Faith

CONSTRAINING HIM

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On the road to Emmaus there were two disciples walking and talking with Jesus.  Scripture tells us in Luke 24 that “they drew near to the village where they were going, and He indicated that He would have gone farther.  But they constrained Him, saying, “Abide with us…

They constrained Him.  They didn’t just ask.  They urged and insisted and compelled Him.  There is an element of force implied in the word.  Jesus planned on going further, but I get the impression that they weren’t going to take no for an answer.  And as he came in to share a meal with them, it says “their eyes were opened and they knew Him”

When Jesus came to the disciples walking on water (Mark 6) it says He would have passed them by.  But they cried out and immediately He talked with them and said to them “Be of good cheer!  It is I; do not be afraid”.  Jesus got into the boat and the storm was calmed. Their desperation stopped Him and brought His peace into their situation.

The blind man at Jericho (Luke 18) heard that Jesus was passing by and he cried out.  The word there indiciates that he was shouting in a tumultuous way.  Probably embarrassing the people that were standing near, so they told him to be quiet.  Yet he cried out all the more.  Jesus called for him and restored his sight.  Had he been afraid of what everyone else might think about him, he may have held his peace and died a blind man.

In all three of these accounts Jesus is right there, but about to pass by.  Yet when someone cried out and insisted on His presence, He stopped.   Why did He stop?  Because there was a longing, a desperation for His Presence.  How many times have we felt that same thing rising up within us, yet because such a crying out isn’t “proper” or “acceptable”, we suppress the longing and ignore the desperation as Jesus passes by.

I want to constrain Him.  I want to stir myself up to take hold of Him.  I want to know Him; to experience His miraculous peace in every storm; to have my vision restored.  I am not content that He should ever pass by.

And the wonder of it all is that He isn’t either.

But it didn’t hide the tears

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Kelsy

Last Saturday I was with the ministry team on Bourbon Street during the VooDoo Fest weekend.  The street was crowded and filled with people in all kinds of outlandish costumes.  We had many people who stopped to talk and we were able to share the gospel with them and pray for them.  Sometimes there are people that stand out in your memory.  Kelsy is one of those people.  She had been standing by the cross for several minutes listening to the preaching.  As I made my way over to her she made eye contact with me and I began to talk to her about the content of the message being preached.  She didn’t say much, but listened intently as I shared the gospel message with her.  She had a mask over her eyes, but it couldn’t hide the tears that were rolling down her face.   She let me pray with her and she gave me her phone number.   Please pray that the Lord would open her heart to the message of His grace and that I would be able to maintain contact with her.

Only a living God can deliver.

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And the Lord said “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.  So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians….” Exodus 3:7-8

His words to Israel in Egypt are the same words He has spoken to us in Christ:

I have seen

I have heard

I know

So I have come down to deliver

Dead religion offers no hope of deliverance.  It offers only the certainly of a vicious cycle of trying really hard and failing yet again.

But the living God sees

The living God hears

The living God knows

And He came down…..to rescue us.

And even now, when Egypt is a distant memory….He sees….He hears….He knows…..and He comes down.

Sometimes there are these moments when I realize that He is so much more wonderful than I ever imagined.

I am a contradiction

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Reaching out in desperation
Thirsting, longing
For Your presence
Ascending the hill of God
The peak, it seems, in view
Until the claws of this earthly existence gripping me
Pull me back into the mundaneness of the temporal
Kicking and screaming?
No, all too willingly I retreat
Easier to admire the hill from the bottom than struggle to the top
And so for yet another day I refuse to climb, to seek
Not realizing how eager You are to aid me in this journey
This pursuit of the Holy
My spirit yearns
My flesh is weak
I am a contradiction.

The beautiful heart of the handmaid

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“Behold the handmaid of the Lord!  Be it unto me according to Thy word.”

Luke 1:38 “Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.”  1 Samuel 25:41

The beautiful heart of the handmaid – surrendered to Him, His will, His word, His plan…..even when it isn’t understood and seems impossible.  Even when it is difficult and humbling.  It submits in a precious obedience to the wisdom of the One who loves perfectly and guides faultlessly.  Unafraid to trust the Lord and His holy purposes; unafraid to humbly serve the people of God.

Oh to have such a heart!

Fighting our enemies

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“However, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shean and its villages, or Taanach and its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of Ibleam and its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages; for the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land.  And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Caanites under tribute, but did not completely drive them out.”  Judges 1:27-28

And the list continues of each tribe that did not drive out all the inhabitants of the land they were inheriting.

They had been warned by Joshua before his death that those peoples who were not driven out of the land would be “snares and traps to you, and scourges on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land which the Lord your God has given you.” Joshua 23:13

You would think that such a warning would have compelled them to fight until victory was complete.  But they didn’t.  They acheived a measure of success.  In fact they were probably mostly successful.  But they remained content with a job unfinished.  Maybe they just got tired of fighting and an enemy determined to stay in the land was a bit more than they felt like dealing with.  After all, if they could put the enemy under tribute, if they could keep that enemy under their control, wouldn’t that be good enough?

No.

These people allowed to remain in the land were a continual cause of stumbling to Israel.  We would do well to learn a lesson from this.  That seemingly insignificant compromise that we tolerate and make a convenant of peace with is the compromise that will one day gain the strength to make all out war against our soul.  The command of God is that all foreigners (and what should be more foreign to the life of a blood-bought believer in Jesus than tolerance of sin and compromise) must be driven out and He has promised His own help.  The Spirit of the Lord Jesus, the ultimate overcomer, dwells in us, faithfully showing us those enemies and then empowering us to be free of them.  But we must rise up determined that none shall remain.  Those enemies you do not fight, you will live with.  So let us fight by taking hold of God in prayer.  Let us fight by clinging to the promises of His word.  Let us fight by a daily surrender of ourselves to the will of God.  Let us fight brothers and sisters, and never be content to merely keep those enemies suppressed.  But let us live in the glorious freedom purchased for us by our Lord Jesus.

Faith speaks

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“And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke, we also believe and therefore speak.  2 Corinthians 4:13

Can there be a silent faith?  Can there be a genuine faith that does not lift up its voice to be heard?  Does not our silence betray the fact that we do not truly, at the core of our being, believe those things we profess to believe?  I am convinced that nothing would ever be able to silence us if we became truly convinced of the glory, power and beauty of the Lord Jesus, of God’s great desire to show mercy and grant eternal life to the repentant, of the imminent approach of the day of judgment, and of the horror of the eternal punishment that awaits those who do not believe.

May God grant to all of us, His people, a greater revelation of these things so that with all our believing there would also be speaking.

“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kindgom: Preach the word!  Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.”  2 Timothy 4:1-2

And after the outreach was over………

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Sunday afternoon was my city’s annual Earth Day celebration.  Mostly it’s just another excuse for a festival with live music, beer and carnival food.  After church I went with a small group of people to share the gospel of Jesus.  There were some memorable moments during the day when I felt like it was a God ordained moment for me to speak to certain people…..a man who was weighed down by the guilt of his alcohol addiction…..the 20-something pastor’s son who was dabbling in the world and trying unsuccessfully to justify it to himself….so many stories.   So many people in need of the freedom that only Jesus can bring.   After several hours, the outreach was over and it was time to make my way back to church for prayer meeting.   Arriving at my car, I began to unload my backpack into the trunk when I noticed that a lady was opening the trunk of the car next to me.  Just being polite, I turned towards her with a very generic, “How are you today?”    When she turned towards me I could see the pain on her face as she answered, “I”m having a really bad day.”  I offered to pray for her but she seemed hesitant to reveal any details of her trouble, yet my heart was moved with compassion for her and I knew I couldn’t just leave.   I began to tell her of the One who loves with a faithful love, watching as her face softened.  There were only a few moments that I had to speak to her before her companion joined her at the car, so I spoke all that was on my heart, threw my arms around her and prayed a brief prayer in her ear.  Her name is Keisha.  And as I drove away, I told her once again, “I will pray for you Keisha.”

I had thought the outreach was over.  In reality, it never is.

Cisterns and fountains

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For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jeremiah 2:13

Why is it that men will forsake the fountain in favor of the cistern?

With the fountain there is an endless supply, not just of water, but of living water.  A never ending source and an unmatched quality.  There is no effort to be expended in order to drink your fill, except that which is necessary to come to the fountain.

Yet we humans, always desiring to attain by the works of our own hands, reject that which is freely offered in favor of that which we can produce by the sweat of our brow……even when the quality is so terribly inferior and the end result imminently unsatisfying.  At the fountain we are offered water of life.  All the cistern can offer is something stale and stagnant.

So how are those cisterns working out for you?  What cisterns, you ask?

How about the cistern of religious activity that we choose instead of the fountain of encountering God?

How about the cistern of saying prayers that replaces the fountain of real soul travail that touches heaven?

How about the cistern of singing worship songs instead of the fountain of true worship in spirit and truth that pours itself out at the feet of Jesus?

Dig with all your might the cistern of your choice.  Meanwhile all of heaven is astonished at our foolishness.  Will we never learn that only at the fountain of our precious Lord Jesus will we ever find satisfaction?  Or will we go on ever building cisterns….and ever thirsting?

Not religion – but life!

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Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life….”  John 11:25

If there is one thing I’ve learned about religion, it’s that religion is satisfied with behavior modification.  It generally goes no deeper that that, because it sees the problem of mankind as this: we are bad people who need to be made good.  But the problem is much more desperate than that.  We aren’t merely bad; we are dead.  Dead in trespasses and sin.  A bad man at least has the hope that he can become better.  A dead man is hopeless and can do nothing for himself.

But Jesus can do everything for us…..and He has.  Not only has He resurrected us (giving us freedom from the death that once held us) but He has also given us life.  Not religion……LIFE!

When Jesus spoke these words, He was addressing Martha, whose brother Lazarus had died a few days earlier.  Martha realized that her brother would rise again in the resurrection at the last day.  I marvel at Jesus’ response to her.  He didn’t say “I will be his resurrection and life on that day”.  He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Life is never postponed to some future time or place.  In Jesus, life is always present tense.  He is the RIGHT NOW resurrection and life.

Tomorrow, Christians across the world will celebrate Resurrection Day, only to return on Monday to an existence that seems to fall short of the abundant life Jesus promised to His people.  How long will we be content with this?  When will we take hold of Him in faith and refuse to settle for an ordinary existence?  Romans 6:4 says this:  “….just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, EVEN SO we also should walk in newness of life.”  That kind of life is anything but ordinary.

On this Resurrection weekend my prayer is that God would awaken us to the spiritual realities of LIFE in Jesus, that we would taste it, and be forever discontent with every lesser thing.