Month: March 2017

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love…….

With your eyes closed all you know is that it is cold.  You are not sure where you are or how you got here.  As you slowly open your eyes what light there is seems only to add to the darkness.  It would be so much better if there were total darkness.  In total darkness you could just close your eyes and never know.

But now you know.  You are in a hole.  Somehow you are sitting cross legged in the bottom of deep hole, maybe an abandoned well.  As your eyes begin to adjust to the limited light you look around.  To your surprise there are other people with you but no one seems to be awake and everyone seems to be injured.  You cannot move your legs and it appears that no one else can either because of the debris that has fallen in the hole.  Escaping the hole without help will be impossible.

As you lean back against the outer wall of the hole, assessing your situation, knowing that this hole has become your grave, you hear something.  Initially, you look around, expecting to see that someone else has moved.  But no one has.  Everyone is still either asleep or worse.  No one is moving.  But there it is again.  Then you realize that what you are hearing is the sound of dirt falling into the hole.  You look up and as you do, your hear a voice coming from someone peering in the hole.  You can’t see him but you know his voice and as he says, “Do not be afraid, I will rescue you!” and your heart leaps.

No one else in the hole heard the voice because everyone else is either asleep or deceased.  But you know you heard the voice and better yet, you know the person whose voice you heard.  He has been a faithful friend and he has shared his heart with you.  You know him and you are fully persuaded that he has the ability and the power to do what he has promised.  You have faith.

Faith is a matter of believing in someone because of who they are not because of what they do or say.  Their heart is what matters and you only know someone’s heart by spending quality time in their presence.  Watching someone perform incredible acts or listening to someone share amazing wisdom is not enough to have faith.  What matters is what is in their heart and the heart is revealed by relationship.  A relationship always involves disclosure and disclosure always involves the risk of rejection.  Only someone who loves enough to risk rejection through full disclosure can ever really be trusted.  Faith must always have an object and your faith can only be as strong as the revealed faithfulness of the object of your faith.

Once again there is silence.  The object of your faith has moved away from the top of the hole, he is no longer visible and you can no longer hear him.  You have a choice to make.  Are you going to focus on the circumstances of the hole, try to save yourself and struggle with all of your remaining strength or are you going to exhibit patient endurance and rest by focusing on the object of your faith?  Patience is the quality of resting under the pressure of suffering.  Patience is only possible when you have hope.  Hope is confident expectation of good based on a settled faith.  And faith is activated when you focus on the object of your faith in the midst of your trials.  What will you do?

You look around.  Some of the others have begun to move.  They are in worse condition than you and none of them heard the voice, although it does not matter that they missed it.  You are the only one in the hole who knows the voice.  More importantly you are the only one who knows the heart of the one who spoke.  Faith and hope do not focus on the promises.  Faith and hope focus on the heart of the object of your faith and hope.  You grow your faith and hope by spending time in the presence of the object of your faith and hope and you exercise your faith and hope by focusing on the object of your faith and hope.

You close your eyes and lean back again but not to scheme or struggle.  This time with your eyes closed you remember the faithfulness of the one who spoke.  You hear his words again, “Do not be afraid, I will rescue you.”  You have hope.  You rest in the assurance of hope.  An odd thing begins to well up inside you considering the circumstances.  You begin to have this unmistakable feeling of joy.  Joy is the fruit of knowing a secret that results in hope and is very hard to contain as it bubbles up from the depths of your heart.

The delight that you feel begins to shine in the bottom of the hole.  People around you begin to notice the glow in your eyes and the contentment on your face.  They can tell that you are at rest but they do not know why.  Some of them are envious, but most of them are angry, sure that you are either crazy, delusional or heartless.  What they do not know is that you know a secret.  The foundation of joy is knowing a secret.

Now you have another choice but it’s not really a choice.  The only reason that you have joy is because you have hope.  And the only reason you have hope is because you have faith.  And the only reason you have faith is because you know the person whom you heard say, “Do not be afraid, I will rescue you.”  And the only reason you know him is because he has revealed himself to you and has shown himself to be faithful.  He has opened his heart to you.  Now you have a choice to make, it’s not really a choice, because your faith, hope and joy have produced love in your heart for the one who spoke and his love has compelled you to share his love with those around you.

Until he comes back all you can do is share your heart with those around you.  Many will not understand you and will be offended, defensive or antagonistic.  But you must share because you cannot help yourself.  The reality of your joy is evident to all and people begin asking you questions – “How can you be so stupid?”; “How can you be so calm?”;  “Where do I get what you have?”; or “Why do you think you so special?”  With each question comes opportunity.  Your peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness express the love and joy that you have within based upon your foundation of faith in the one who spoke.  The sum of the parts manifests itself in self control.  Their ears and hearts are open.

Now you can tell them about the heart of the one who spoke.  You can relay to them his faithfulness and his ways.  As you pour out your heart to those around you, you simultaneously reveal your love for him as you express your love for them.  Love poured out is love poured in.  The depth of your love testifies to the reality of your faith.  Your hope and joy patiently draw people around you to the truth.  And the truth that has already set you free begins to set others free.

The bottom of the hole though filled with imperfect and hurting people has become a place of hope.  Faith that began when faithfulness was revealed to you has been faithfully transferred by the witness of patient endurance, hope and joy.  People’s focus has been turned away from themselves and the circumstance of the hole and has been turned toward the faithfulness of the source of faith.  His words have become truth and they have become the source of life, hope and joy.

No one hopes for what he already has because if you already have it you do not need to hope you will have it.  But hope (confident expectation of good) allows you to wait patiently for the thing hoped for because in the very fact of hope the promise is received.  The words of the faithful speaker were, “Do not afraid, I will rescue you.” and in hope they have become truth even before they have become material fact.  The benefit of the faithful promise is delivered in the package of the promise and the unwrapping of the package is a foregone conclusion.

The speaker has not yet returned, but the believers have already been rescued from the hole.  The hole that at first appeared to be a grave has now become a temple.  The spirit of the one who spoke has filled the hole lifting everyone who believes to the light and life above the hole.  Faith has led to patience, produced hope, quickened joy and compelled love.  The one who promised is faithful and he will be back.  But until he does, these three remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.

C.S. Lewis gave a talk which later became a pamphlet called, “The Weight of Glory.”  He begins the talk by stating that Christians have mistakenly come to believe that the highest of the virtues is self denial instead of love. Self denial is a negative ideal based on going without things as opposed to the idea of securing good things for others through love.  Lewis then argues that because we are focused on self denial we are uncomfortable with the concept of being promised rewards and even more uncomfortable with the idea of being glorified. The scriptures are filled with promises for believers and “the promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promised, firstly, that we shall be with Christ; secondly, that we shall be like Him; thirdly, with an enormous wealth of imagery, that we shall have “glory”; fourthly, that we shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained; and, finally,that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe—ruling cities, judging angels, being pillars of God’s temple.”  We shall focus on the concept of believers receiving glory.

Being glorified was difficult for C.S. Lewis to comprehend and to accept.  He says that he could only think of two possible meanings of receiving glory and they both seemed implausible.  First, being glorified could mean receiving fame and that seems contrary to the Christian call to humility.  Second, glory could mean luminosity and Lewis says no one desires to be a living light bulb.  He needed to dig deeper.

To the rescue came Milton, Johnson and Thomas Aquinas who took the concept of receiving God’s glory quite literally.  But their concept of glory was very different than Lewis’.  He says that what these pillars of Christian wisdom understood with regard to glory was indeed fame, but not fame conferred by other creatures but “appreciation” conferred by God.  But it is an appreciation that comes slowly as the outcome of a process during which we are mostly unaware of the promise of reward.

Imagine, if you will, a young man who decides to learn to play the piano. In the beginning the entire endeavor is made up of following rules and practice.  His entire motivation is extrinsic and his focus is outward and rule based.  At this point he has no understanding of or desire for the reward he will receive when music becomes part of who he is.  The young man just presses on and tries to do the best he can following the lessons that are put in front of him.

Then one day the motivation becomes internal and intrinsic and playing the piano becomes enjoyable because it is who he is not what he is doing.  And as the young man continues to mature in his musical skill and understanding he begins to see the beauty and wonder in music of all kinds including the classics.  As a reward for his early efforts to improve as a simple piano student, refined and matured by being changed from the inside out into an accomplished pianist, the young man is given an appreciation for and an entrance into the glory of music.  His reward is something he never considered when his journey began and he only became aware of its value as he approached its reality.

The Christian life is very much like the experience of the young piano student.  Our walk begins by being acted upon from the outside and focused upon trying to change by following rules.  But just like the student moves from the drudgery of practice to the freedom of music, we move from the constraints of the law into the freedom of the Gospel and at each step as Lewis says, “longing replaces obedience” and we begin to glimpse the promised reward even before we understand it.  But Lewis says “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.  Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object.  The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

Lewis then explains what the true longing of our heart is by stating, “when I had thought it over, I saw that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the divine accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” With that, a good deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a house of cards. I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child—not in a conceited child, but in a good child—as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a child, either, but even in a dog or a horse. Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years. prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator.”

You see just like the lawn in which we are pleased because of the work we have accomplished in it, God will ultimately bestow His glory upon us with the words, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” As we mature as believers we will begin to see that the longing of our hearts is to be invited into the beauty of the Lord in a way in which we cannot be invited into the beauty of literature, or music, or art or nature.  We can worship many created things in an attempt to be fulfilled but none of them will ever be consummated by the words, “Well done my good and faithful servent.”  Only our worship of God will ultimately satisfy the true desire of our hearts and only as we begin to approach God through His transforming work in us will we even be aware of our desire.  But on that day, when we see Him we will be like Him.  We will see true beauty and unfathomable glory and “in Him” we will be invited in and we will be glorified.  As C.S. Lewis says, “It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.” And those whom He justified, He also Glorified!