Category: Faith

If I having  just completed mowing the lawn, stare out the window and proclaim, “The lawn pleases me!” I do not mean that the lawn has done anything that pleases me.  What I do mean is, “The lawn in the state in which it now exists, because of the completed work I have accomplished in it and to it, pleases me.”  I am not pleased with the lawn instead I am pleased in the lawn.  If you are a believer, when God sees you He proclaims, “I am pleased in my Son!” and His countenance rises upon you.  Be Blessed!

The Apostle Paul had established churches throughout the province of Galatia in what we now know as Turkey.  Whether it was southern Turkey or northern Turkey is up to debate but we know that that these churches were relatively close to Paul’s hometown of Tarsus. These churches were dear to Paul not only because of their location but because of their enthusiastic acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the working of the Spirit of God and the mercy and grace of the Father.  They had been set free by an obedience that came through faith.

But then, some Jewish believers from Jerusalem came through Galatia. These Jewish believers had been raised in the Jewish tradition and were proud of their strict adherence to the Jewish law.  Now that they had been convinced that Jesus was the Christ and acknowledged that salvation came through faith in Jesus dying on the cross and having been raised from the dead, they had a dilemma.  What about all those years they had spent following the law? Following the law was part of being a good Jew.  Just because a Jew had become a Christian he didn’t stop being a Jew therefore if following the law was part of being a good Jew then of course it must continue.

Now what about these Gentile sinners? How could Gentile sinners become Christians without having to first adhere to the Jewish law?  How could Gentile sinners get off easier than Jewish believers?  Jesus was a Jew.  How could a believer be a believer without being a Jew or at least by following the Jewish law?  Who was this man who was telling Gentile sinners that all that mattered was listening with faith? Who is this Paul?

Paul was not part of the Jerusalem church.  In fact when he first visited Jerusalem as a Christian following his encounter with Jesus in Damascus he was run out of town.  Prior to his encounter with Jesus he was dragging Christians back to Jerusalem to have them imprisoned or killed.  What authority did this man Paul have to tell these Gentile sinners that they could live in the freedom and joy of the Spirit, being changed from the inside out by the Spirit?

In the self righteousness of a good Pharisee these Jewish believers insisted that the Galatians believers follow the Jewish law in order to prove that they were really saved.  Ignoring the works of the Spirit and the transforming hearts of the believers, they demeaned Paul and exalted themselves above him based on their heritage and their behavior.

Sometime in the early to mid 50’s A.D. while in either Tarsus, Antioch, Ephesus, Athens or Corinth Paul is informed that his precious churches have been infected by this insidious heresy.  He is understandably upset with the Jewish believers whom he has never met but he is astonished with the Galatian believers to whom he has poured out his spirit, soul and strength.  He cannot believe they have fallen prey to such a foolish exchange.  He cannot believe that have rebuilt the wall!

In his letter to the churches in Galatia Paul, in response to the Jewish accusations, says, “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.”  He tells us in another letter that he was in his pre-Christian days “as unto the law, perfect.”  He understood the law but now he understands its purpose.  As he had clearly explained to the Galatians, the purpose of the law was always to show us our utter sinfulness and our need for a savior who rescues us from the wrath of a perfectly righteous and holy God.  When the Galatians had listened attentively to the message of the Gospel (The wrath of God is justifiably on everyone because all have sinned and continue to fall short of the glory of God but in His mercy and love God in the person of His Son Jesus Christ came to earth as a man, lived a sinless life in perfect communion with the Father, became all of the sin of the whole world, died on the cross as the payment for those sins, and was raised from the dead by God the Father after three days as the ultimate proof that He was who He claimed to be, the Son of God, in order that all who by hearing with faith are persuaded that in believing they are made the righteousness of God and the children of God who will live with Him forever) they received the Spirit of God and were changed from the inside out into the children of God who walked in the freedom and truth of God’s mercy and love.  God’s love compelled them to first love Him and then love one another as they loved themselves.  The love of God had allowed them to move beyond the wall of the law and as they did it crumbled because it had completed its work.

But now the Jewish believers had bewitched them and convinced them to rebuild the wall of the law.  As they began to focus on the law, the law simply convinced them of their sinfulness and life, joy, hope and growth vanished being replaced by enslavement, fear and guilt.  Paul writes to them, ” You foolish Galatians”, “I am astonished how quickly you are deserting the Gospel”, “Who has bewitched you”, “If you rebuild what you have torn down, you prove you are a sinner once again”, “If righteousness is possible through the law then Christ died for nothing!”, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”, “Are you so foolish, having begun with the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh?”, “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse”, “The righteous shall live by faith”, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons”, “and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba (Daddy) Father!” “So you are no longer a slave (in need of a wall) but a son, and if a son then an heir through God.”

Don’t rebuild that wall.  The Holy Spirit is now your guardian and God has written His law on your heart.  Let the Spirit change you from the inside out as your listen attentively with faith and you will walk out His ways in His strength and in His time.  He has prepared good works for you to do in advance and He will accomplish His purpose in you and through you. “It is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me.”

 

 

 

There is much we do not know about the Old Testament prophet Isaiah who was first recognized as a prophet by King Uzziah sometime prior to the King’s death.  He continued in his ministry as a prophet for as long as 64 years through the reigns of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah.  We believe he was the nephew of King Amaziah, King Uzziah’s predecessor.  But one thing we do know is that Isaiah became a man of integrity in the year that King Uzziah died.

What is a man of integrity?  We have come to say that a man of integrity is a man of honesty, blamelessness, and innocence but integrity is actually something deeper than that.  The word integrity comes from an old French word, integrite which means “wholeness, perfect condition” and the Latin word, integritatum which means “soundness or whole” from which we get the term integer.  All of you remember from Algebra that an integer is a whole number.  Our words entire and entirety come from the same root.  So you see integrity means to be whole.  Integration means to be made one or whole and disintegration means to tear apart or scatter.

No one is born as a man of integrity.  The Bible tells us “there is no one righteous, not one”. No one is born perfectly integral.  But because Isaiah was born in the kingly line, was the nephew of the king and the prophet of his uncle’s successor, people would have certainly thought that Isaiah was “a man with his act together.”  But he was not!  How do I know?

In Isaiah chapter 6 we discover Isaiah’s imperfection but not before Isaiah is shown what integrity looks like.  The chapter begins with, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” (meaning in a year in which one of Isaiah’s foundations of security and position was taken away) “I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, high and lifted up.”  Becoming a man of integrity always begins with being shown who you are not (God) and then in the light of that revelation being shown who you are.  The passage goes on to say that God is so powerful that his train (the symbol of a King’s majesty) fills the entire temple.  A powerful King might have a train of his robe that filled the entire aisle upon entering the temple but no earthly king could wear a robe whose train filled the entire temple!  In addition the angels are crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of host” and the foundations shake and the temple was filled with smoke.  Isaiah thought Uzziah was powerful but now he had seen the Lord.

Isaiah’s response to seeing the glory of the Lord is “Woe is me, I am undone…”.  Because he is a prophet, literally he is saying, “I am accursed and I am unraveling!”  And why does he pronounce a curse upon himself?  Because having just seen the Glory of God he now sees the truth about himself – “I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.”  He declares that he is a liar and he lives in a nation of liars!

Now Isaiah is ready to be remade.  He has come undone much like a ball of yarn having been wrapped tightly into a ball unfurls when released.  But he’s now ready to be put back together perfectly and become a man of integrity.  Only he can’t do it.  Becoming a man of integrity is something done to you and it always involves (1) an acknowledgement that God is God and you are not, (2) a declaration of your own sinfulness and the sinfulness of the people around you, (3) a surrender to your own emptiness, (4) a sovereign act of God purging you of your sinfulness, (5) hearing with believing that your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for.  In Isaiah’s case, an angel takes a coal from the altar and touches his lips and says, “Behold this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sins are atoned for.” When Isaiah hears and believes that he no longer needs to feel guilty and that his sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west through God’s work and not his own, he is made whole.  He is now for the first time in his life perfectly integrated without blemish – not in his own perfection but in the perfection of the Lord.  He is now a man of integrity.  God can now ask, “Whom shall we send?” and Isaiah can answer, “Here I am, send me!”

In Romans Chapter 12 Paul writes, “Be no longer conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so you may know the will of God, that is what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Conformed here means “to be pressed into the likeness of” or living according to the pattern of the world.  Transformed comes from the Greek word from which we get metamorphosis – a change in form and habits.  (Caterpillar to Butterfly).  Renewing means “to be made new again” and mind is as you would imagine, “the intellect.”

So basically Paul is saying, stop living like caterpillars because the truth of the Gospel has changed your form and habits into those of a butterfly and you need to begin thinking and acting like a butterfly. Caterpillars are eating machines, devouring more food than they can actually contain within their bodies.  They selfishly destroy the leaves and trees that support them as they eat voraciously causing them to shed their skin four or five times in order to grow large enough to contain their appetites.  Caterpillars predominately eat leaves and are not able to drink, so all water that they require for life is contained within the leaves they eat.

Once a caterpillar receives the internal signal that metamorphosis is at hand he attaches to the branch (“I will raise up for David a righteous Branch……”Jeremiah 23:5) and through a process of literally dying to itself the caterpillar is metamorphosed into a butterfly.  Once a caterpillar has become a butterfly it has changed form and habits.  A butterfly has wings to fly and no longer lives off of eating leaves.  In fact, whereas a caterpillar has no ability to drink anything, a butterfly can only survive by drinking.  Butterfly’s ingest everything they need for life by sipping nectar, fruit juice or water.  They have no ability to eat like a caterpillar because they have been transformed.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, he was astonished that the butterflies he had left behind had foresaken flying by the power of the Spirit and drinking in the nectar of the Spirit.  They had abandoned new life because caterpillars or butterflies living like caterpillars had come behind Paul and “bewitched” them.  Paul reminds them that they do not need to eat leaves in order to survive, in fact trying to eat leaves through the straws they now have to sip in life will ultimately destroy them.  The wings they now have to fly will make crawling like a caterpillar difficult if not impossible as well.  In fact trying to live like a caterpillar once you’ve become a butterfly will only condemn you and fill you with guilt while negating the transforming work of metamorphosis.

You see, as Paul points out to the Galatians, the law was given as a guardian for the caterpillar state of the believer.  In the fullness of time, God sent His Son to fulfill the law and to redeem us from the penalty of sin so that we could become butterflies and live in a new way – by the Spirit.  We now have everything necessary to drink in Life and thereby we are changed into His image.  Paul says we do not need to rebuild the leaves of the law because the law has done its work in our lives – we know we are sinners and in need of a savior.  Now that we are butterflies we need to learn to think like butterflies with a new mind. We need to sip in the Life of the Spirit and we need to soar on wings like eagles.  In our new nature we cry, “Abba (Daddy) father” because we are no longer slaves (caterpillars) but we are heirs (butterflies) through God. (Metamorphosis while attached to the Branch).

I actually enjoy cooking and baking.  I don’t do it very often anymore but I really do enjoy it.  One of my first paying jobs was as a short order cook at the Belvoir Grill on Rt. 1 in Alexandria, where I was nearly strangled by a trucker who failed to fully appreciate my refined sense of humor. (But that’s a different blog). At any rate I love to cook.

Many times when I cook I do it totally by memory, experience or instinct but when I bake I nearly always follow a recipe or the directions on a box.  I sometimes vary from the recipe or the instructions but only to the extent to which I trust my own knowledge or instincts above my belief and trust in the writer of the recipe or instructions.  If a recipe is a treasured favorite of my mother or someone else for whom I have tremendous faith I follow the recipe very carefully.  That is a perfect example of an obedience that comes from faith.

As I have written before, the word translated “obedience” most often in the New Testament means to “listen attentively”, that is to pay close attention to the words spoken or any other kind of communication.  The word translated faith most often in the New Testament means “persuaded”, therefore when describing the faith that Abraham had in God, Paul writes, “….Abraham was fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised…”. Faith always has an object.  Faith can only be as strong as the faithfulness of the object of your faith combined with the measure of your personal knowledge of the object of your faith.  Because I know my mother to be faithful in her writing of her recipes and I know my mother well, I pay careful attention to the details of her recipes.  Obedience that comes from faith.

Ultimately, having paid very close attention to my mother’s recipes I am transformed into someone who, because of my faith in her, is changed into someone who thinks about baking in a way very similar to her if not in exactly the same way.  The more attention I give her words when combined with the faith I have in her because of her faithfulness, the more I am changed and the more I bake like her by my new nature even when I am not baking one of her recipes.  Everything I bake will reflect my attentive listening and my faith.  An obedience that comes from faith.

At some point I no longer need the recipes.  I have been changed by my attentive listening and my baking reflects my obedience and faith.  Life is meant to be lived spontaneously.  Life is meant to flow from a transformed mind.  As Paul writes, “Be no longer conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  A renewed mind comes from attentively listening to the object of your faith and the transforming power of God’s truth.  As I listen to God’s word (reading it, singing it, listening to it, studying it, praying it, writing it, sharing it, applying it, and believing it) I am changed in how I see life and all of the creatures and elements God created within it. I especially am changed in how I see myself.  By nature I will begin to do the following, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength and the second is like it, Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  An obedience that comes from faith.

As we all know our founding fathers said that we were all created with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We are told that the purpose of government is to protect these rights.  While it makes sense that the government should protect us from being unjustly or prematurely killed and our government should protect us from being unjustly imprisoned or enslaved the government cannot do anything about our happiness.  In fact by definition no one can, not even ourselves.

The root word of the words “happy” and “happiness” is an Old English word “hap”.  The definition of the Old English word “hap” is “a chance event over which you have no control”.  Because this is the definition of “hap” when something occurs without known cause we say it just “happened.”

The word happy is used when all of your “haps” are lined up just the way you would like.  When they are you are said to be in a state of “happiness.”  But you see the problem!  If a “hap” is a chance event over which you have no control then you have no control over your “happiness.”  Happiness occurs by chance events lining up indiscriminately.  By definition no one can pursue “happiness.”

The Bible is not filled with “happy” people.  It is filled with joyful people.  “Happiness” is based on circumstances outside of oneself while joy is always found within.  Joy springs from an inner contentment based on settled belief and expectation of good.

Joy is knowing a secret.  Imagine you of one of ten students in a class.  Passing this class is a prerequisite of completing your degree and showing up and participating in each and every class is a requirement of remaining in school.  It is the day of the final exam.  No one in the class has a grade sufficient to pass the class even with a perfect score on the final exam but everyone must be present and complete the exam in order to continue in school.  Each and every student is hopeless – except you.  Last night the professor called you and admitted that the students were failing because of his failings as a teacher and that he was going to make everything right.  His plan was to give everyone in the class an A for the course on one condition.  His condition was you could not tell anyone of his plan until he did.  You had to hold in the truth.

The time for the final exam has arrived.  You are sitting in a class with nine other students who are absolutely hopeless.  As you look around the room all you see is nine empty faces, in fact anger is right under the surface.  But your fellow students notice something different on your face.  Because you know a secret and you are filled with joy, your countenance begins to rise.  In a seemingly hopeless situation you are filled with joy that you cannot contain.  Your fellow students accuse you of being crazy, not smart enough to understand the current situation.  But in fact your are the only one who knows the truth – and the truth has set you free.

The Bible is filled with people who know a secret.  It is filled with people who know who they are in Christ and where they are going.  Their circumstances are difficult but their hearts are light.  They are filled with joy!

When my daughter, Lindsay, was about 7 years old, (which just happens to be the same age that her oldest daughter Kahlan is right now),  she asked, “Dad may I walk down to Lisa’s house alone?”  Lisa was her best friend and lived on the opposite side of our neighborhood street several houses down.  I did not think it was a good idea for her to walk alone so I said, “No sweetheart, wait a few minutes and I will walk you down to her house and then call me when you are ready to come home and I will come get you.”

Now the moment of truth was at hand.  Was Lindsay going to “obey” me or not, but more importantly was she going to follow my words for the right reason.?  You see at that moment Lindsay had the following choices – (1) “disobey” me and wait until I went inside and just walk to Lisa’s house alone and defiant,  (2) “obey” my words but not believe in me and angrily wait for me to walk her to Lisa’s house, (3) just stomp up to her room and cry, (4) decide that if she waited and allowed me to walk her to Lisa’s house she would get a reward, (5) decide she had no choice but to wait because she would be punished if she “disobeyed, or (6) she could stand there, listen to my words, disagree with my assessment but allow her trust in my unconditional love for her to overcome her desire to do her own thing and allow me to walk her both ways even though she was sure she could do it alone.  

I italicized obey and disobey on purpose.  In the New Testament, the word most often translated “obey” means to “listen attentively.”  We often say to our children, “when are you going to start “listening” to me?”  Listening with attention is given to words we value.  And words we value come from people whom  we trust and love, but more importantly from people who respect us and love us.  To disobey doesn’t only mean not doing what the speaker has directed us to do, it also means doing what the speaker has directed us to do for the wrong reason.  In the example above each of Lindsay’s first five choices have an element of disobedience and selfishness.  Only the sixth option is true obedience based on listening attentively to an object of our faith and love.

Lindsay waited for me to walk her to Lisa’s house.  Why she waited only she knows.  I wish I could say that I know she chose the sixth option.  But if she is anything like me there was a part of self involved in the decision.  When I read or hear God’s word I often listen with limited attention and then follow for selfish reasons.  One day I pray that I may know God well enough to trust completely in His faithfulness and love and therefore listen with total attention and follow in response to His Love and Mercy.   Continue reading “It Matters Why We Do What We Do”

Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches…..” (John 15:5).  Paul said, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Branches are humble vessels connecting source with fruit, content with being used without esteem.

Humility means “the state of being humble.” Both it and humble have their origin in the Latin word humilis, meaning “low.”

Here are some examples of humility in use:

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
— Proverbs 11:2

Who has not gazed at the night sky, mouth slightly agape? The experience is so common, its effects so uniform, that a standard vocabulary has evolved to describe it. Invariably we speak of the profound humility we feel before the enormity of the universe. We are as bits of dust in a spectacle whose scope beggars the imagination, whose secrets make a mockery of reason.
— Edwin Dobb, Harper’s, February 1995

If leadership has a secret sauce, it may well be humility. A humble boss understands that there are things he doesn’t know. He listens: not only to the other bigwigs in Davos, but also to the kind of people who don’t get invited, such as his customers.
—The Economist, 26 Jan. 2013

For many, the lowness in both humility and humble is something worth cultivating.

Without humility any fruit in our lives is artificial, incapable of nourishing or regenerating and always self serving.

“The humble shall be exalted and the exalted shall be humbled.” (Luke 14:11)