Category: teaching

He Will Come and Find You

“The Blind Beggar” by Jules Bastien-Lepage

When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Mark 10:47

What a gritty, hard life Bartimaeus lived.  How terribly desperate and lost he must have felt.  He has spent years and years without any real hope.  The future to him had been emptied of all purpose and meaning.  Life, from his point-of-view was worse than non-existence.  It was brutal and vicious, and when he had bad times he could barely look up.

He had a customary spot beside the busy road.  Routine had become his coping skill.  As a blind man knew that routine kept him from really losing it.  Seated on a dirty mat, he focused in on the voices of the passing crowds.  There seemed many more than usual and Bartimaeus began to try to piece together what was happening.

Someone to the right of him, shouted “Hosanna, Son of David”!  In that stark moment Bartimaeus jumped up and began to shout himself.  He shouted and shouted until he was hoarse.  He waved his hands, desperate to be seen.  There were those around him who told him to sit-down and shut-up.  There were hundreds of people reaching for Jesus, arms outstretched and pleas being made.  In this crazy and confusing scene Bartimaeus will not comply, he must speak, he must, he is desperate!

Jesus doesn’t walk alone, but is mobbed by well-wishers.  But suddenly He stops, Jesus can hear the voice of Bartimaeus.  Jesus wades partly into the jumbled mass and asks someone to bring Bartimaeus into the open.  We see him wriggle through the crowd, he is shaking and he is filthy.  His hair is matted and he has rotting teeth.  He hasn’t bathed for several months.  A filthy rag is wrapped over his eyes.

Is Jesus passing by?  Do you call out for Him? Does he call for you?  He often touches His most needy disciples, outside of the confines of the Church.  Jesus’ travels wherever He wants, He goes where He wills.  Jesus passes by us as we sit in our youth meeting, our marriage counseling or on a short-term missions project to Mexico.  He interrupts and pulls you out of the crowd.  All to heal you, for Himself.

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Making Sense of a Deep and Kind Love

Love.

In the face of doctrine, creeds and faith systems…isn’t the important thing that we just love?

Isn’t love the superior truth we should be after?

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1 Corinthians 13, “The Message”

The Way of Love

” 1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”

About the time I have my discipleship all figured out, I come across a passage like this. It seems I continually try to move beyond it, somehow regarding love as something diminished. I get it in my head that love is a “primitive teaching”, something I’ve somehow outgrown.

8 “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”.

When we try to define love, we need to look at what love is not. The above list helps us make certain distinctive. Soaking ourselves in the scripture gives us limited authority in the vital area of discernment of real love. Love has a sterling quality that sets it far above everything else. Just as fine gold is valued and tinsel debased, so love is superior to all else.

8-10″Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”

Love is the constant and an eternal security  for the believer. Get it now, dig for it. Mine deep and pull it out,  for love is the steady currency of heaven.

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Absorbing the Evil, [Like a Sponge]

I have danced on the edge of theology for years.  I appreciate it so much and yet I am confused by a whole lot, and then sometimes just plain disappointed.  I do on rare occasion cross the line and wander into “The Twilight Zone”.  People who know me well start to get concerned. It is not something I do very often.

I’m intrigued with what I’ve found.  It is this principle of Jesus Christ absorbing the wrath of God, which we deserved.

“But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

Gal. 3:13, NLT

“This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.“

1 John 4:10, NLT

Absorbance is the theological concept that is being used.  Less lofty considerations are the diaper, Kotex, the sponge, toilet paper, and oil spill skimmers. (Hardly the stuff of theology!).  But these simple products all use the principle of extracting something unwanted and undesired and sending it to another location.

God’s justice and wrath on our sin was an indisputable fact.  In our rebellion we were getting exactly what we deserved.  Each of us chose pride, sin and evil.  Not just passive about it, we declared war on the Kingdom of God. Our sin is not a small thing, because it offended a Sovereign Majesty.

God cannot just sweep our sins under the carpet, and smile and just pretend they don’t matter.  We have broken the Laws of truth and love.  The Bible tells us point-blank that “the soul that sins shall die.”  “All have sinned, all fall short of God’s glory”.  We are in a tight place, very sticky.

God figured a way out for us.  He would send His Son to absorb our sentence of death.  Jesus would extract and then siphon off the wrath the we deserved.  He would sponge our souls, wiping off the dirt– the sin.  Jesus would absorb our transgressions, perversities, our rebellion and wick them away.

Jesus just doesn’t cancel our debt.  He pays it Himself.  His “credit score” is unbelievable, off the charts and He pays your debt.  He makes it like we have never sinned. This is Love!  The universe rolls around on these pivot points.  We have legally been freed.

I think I’m going to keep dancing to this tune.

ybic, Bryan

 

 

 

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Grace That Teaches

“For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,”

– Titus 2:11-12, NIV

The grace of God can be very obvious.  It is seen by all.  It is not sophisticated, and you don’t have to jump through any ‘hoops’.  Everyone can see it.  However, there are a couple of things that will block it.  The sins of ungodliness, and the passions of this world system.  These will short-circuit His grace– sort of like dumping a glass of water on your computer’s keyboard.

It is ‘grace that teaches’.  We learn and take our lessons from handling God’s grace in our own lives.  We receive our education from that grace, it tutors us and we grow in understanding as we understand His love for us. Grace comes, and we receive our lessons, and take notes.  We begin to understand others, and get a handle on life and all its imponderables.

Grace educates, but legalism never does.  The Law has absolutely no ability to educate our hearts and minds.  But God’s untiring mercy explodes on us, and we begin to download all that He offers.  Learning grace expands us, and we develop abilities that we never dreamed of.  We start to do things that amaze us.

One of the most amazing things is that we learn to say, ‘No!’  This is perhaps the ultimate ability–to just say no.  Saying ‘no’ means we will not step in that particular direction.  We won’t travel down that road.  ‘No!’ is in a sense is saying, ‘Yes!’ to what God wants.  Learning to do that is what we are doing here.

Grace is so gentle, and she is a perfect teacher.  She teaches me to be merciful and forgiving.  All that she has, she imparts to me.  When I receive from grace myself, I become gentle and joyful and kind.  When I receive from grace, I become a much more fulfilled Christian.

There are things that work contrary to this.  Ungodliness and the lusts made by this world’s system.  The dynamic of grace somehow gets “turned-off” when we get diverted into these sins.  And this happens all the time, it seems.  But developing a self-controlled, upright and a godly life will give us a deep and eternal perspective.

We are not created for living in a garbage dump.  We are royalty–we are meant to rule and reign, as Kings and Queens.  We have been made ready by Grace for this place.

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