“Those who think things have to be done by human ways and means are wrong. If that is the way we are supposed to approach our situation, we are beaten. God’s kingdom remains far off if it depends on what we do or what we may yet accomplish. Indeed, we can spoil the work that God does through us if we think it depends on our strength. If Christ is victorious, then our happiness depends upon God exercising his power, not we exercising ours.”
-Christoph Blumhardt
I’ve heard time and again about how God’s high standards of the law were impossible for a man to keep and therefore “all have fallen short.” So it really grabbed my attention in chapter six of Charles Finney’s Sermons on Gospel Themes when he argues that the law was indeed entirely within man’s power to keep and that it would be ludicrous for any just government (God in this case) to institute unkeepable laws. Laws whose requirements are beyond reason should justly be revolted against. God, being the ultimate champion of perfect justice would never demand obedience to laws that he knew his subjects could not keep. My traditional background prompted an impulse to argue with Finney on this point but then suddenly the words of Paul came into focus on the purpose of the law being a device to show a man his own sinfulness and reveal his true condition; not that we could not keep the law, but that we would not. Every one of us holds within ourselves the stubborn residue of self interest and self pleasing, that leads us into hidden secret shadows of our own making, robbing us of the wholeheartedness demanded from the singular point of the law: to love the Lord your God with all your mind and strength. The centerpiece of God’s design here in deploying the Law to his people is his own war on hypocrisy and pretense : affirmed and evidenced by the ministry of his Son and now expected of his people. What tragedy that those bearing his name are most often caught up in systemic religious pretense!
The second point that stood out to me from Finney’s conversation was about who creates the “new heart”. Starting with King David’s cry of “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit with in me!” we’ve been taught by institutional catechism that making new hearts is God’s work. He removes the heart of stone and makes a heart of flesh, as the prophet Joel describes. I was told innumerable times by my grandmother that when you ask Jesus into your heart, he comes in and makes you a “new creature” assumed to be in the form of an original creative work of a “new heart”. It has always been very mystical and was assumed to be necessarily so. Finny, however, argues a very different point. He states that created man, even Adam, had no “heart” or inward life until he begin acting in moral agency. Becoming a moral being required an orientation to government, being either the self or God. The propensity to act with divided allegiance is the essence of sin. It is upon total surrender and complete orientation to God’s governing purpose that one is empowered to shape one’s heart into a new pattern of following Jesus. Thus the “new heart” begins, not as a mystical abstraction, but as a luminous reality of his indwelling presence made possible by each individual choice to abhor the darkness of self-concerned internal government, and clamor for allegiance to Christ in every aspect and facet of the internal life.
We make ourselves a new heart. And any salvation in this act is of no merit to our will, but is a gift of God, opening our soul to his reality, directing our will into the cascading adventure of grace.
Went tonight to go see the film Nefarious – Merchant of Souls. It is a difficult watch documentary on the current state of human sex trafficking. I knew a lot about this subject, but this film really lays into it deep. I was profoundly moved. A very insightful treatment of the subject. Prepare to cry, not only in sorrow but in joy as well… from an amazing twist near the end. It’s a massive film project that is becoming a potent trilogy.
“But as I had given up on the priests, so I also left the separate preachers and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could anyone tell me what to do; then, Oh! Then I heard a voice which said, There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to your condition.’ When I heard it, my heart leaped for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition; namely, that I might give him all the glory. For all are bound under sin, and shut up in unbelief, as I had been, and to become free, each person must know that Christ is the creator and he alone understands us; he who enlightens, and gives grace, faith, and power. And when God does work, who shall hinder it?”
-from the Journal of George Fox
Easter is too often a quaint, though undoubtedly meaningful, rabbit trail (a-hem!) from the usual plodding routine of Church business. Yet the reality is that the resurrection is the greatest phenomenon to enter the horizon of this universe. It is the physical manifestation of a reality etched in the seamless stone of eternity from before the foundation of the world. It is the end of all things, the beginning of all things, the apocalypse and revelation all rolled into one act of love that punctured the fabric of our desolate world. It simply changes everything.
Change.
Not cheap outward change that politicians might promise. But the real spiritual lead-into-gold stuff: Death into life: Judgement into victory: It is the ultimate work resulting in our ultimate Rest. This meditation comforts me as we face so many changes. Our community is losing a dear pastor and his wife who have become close friends this last year and a half. Their immigration request has been denied so they are returning to their home in Wales after a year and a half sojourn with us. It is bittersweet. Bitter for selfish reasons, but sweet to know God has a plan that is advancing. Not only for them, but for us. They’ve provided some training wheels for me in some aspects of ministry and have affirmed me in ways that have helped more than they know. We’ll keep marching on, being faithful to participate with the Spirit in drawing others to Jesus, wherever he leads us.
I felt last year that God was telling us that we were to become a tool in his hands right where we are at, and then he would move us to where he needed us to be. So we are doing that. Seeking the Kingdom. And now we have opportunities to explore going abroad as “missionaries.” I don’t know what is going to happen. But I can say that this Easter is a wonderful celebration of the substance of our rest, where we don’t fuss and stress about where we are going and what we are doing. All we have to do is participate with God in a love language that is the narrow path; letting the pure “air” of His goodness permeate our lives in response to Him. The hardest part is dying to the self that wants to “do” apart from him. Yet it is simply his fragrance that makes the difference. His presence is everything. He is alive and does the work. The vine drinks and rests. Fruitfulness just comes.
“Arise and come away with me, my love.”
He has risen!
Friends,
If you love the light and walk in it, then you love Christ and will all walk in unity together. And if you hate the light, then you hate Christ.
In this is your teacher, if you are who love the light.
In this is your condemnation, if you are who hate the light.
And when the conscience becomes seared, there will be a returning to teachers without. For the carnal will possess a vain invented form. But the spirit’s form stands in the power.
Now, prove yourselves where you are.
George Fox - 1655
Dreams dreams. Perhaps I am just so dense it is the only way God can get through to me. But whatever the case, I don’t deserve this.
I was in this really frightening shanty town at night. Our broken-down slum house was there in the middle of it all. An overwhelming feeling of dread was everywhere. Words fail me. As I try to frame the horrific feeling with words, the sensibility of it evaporates. But it was severe. More than a fear of death. It was more of a sense of speedily approaching torture. Not just physical but psychological, like the most incomprehensibly vile evil about to be perpetrated on your loved ones while you are forced helplessly to watch. You could feel it like a sharp, blinding stab into your thoughts. It was hell. And I don’t mean to slight the reality of it by my description. If there is a Niagara waterfall of hell, then I maybe only felt the mists. No, not even that. I sense it was merely a rise in humidity. And I could barely stand it. It was overwhelming, terrifying dread in the truest, harshest sense of the words. I met the killers who did far worse than merely kill. They came into the crumbling old store front where I was cowering. The air smelled like death. Not just foul, but evil. They were like soldiers in the Rwanda nightmare. Unpredictable, calm, unnerving, frighteningly inquisitive, soulless… they looked at me with eyes both human and inhuman. They passed over me. I escaped. Where was my family?
I was then on a bicycle in the dark. I couldn’t see the road. But I was peddling hard. A companion was with me also on a bike. I don’t know who he was. I could see the lights of cars from nearby roads. The sense of dread was diminishing, but I feared what was behind. We ate hastily from a roadside shop in the middle of the night. We had to keep going. We couldn’t stop. The darkness was marching, unchecked, with an unmentionable grotesqueness that grips your guts and mentally twists to nausea. Keep going. God! Keep going.
The traveling movement gradually gave way to a sense of being in a car gliding down a smooth highway. The day was just breaking over the tops of the trees and the sky was bright. I could sense that beyond the trees was a great city. A peaceful place.
I then I saw it. A building in the distance. It was brilliant. I could not tell if it gleamed from reflecting the sunbeams or if it was shining out light of its own, although it seemed reflected. Perhaps both. So many colors, yet all brilliant together in whiteness! I could not take my eyes off it. As the beams of light from the building would shift as we flowed through them along the curves of the highway, great waves of emotion swept through me. With each slight movement of the light in my eyes, ripples of tremulous joy overwhelmed me in sheer spiritual and emotional ecstasy gushing up from deep within my soul. It was one of the most incredible feelings I have ever felt. All words I dare try to capture it with are so two-dimensional and flat compared to the astonishing depth and brilliance of the sensation that reached through all of me from some transcendent, unknowable Point. I’m trying too hard, it sounds like I am making it up. But I just… I don’t know…
I woke up.
I’ve tried to explain it to a few people, but I end up crying. I know what I saw.
One of the many facets of why Christ came was so that we could have the experience of finally losing the self-consciousness that descended upon us in Eden when passivity and rebellion stained us. We can now return to God-conscience as the man did while conversing as he walked with God in the cool of the day. However, in pre-fallen Adam, the God-consciousness was as a creature only. But in Jesus it is in sonship, adopted, rescued and paid for by that same God himself entering in and drinking a bitter cup to the bottom. And now, with the veil ripped, our God-consciousness must completely overthrow and crush self-consciousness. Just as self-consciousness diminishes when a person becomes drunk on spirits, so too our self-conciousness becomes eclipsed when the will bends perfectly to the Spirit of Holiness just as Jesus described to Nicodemus about those being like the wind who are born of the Spirit. You lose your “you” and I lose my “me” until such references are merely incidental to the great truth that He is all, and all that really matters of who I am in this world.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Gal. 3:20
Joyfully, I am dead. He is all, who is joy and life. I have no reputation except His own, whose I am. Everything else is for the fire.
“…God wants to bestow an indestructible harmony upon our inner life: harmony that shows itself in mighty melodies of love. The energy born of inner gathering empowers. When hearts are gathered, people are gathered. Their industrious work shows that the kingdom of God is justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit…”
- from Innerland, by Eberhard Arnold.
My 10-year-old son and I had a good discussion while on a steep mountain hike this week. We were talking about the ‘end of the age’ in Jesus’ discourse in Matthew 24 and then the great commission in chap 28. We discussed what it meant to be a missionary and the significance of Jesus command to “go.” He surprised me by his sincerity that he is now willing to leave friends and familiarity to go leave it all behind for the sake of the call. I didn’t even frame the discussion to draw that kind of response from him. In addition to this, he seemed to think that we’ll all be leaving soon somewhere. I showed him that mission is right here everyday where we are. “You become God’s instrument right now and then he may move you where he needs/wants you. But mission isn’t a destination, its a journey.” He liked that. And I love that he did. What a great week.