems like one side. Where does the one start and the other stop? But still, the two are there. The two seem to become one, there.

A man named Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross. But he was not just a man. He was, and is God. He rose from the dead to prove it. The God-Man came to represent God to us and us to God. He came to be both our substitute and our representative. He came that we might live and he came that we might die. He gave us two symbols to remember him with – bread and wine. Why two? They speak of his body and his blood. Broken body. Shed blood. One is to stop something, and the other is to cover something. Stopping and covering are the two sides of the sacrifice of Christ.

What is covered by his shed blood? This is maybe the more easily recognized of the two aspects of Jesus’ death. We sin. We accumulate sins. In each of us there is a desperation for forgiveness. We are forgiven because the shed blood of Jesus has us covered. There is blood on our hands because we are to blame for Jesus’ death-sentence. But it is His blood on our hands. The crowd that day shouted out “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” Little did they know that that was what they truly needed. Jesus’ perfect life offered on the cross makes up for our paltry lives. Something had to be paid for our disobedience. It just makes sense that it was paid for with obedience.

What is stopped by his broken body? The more difficult thing to see is our need not only for forgiveness, but our need for deliverance. Sin is a verb for us, but also a noun. The principle of sin as an operative agent in us needed to be stopped. The breaking of Jesus’ body on the cross accomplished this. How? Death was the only way. We are married to sin and since God does not grant divorces, death is the sole escape. We needed to die. Christ included us when he was crucified, so we can truly say, “It is no longer I that lives, but Christ who lives in me…” With him we died, with him we rose again. Spiritually, our resurrection has already taken place. We wait for our bodies to catch up. This being so, we can count on the cross of Jesus to be our freedom from sin. We no longer ask for victory, we simply thank him for it.

There are always two sides. Leave no stone unturned. Leave no page in God’s word unstudied. There is more. Jesus told a story about a woman who had lost her coin. She swept the house to find it. Coughing from the dust in the corners she finally found it and rejoiced! It was made of silver. He then said that there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. Over one lost coin that turns over. A coin has two sides.

BJ

He Had No Rights

2006-05-24T10:37:00.000-05:00

This is a poem written by Mabel Williamson and included in her book "Have We No Rights?" I think it fits in here at "Three-Thirty" perfectly.

He Had No Rights

“He had no rights:
No right to a soft bed, and a well-laid table;
No right to a home of His own, a place where His own pleasure might be sought;
No right to choose pleasant, congenial companions, those who could understand Him and sympathise with Him;
No right to shrink away from filth and sin, to pull His garments closer around Him and turn aside to walk in cleaner paths;
No right to be understood and appreciated; no, not by those upon whom He had poured out a double portion of His love;
No right even never to be forsaken by His Father, the One who meant more than all to Him,
His only right was silently to endure shame, spitting, blows; to take His place as a sinner at the dock; to bear my sins in anguish on the cross.

He had no rights. And I?

A right to the “comforts” of life? No, but a right to the love of God for my pillow.
A right to physical safety? No, but a right to the security of being in His will.
A right to love and sympathy from those around me? No, but a right to the friendship of the One who understands me better than I do myself.
A right to be a leader among men? No, but the right to be led by the One to whom I have given my all, led as is a little child, with its hand in the hand of its father.
A right to a home, and dear ones? No, not necessarily; but a right to dwell in the heart of God.
A right to myself? No, but, oh, I have a right to Christ.
All that He takes I will give; All that He gives will I take;
He, my only right! He, the one right before which all other rights fade into nothingness.
I have full right to Him; Oh, may He have full right to me!”

Mabel Williamson, 1957

Circling the Gospel

2006-05-17T08:34:00.000-05:00

Define a circle. Ok, you say. It’s a… uh… you know, a round line. Is it? Circles are an interesting phenomenon. Circles are by nature perfect. No matter where you start, when you pass through the centre, the diameter is the same. If at any time, the diameter at one point increases or decreases, you cease to have a circle and you then have an oval or an ellipse. Ovals often look just like circles until you measure them. If a circular shape is at all elongated anywhere, it cannot bear the name: Circle. Remember trying to draw one of those with a compass? As soon as you switch hands you’re toast. In the hands of a master, a compass can produce a perfect circle, which is a redundant thing to say because circles are perfect.

I read a “discussion” which was really a debate over the Gospel. It was entitled, “What Is The Gospel?” and a couple of experts were present to define it. There was hair-splitting, subtle name-calling, and straw-man arguments, but the two gentlemen were actually pretty graceful about the whole thing. The thing that struck me, was that at the end, the one guy said that the other guy was preaching a false gospel. He said that by nature, the gospel is something that if deviated from even slightly, ceases to be the gospel. It’s like a circle, really. If it is stretched in any direction, it ceases to be the good news.

I’m thankful for what the apostle Paul called “the simplicity which is in Christ.” While theologians are debating whether or not justification is declaring or making one righteous, four year olds are getting saved because they know that they know that Jesus died for them. Jesus died for you. That is a circle. It is a perfectly continuous shape without beginning or end. In 1st Peter it says, “the just died for the unjust.” The only circle died for the ovals of the world.

Part of the problem we have with defining the Gospel is that we don’t see Jesus as a circle. We elongate him. We stretch him at various points to be the Jesus we want him to be. When we distort Christ, we get a distorted gospel. He begins to take on this elliptical shape and it’s like we see him in a funhouse mirror. But who sees Jesus perfectly? Is he not either exaggerated or underrated at one point or another by us all? How are we then to preach the good news? Thank the Lord for his Word! It is a true circle, just like the Lord Jesus. It is balanced and sound and whole and perfect. It says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” and it does NOT go on to say – that whosoever has their soteriology perfect will be saved. I was saved and thought I could “fall away.” I’m glad the Lord saved me in spite of me.

I think we have a hard time letting God be as gracious as he really is. We are afraid of “easy-believism” and so we add things to Jesus’ simple declaration of “whosoever believes…” At the same time, we don’t let God be as just as he really is. We don’t ponder long enough on the truth that Jesus was made “to BE sin for us.” We all suffer from “oval-vision” but by God’s grace we can fix our eyes on Jesus, the perfect circle and allow him to correct those places we distort him. We can then proclaim the good news with simplicity and clarity. The Perfect One died for the imperfect. Let’s not get bent out of shape trying to make the Gospel out to be something that it is not. Stay on a tight orbit around the Lord Jesus.

BJ

Losers Are Winners

2006-05-10T15:53:00.000-05:00

“And the first prize goes to…” Every first place winner owes their win to the second place contestant. If he or she had not done worse than the winner, the winner would not have won. Winners need losers. Losers are important people. Without losers, we would have no winners. Losers are the shoulders winners ride on. Everybody who wins should thank their lucky stars that somebody did so badly.

Have you ever been called a “loser”? It hurts. “Looozzer!” Everybody wants to win. Someone once asked my brother what he liked to do in his spare time. He said, “I like to win.” So often our personal best is not enough. It doesn’t matter if we did all we could, it just seems to matter who did worse. There is something in us constantly comparing ourselves to others. That’s why the Guiness’ Book of World Records exists. You have some people that are no good at the regular contests, so they have to make up a weird one to be the best at. There is actually an award for the largest naval fluff collection.

He must increase, I must decrease. He must become greater, I must become less. This is the thought John the Baptist had when confronted with the popularity of Jesus. Not only the popularity, but the success of Jesus. He was baptizing more people than John and John’s disciples appeared to be threatened by this. But John was not threatened. In essence, he replied, “I am still too much. Jesus needs to be more.” At the heart, John is saying, “I have to shrink from view, I have to be less successful, I have to lose more.” John wanted to be a better loser.

We talk about glorifying God but I wonder how often we watch out for competing glories. Our glory gets in the way of the Lord’s. Or maybe we think our glory is necessary for making God look good. Jesus said, “Let your good works so shine before men that they glorify your Father in Heaven.” Well, that isn’t referring to the degree of illumination your works emit. Jesus is talking about the nature of the illumination itself, with that word “so”. You have to back up to one of his illustrations to get the full picture. He talks about a lamp-stand propping up the light, instead of a bowl on top of it. He links the lamp-stand with the works. The light is Christ. We are to hold him up for the world to see. We are to be holders (and beholders) of the light. Do you prop up Christ? Do I prop up Christ? Or are we busy climbing the shoulders of losers?

This can be a hard thing to see in your life, because we are so prone to seeking praise. But start today. We all actively promote ourselves. Sometimes our résumé is a little too handy. Put it away. Let Christ win. Take second place – take last place. May his interests and his endeavours be ours: His Church, his Word, his Name, his Glory… Christ’s is the only opinion that matters anyway. And he doesn’t miss a thing. Even when your right hand is unaware of what your left is doing, Jesus knows. When he says to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant” may there be many secrets between you. Be anonymous in your giving and generous with your prayers.

And stop collecting naval fluff.

BJ

Chicken-Hearted

2006-04-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” What on earth does that mean? Will they break if there are too many in there? Will there be so many in the basket that they will start to warm each other up and hatch? Will other people get egg-envy and tackle me for my basket? So many questions... How do I know how to apply this saying I’ve heard so often? Some research should be conducted, I think. I will have to contact the experts in the field. Only the most qualified can participate in the project. To the hens I go. I guess I’m going to have to learn to read “chicken-scratch”. I have some doctor friends who will help me.

We all want to know where to put our eggs. There are all these fragile responsibilities to prioritize in our lives and so often one of them gets cracked in the jumbling and fumbling to which we are so prone. Maybe you’ve seen the illustration with the jar and the different sized rocks – they only all fit if the big ones go in first. But how does that really help? What happens when the rocks in your life all seem the same size? So many things seem just as important. I’m mixing my metaphors here, I know – Rocks or Eggs – The thing is, we need to sort out what’s what in our lives. Sometimes the big things in our lives are mountains we’ve made out of speed-bumps.

Christ is our compass. We look to him to find the secret to sorting out our lives. He said, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I think the key to this is the very last phrase – “there your heart will be also.” Jesus wants us to have heaven-centric hearts. He wants us to be preoccupied with our real hope and our true home to the point that the very core of our beings (our hearts) are already there.

Jesus modeled this. When talking to Nicodemus he said, “No one has ascended into heaven… except the Son of Man who IS in Heaven.” He was already there. When praying to the Father just before he was betrayed he said, “I am no longer in the world…” The heart of Christ was with his Father in Heaven. Having a heaven-centred heart made it easy for Jesus to walk around without a single coin in his pocket, nowhere to lay his head, and associating with the dregs of society. It also made it just as easy for him to speak with authority to members of the Sanhedrin, to put Pilate in his place, and to refuse the offers of the Devil himself. Jesus knew what was what in life, because Heaven was always in mind.

His disciples asked how they should pray, and part of that prayer Jesus gave them was “…on earth, as it is in Heaven.” Let Heaven dictate life here. If it’s important there, it’s important here. Put your eggs in THAT basket. When you do, you’ll find that everything here settles into place – and you won’t need to consult the poultry.

BJ

A Case of the Nerves

2006-03-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

Nerves are touchy things. When you get nervous you can throw-up, punch somebody, or say the stupidest things – all over something that hindsight sees quite differently. Nervousness is something that seems out of our control until we’ve worked it out of our systems. New experiences generate a kind of anxiety that familiar ones don’t. But it’s a physical thing. Nervousness affects our, well…um… nerves. Surprise, surprise.

The human body is a fascinating construct. We have a central nervous system, and a peripheral nervous system. In the PNS we find the effects of nervousness: sick-to-the-stomach, gas and bloating, or just “butterflies”. It’s amazing that there are memory cells surrounding our guts that replay nervous experiences over again. You can feel woozy just recalling that time you had to speak in front of 100 people. What goes on in our heads and hearts can show up in our bellies and bowels. Our bodies take some of the burdens we carry in our souls.

This is seen in the Lord Jesus when he was in the garden of Gethsemane. He said, “my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death”. As he prayed and considered what would take place on the cross, he went through a physical agonizing that eventually caused a condition called hematidrosis. His sweat glands burst and mixed with blood, and so Luke records that Jesus “sweat as it were great drops of blood.” The anguish in his soul poured out into his body to such a degree that it was necessary for God the Father to send an angel to minister to him there. The same thing happened after the testing in the desert.

The Incarnation of the Son of God is the greatest mystery. An unlimited, omni-present, inexhaustible God fit into a tiny embryo and was born in a barn. As an aside, I wonder where that phrase came from. You know, when you forget to close an outside door behind you someone invariably says, “Where you born in a barn?” Well, Jesus was, and he knew to close the door. He closed the door of the ark, didn’t he? Born in a barn. This mystery of God in the flesh will continue to baffle us, but there are times when it makes perfect sense. Someone needed to die in order to pay the penalty of sin. You have to have a body to die.

Emmanuel means, God with us. You can’t get much closer than slipping into our skin and experiencing life as we know it. The Son of God knew what it was like before he was conceived in Mary’s womb, but there is something beyond knowing in Jesus becoming a man. I guess the word might be, endearing. It pulls us in when we consider God’s desire to be with us was so great that he would condescend to be a man. It’s like us deciding to become an ant – or an amoeba. God loves us amoebas.

Jesus wasn’t nervous in the garden. That word does not do justice to what he was going through there. “Sorrowful unto death” were His words on the matter. He was going to be forsaken for a time by God the Father, and when you get even a little sense of how close their relationship is in the Godhead, you begin to understand the blood-sweat. The next time I’m nervous, I’ll pray in the name of the one who went through that much for me. And then to nervousness I will say – “Adios amoeba!”

BJ

He Giveth, And He Giveth, And He Giveth Again

2006-02-20T14:27:00.000-05:00

The word for the day is ingrate. When a person is consistently ungrateful, we call him or her an ingrate. You hold a door open for someone and they don’t say “thank-you.” You are driving and you let someone in and they do not wave. You go out of your way to tell a guy that he dropped his wallet, but you find out that he had just stolen it and only wanted the cash, and then you get punched in the face. Then you throw the wallet at him and knock him unconscious because there was like a hundred pennies in the coin pouch section. Ya. What was I talking about before? Oh – ingrates. Ya, that guy wasn’t too grateful for me throwing that wallet at him. I nursed him back to health though.

Kidding aside, we have all run into people (or may BE one) who are not thankful, and are just plain hard to be nice to. You are willing to do someone a good turn, just as long as they are aware of how put out you are to do it. We don’t even mind when no one else notices, just as long as the recipient does. When we think our good deed will go un-thanked, we second guess the whole thing. Don’t we? I don’t think it’s just me. More so, when people are demanding when there is no obligation on your part, it’s even harder. So what do you do? Well, you probably don’t throw the wallet at him.

How is Christ, as a giver, different than everyone else on the planet? There are giving people here that would have no connection to God whatsoever, and yet they still give. I was stranded on the side of the road and a guy helped me for hours to get back on the road. He ended up driving me and my family home. Not a capital “B” believer, but a believer in giving. I sure learned a lesson about the golden rule that day. But Jesus is different. His giving put him on a level so astronomically higher, that our most heroic efforts look like pocket lint in comparison.

You see, he gave not only when it was not received gratefully, but when it was taken from him by such force it killed him. His life was taken. He willingly gave what was murderously exacted from him. The very worst that the world could do was kill God’s Son, and yet it was the very thing he came to allow. Pardon the comparison here, but think of giving your wife to a rapist or your child to a pedophile. What happened to Jesus was worse. He was “altogether lovely”, “full of grace and truth”, and simply perfect. The man that everyone should have been dying to protect, died in the place of his murderers.

We are told in the New Testament to do better than just the golden rule. “Do as you would be done by” was the height of the Old Covenant. The new covenant is higher. Not just “love your neighbour as yourself” but love your neighbour MORE than yourself. The words go: “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another.” Preference to one another should mark us as believers in Jesus. When we go without rent money to pay another’s rent, or when we offer our vehicle to one who has just crashed theirs, we are living out this kind of love. When we give and there are no thanks in return and even when we are demanded to give something that is not necessary, we are then loving like Christ. Instead of throwing your wallet at someone, open it up.

BJ

Love & Wrath

2006-02-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

My brother Ben jokes about a product he would love to manufacture. I’m not sure if he has finalized the name for it yet, but the marketing goes like this: “Nuts and gum, together at last!” Maybe he’ll call it Gumnuts, or just Num. Regardless, it’s a terrible idea, but funny. I forgot I was chewing gum once and threw a potato chip in my mouth. It was pretty much a write off for both the gum and the chip.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that two such antagonists could ever come together and unite on a common cause. Polar opposites repel each other. It’s simply a magnetic thing. But we find it sometimes. Love and hate are not always that far apart - and not just when two people “love to hate each other.” Love is an exclusive sort of thing. Hatred comes easy when something gets in the way of that love. You may have heard people talk about “loving the sinner and hating the sin.” (That phrase can be taken too far, but bear with me.) Sin disrupts relationships and gets in the way of love. But love and hate unite on a common cause, and that being a person. A person is a combination of soul and sin – something to be loved, and something to be hated.

When it comes to the Lord, there are aspects of Him that seem like antagonists. He is the very definition of love, and yet we find Him wrathful. He is kind and merciful, and yet He demands justice. When it comes to us, he definitely loves, but has a consistent judgmental stance toward us due to the sin in our lives. It’s like a stalemate. Neither attribute can move into check. We do not find one outdoing the other.

The Pharisees had hoped that Jesus would be a kind of chess piece. On several occasions, they “played” Him to see what he would do. They presented a woman caught in adultery, and thought they had caught Him between his graciousness and his righteousness. If he has her stoned, they win, and if he lets her go, they win. But Jesus ends up playing them instead doesn’t he? “He who is without sin may throw a stone at her first.” He caught them in their hypocrisy (where was the other adulterer?). Another time, they asked Him if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus tells them to bring the coin for the tax to Him, and asks whose picture is on it. They say, “Caesars.” Jesus then says one of the most profound things ever uttered, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” They could not play Him, and in His responses we find that he joins these ideas of wrath and mercy, grace and justice.

These attributes are seen together no better than in the cross. Love and judgment are like the two beams of wood that formed it. There, Jesus was forsaken by God the Father whose felled wrath was pictured by those three hours of darkness. At the same time, the willingness and ability of Jesus to bear that wrath on our behalf is the epitome of love. The stalemate was over. Justice is completely satisfied by the offering of the life of the Son of God. Grace is also unfettered to lavish itself upon us because of the willingness of that offering. God is free to love us because his righteous requirements have been met by his only Son, for us.

The next time you drink orange juice immediately after brushing your teeth, remember how the attributes of God meet in Jesus. And let’s hope that my brother never gets to put nuts and gum together.

BJ

Some Ish-ues With Sin

2006-01-31T12:29:00.000-05:00

Some things we say – sayings – are said for a reason. There is some truth to many of them. I’m thinking of a few that go this way: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire”, “Just when you think it can’t get any worse…” and “Rolling off a bed of nails into a pool of vinegar”. Ok, I made that last one up. But the truth is that trouble is always around the corner. You are never going to escape it. That’s why James just says, “count it all joy…” because if you don’t, you’re going to be pretty miserable.

I’ve been thinking about sin, and how there seems to be a progression in the temptations we face. It seems that we start off having a lot of trouble in the “sensual” world. Early on, a lot of our problems stem from the appeasing of our senses. Substance abuse, gluttony and lust are base sins that no one is immune from. But I think maturity allows us to shrink from these kinds of sins to a certain extent. We outgrow them. But then we move on to the next stage, which we can call “soul-ish”. First we have body-ish sins and then soul-ish ones.

The soul-ish variety involves pride, jealousy, bitterness, resentment, condescension, compromise, hypocrisy, etc… They come from our minds and hearts more so than our bodies. We think we are so great when we do not give in to base temptations, but then we are so full of arrogance that we might be better off with the first lot! With this, I am by no means advocating “mortal” and “venial” sins. All sin is bad, and some are not worse than others in God’s eyes. Jesus died for all equally. But there does seem to be a progression that we naturally go through as we mature.

The last stage would be what we might call “spirit-ish” sins. I didn’t use the word “spiritual” because that is generally a positive word. But spirit-ish sins are the most subtle of all. They appear to be good when they are really far from God’s ideal. The clearest way I can put it is that you either choose your way or God’s way. There are many good things that we can put our hands to, but “unless the Lord builds the house, the workers labour in vain.” If the Lord is not in it, it does not matter how apparently good it may seem. You might as well be building casinos if the Lord is not in what you’re doing.

This progression is seen in the life of Jesus. That may sound strange, but even though he was sinless, he still went through trials. He was tested. The difference with Him is that he went through the progression so fast it makes my head spin. The scene is the desert, where the devil comes to test Jesus. He works first on the issue of Jesus’ hunger (bodyish sin). He’d been fasting for over a month out there and Satan tells him to just turn some stones into bread and eat. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy to him and he moves on to the next stage. He then tells him to throw himself down from a great height to prove that the angels will take care of him (soulish sin). The Word of God speaks once again and the devil goes to the last stage. He offers Jesus the world if he will just bow to him (spiritish sin). The truth of Scripture bats this one away too and the devil then leaves him.

Whatever we happen to be dealing with in our lives, Jesus is our great High Priest who knows what we are going through. We will never be perfect this side of Heaven, but we will find victory in our spiritual walk when we trust the One who has won it for us already. Bring on the vinegar!

Burning Bush

2006-01-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter B and the number 2. Two B’s to be precise. Alliteration helps you remember things. My favorite Doctor Seuss line of all time has to be “O is very useful if you want to say: Oscar’s only ostrich oiled an orange oil today.” But I was talking about the letter B wasn’t I… Burning bush has a nice ring to it. That sounds very pyromaniacal of me doesn’t it? Beautiful burning bush blazing brilliantly. Bobbies (policemen in England) bring BJ bound to brison… um, prison. Ok, it’s not that I promote arson. The burning bush that Moses saw was very different than what any match could ever start.

Moses had run away from Pharaoh for killing an Egyptian task-master and after living abroad for a lifetime, God shows up. It’s the strangest thing. There is a shrub with flames dancing on it, but it’s still green beneath. This bush seems to be so alive that it can’t actually catch fire, but the fire is there nonetheless. It’s an impossible scenario. Wood is one of the most flammable substances on the planet. Fire and wood are just not good dancing partners. But there they were, making beautiful music together.

The question at this point would be, why? Why did God choose that image for Moses to see? We have a tree and we have fire. We could speculate, which might be fun, but it’s good to consider Jesus’ words in John’s account when the Lord is speaking to Pharisees. He says, “if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” At the very beginning of Moses’ work for the Lord, he is given a picture of Jesus. Jesus is both God – the Son of God – and Man – the Son of Man, he called himself. He is divine and human. How can that be? It is as incomprehensible to us as a tree on fire that is not consumed. The tree is Christ’s humanity, and the fire is his divinity. In Mark’s gospel Jesus himself refers to the “burning bush passage” that Moses wrote about. He is discussing the concept of the resurrection with the Sadducees and in relation to that flaming shrub told them that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Jesus being God and Man means life for us. Otherwise, we are just tinder for the flames.

Jesus went through the fire of God’s righteous judgment and came out alive on the other side. We have no hope other than to trust that he took that journey for us. We would not have survived it. We would have been consumed. The burning bush is a perfect picture of Christ as to the one who redeems man, by being God and Man. He is the union – the reconciliation.

I have to give credit to my brother-in-law, Dan, who opened my eyes to this symbol. I stole this idea from him. I’m a no good plagiarist, really. Oh no – here come the Bobbies again!

BJ

The Taste of Shoes

2006-01-20T09:56:00.000-05:00

Just after the new year started, a friend at my assembly on a Sunday morning asked me how my New Year’s Eve went. Joking, he asked me if I stayed up until midnight. “C’mon,” I said, “I’m not Al Birgham.” Al is a quite elderly man (in his late 80’s) in our chapel who just happened to be standing behind me as I spoke. That’s right, I spent the next few minutes taking my foot and half my leg out of my mouth. The next week I was at work remarking to a co-worker about how absent minded my dad is. Something had gone missing and I said that it was probably with my dad’s coffee mug that he seems to lose quite often in his wanderings around the office. You see, I work with my dad, and just as the words came out of my mouth I saw my dad sitting in a little office space right beside me that he normally doesn’t frequent. Once again, with a red face a tried to joke about it and do some quick back-pedaling.

I think we’ve all had moments like this. These were innocent enough (I hope!) and I don’t think either of these gentlemen were hurt by my comments, but still, I don’t think I would have said them if I had known they would hear. Both cases were me just trying to be funny, but you have to be careful with that kind of thing. We need to speak as though anyone listening would be edified, encouraged or endeared by what we say. They may not be due to the need for an attitude adjustment of some kind, but you try nonetheless.

It makes me think of the time when Jesus, while speaking to his disciples, uttered a quick prayer saying, “Father glorify your name.” God the Father then spoke from heaven saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” It sounded like thunder in the ears of those who stood by. Jesus then said, “This voice did not come because of me, but for your sake.” God took the static energy of clouds and used it for vocal cords – for our benefit. You see, Jesus was once again addressing the topic of his death. He went on to tell his dear disciples exactly what kind of death he was going to die. “If I am lifted up…” he said. This was a direct reference to the cross. He was not going to shrink from it. He would not say, “Father save me from this hour.” The Father’s voice crackled through and split the air to declare his agreement with his Son.

This was not the only occasion where a voice from heaven was heard. Jesus didn’t need to hear it, but we did. We still do. We need to remain confident that the Father’s approval of His Son still stands. It stands so much so that He raised Christ from the dead. At the same time, we need to recognize that the Son of God speaks for His Father. The writer to the Hebrews begins that letter this way:

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son”

God the Father trusted His Son enough to let Him be the final word. We need to listen. On another occasion the Father said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” Christ alone has the words of eternal life, Peter said. Where else can we go? There may be someone listening that you didn’t plan for. Well - Dad, Al – I’m not going to eat my shoes anymore.

BJ

Seeing Is Believing

2005-12-21T10:38:00.000-05:00

For the last few days now, my 3 year old son has asked me, “Is today Christmas?” He has already got a bunch of presents from his little church-friends and others, but he has a vague recollection of last year’s loot – swimming in wrapping paper and all that. So, he’s quite anxious for the day.

There’s a day coming for those who know Christ. It’s actually called “the Day of the Lord” – His day, the day He comes. There are many things that are going to come to fruition that day: shedding this corruption we carry around like corpses chained to our ankles, seeing creation restored to its former unspoiled glory, and having this world run right by the One who made it. But more than this, I think the over-riding hope of all hopes for everyone who knows Jesus is simply to see him face to face. A group of us were singing the other night and as the words “when I stand in glory, I will see his face…” were being sung, I looked over at my wife who had stopped singing. She couldn’t, because the tears welling in her eyes told me there was a lump in her throat. She wanted to see Jesus.

Why? She has never seen him before. She has never heard his voice. Or has she? The thing is, there is a kind of knowing that beggars the imagination. No picture is ever good enough. No voice is ever close enough to resemble the one we’ve heard in our hearts. Yes, he has spoken to us before. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that when I see him, I will not recognize him simply by the scars he’s chosen to keep in his glorified body. I think I will know him, just as I am known by him in a way beyond my appearance.

I wonder about Thomas sometimes. He gets it rough too often. “Doubting Thomas” we call him. In John 11, when Jesus is going to resurrect Lazarus, John records Thomas saying, “Let us go and die with Him.” Does that sound like a doubter? Put yourself in Thomas’ shoes for a second – we have the benefit of hindsight. Yes, maybe he should have understood the prophecies about Christ’s sacrifice, but so few did (Simeon being one). But all the same, in his despair and simultaneous anxiousness to see Jesus, he blurts out the need to touch those wounds. Jesus doesn’t think that’s such a bad request, because he lets him do it.

When did Thomas know enough to say to him, “My Lord and my God!”? I think he knew before he felt the scars. I don’t think he needed that when Jesus was standing right in front of him. There is some rebuking that goes on in that scene, but it’s of the encouraging variety. Jesus does more than is required, not surprisingly. Thomas is singled out, but given an honour really. He went to his death for it as a martyr for his Lord.

I will know that it’s Christ when I see him. I can’t tell you how. The new life he put in me – His life – will resonate with Him. He has tuned me to sing true, like the sun draws a song from the birds. Just like Christmas has found a home in my son. Ok Josh, just like in the snow – wrapping paper angel time!

BJ

Dark & Light

2005-12-13T09:16:00.000-05:00

I used to be scared of the dark. Who wasn’t, I guess. My kids have a nightlight in the hall outside their rooms. My wife and I used to close our boy’s door before he was two, and I remember listening outside his door one night while he was still awake. There he was, in the dark, and he was singing a little unintelligible song. All the more, he was in a crib – which is a cage for babies really. So, locked up, in a dark place, my son could still sing. But not now. He needs the door open and that little 15 watt bulb glowing in the hall. It brings me back to when I was afraid.

I don’t remember how old I was, but one day I didn’t want to be afraid of the dark anymore. In light of that, a plan was put into action. Simple, really: Find the darkest place I can, and stay there until I’m not scared anymore. The house I lived in at the time had a basement and then a kind of sub-basement as well. It was a half-floor lower on that side of the house. It also had what you call a “fruit cellar”. It was a long closet with shelves – a cold storage that ran the length of one of the walls down there. It had a regular door-size entrance at the one side and no opening on the other. It was pretty dark in there. So, I went down to the 1st basement, turned out the light at the top of the stairs, felt my way down to the 2nd basement, and into the cold storage I crept.

It was quiet. It was dark. It was scary. Visions of hands reaching out at me and zombie faces closing in rushed at me. But I sat there. I started to listen. I could hear the hum of electricity and footsteps in the distance above. The air in that kind of a space has a sound to it as well. My little movements reverberated against the cement – I shuffled a bit to get comfortable. It’s amazing, but I got less scared the longer I stayed. I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but I got up and felt my way back upstairs. It was nice to see again.

Many significant events in the life of Jesus occurred at night. Here are a few: his birth in the stable along with the angels singing to the shepherds and the journey of the wisemen, when he walked on the water, when he said “For God so loved the world…” to Nicodemus, when he prayed in the garden and on the mountain, and when he broke bread with his disciples. More than these, remember that the sun was darkened in the middle of the day while he was on the cross.

Christ came as the “light of the world” and often chose darkness to contrast that light. He did not leave that place untouched by his presence. He came walking on the water, in the dark of night, to his disciples who would think he was a ghost – a specter to be feared. But he spoke with that voice that could not be mistaken and said, “Don’t be afraid – It’s me.” Their fear was not displaced because of some rationalization on their part, but simply because of the presence of Jesus. He was that perfect love that “casts out all fear”.

The dark will never be the same now. Jesus has touched down here and did not shy away from the unlit world. On that cross the sun fled while the Lord Jesus took on the wrath of an offended God. What was the sun compared to the Son of God shining with a love that pierced the blackness of sin? Death died that day. Life slept in the dark of the tomb and rose gloriously on the third day. If he can make the grave bright, what can he not make shine? That’s IT – I’m turning off MY nightlight tonight!

BJ

Juries & Worries

2005-12-07T13:52:00.000-05:00

Two words. Jury summons. It was pinned up on my phone-message board for a couple of weeks. The day was getting closer. I didn’t want to be on a jury. Thoughts of serial murderers and corporate tax evasion assaulted me every time I passed that piece of paper on my wall. Will I have to decide the fate of some criminal? That word “criminal” hung in the air like an internet pop-up.

So, I got there Monday morning to find that it was a civil case, I wasn’t selected and it was about some car accident. Everything I had been dreading was deflated as the six jurors held their hands on the Bible and were “sworn in”. The registrar asked them whether they had any objections to swearing on the Bible, and I thought about Jesus saying, “let your yes be yes and your no be no”. I wondered if that was what he was talking about. Probably not. But it was strange to leave the courtroom so changed. Beforehand: I was sure that I’d be seated in the jury with a criminal in the witness stand just a paper-airplane’s throw away from me. Afterward: Just looking for the nearest phone to call my wife. Before – dread. After – no big deal.

In thinking about this drastic switch, I can imagine Future BJ talking to Past BJ. Past BJ says, “oh man… Jury duty… I’ll be sequestered for months, swarmed by the press and have a nervous breakdown after being selected as the chairman of the jury responsible to bring everybody to a unanimous decision!...” Future BJ will then slap Past BJ saying, “Pull yourself together man! It won’t be anything like that. Patience young aphid – your forgetting something.” What was I forgetting?

When Christ commissioned his disciples to go and prepare the way for him, he told them not to worry about what they would say when delivered to the courts, “For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak.” He said. (Matt. 10) The principle is the same with all believers – reborn, new creations in Christ, placed into the Body of Christ by the Spirit. The very places where worry can most easily seep in are those where the supernatural workings of the Lord are most clearly manifest. This is a constant theme here on “ThreeThirty”, but it cannot be overstated. It certainly isn’t said enough.

Because Jesus either meant what he said throughout, or he’s wrong altogether. He talked about a spring of living water flowing out of a heart – the very Spirit of God living in all those who receive Jesus by faith. If we are on our own, with a little help from God now and then, why did Jesus die and rise again? No, we are not alone. Because of the sacrifice of Christ, God has taken up residence in me. It’s humbling. He’s in me when I am at my most human. He’s in me when I sin. I use His hands when I drive. I use His mouth when I speak. I am not my own, I was bought with a price. Jesus was that price.

This post seems really convoluted today, but I hope you get this sense of belonging to something much bigger than yourself. I would not have been alone on that jury. Christ would have been there. He may have wanted me there. I’m thankful to him that I’m not, but still, I’d have to be just as thankful if I was. No worries. I think gratitude displaces worry pretty quick. Lord, don’t let me forget that I was once no better off than my imaginary criminal. Thank you Jesus.

BJ

Where There's Fire, There's Smoke

2005-12-02T16:52:00.000-05:00

I know, I know… It’s supposed to be smoke then fire. I’m reversing the order of that old adage today. On my walk to work there was a car on fire. People were already responding to it, and nobody was in danger. I stood there for several minutes as the smoke billowed out of the front of the car. It worked fast. Soon you couldn’t see down the street at all. The smoke to fire ratio was really rather disproportionate. It wasn’t fair. Smoke beat fire.

Smoke was born out of fire and outdid it. Now, if it wasn’t for the fire, the smoke would not exist. Smoke owes everything to fire. As big as it gets, it should not forget the fire down below. But old Smokey sometimes does. You see, when the fire goes out, he still hangs around. He thinks he’s big stuff still. The Smokester disperses himself through the air trying to get bigger still. He just doesn’t realize that he is getting thinner and thinner as he dissipates. Soon you begin to see right through him. And then he’s gone.

Scripture says that there are some “having a form of godliness but denying its power”. Smoke is like that “form of godliness”. The old saying stated that wherever you find smoke, not too far from it must be fire. But that’s not true. You can have smoke without fire. Dry ice, automobile exhaust, chimney sweeps, etc. Borrowed smoke sometimes happens too. Like the smoke in the lungs of little kids in the back seat of a smokers car. I think those that are beginning to call that abuse, are right. But that’s another topic altogether. I realize that every metaphor has its shortcomings, but lets just say that when it comes to people, sometimes they are just like “clouds without rain” as Jude says.

In Nazareth one day, on a crowded street, a women reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ clothes. He then asks his disciples who touched him. We read that he felt power leave him. The Twelve reply, “You see the multitude thronging you, and you say, who touched me?” It’s an amazing scene, really. Jesus doesn’t know exactly who touched him with the intent that we find in that woman, but he wants to know. He starts looking around for this person. She is afraid. Maybe she felt like she stole from the Lord – took something without asking. I tell my kids that’s stealing. Nonetheless, she confesses. It says “she told him the whole truth.”

The truth was, she had been sick for a long time, and had spent her fortune and energy trying to get well. It never worked. Now she is near this One that can heal with a touch and in desperation she reaches out for a flap of the garment in his wake. His power was so available that he healed someone without even knowing it. It just flowed from him naturally – well, supernaturally, but effortless on his part. This is the hallmark of spiritual life: it comes without fanfare, without bluster, without the machinery of man. It’s like fire without smoke. Like the burning bush that was not consumed.

Christ Jesus is the power of God. Don’t be too concerned about puffing yourself up. Be concerned instead, about not letting the fire of that “first love” go out. Don’t smoke. It’s bad for your spiritual lungs too.

BJ

I Think Therefore I AM

2005-11-29T09:12:00.000-05:00

I received a parcel at work from a customer in Japan, and inside, attaching some papers together, was a triangular paper-clip. It seemed so exotic. Stationary from the Orient. I had already figured out that they do not use our standard sized 8 ½ by 11 inch paper. Theirs is longer. But this was different. I imagined a whole triangular world over there – triangular file-folders, triangular calculators, triangle shaped phones… I was explaining this to a friend and afterward, he told me that you can buy them at Staples. My triangle world came crashing to the ground.

Imagination can be dangerous. I think we forget sometimes that our minds are fallen too. Our thinking has been clouded by the same sinful nature that affects our desires and dispositions. Our minds are carnal, naturally. The Lord has said that not only are his Ways higher than our ways, but his Thoughts are just as out of reach of ours. “As the heavens are from the earth…” My mind created a triangle-land with absolutely no facts to work with, other than the connection between the address on the box and the things inside. I assumed wrong. We can easily assume wrong when it comes to spiritual things as well.

So, how does one become spiritually minded? Well, you can’t use your natural mind to do it. That’s like trying to get orange-juice by squeezing a tennis-ball. The only way to be spiritually minded is to let Christ do the thinking for you. Paul talks about this in his letter to the Philippians. He said, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…” Now, he wasn’t saying, “Put the mind of Christ in you” because how do you do that? The same idea is here that we also find when the Word talks about being filled with the Spirit. In Ephesians it says, “be filled with the Spirit” which could be translated, live in the light of the fact that you are actually filled with the Spirit. The original language reads, “be being filled with the Spirit.” So with “Let this mind be in you…” we can render it as, let the mind of Christ that is already in you, be your mind for you. Let the mind of Christ do your thinking.

This may sound confusing. But the truth is, believers are to live an exchanged life. To the Colossians, the Spirit wrote, “when Christ who is your life appears, you will appear with him…” Christ IS your life. He lived a perfect life already, so that you don’t have to. He thought perfect thoughts too. Now, this does not mean that we become complete automatons, robotically mimicking Jesus’ earthly life. But there is value in understanding that our new life in Christ includes a mind – clear and clean, learning Christ and maturing in Him to govern the rest of our new life. The mind of Christ is actually in you, because HE is in you. Allow room for His thoughts.

When I pause to give the Lord space this way, I find myself considering things that should have been so obvious before: be a better employee, a better husband, a better father, a better friend… and lots of practical ways to do it appear in my mind. That’s the mind of Christ who “took on the form of a servant…” Our minds can get crowded with so many useless thoughts. I’m glad the Lord was way ahead of me on this. He put his mind into me when he saved me, so that it would be here when I came to my senses. Well, I’m off to Staples for some triangular paper-clips.

BJ

Righteous

2005-11-23T16:43:00.000-05:00

Things fit sometimes. Two previously unassociated things can come together and are a perfect match. Married people will tell you all about it. My wife and I share a common dislike for birthday cake. She got a ring from her parents with my birthstone in it, and not hers (she didn’t like her pink one) before she even knew me. We discovered that we both played with the exact same sunflower mirror rattle in our cribs. I could go on. Maybe I will.

There have been a lot of things that my wife and I did not talk about ahead of time. We kept finding out that we agreed on pretty well everything already. Kids, finances, church… short conversations. Don’t get me wrong – there have been adjustments on both sides. Our first trip to the grocery store involved me putting things in the cart and my wife taking them back out again. But we fit. I’m a happy man. I can honestly say that my wife is perfect.

I’ve wondered about the answer to a question that poses itself in my head quite often, and it’s this: “Why bother with Jesus at all.” It’s the world’s question to me. They want to know (I think, anyway) why He plays the central role in my life. My answer these days has simply been, “He’s right.” He fits. He is a match for the bottomless pit of a hole in my heart. If someone asked me why I think Jesus is coming back someday, I would say, “He’s never been wrong about anything else, so why would he be wrong about that?” He foretold that the temple would be destroyed to the extent that not one stone would be left on top of another. It happened in 70 AD – exactly the way he said. He’s never been wrong, so that makes Him right.

He’s right when he says that “he who commits sin is a slave to sin.” He’s right when he defends the woman caught in adultery. He’s right when he calls the Pharisees white-washed tombstones. He’s right when he casts a legion of demons out of a man and then gets him some clothes. He fits. There is no one else that is as right.

Marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. When I see my wife and I matching so well, it reminds me of just how right Christ is for His Bride. He never married, you know. He’s preparing his Bride now, and there will be the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in heaven. I haven’t just been invited, I’m going to be walking up the aisle. My wife will be there too – not married to me in the same sense as we are down here (I’ll leave that for another time) but past needs there with Christ forever.

For now, I am not a match for Him. I carry around a corpse called my sinful nature that still trips me up a lot. But Christ has committed himself to me. I love the poetry of how Paul puts it in his letter to the Philippians: “that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” I will match him someday. That’s the purpose of His cross. The job here, is to let that work go deep, and let him show me what he’s already up to in getting me ready. He knows best. He’s right. A’aight?

B-to-the-J

Different

2005-11-16T09:42:00.000-05:00

Here’s an experience I’m sure that, like me, you’ve had. Someone is trying to get your attention, but you don’t notice. You’re oblivious to the fact that there is a person waving across the room to let you know they’ve arrived, or there is a person clearing their throat to indicate that they are ready for you to serve them, or there is a person dumping a bucket of lobsters on you to wake you up. Sometimes, that’s what it takes.

I think my family has been trying to get my attention for some time now. I’ve written about my name before. I remember hating it and dreading the first day at a new school. The looks I would get when they would call out – “Bartholomew Raymond”. I go by B.J. not by choice. My parents called me that from the start. I didn’t even know my full name for a while. Apparently, B.J. wasn’t short enough a name for me around the house. Two syllables – way to much work. So, I became known simply as B. My Mom says that when I went to kindergarten I told the teacher my name, but that she could call me B – for short. They still call me B. They are trying to tell me something.

Ok, they don’t know it, but in calling me B all these years, I see it as a message to just BE. That’s a trendy thing to say, isn’t it? So original. Bear with me though. A good friend from College came to my wedding and at the reception gave my wife and I some advice. He was a little crazy. He liked going into grocery stores, standing in the cereal isle and waiting for an employee to come by so he could ask him or her where the cereal was. He would stand in the street, point at his watch and ask people for the time. He would pray for natural disasters because he knew that sometimes that is the only way for God to get people’s attention. But, back to the advice. He said this, “Love as if you’ve never been hurt, and become who you already are.” Powerful statements. The second one is what I’m talking about here. Become who you already are.

Donald Miller wrote once about people wanting to be other people. Fantasy lives are pretty commonplace for our imaginations: Rock Star, Celebrity, Politician, etc… But he said, “imagine someone who actually really wanted to be himself. That guy would be so different that everyone else would want to be that guy.” Funny, but true. We need to really BE ourselves, but the problem is - we don’t really know who that is.

Christ came to be us for us. He lived an impeccable, unimpeachable, perfect, holy, righteous, wonderful life. Who does not agree with that statement? The world knows it. They may not like it, but they know it. At one point (John 7) we read that the Pharisees sent officers to bring Jesus to them by force. They return empty handed, mouths open, saying, “No one ever spoke like this man.” He was so different that no one knew what to do with him. So, they killed him. It was actually what he came for. But the difference kept on coming. He rose from the grave. He promised those who trusted him that they would rise too. Christ puts his life in us when we trust him. That is who we are to be. We are to be Christ here. We are called his Body are we not? You CAN be like him, because by faith he is IN you. You are not God. But, the MAN Christ Jesus came to be you for you. And He’s alive. Just be. Don’t be who you would like to be. Be who Christ has made you. My name is B.

BJ

Ezekiel Bread and Fake Ears

2005-11-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

If you’re like me, you’ve probably found yourself at one time or another saying something to the effect of, “that’s not what I’m saying, what I’m trying to say is…” And you would give anything to be understood. You start making hand-gestures or just resort to sighing. “It’s like this…” you go on, launching into some tangent involving crocodile eggs or foreign currencies. Ok, maybe that last part is just me, but the desire to find resonance in the people around you is pretty strong. There is a real need in the human heart to be understood, to be believed, to be agreed with. When you finally hear those blessed words, “I know what you mean” you feel like collapsing to the floor and having an IV hooked up. It’s a often a marathon of talk to get there.

Ezekiel is a fascinating book. God tells him to lie on one side for a year with a model of Jerusalem at his back and only eat a certain kind of bread. This is God’s way of getting through to people. Jeremiah was told to walk through the streets with a yolk on his back. Hosea is told to marry a harlot. God knows that getting through our thick hearts is tough. Shock is often needed. Jesus said things like “if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off” and “my flesh is food and my blood is drink”. It made people walk away from him at times. He was probably the most misunderstood man that ever lived. There is mystery to that. He’s called “the Word” and yet to most it’s like he’s a foreign language. Clarity in the presentation of truth is only one side though. That’s why Jesus said, “he who has an ear to hear, let him hear.” It seems that some people only had fake ones stuck to sides of their heads.

Jesus said something else that’s hard to hear. He said, “no one can come to me unless the Father draws him.” There is more going on than we ever see. Before Jesus was betrayed and willingly gave up his life for a world eager to kill him, he spent some time with his closest friends, telling them about the way it is. He said that the Spirit of God has come into the world to “reprove” it. That word “reprove” boils down to two words – convince and convict. The truth is, we are in a state that makes us unable to receive the truth on our own. The truth sounds like a lie to us, because our lives are a lie. We lie to ourselves and everyone else lies to us – the devil lies to us, and we can’t recognize the truth anymore. We need help. So God gives it. His Spirit is busy opening our eyes at just the right time, so that we can see Jesus for who he really is and for what he has done for us.

Paul prays for the believers in Ephesus, “that the eyes of your hearts may be open.” The letter to the Ephesians is a staggering declaration of what God has done. It’s this amazing run-on sentence – like Paul had taken this deep breath and even then gets winded and just about passes out expressing the blessings of God. Even as he writes, he knows his readers aren’t getting everything he’s saying, so he writes a prayer right into the letter.

Jesus prayed for us too. I remember hearing a preacher so impressed with the fact that Jesus prayed for him that he couldn’t stop repeating it. He was this broken record skipping behind the pulpit. It didn’t dawn on me until later how impressed this guy was with Jesus praying for him. All I could think of at the time was how annoying it was that he was repeating himself. How ironic. I didn’t have my ears on. We need prayer. We need ears. We need the Spirit of God to show us Jesus. We need to hear Him. We need HIS ears. He came to be ours, along with everything else about him. Hear, hear!

BJ

Surprise

2005-10-26T15:54:00.000-05:00

The word for the day is, EXPECTATION. It’s different from anticipation. You anticipate things that are actually on the way. Expectations are more in the category of wishes. They belong to that family of wishes that masquerade as “hopes”. Real hope is simply anticipation. When you expect something, you have absolutely no guarantee that it will show up. But it’s funny, expectations are devious – when they come up short, you feel ripped-off, duped, robbed. And they just stand there and say, “What…?” Then your just left with disappointment. You know what that is. It’s an appointment with a dis. Worse than the dentist.

But I have a secret for out-witting disappointment. Don’t expect anything. Seriously. It’s more than just keeping expectations low. I think we expect things because somewhere down deep we think we’ve earned them. We think we’re entitled to things. We’re not. If you want your rights, here is what you have a right to: death, eternal separation from God, eating bread derived from the sweat of your brow, and the law of diminishing returns (AKA – Sin.). That’s it. Everything else is gravy. We have a hard time with grace though, don’t we? We want to buy it. The problem is, it ceases to exist then.

Jesus was surprised once. Surprises are wonderful things. You have a lot more of them when you don’t expect anything. I think Jesus knew this secret (what doesn’t he know…). We read that “he did not commit himself to them for he knew what was in a man”. He did not expect much of us, and rightly so. But he was astonished when the centurion told him to simply say the word, and his servant would be healed. He explained that as a centurion he had authority, and simply had to speak and his will was done. The centurion deduced that Jesus must have the same ability. He didn’t need Jesus to even come to his house. When the Lord heard this, he said that he hadn’t seen faith like this in all of Israel! He was surprised.

The fact that Jesus could marvel is proof that he is really a man. He really did humble himself and fit himself into our skin – our experience. There were many times when he showed divine knowledge, but there were also times like above when he didn’t know something. He knew only what the Father told him then. The Father wanted him to be surprised too. How amazing is that? God the Father wanted His Son to experience something that He hadn’t. You have to be human to be surprised.

I once read that the definition of meekness is to be surprised at how good you’re treated when anyone says anything bad about you, because they could have said much worse. Keep your expectations chained up. They bark really loud sometimes, but what the Lord has in mind for you is so much better than anything you can dream up. “him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think… ” Expect nothing and life will be a never ending surprise party. Also, be surprised when things you know you have coming to you don't show up.

BJ

What's In A Name

2005-10-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

I just recently got a new e-mail account. My name was taken already. I was kindly offered some scrambled versions of it that were still free to use. I ended up just having to have my first and last names inverted. That wasn’t so bad. “raymondbj” is better than “ray_mond001b1976j1234”. But, as usual, that got me thinking….

When both Mary and Joseph were visited by an angel to confirm the birth of the Son of God, they were told to name him “Jesus”. That name is a version of the Hebrew name “Joshua” and simply means “Jehovah saves”. But more often than not, in the epistles of the new testament, he is called “The Lord Jesus Christ”. That title is what we may call his full name. It expresses who he is quite well. The Lord… God, sovereign, king of kings. Jesus… saviour, rescuer, redeemer. Christ… messiah, anointed one, chosen, special.

Having my name inverted for my new spam… I mean e-mail account, reminded me that Jesus kind of had the same thing happen to him. When Paul was before King Agrippa he talked about his “faith in Christ Jesus”. The messiah aspect of his title is here put first. It’s interesting to see the number of combinations used for Jesus in His book. Sometimes he is the Lord Jesus Christ, other times he is the Lord Jesus, the Lord, Christ the Lord, Christ Jesus (as mentioned already), Jesus Christ, Christ and simply Jesus. We read also about the Lord and His Christ.

So, why the mixed-up name? Well, I think we are often quick to come up with formulas. I don’t think there is anything magical or mystical in the letters and syllables that make up His name. It’s not like in the Chronicles of Narnia when Queen Jadis uses the deplorable word and destroys her own planet. But we are prone to looking for incantations sometimes. I remember when the “Prayer of Jabez” phenomena hit. It resonated with that place in our fallen natures that craves a system for self-improvement. The thing is, it didn’t last. These things never do. But Jesus lasts. 2,000 years and counting.

He is not a formula or a system or even a means to another end. Paul was told that he would be a witness to Jesus in Rome, and even though he had to go in chains, he still went. Why? For Christ’s sake. He was most likely killed, eventually, under Nero – alone in prison writing to Timothy that everyone in Asia had left him – even Ephesus. Why? For Christ’s sake. His Lord, loved him and gave himself for him. There was no formula for Paul. Jesus, plus or minus nothing. He wrote in his letter to the Ephesians (1:10) about “the SUMMING up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.” NASB (emphasis added) It’s a mathematical term that’s used here. And it’s simply this: EVERYTHING = CHRIST. The whole is definitely greater than the sum of it’s parts when we put it that way.

Even in His name we find a complexity and that touch of “otherness” that accompanies this One who left heaven to come looking for the very ones who dragged that name through the muck and mire. You can’t pin him down. He has a name that is above every name, we read. I think there is more to that than simply J-E-S-U-S. I think it’s like the Jews that never actually spoke the name JHVH. We can’t say his rightful name yet. Not until we have new tongues and a new heavenly speech. I can’t wait. No more e-mail…

BJ

Lightbulbs and Great Fishes

2005-10-05T16:01:00.000-05:00

Epiphany is a funny word. It just sounds funny. Really - say it out loud right now. See? Funny word. It sounds like a girls name that everybody skips over in the baby-name book. What would you call her for short? Epiphany is one of those words you have to look up in the dictionary twice. What the meaning of it boils down to is, a lightbulb. Think cartoon: A coyote has a great idea (always involving explosives) and a lightbulb appears over his head. An epiphany is when the light comes on in a big way. It even looks funny typed.

So, I was sitting one Sunday morning, listening to a guest speaker in our chapel and I was daydreaming. I should have been trying harder to pay attention, I guess, but I found myself thinking about how Jesus said he was like Jonah. It was the time when the Pharisees were asking for a sign, and all the Lord would give them was the sign of Jonah. He said, “as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” I had never really thought much about how that was so. So, I did. It fits better than I would have thought.

It goes this way: Jonah was on a ship close to capsizing. The cargo had been thrown overboard and the nature of the storm was such that the sailors were sure there was something supernatural to it. They determine that somebody on the ship is the cause, and so they draw straws to let divine intervention pinpoint the culprit. Jonah gets the short straw (or long one and the rest were short… not sure). He jumps into the sea – the very thing that is about to kill everyone – and the storm subsides. The sailors are saved. He is then carried through the water – through death – in the belly of that great fish. God commands the fish to throw him up, and Jonah then goes on to save a million people in Nineveh. Do you see it?

Death is the result of sin. It didn’t exist before the fall. It wasn’t part of the original creation. But death is not only something that happens to us at the end of our lives. It’s something that is present with us all the time. Death is inside us. So, the Son of God takes on humanity – he dives right into it – and allows mankind to swallow him. But he’s preserved through it. He comes out the other side. Millions of people are saved. Maybe you’re reading this going, “um… ya Beej, that’s great. I learned that in Sunday School when I was 8 months old.” But it’s MY epiphany! That’s the thing about those things. They’re personal. God makes something real to YOU and you hang on to it.

Christ certainly didn’t have Jonah’s attitude, but Jonah is a “type” of Christ. He pre-figures the Lord in what he goes through. The interesting thing is that now the opposite is happening. Before Jesus came, people like Joseph, Isaac, and Jonah outlined Christ in different ways. Now, we who are reborn in Him find Him as our type too. T. Austin-Sparks wrote that the Holy Spirit is writing a biography of Christ in the lives of believers. We will go through what Jesus went through here in varying degrees. Jesus said, “the world hated me, and they will hate you too.” But he was preserved through it all, and so shall we be.

The Lord turns the light on sometimes. Sometimes it’s the littlest and simplest of things that all of a sudden become dear to us this way. I’m thankful for a fresh look at Jonah. I am grateful for how it has increased my appreciation of Jesus. Now, if I can just say epiphany without snickering.

BJ

God Is In The Details

2005-09-27T15:45:00.000-05:00

Almonds are good. They are tasty little things and actually good for you. Lots of calcium. Good fat in them too. They’re not nuts though. Technically, they are in the peach family. Weird. I thought only tomatoes had an identity crisis. Nonetheless, almonds grow all over the place – mostly in California, but a lot in Spain too. Thanks Wikipedia. They also grow in Israel.

God (Jehovah, The LORD – it’s good to clarify these things) gave instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai for a tabernacle to be constructed in order for the LORD to dwell with his people. It was elaborate. It took craftsman of all kinds to put it together: weavers and metalworkers mostly. The metalworkers used silver, brass, bronze and gold. One particular furnishing in the tabernacle were golden lamp-stands. God told Moses to make the bowls on the lamps to resemble almond blossoms. Why almond blossoms? They look nice, I’m sure. God never tells Moses why, just that He wants them to look that way. Maybe it was obvious to Moses. It sure wasn’t to me.

So I went looking for more information about almonds. Here is what I found: Almonds grow on trees, and these trees are the first to blossom – of ALL trees. They are in bloom as early as January. That is why God wanted them to adorn the place where he was going to make his presence known. You see, God making a dwelling place here on earth simply pre-figures Jesus. The tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament are all about Jesus Christ. This aspect of it shows us that Jesus is the first to bloom. He is actually called the “firstfruits” of the new creation God is making. We will follow in the likeness of His resurrection.

When some of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron, one of the things God did was to have all of the leaders in the various families to bring their rods to the tabernacle. Aaron’s was brought as well. The test was that whichever rod blossomed was God’s choice of a mediator for the people. Aaron’s rod blossomed – almond blossoms to be precise. Not only that, but there were also ripe almonds in the blossoms. This was later put into the ark of the covenant along with the stone tablets and a jar of manna.

Aaron’s rod that budded was kept as a reminder of God’s way. God’s way is resurrection. A dead stick does not naturally blossom. But with God, all things are possible. Impossibilities are actually his specialty. Ezekiel saw dry bones coming to life again in the valley. This is the principle of God’s working. That is how we know the difference between our way and His way. His ways are higher than our ways “as the heavens are from the earth.”

One more thing. Remember what Jesus called himself? He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Think about the ark for a second. That’s a picture of Jesus too. What was inside? A jar of manna – life, the stone tablets – truth, and the rod that budded – the way. The next time you eat an almond, I hope Jesus comes to mind.

BJ

Who Said That?

2005-09-21T08:42:00.000-05:00

The other day my wife caught me talking to myself. That’s right, I was audibly carrying on an imaginary conversation. Now, it wasn’t really loud. My lips were moving and I guess she heard something. Does that qualify me for institutionalization? Am I crazy? Well, as the one in question, I would have to say that sanity is a subjective thing. In other words, crazy often just means, misunderstood. Yes, I talk to myself sometimes, but that’s just because sometimes no one else will listen. Thanks for listening, me.

The fact that it is possible to have a conversation with yourself (come on, you do it too) helps to understand what Jesus came to do. He came to divide. In talking to Nicodemus, he said, “flesh is flesh… spirit is spirit.” When you are reborn through faith in the finished work of the cross of Christ, something brand new is planted inside the old. It’s like the Israelites entering the Promised land, even though it’s full of enemies. There’s a new life that gets put inside you when you come to faith in Christ, but the old is still there. There is war going on between the two. It doesn’t have to be a war, though. The nature of the new is like those that marched around Jericho. Those walls didn’t stand a chance.

All the same, there are now two natures. If you don’t think so, read Romans 6 and 7, again. This is not to say that all Christians have multiple personality disorders. There is one you. But the old you dies on the cross with Jesus, and the new you is immediately planted in the old, dead, you. This is confusing, as spiritual things normally are to natural minds (1st Cor. 2:14). Paul says it this way, “Reckon yourselves as dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There are two things that happened at the cross. The first is death, not only for Jesus, but for those who trust in him too. His crucifixion provides the severing of your old enslaved life to sin. His resurrection (2nd thing) infuses his very life into you, starting you over again. But the old dead you is still encasing this new life.

So, how does talking to yourself help to see this? There is a back-and-forth between the flesh and the spirit. What theologians (we should all be, really) call the Adamic life is dead set against this new Christ-life. It’s like the animosity between Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael represents mans efforts to achieve God’s ends. Isaac represents God’s way. Temptation does not come from the devil, it comes from you. (James 1:14) The old dead sinful self talks to the new Christ-life, trying to entice you to go back to your old ways. The trick is not to talk back.

You won’t argue or reason your way out of temptation. The old life is conniving and scheming. Your focus needs to remain on the source of your new life. And that is none other than Jesus, of course. People talk about victorious Christian living, as if the battle is still to be fought. Christ won already. You just have to believe it. It’s hard to see, especially when your gaze is turned inward. Look into the empty tomb instead. Look at the scars that Jesus decided to keep in his glorified body.

The next time you are engaged in a little heart to heart with yourself, turn it into a prayer instead. I’ll try too. Hold me to it. Even Jesus had a habit of going alone to the mountain to pray. It will help you to remember what he’s done for you already. It will keep you out of the loony-bin too.

BJ

Dim The Lights Please

2005-09-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

There’s a lamp in my living room that my brother gave my wife and I when we got married. It’s nice - A heavy thing that the kids haven’t managed to knock off the cabinet yet. But there has been a silent war going on, and this lamp is the battlefield. Whenever I go to turn it on, I turn the lampshade just a bit to get at the switch. This makes the seam in the shade turn outwards to face the rest of the room. My wife will then turn the shade later when she notices this. So, back and forth, this has been going on for years now. It’s never mentioned, but my sense of practicality is rubbing up against my wife’s uncanny knack for interior design. The war of the lamp may not end this side of heaven. Unless of course all this turning causes the thing to eventually just snap off.

So, this gets me thinking about light. I want the light to be turned on easily. My wife wants the light to look right. Philosophically, both are important. If there is a way to see, it should be something accessible. Also, if there is a source of light, it should be presented in the best way possible. The light should be on, and it should shine well, without distraction.

Jesus walked into a dark temple, during the feast of booths, and said “I am the light of the world.” Traditionally they put out the lights during this festival and He used the opportunity to contrast that darkness with himself. John says that “in him is no darkness at all.” This is the same one of whom Paul writes, “he dwells in light unapproachable.” Christ brings clarity to grace and truth, the very things this world can even appreciate to a certain degree without him. Sometimes I think that it’s just a matter of flicking a switch and having Jesus presented that will win people over to him. It doesn’t in fact play out that way very often. He seems to mystify people quite a bit. I’ve been thinking more lately, thanks to my wife’s side of the lamp-war, about the way he should be presented.

Light is a funny thing. C.S. Lewis wrote a short story about a man born blind who received his sight through surgery. This man had a fascination with light. He wanted to be able to see it, but could only see the things the light allowed him to see. It’s a tragic story, ending with this man diving into a gorge filled with luminescent fog. This seems to have some bearing on the Lord Jesus, as we consider him, “the light of the world.” He brings light to the sin and darkness here and exposes it. At his death, we see the conspiracy of both religion and government, the betrayal and the fair-weather friendships we are all so prone to, the violence man is capable of, and our propensity to wash our hands of a thing and hang someone out to dry. Jesus exposed sin so clearly and yet he is still so misunderstood.

Christ is like that dangerous sun, able to blind you if you stare too long. What is the danger? He is the radiance of the glory of God the Father, the express image of His person – Holy, Perfect, Right. These flawed eyes can’t take him in. But one thing about the sun - you CAN see it set, and rise again. That’s where these eyes find Jesus. He had a blinding effect on those that tried to take him in full strength. But for those who see him crucified and rising from the tomb, he fills their vision. That’s how I now present him. I don’t just preach Jesus, I preach Christ crucified. I read that Billy Graham once spoke about Jesus without mentioning the cross, and not one person responded. He vowed to never do that again.

Light isn’t to be hidden under a bowl, but shining it directly into people eyes doesn’t help either. Present Jesus the way the Word presents him: setting and rising like the sun. There’s a reason why Jews start their day in the evening. Dark came first, and then light - death, then resurrection.

BJ

That's Sick

2005-09-12T07:50:00.000-05:00

I’m a baby when I’m sick. I don’t tolerate illness well at all. Colds and flus don’t inflict themselves on me that often (thanks guys), so that is probably why. I hear about people that wake up every day with a splitting headache, or a sore back, or feet that burn so hot they never have to where shoes – even in the winter. I’m not kidding about that last one. Disease is a symptom of a fallen world. The fact that our bodies break down is proof that we are physically on the way out. The downward spiral is upon us all. A couple of guys escaped it – Enoch and Elijah. They lived before Jesus touched down here, so things were different then. But barring the day of Jesus’ return, we will go through illness and death. It’s as sure as taxes they say. As sure as babies like to suck on things.

What concerns me though, is our reaction to it. Mine this time around was not so good. I think I milked it a little. “Honey, can you get me a Tylenol…”, “Dear, can you run out and get me some cough syrup…”, or even “Can you unwrap my lozenge?” It’s good to be sick. It helps you understand what others go through. Sympathy should be a healthy currency when a friend is ill. But we can be too fixated on it. I’ve often had a knee-jerk kind of reaction to prayer meetings I’ve sat through where just about every request had something to do with either a physical ailment or a material need. It grates me the wrong way when people get too preoccupied with the physical world and neglect the spiritual. But then I turn around and get sick. Pray for me, I cry!

It’s an important thought, nonetheless. It is easy to keep our needs in the forefront of our minds. The hard thing to do is to cast those cares, that bread on the waters. The problem with being preoccupied with the physical things is that it actually has the potential to undermine God. Jesus asked a man to follow him once. The man replied, “let me go bury my father first.” The Lord answered him with seeming harshness by saying, “let the dead bury their own dead…” It sounds callous at the outset, but maybe the carbuncle was on the other guy. He was in effect saying to Jesus, “You don’t understand, my dad is sick and he’s going to die soon. I want to stick around and be there for him and my family.” Once again, that first part of the reply was, “Jesus, you don’t understand…”

I think we often tell Jesus that he doesn’t understand. We question the waiting and the often lack of supply for the need, but you have to remember that we don’t really know the meaning of that word. Need, is a subjective thing. It’s a whole lot different from God’s perspective. Maybe we need tuberculosis, maybe we need to get into a car crash, maybe we need to even die. But to die, is gain – right? That’s the mind of Christ. It’s not our natural minds to think that way. This takes prayer. This takes some serious re-adjustment of our hearts to the heart of a father that actually loves us more than we love ourselves. We talk about him knowing us better, but not too often do I hear that the Lord passionately and desperately loves us more than we even begin to love ourselves. If that’s true, don’t you think he’s worth trusting?

Jesus was on the cross, and looked down at Mary. He said to her, “Mary, behold your son” referring to John. He was dying on the cross, going through excruciating (a new word they had to coin) pain. He is thinking about others. He didn’t take the gall, the anesthetic. He bore our griefs and our sorrows, physically, emotionally, mentally, and most of all spiritually. We can trust that we have a sympathetic high priest.

I’m told that “sick” is another word that has been re-applied. Like “wicked” or “ridiculous”, now “sick” means, cool. Well, I don’t think that’s a stretch. Don’t we often quote Romans 8:28 – “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” I think it’s safe to say that “sick” can be included in “all things”. God can make being sick, good. How? Let’s leave it up to the One that made death good too.

BJ

God Holds Horses

2005-08-31T12:53:00.000-05:00

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

2005-08-29T15:49:00.000-05:00

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

2005-08-24T08:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-08-16T08:38:00.000-05:00

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

2005-08-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

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

2005-08-03T08:41:00.000-05:00

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

That's Not All

2005-07-29T15:09:00.000-05:00

There is always more to the story. I got a real sense of this one day as my wife gave me an account of something my eldest daughter did. We have a baby monitor in the kitchen, with the transmitter being in the girls’ room. Our friends father was dying, soon to see face to face the very maker of noses and ears and eyes. We had been praying for the family for the last while and my wife overheard Hannah praying up in her room, by way of the monitor. She was lifting up her little voice and saying, “Oh Lord, Mr. Martin, Mr. Martin… oh Mr. Martin, oh Lord, Mr. Martin, amen.” If that isn’t a picture of the intercessory groaning of the Spirit, I don’t know what is. Just before this time, Hannah had come to my wife to tell her that she had asked Jesus to forgive her of her sins and to come live inside her. Suzanne was the same age when she did that very same thing.

We would not have heard that prayer if it wasn’t for some modern, useful, technology. That part of Hannah’s story might have gone unnoticed – not to the God who never sleeps – without a little electronic device designed for a completely different purpose. I think the Lord used that to refocus me quite a bit. “Out of the mouth of babes…” Also, it allows life to take on the story-like quality it should have. There are extenuating circumstances playing out at this moment, completely oblivious to me as I to them, that will nonetheless have a dramatic impact on me. They are little parallel universes; streams of happenstance connected to me in a way only the God of the baby Jesus could ever orchestrate. You see, they were confused before Christ was born. The prophesies spoke of him being from Nazareth, Galilee, Egypt and Bethlehem. How could he be from four places all at the same time? Well, that’s exactly how the story went. Within a two year period, Mary and Joseph had toted him between all those places. Perfectly good reasons for it too.

The gospels are a wonderful gift to us. In them we find Jesus. His life has been chronicled for us as the King, the servant, the Son of Man and the Son of God. Different perspectives and slants help us to take him in. He is multi-dimensional, rising above the page and staying with us long after we’ve closed the book. It’s interesting though, to read the end of the last gospel written, John, and find these words:

“Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

What were these things? I’m sure we would find the same wit as when he said, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” or “man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.” I would hazard a guess to say we would find similar scenes as when he stooped to write in the sand with his finger, or when he cast the legion of demons into the pigs. I think we would also find him touching the untouchable, speaking to the spiritually deaf, and feeding the multitudes. He was continually laying his life down. The cross was the exclamation point of his life. It was only needed to be done once. It is finished. Jesus said so himself. But he never said HE was finished.

BJ

Your Biggest Fan

2005-07-28T21:49:00.000-05:00

I grew up sleeping with an oscillating fan. The gentle whir lulled me into dreamville every night. My brother had a box-fan – the kind that tips over so easy. So many fan memories though… My little brother Shawn thought it would be fun to drop a cracker in my fan. The result was more than he’d hoped for. Stone Wheat Thin fragments shot through my room like shrapnel. He kept reloading as I inched forward with my hands in front of my face. Then, it happened. In the kafuffle, someone knocked over my guitar and a neat little chip was missing from the soundboard. I like to think it was Shawn, but it may have been me. I wasn’t too happy then. Let’s just say, I wasn’t a big fan of Shawn at that moment.

Where did that word come from anyway? Oh ya, right… fanatic. Short form. Ok. It’s late. But there is a connection (as usual, bear with me) between an electric wind-maker and an adoring admirer. They’re both fans. They both have something to do with air. Cool air in the one case and mostly hot in the other. Fans of celebrities tend to inflate their idols until he or she is practically floating above this mass of low-density pressure. Fanatics are a virtual weather system for the egos of athletes, actors, and rock stars. They think they really are something because so many people are holding them up. They’re crowd surfers to the beat of a looped laugh-track. And they’re not going anywhere. No matter what sphere of life you’re orbiting there is always a flashy comet or two streaking through your sky. We fired them off from our canons. We put them there.

A man simply called a “rich young ruler” came to Jesus one day and asked him what he must do to enter the kingdom of heaven. He started his pious question by saying, “Good teacher.” That was a mistake. Christ stopped him short and said, “Why do you call me good? There is no one good, but God alone.” This young man came as a kind of fan. He’d probably heard about Jesus’ wisdom, as well as his miracles – who hadn’t? He addresses him as “good teacher” like saying, “oh grand sage” and Jesus stops him. Isn’t Jesus God? Why did he not take that praise? Well, Jesus is smart. What an understatement. He is incomprehensibly omniscient. That’s closer. He knows that this young man doesn’t really know who he’s talking to. So, being the good teacher that he is, he addresses something that this young guy – we’ll call him Joseph from now on – is assuming, and shouldn’t. No one is good. Don’t ever think it. The World will have you think otherwise, but down deep we are hopelessly sinful and like it. Christ wanted to make this clear before going on to address the actual question. Think about that the next time you are praising someone for their athletic prowess or musical proficiency.

But Jesus did not always brush adoration of him aside. Many are seen worshipping him. Like the one leper out of ten that came back to thank him for giving him his life back. He is seen on his face at Jesus feet. I think that’s appropriate. Mary is seen with that flask of costly fragrant oil that she breaks and anoints her Saviour with. The woman in Simon’s house who comes in weeping and kissing Jesus’ feet – giving him the honour he was denied by the Pharisee. Then there’s Nicodemus. We meet him at night coming to talk to Jesus – being sarcastic about the necessary rebirth Christ proclaims. But we find him again later defending Jesus. After the crucifixion, he is seen again helping to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. He’s helping a man from Arimathea. It’s a place just north of Jerusalem. It’s the same place the rich young ruler was from. It may be the same guy. Didn’t Jesus say, “with God all things are possible” after he went away sad? I can’t prove it, but I like to think they are the same. Fans tend to do that kind of thing.

BJ

Old is the new New

2005-07-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

Strange title, but let me explain. I’m primarily a hamburger guy. Some people gravitate towards hot-dogs, or pitas, or sushi – but I’m prone to burgers. I know I shouldn’t eat them. But sometimes I do. One day, I didn’t. I tried a sub instead. Wow. It was so good. Fresh veggies and thinly sliced meat on fresh bread. I was telling everybody about subs. I could eat a foot-long and not feel sleepy like I do when I eat a burger. I ate three in one week. It was exciting (I do get out much, you know – to get the subs). It was so fresh. So new.

But it didn’t last. I haven’t had a sub for a few weeks now. They’re still good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s possible that I could be eating a hamburger sometime in the not-too-distant future. Subs lost their newness (newety?) It happens all the time. Two people meet and become infatuated with one another. Everything is exhilarating. The electricity and chemistry and geography (?) and all that. But it is a stage. It is elusive. People that get married learn to live after the “honeymoon” stage. It takes work, but you move on to better things – security, stability, real intimacy, connectedness, and all the rest that comes along with commitment. But some people (more all the time) think that something is wrong when the moon is not made out of honey anymore.

I think we are all looking for that pang of newness. We get bored easily. It causes problems in our families, in the work-place and in the Church. There is always a new movement it seems. I was in college when the “Toronto Blessing” came to town. I sat in a room full of guys during a prayer meeting who were “laughing in the spirit”. Why wasn’t I laughing? But people are realizing that charismania is really just a physiological experience – euphoria. It isn’t lasting. There are still new movements though: The Third-Wave, the House Church Movement, and now the Emerging Church Movement (ECM). ECM is gathering speed and the “conversation” is getting louder. People are talking about “a new kind of Christian”. These are bright people with some genuine concerns. They are worried about staleness. They just have to make sure they don’t throw out the chicken with the bucket.

Christ is the perpetual novelty. For years I had only seen one side of the cross. I believed that Jesus died so that I could be forgiven for my sins, but I had no idea that he also died to deliver me from sin. I read Watchman Nee’s “The Normal Christian Life” and it rocked me to the core. It was simply a study of Romans 3 to 8, but it was a clean breeze that blew through my heart. Since then, I keep discovering things about the Lord Jesus that have given me an insatiable appetite for Him. He satisfies and always meets the hunger I have – even as it grows. That’s why he said that his flesh is food and his blood is drink. Macabre sounding, I know, but he meant that he – himself – is the very sustenance for the new life in us.

If you’re looking for something new, don’t simply be reactionary to the old. ECM seems at this point to be just that. I shouldn’t generalize like this, but so far, I’ve read more about “following Christ” than actually ABOUT Him in the blogs and articles that are out here in the Mecca of Emergent – the Internet. Don’t lose out on the tried and true obsession with “the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the earth”. He has satisfied the thirst for novelty for centuries now. He will for centuries to come (even so, come Lord Jesus). Did you know that He was quoting Psalm 22 when He cried out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Did you know that He filled in some missing narrative about Balaam in Revelation chapter 2? Did you know that when He got in the boat after walking on the water, He immediately transported them miraculously to the shore? Just to wet your appetite a little. I’m getting hungry – maybe I’ll try Tai.

BJ

Done and done

2005-07-26T11:55:00.000-05:00

I wish my name was B.J. I’ve always thought that it would be cool to have initials for a name. Like, B.A. Baracus. But B.J. is even better. You know, like B.J. Honeycutt from M*A*S*H, or B.J. and the Bear. Ya. If only my name was Bob Jack, Billy-Joe, or Bartholomew John. Then I could go by B.J. I wish, I wish, I wish...

Ok, in case you’re not aware, my name actually IS B.J. It stands for Bartholomew John. I’m one of nine kids, so my parents had to get creative. So, why did I start the post this way? It’s a reaction that I’ve had countless times when listening to “worship” music. So many songs have been written with lyrics like, “change me, take my brokenness and make me new, I surrender my lifeless life, I’m no good, be my everything…” I think you may have heard these too. Churches resound with these words. People gravitate towards songs asking for God to do something in their lives. That’s not a terrible thing. But there is a problem when people ask God to do something He has already done. Like wanting my name to be B.J.

This comes down to an understanding of the gospel (the good news) of Jesus Christ. What happened on the cross? What happened when He rose from the grave? What happened when He ascended into Heaven? What happened when the Spirit came during Pentecost? Without knowing more about what God has done already, it’s easy to ask for things previously accomplished. There isn’t room here to unpack the finished work of the cross - As we sing sometimes:

“Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment madeWere every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by tradeTo write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dryNor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.”

But, that should not stop us from trying. The next time you find yourself asking God for something, give some real consideration to the possibility that He’s already taken care of it. Do you want to be changed? The death of the Lord Jesus has made an end of sin. If you’ve trusted in Christ for forgiveness, then trust Him for deliverance too. You’ve been crucified with Him. The sin nature in you is no longer your master – even though it’s still there. (Romans 6-8) Start living as if that is true – because it is. Do you feel like offering your broken life to God? He won’t accept it. We are only “accepted in the beloved”. We are to offer up ourselves as “living sacrifices” – Not dead ones. Do you long for God to improve you – make you better? It won’t happen. “You must be born again.” Christ did not just come to renovate, He came to rebuild. You are a “new creation” in Christ. The new life has been put inside the old. But it will grow. Do you feel far from Jesus? Don’t believe it. HE, Himself has made you a branch on the Vine. You can’t cut yourself off.

I know how this may sound to you. You might be thinking, “if that’s true, why do I still feel the way I do?” or “this sounds like some weird name-it-and-claim-it thing”. Listen, regardless of your initial reaction, please consider this question: Are you exhausted trying to live the Christian life? There are three possibilities.1. You’re not, because you’ve never really tried.2. You’re tired and worn out from trying to live like Jesus, not actually becoming more like Him.3. You might be on the road already to a life of freedom, where the fruit of the Spirit is growing without human effort. The last option will only be the case when you begin to realize what Christ has done for you. Not what He will do, or might do. Consider Paul’s words from the letter to the Galatians:

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

There’s a whole lot of paste tense there. Jesus’ own words are “if the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” Believe it. It’s still true even if you don’t.

BJ (not a wannabe)

Reading Into Things

2005-07-25T12:48:00.000-05:00

The past tense of run is ran. For lead, it's led. But for read, it's read. Why not red? Well, ok, that's obvious. Why not redd or even readed? Nope, it's read. It's spelled the same, you just have to say it differently. You have to know when to use that short vowel sound, or the long one. You can sound like a neanderthal if you're not careful. So, context is everything. Words around words help to show you how to read them. It's the literary budy-system. Once you've read it right, you can read it right, right?

This is about taking a step back and looking at more than, in this case, just one word. People talk about the big picture, not just seeing the forest for the trees, saying you're from Earth in the Milky Way when asked for your address. Ok, I made that last one up. The idea here is, keep things in perspective. Ultimately, it comes down to reading the whole into the parts. We read into things in the wrong way all the time, but that doesn't mean we're not supposed to do it.

A man named Cleopas was walking home from Jerusalem one day. Another was with him - possibly his wife. They were talking on the road about the crazy events of the last few days. Someone caught up to them, and asked them what they were discussing, and why they were so sad. They had been talking about a man they had hoped would be one to free them from Roman tyranny. They had hoped it would be the Redeemer. But he had been crucified. Three days later, some women went to the tomb where he was put, but he wasn't there. Angels told them he was alive, but he hadn't been found yet. That was where they ended their story. Jesus hadn't been found.

The man listening to this story called them foolish. He then walked them through the Old Testemant, starting at Genesis and going all the way through the Prophets (even the "minor" ones!), showing them that this one, called the Christ, had to suffer and then enter into his glory. Jesus himself was teaching them (not prominent disciples, but nobody's really - like you and me!). But he did not allow them to recognize him. I've heard someone say that they just needed to see his scars as he broke the bread and then they realized who it was. But that's not what we read there. The good book actually says they were "kept" from recognizing him. That's an action someone was taking to prevent them. There's a reason for that. He wanted himself to be known primarily through His Word, and not through the senses. Our senses can deceive us. Jesus is called "the Word". We shouldn't be surprised to find him living that out.

I love their response to this when thinking about it later, "Didn't our hearts burn within us... while he opened the Scriptures to us?" No indigestion here - this was before they ate. The Scriptures, the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, had been opened - and what was the key? What was the thing that made it "open" for them? It was no less than Christ himself. He is the big picture. He was reading himself into the Word. We can take a step back, and see Jesus from start to finish in this God-breathed book we call the bible. It's not an end in itself. We are supposed to see past it. We are not to be bible-worshippers. So read Jesus into it.

Now, we find (as usual) that Jesus humbly allows his Word to speak for him. He could have simply opened their eyes instead of their hearts. But where would we be then? We who haven't seen him - though we long to. Our hearts can burn too, as we're distracted from ourselves by the central thread and theme of history. His Story. The past tense of read sounds like red. I see Him in that colour too.

BJ

The Perfect Son

2005-07-22T11:09:00.000-05:00

My Mom seems to have a terrible memory. She calls me "the perfect son". I say to her in response, "Don't you remember that time I pushed Ben down the stairs? He was in a neck-brace for weeks!" She just said, "Oh, that was an accident. You didn't mean it." Oh yes I did! Ben knew how to get me going. But being human implies imperfection. "Pobody's Nerfect" right? You can probably hear the voice of Marge in your head now saying, "That's cute, Lisa, like you."

We all want to think the best of people. My mom is well-intentioned. That's part of her job. Moms root for you when no one else will. But this selective memory of hers really goes too far. I was far from perfect. I like to remind her of the time I was in the back of a police car because my drunk friends and I were out vandalizing a restaurant. The girl I was with lied our way out of it and had us dropped off at some remote part of town. Not good.

But that makes me think of another son. Very different from me. His parents couldn't find him one day and looked everywhere for a whole day for him. They finally found him with some Bible teachers asking profound questions. His comment to his parents was, "Didn't you know I would be about my Father's business?" Mary's husband was Joseph, but that wasn't who Jesus was referring to.

Christ is the Son of God. Sons are like their fathers. I'm not about to get into the complexity of trying to understand what part Jesus got from Mary and how exactly the Spirit's "overshadowing" permitted Christ to enter into her womb. Honestly, these matters have split churches through the centuries and we don't need to major in the minors. The truth is, Jesus who was "with God in the beginning" became incarnated and was 100% God and 100% man. You can't refute that. Jesus is God in the flesh. And he's just like his father.

That being said, it's amazing how Jesus most often referred to himself. He didn't call himself the Son of God. He called himself the Son of Man. It's not that he ever disputed actually being the Son of God, but he preferred to be known as the Son of Man. What does that mean? We could talk about Daniel's prophecy and how this is a Messianic title, but when it comes right down to it, he was simply saying that he was really a man. He came to be a man. He had always been the Son of God in eternity, but now he had become human. That's a big deal. That was what he was emphasizing when he called himself, "The Son of Man".

Once again, we have this principle of humility in action. He did not assert his Kingship even in the words he used to express what he wanted to be known by. That was a mouthful. Christ came to simply be one of us, to represent us. There is a difference between him and us though, that should never be glossed over. He was sinless. You see, we are less than human. We are fallen. We have a sinful nature. We are not what Adam and Eve were at creation. Sub-human. Quasi-human. Use whatever term you like. We have fallen short of the mark. Our best just isn't good enough. Not so with Christ.

He is the perfect son. Do you want to see someone who never missed the mark? Look at Jesus. Do you want to see someone who always said the right thing? Look at Jesus. Someone who always did the right thing? Jesus. Always used every opportunity to better everone present? Jesus. The most efficient person ever? Apparently, effiency is measured by how little effort is needed to produce the most output. Jesus simply died, and millions of lives have been changed. That's efficient.

Christ is the human we can never be on our own. You can never emulate him enough or imitate him sufficiently to make any difference. His own words are, "You must be born again." You need to be a new creation. His life is meant to be fruit that simply grows out of you. He is life. He is perfect. He's perfect for me. He's in me. I guess my mom was right after all.

BJ

On the Down Low

2005-07-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

So, irony is a hard word to define. If my first language was Cantonese and in learning English I came across this word (this is a stretch I know, just bear with me) I would think it had something to do with metal. Like iron. You know, iron-y. Like watery, or ketchup-y. Oh, if it was only that easy.

Irony is when something happens that is incongruous with the preceding events. Thank you Webster. That really helps. But I think we all get the sense of something that is ironic. A tyrant rises to power due to a relentless promotion of slavery and ends up being overthrown and becomes a slave himself. Or, you go to rob a bank and just before you pull out your gun, the guy behind you in line pulls a mask over his face and says, "everybody down!" (Why these are all involving crime, I'm not sure...) Or, it could be that you go to put some apricot jam on you toast, find the jar empty - fume about it for a while, but later learn that it would have been the thing that sent you into a diabetic coma if you'd had it. I think. This is getting kind of mixed up, but once again, we all seem to be aware of this concept of irony. Heavy stuff. (ha-ha)

But here's something that seems to be a secret to most of the world:
"Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Jesus, Matthew's gospel.

That's ironic. That's incongruous. It doesn't make sense to our natural minds. If we demote ourselves, we will be promoted. That kind of takes the wind out of the sails of ambition, doesn't it? But Jesus lived it. In the beginning of Mark's gospel, Jesus is seen casting demons out of people left and right. He then tells them to tell know one about it. He would not let the demons speak the truth about Him. Many times Christ performed a miracle and then demanded silence. Very rarely did he do the opposite (the man from the tombs being one exception). At one point in his public ministry, the crowds wanted to take him and make him king "by force", it says. He wouldn't have any of it. He slipped out. He purpously kept himself "on the down low".

Remember the court room scene before the Sanhedrin. People were accusing him of things that were out-right lies. Their own testimonies were cancelling each other out. But Jesus didn't say a thing. "Like a sheep before shearers is silent..." He humbled himself. He was willing to be called "a friend of sinners" (I'm glad for that!) They called him a glutton and a drunkard. They called him a blasphemer. No reputation, right?
But what was the result of all this? Well, in a word, it was joy. "who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame..." He hated the idea that what he was doing was shameful. He was directly opposed to the thought that he should be embarrassed to be nearly naked, nailed to a roman cross, having mostly women there to support him - all of his male disciples took off earlier, except for John. There was joy ahead. Exaltation was coming. He knew it. This was the way. This was how He was given a name that is above every name. His name is now mostly used as a curse-word in our culture. It's still a name that saves, though. Little do they know.

Don't be afraid of things you can't define. Irony is a tough one, but harder still is the idea that God uses things that we think are useless. Jesus was considered born out of wedlock, grew up as a tradesman (never officially taught), only had a public ministry of 3 years and was followed around by fishermen. Pretty unassuming start. But what an end. And by end I mean, what a beginning to the joy ahead. He took death, sin, hell, the devil, the world - you and me - on his shoulders and was "made to be sin for us". That takes humility. God the Father exalted him for it.

When Jesus was presented at the temple by Mary and Joseph, it was Simeon that said, "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many." Notice that falling precedes rising here.

BJ

It's 3:30

2005-07-20T12:06:00.000-05:00

What time is it? To set up this blog I had to choose a timezone. There were a lot to choose from. If I wanted I could have picked anywhere from Saskatchewan to Cambodia. Predictably, I chose EST, which of course reflects the clock on my monitor and the one in my kitchen. But I didn't have to. Blogger.com would not have sent me a condescending message about not knowing which timezone I'm in if I did not pick EST. So, why am I saying all of this? Well, it helps to know what time it is. Without a watch, you can get pretty good at approximating the hour of the day. You might even be able to tell the quarter-hour. But I doubt you'll know the minutes or seconds - unless you swallow some quartz. Which brings up a story I heard once. The Swiss had cornered the market on watchmaking. The precision they incorporated using tiny gears and springs was incredible. One day, a man came to them with a brand new idea for a watch. It involved using quartz. Swiss said, no way, it will never fly. Well, it did. Somebody was thinking outside the egg-carton, outside the microwave-safe tupperware, outside of just throwing a wrench in the gears.

Which brings us back to the time. It's 3:30. John 3:30 actually. "He must become greater, I must become less." The words of John the Baptist are remarkable in that Jesus himself said that John was the greatest prophet that ever lived (Mt. 11:11) John knew what time it was. Jesus had come onto the scene. John must shrink from view. He went to his death under Herod's captivity, being beheaded by Herodias for saying that their marriage was wrong. But before that John also said, "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world." It was time to "behold" Jesus. Not just glance or even look. Behold. Fix a steady gaze. "Looking to Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith". Keep looking. Keep seeing. There's more to see. You are never done taking in who He is.

We can get distracted by so many things (Martha and Mary?) and lose sight of the purpose of our re-birth. Being a new creation in Christ means being an extention of Him. His interests become yours, his motivation becomes yours, his means and ends are also inextricably yours. There is no other way for life to flourish, become manifold, and be more abundant, than for Christ to simply live it out in you. You can't do it. You must "become less." In your own estimation and by reputation you must decrease. Paul started his letters saying that he was "the least of the apostles". He then went on to call himself, "the least of all saints". When he was older, writing to his friend Timothy he called himself "the chief of sinners".

Don't be afraid to diminish. God wasn't either. Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, of no reputation, and emptied Himself. It can be a scary thing to actually demote yourself, but don't be afraid. We have a forerunner who took that road all the way to death. But death looks different now doesn't it?

So, it's time for the increase of the Lord Jesus. May you be found by Him, in Him, of Him, through Him, to Him and for Him. Start now. It's not too late.

BJ