Profoundly Simple

Growing up in a church is a great experience, but it has the potential to have an adverse effect on spiritual development.  It had an adverse effect on mine.  At an early age I became aware of the fact that there is a major gulf separating me from Heaven.  I also became aware that there is a laundry list of things I could do to get in--and if I didn't do it I was screwed.  

But that's not what the Bible teaches.  To paraphrase John Ortberg, "the Bible is not a list of minimal entry requirements to get into Heaven when you die."  That path does not lead to life.  Jesus taught of only two commandments.  First, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: 'Love you neighbor as yourself.' (Mark 12:29-31)"  That's so simple.  Actually doing that on a consistent basis is difficult, it's a simple command. 

Jesus isn't changing the law of Moses.  He was/ is the fulfillment of that law.  Romans 5 talks about sin entering the world through one man (Adam).  It explains that "before the law was given, sin was in the world," and consequently, so was death.  I love Romans 5:15 which simply says, "But the gift is not like the trespass."  It continues: "For if the many died by the trespass of the one man [Adam], how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift is not like the result of the one man's sin."  (Romans 5:15+16).  

Adam, who is human, brought sin into the world.  Jesus, who is God, brought justification.  God is so much greater than mortal man, we all agree on that.  So what He brings into the world is greater as well--freedom, justification, mercy and love.  This basic Christian doctrine which bombarded me as a child is starting to take on flesh in my life today.  I just needed to see it through the a different lens.  

So where does that leave us?  Now that we understand what Jesus did to sin, how do we respond?  As Believers, we can put off spiritual striving.  "Don't complicate the gospel.  It's good news," said a professor of mine.  Don't be like the Pharisees in Mark 12.  Jesus says, "Watch out for the teachers of the law.  They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.  They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers."  

It's the simple mentality of the first being last and the last being first.  In Matthew 11 Jesus thanks His Father for hiding these things from the wise and learned and revealing them to little children.  "For this was his good pleasure."  Right after Jesus had explained that all things in Heaven and on earth have been committed to Him by God he says, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." 

It's two commandments.  Love God.  Love everyone else.  That may sound difficult, but look what Jesus just said--"learn from me."  Psalm 103 says that God knows we're just dust.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  He knows loving everyone doesn't come naturally to us.  So He gives us the Spirit who teaches us and speaks to God on our behalf.  And the evidence of that Spirit living in us are, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."  These trump the law.  This is the recipe for living out the only two commandments we need, and the awesome thing is that when we are in tune with the Spirit, they come to us like second nature.  John the Baptist says, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentence."   

I love Jesus' response to the Pharisees and Herodians when they asked him about paying taxes to Caesar.  Jesus asks for a denarius and says, "Whose portrait is this?  And whose inscription?"  "Ceasar's," they replied.  Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."  Time after time after time crowds come to Jesus assuming there are rules and requirements and He keeps giving them these simple answers.  Flipping the coin back at their chests He says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."  It doesn't have to be complicated!  The best part of that story is that they were amazed at His answer.  It was profoundly simple.  

So take heart if you feel like you can't live the "christian" life.  If you are doing something that is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, good fruit, impartial and/or sincere, then you are pleasing Heaven.  Don't worry what you heard in church, or what other christians might think.  Richard Foster said, "Jesus rejoiced so fully in life that he was accused of being a wine-o and a glutton.  Some of us might live our lives with such sourness that we couldn't possibly be accused of such things, and we think thats good."

I'll end with a quote from Gary Haugen (another hero of mine).  He says, "Something is wrong if Jesus' yoke is light, and somehow mine is heavy."  Don't complicate the gospel.  It's good news.  

Hope

The subject of fear, doubt, anxiety, etc hits very close to home, so I want to take some time here and remind myself (and whoever reads this blog) what Jesus/ the bible and some great Christian leaders have to say about fear.  

"God does lead his people on roundabout ways.  He does not move hastily.  He is never in a hurry.  It is one of his most irritating qualities." -John Ortberg.

In Love Beyond Reason, Ortberg continues about "the God who takes his people to the Promised Land by way of the desert."  But why?  If God loves us like sons and daughters, can't He calm the storms in our lives?  Why does God let it be so difficult?  

I like Ortberg's answer: "The desert is where you face the question of perseverance.  The desert is a place where only the patient can go on."  Here God's love lands in a deeper place.  "In the desert all we have to cling to is the promise.  God has not forgotten you."  Here Romans 8:15-17 is life-giving, "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  And by him we cry 'Abba, Father.'  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.  Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

Really take a moment to think of the implications of a statement like, "The Holy Spirit tells our spirit that we are God's children."  That's one part of the trinity saying we're God's children, how about another?  In Matthew 7:9-11, Jesus (The Son) says, "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"  (Just look at my hot girlfriend as evidence of this being true).  That's two members of the trinity considering humans sons and daughters of God.  Psalm 139: 13-16 says, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  We were created by God.  He made us.  That is why He sees us as His children.  This is profound, to me.   

There is a field in social science that attempts to study resiliency.  Researchers study people who have survived traumatic experiences.  For example, they studied 3,000 POW's who returned from being "brainwashed" in Korea, victims of crippling accidents and children from very difficult backgrounds.  Their answers (the resilient ones, rather) all shared a few themes.

• Resilient people continually seek to reassert some command and control over their destiny rather than seeing themselves as passive victims.
•  Resilient people have a larger than usual capacity for what might be called moral courage--for refusing to betray their values
  
• Resilient people find purpose and meaning in their suffering
  

These qualities are not just the product of a strong character.  Each one of them grows out of a deep dependence on God.  Jairus's daughter being dead didn't phase Jesus.  Surely my enormous student loan debt won't phase Him either.  Whatever you're going through isn't too big (or trivial).  Jesus says, "Don't be afraid; just believe (Mark 5:36)."  In Matthew 21:22 Jesus says to his disciples, "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."  This takes faith.  God, I believe.  Help my unbelief.  Psalm 25:3 says that no one whose hope is in [God] will ever be put to shame. 

Sometimes I doubt that God really cares about me.  I believe that He loves me, because I believe that what Jesus said is true.  But I sometimes doubt that God likes me and therefore, doesn't care if I'm blessed.  Take a guess where this thought comes from.  

From cover to cover, the bible is about God doing everything in His power to be with His people (me and you).  He delights in us, the bible says.  So when times are hard, when we are in a desert, when the storm is tearing everything else apart, remember Paul's words, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; confused, but not in despair."  

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." -Luke 12: 6+7

Who Does God Say I Am?

At some point in the Christian walk, you will encounter what I like to call the "Now what" dilemma. Everyone (every believer, that is) knows this. It is the internal battle that is sparked by committing a sin. The guilt and shame of this sin can be paralyzing.  

One of my personal heroes, John Ortberg writes, "Sometimes we don't have much of a sense of God's presence in our lives, but there's no mystery to it at all. The truth is that our desire for God can be pretty selective. Sometimes we don't want God to be around.

Dallas Willard write about a two-and-a-half-year-old girl in the backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called 'warm chocolate'). Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.  

The little girl soon resumed her 'warm chocolate' routine, with one request posed as sweetly as a two-and-a-half-year-old can make it:

'Don't look at me Nana. Okay?'

Nana (being a little codependent) of course agreed.

Larissa continued to manufacture warm chocolate. Three times she said, as she continued her work, 'Don't look at me Nana. Okay?'

Then Willard writes, 'Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we be unobserved in our wrong.'

Any time we choose to do wrong or to withhold doing right, we choose hiddenness as well. It may be that out of all the prayers that are ever spoken, the most common one--the quietest one, the one that we least acknowledge making--is simply this: Don't look at me, God.

It was the very first prayer spoken after the Fall. God came to walk in the garden, to be with the man and the woman, and called, 'Where are you?'

'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid,...so I hid.'

Don't look at me, God.

[...] We don't say it out loud of course. We probably don't admit it even to ourselves. But it's the choice our heart makes:

Don't look at me, God."

The apostle Paul said it this way, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." (Romans 7:15- 17)

That means Paul was not a sinner. And if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, then neither are YOU. That is, if the Bible is true. "It is no longer I who do it..." We simply aren't sinners. Earlier in Romans Paul says that we have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.  

Doesn't it make sense that Satan would want a statement like, "I'm not a sinner" to come off as heresy? If he can keep the Christian trampled to the floor with guilt and shame, then he wins. But those who are in Christ are new creations. The old has gone (slaves to sin), the new has come (slaves to righteousness). After all, isn't that why Jesus came? Belief in Jesus Christ equals freedom from sin.

I think walking around with the mindset of who we are in God's eyes would greatly influence our behavior. Personally, I live with an intense awareness that I am a sinner. I bounce around from sin to sin, almost expecting it. In weaker moments, I really do tell God not to look at me. I forget who I am. I still walk around thinking I am just another sinner. "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love." That's me (in my eyes). In God's eyes I am white as snow.

A.W. Tozer is becoming one of the most important people in my life. Here are his words from The Pursuit of God, ch.3 Removing the Veil, "The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush."

So regarding that "Now What" dilemma, where I feel like God has left me to my own devices, I will consider who I am. Who I really am. Next time I sin (which is inevitable), I need to confess it right away. Confession of guilt is still necessary and God uses our heavy, hurting hearts to bring true repentance. But a persistent, nagging guilt and attacks of, "You're worthless. You suck. You will never be able to stop doing that. God's done with you, etc." are never from our loving Father. They are from Satan. It is wise to realize that right now. As Bill Hybels says, "God doesn't want you to sit in some penalty box for an indeterminate amount of time."

I'll end my first blog with encouraging words from Jesus in Matthew 18: 22. Peter comes up to him and asks, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"

Jesus replies, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Not specifically 77 times, but an infinite amount. It is good to remember who Jesus is when you come to this passage. Jesus is God. He thinks like God. This is God's attitude towards us. He will never NOT forgive us. Never.