Category: lordship

A Maze of Grace

“For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

Romans 8:29, NLT

“Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man.”

1 Corinthians 15:49

flourish20

Much speculation has been made regarding these two ‘pinnacle’ verses. We must approach them humbly to see what they are all about. We must see for ourselves all that concerns us. “They will not hear the voice of a stranger,” (John 10:5).

The Father has decreed, “Christlikeness.’ This is a mandate from the One who loves us unconditionally. (There are no whips being used.) We really need to enter this holy process with a sure confidence of a solid love.

His face burns brighter when we are positioned appropriately in His glory.

It begins now. The heavenly Father’s exclusive purpose is to “bring many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10). We do not have to wait until heaven to become like Jesus. We can accelerate the joy by starting today. And when He comes, He will ‘clean house,’ (so to speak). Holiness is mandatory to everyone who wishes to walk with Him.

You are one of the selected. Few have the options and opportunities that have been offered. To ‘put on’ Christlikeness is a rare privilege. From this point on, you will move through the confusion as one assured of his place and calling. He has ‘marked’ you, you are His. Everything will move aside in the light of His calling.

I so want you to ‘long for heaven.’ It is the place where we will dwell permanently. But at this point, the Father needs you to ‘hash it out’ on planet Earth. There is a need for volunteers who will come from ‘free will.’ After all, we get to choose Him who holds our destinies within; He alone carries our burdens and sins. He knows me thoroughly, yet loves me still.

You need to decide soon of your next step. But know this– Christlikeness will never be forced or coerced. Yet it is the ‘ride of a lifetime.’ Sheer boredom will probably ‘do-you-in’ if you choose to just ‘pray the prayer’ and walk away.

But you will never know the thrill of standing under God’s grace blasting full over your thirsty heart.

cropped-christiangraffiti1-2

The Desperation Factor

  1. : Loss of hope and surrender to despair. 2. : a state of hopelessness leading to rashness.
  2. Synonyms–desperation · concern · dejection · depression · despondency · disconsolateness · distraction · distress · pang · torture · trouble · worry. noun as in rashness.

A terrific study is finding the people who fell at Jesus’ feet. Tucked in the Gospels you’ll find stories of those who despair. You’ll also see them come to Jesus in brokenness and humility, without any other recourse. I call these the feet-finders.

They came to Jesus because they had no hope otherwise. They were people who were hopeless and wretched, they had long ago run out of options. They came to Jesus, falling down in front of Him. They were all feet-finders.

They were men and women who were truly desperate.

“Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

John 11:32

One of the classic scenes in the Gospels is when Mary meets Jesus after her brother’s death. She doesn’t understand Jesus’ delay, Lazarus has been very ill and Jesus could have healed him. She is grieving and confused. But she only has one posture and one place in her heart to be– at the feet!

There are some common characteristics that feet-finders have:

  • A great need that can’t be met without His touch
  • To understand one’s true condition–humility, brokenness
  • To beg for a healing, for self or family
  • To honor Jesus as the Messiah
  • To be more receptive to His teaching, to understand Him
  • To become a witness to others (although it does seem secondary)

The following 3 verses are just a small selection of those who fell at Jesus feet.

“And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them.”

Matthew 15:30

“But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.“

Mark 7:25

“Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

Luke 8:35

But there are several other instances where people came to sit at Jesus’ feet:

  • Mark 5:22-23, Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue
  • Luke 7:37-38, a sorrowing mother for her daughter
  • Luke 8:41, also Jairus
  • Luke 10:39, Mary, when Jesus was teaching
  • John 11:32, Mary, meeting Jesus entering Bethany
  • John 12:3, Mary, with her perfume
  • Revelation 1:17, John to express what he was seeing (also 19:10)

In every case we find people consciously coming and kneeling at the feet of the Lord Jesus. It was a deliberate action that came from their hearts. Each had a terrible need, and each was without hope.

Formality and religious politeness are jettisoned. Brokenness and true humility takes their place. A foot-finder is no longer operating on spiritual niceties. Religion is comfortable, noble, and respectable, but it cannot heal or change people deeply.

Feet-finders know that they need Jesus desperately and will go to any length just to be touched by Him. They defy what is conventional and proper. They are not what we call respectable. You can find them at the feet of Jesus. They are feet-finders. Foot-finders weep, kneel, beg, shout. Too many tears and maybe some snot.

Hardly decent to religious people.

Are you really that desperate yet? Have you seen your need, and do you realize how lost you would be without His healing touch?

Often when I do pray, I sometimes think of the woman who was unclean. She speaks to me about approaching Jesus. I see myself in a crushing crowd of people, and I’m reaching out just to touch the hem of His robe. I know only Jesus can stop my own uncleanness. (Matthew 9.)

I’m convinced only Jesus can make me clean and whole.

I’ve tried to be holy and acceptable to Him. But I felt like a juggler, trying to keep my balls in the air all at the same time, and I could never pull it off. So I tried again and again. I was the unofficial master of religious effort.

But I found my rightful place at His feet. It’s where I belong. I love Him.

I’m not ashamed to be found kneeling.

bry-signat (1)

*

Are You Drowning?

painting of a person swimming underwater
“For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia:
that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life.“

   2 Corinthians 1:8

“We should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism.”
“But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others’, that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.”

John Piper

It is my deliberateness, and not the impulsiveness that scares me.   I know despair.  I know what it is like to be ‘backed into a corner’ and then feel a totally empty desperation.  But you must understand, there can also be a weird seductiveness to ‘being lost,’ a strange sort of nobility, a twisted kind of weird honor when it comes to despair.

Some people are convinced they are never going to change. They embrace the ‘dark certainties’ of knowing they are profoundly flawed and therefore damned. It’s these dear ones that Jesus especially came for.

Now, this really seems rather bizarre, that people could do this intentionally, deliberately.  But I’m afraid to tell you that it happens all the time.  Despair is chosen over the option of life. This is the ‘lostness’ of the race of Adam.

Perhaps suicide begins before the action? Perhaps it starts days, weeks or months before we actually do the deed?

Pop culture has given us words, albeit in a rather simplistic form.  I just happened to think right now of an old AC/DC  song, ‘Highway to Hell‘.  The lyrics are pretty basic and very simple, but the lead singer seems to really have a chronically, decided dedication to being one of the irretrievably lost. 

The songwriter formats a ‘certain glory’ to being part of the damned.  This is a simplistic approach to the next stop– a more advanced case of stark-white despair, suicide. (We can call this ‘spiritual hubris,’ or even, “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.”)

In dealing with sin we can make two mistakes. One is to make light of it. The other is to be overwhelmed, throw up our hands, and surrender.

When we decide to live this kind of living, we’re pulled into a vortex of a black melancholy with a dash of fatalism, which makes it reasonable and weirdly heroic in some perverse way. We love the dark, and we embrace a fatal life–it becomes our identity.

To escape this ‘drowning despair’ we must first dethrone our right to personal sovereignty.  And secondly, we need to grab the concept that God’s grace has an ultimate power that supersedes our notions of a ‘deserved’ love.  (It’s completely undeserved.)

We must believe that somehow, someway, God chooses us out of a pile–a pile of the worst and ugliest that has ever existed.  And somehow, He delights in doing this, and after all, He is the Lord.

We’re meant to be the people of true hope. 

Our problems, our addictions, force us to clearly renounce our evil folly of despair.  Our issues make us vulnerable.  I’ve discovered that there is a seductiveness to giving up and taking up the sin of despair.  There can be a ‘weird romance’ that lures those who walk out this living DEATH. 

But honestly, is it not even more heroic to live in hope? To live a life full of joy?

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you.”

Psalm 42:5-6

The Scars of Depression

knight

It is a bad habit to try to teach without personal knowledge. We can preach, and yet we do not possess. This is one of the occupational hazards of those of us in our profession. It also seems to carry a horrible curse of spiritual sterility, that the wise believer can discern.

It’s been over 30 years since a diagnosis of severe clinical depression was made. I believe I was BP in my teens. Life is a roller-coaster for me, up and down, with a twist or two along the way. I am now fairly aware at 65 that much of my earthly existence has already been lived. Life can become such a grind. I’m tired and broken and ready for eternity.

But my scars have taught me so much. I understand, and I’m more aware of others. As a teacher, a pastor, it is a very good thing I believe. I also now have a profound desire to step into eternity. That will be a wonderful day. A moment of all moments. The ultimate moment.

“‘One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, “Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.”

–Henry Ward Beecher

Billy Bray was an illiterate Cornish evangelist in the 1850s. He was heard to pray this: “Lord, if any have to die this day, let it be me, for I am ready.” By faith, I think I do understand these sentiments. I am ready to go as well.

I love collecting good quotes. But here’s two more good ones:

“God buries His workmen but carries on His work.”   -Charles Wesley
“If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a “wandering to find a home,” why should we not look forward to the arrival?”  – C.S. Lewis

Sorry if I’m being too maudlin. But the battle is so long, and it doesn’t ever let up, does it? We all can become weary after a while. What we need is to be ‘shut in’ with the Lord. The Word reminds us:

”Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God”

Acts 14:22

“Tribulations” are common, and each must battle through them. And without being melodramatic, we each must walk through the blazing furnace. But I can also boldly attest that there is more than enough grace for each of us. We just need to become desperate enough. (Which shouldn’t be too hard).

Armor is given. Wearing it means you’ll survive (and thrive) to see another day. Those who may suggest that the Christian life is a “bed of roses,” I would say that they haven’t read Ephesians 6. If there is no war, why would the Holy Spirit tell us to put it on?

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” 

Ephesians 6:10-11

We are just starting to learn we must fall in love with Jesus. He receives us with a massive kind of love. And His mercy meets us at every doubtful corner. You have His Word on it. Simply ask Him to come to you. 

 

God bless you.