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We’ve all heard a version of the saying, “in God we trust, all others pay cash.” When Jesus says “do not be anxious about your life”, he isn’t saying: “Don’t worry, be happy.” On that note, he isn’t saying, “stop it”, “knock it off”, or “you can choose not to worry.”
I kinda get the feeling that he’s saying there is a better way.
Recently I was with a friend who was going on and on with a small group of freinds about how she doesn’t worry anymore. I was getting agitated just listening because the people she was talking to had to be just like me I’m guessing—prone to worry.
We all worry from time to time, some of us more than others for sure. But we all worry nonetheless. We worry about who will take care of us when we get older—or who won’t. We worry about how we are going to make it another month unemployed. We worry about the cancer that runs in our family Read the rest of this entry »
The 19th century Scottish mathematician and pastor, Thomas Chalmers, wrote,
My God, suffer me not to let go my hold of Thy good providence.
It’s safe to assume that the life I lead these days as a fumbling bachelor doesn’t always necessarily lend itself to a good night’s sleep (looking for employment again and slaving away over my never ending book project can get tedious and tiresome, and my bursts of writing inspiration in which my bad case of writers block dissipates are more likely to happen at night when the sounds of the day disappear and my mind is quieted).
So, there I was last night, laying there praying and attempting to listen with thoughts of numerous hurdles racing through my little brain Read the rest of this entry »
Grace substitutes a full, childlike, and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. We become ‘jolly beggars.’ ~C.S. Lewis
There is something about those rare birds who have learned to soar above the ho-hum life many of us have become accustomed to living, knowingly or not. Maybe you don’t know the ones I am speaking of here.
Philip Yancey shares the following:
Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’ I smiled when I saw the return address, for my strange friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as ‘the one Jesus loved.’ Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”
What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as ‘the one Jesus loves’? How differently would I view myself at the end of a day?
Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
Brennan Manning tells the story of an Irish priest who, on a walking tour of a rural parish, sees an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, ‘You must be very close to God.’ The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, ‘Yes, he’s very fond of me.’ (What’s So Amazing About Grace?, pages 68-69)
I too, was reminded about this kind of simple dependance upon God yesterday when I stumbled across the following verse that one of my daughters had posted.
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes (Matthew 6:34, The Message).
The full life Jesus speaks of is a life of learned dependance .
Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves—blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. -A.W. Tozer
Faith in our faith is about as useless as rubber lips on a woodpecker.
Early on during what would eventually become a failed marriage with the wife of my dreams, both her and I together encountered some real serious relationship issues—none of which many young couples don’t end up struggling with. Problem was, I was a pastor and I am proud. So, I thought it better to ignore our problems. Over time, our marriage suffered as both my young bride and I made compromises that the marriage couldn’t afford in the grand total of things. Eventually, we separated. And then surprisingly, somehow, we reconciled two months later as both of us made stellar attempts to forgive and leave the past behind. But even our most ardent and combined efforts proved insufficient and our union of fifteen years completely dissolved not too much later.
Looking back, I realize now that neither of us had the kind of faith in God (instead of in ourselves) that it would take to repair a broken marriage. Both of us placed a lot of confidence within ourselves and eachother to do what was going to be painfully necessary to see a marriage so torn apart get the healing it so desperately needed. An indicator that stood out like a sore thumb that I should have easily recognized was how quick I was to pat myself on the back for the small gains I’d made on the long road back to what we had hoped would be an even stronger and more transparent intimacy.
7-8 A holy man showed up and said, “No, O King—don’t let those northern Israelite soldiers into your army; God is not on their side, nor with any of the Ephraimites. Instead, you go by yourself and be strong. God and God only has the power to help or hurt your cause.” -2 Chronicles 25:7-8, The Message Bible
There are things in our lives that we need to learn to trust God for, namely—everything. And when we don’t, we learn the hard way. It’s better to go some places alone if that is what it takes to trust God instead of our faith.
Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.
-Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor
Pastor Mark Driscoll has laid out what I believe to be the best list I have run across in some time on the distinct differences between the Gospel and religion. Jesus delivered the very Gospel we preach today within the context of his earthly ministry and his fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures. It was the religion of the Pharisees (and any other man-devised system of connecting with the Almighty) that he came to abolish with his very life.
When you get down to brass tacks—Jesus is the Gospel and Jesus is about setting us free. And since I have been outlining what freedom is and what it isn’t (the Gospel shouts Freedom! after all)—I figured it would be fitting to share Driscoll’s list while we are taking the time to expose the fallacies of religion that are constantly at work to undermine the message of freedom.
Religion says, ‘If I obey God, God will love me.’ Gospel says, ‘Because God love me, I can obey.’
Religion has good people and bad people. Gospel has only repentant and unrepentant people.
Religion values a birth family. Gospel values a new birth.
Religion depends on what I do. Gospel depends on what Jesus has done.
Religion claims that sanctification justifies me. Gospel claims that justification enables sanctification.
Religion has the goal to get from God. Gospel has the goal to get to God.
Religion sees hardships as punishment for sin. Gospel sees hardship as sanctified affliction.
Religion is about me. Gospel is about Jesus.
Religion believes appearing as a good person is the key. Gospel believes that being honest is the key.
Religion has an uncertainty of standing before God. Gospel has certainty based on Jesus’ work.
Religion sees Jesus a the means. Gospel sees Jesus as the end.
Religion ends in pride or despair. Gospel ends in humble joy.
As Driscoll so explicitly points out, the Gospel of freedom Jesus embodies and the religion he came to expose are at polar ends of the spectrum—they are at diabolical odds with each other.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified. (Galatians 5:23b-24, The Message Bible)
Do you know why most Christians don’t get any better or why you don’t get any better? It’s because you’re doing it wrong, dummy! You are obsessed with sin and your faith has become another ’system of laws’ whereby you feel guilty and try and try and try to do better. It doesn’t work, never has worked, and never will work…
-Steve Brown
If I had this freedom thing down pat I wouldn’t bother writing about it. But I want to breath it with every gasp of air I have left before they box me up and stick me in some stuffy cemetery.
A few days ago I returned from a weekend away to see my oldest daughter graduate from high school. It was exhilarating and frightening all in the same swoop. Maybe you can relate to my feelings—she’s my first-born and makes me one proud dad. Anyways, I woke up the other morning and headed into the bathroom after putting my morning coffee on just to be greeted by a big red spot on the tip of the end of my nose (and for those who haven’t seen me—I don’t have the smallest beak in the world). The thing was irritating and it hurt too. Figures Id’ get one—my dad gets the pesky buggers every once in a while and I make fun of him. I thought by the time you were so close to forty these little ego deflaters would be history for good—let alone a man in his mid-sixties. I suppose I have something to look forward to besides streets of gold.
Nobody likes zits, or least no one has told me any different. Zits are like sin if you ask me—although those of you lucky enough to never get a zit can’t say you never get a sin. Sadly, some times it seems like I hate zits more than I hate sin. I also got to thinking about the fact that I didn’t touch my big zit—not once, and it disappeared within a day (to my satisfaction). Sin is like that I have found, and although my sin nature hasn’t taken any extended vacations lately to my dissatisfaction—my sins do seem to have a way of being less of an issue when I don’t obsess about them but rather trust that God meant it when he said he forgives every last one of them.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:13-14, ESV)
I think the idea here is to starve the flesh—my sin nature has trouble surviving let alone prospering when I don’t feed it. Like my big zit, I have this thing for obsessing about things that are better left alone and I am slowly but surely learning that it helps to stop thinking about my sin and start focusing on the one who has delivered me from it’s penalty.
Temptation has a way dissipating when it isn’t messed around with.
free·dom: 1: the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another
-Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Alright—we’ve been on this topic of freedom for a few days now and there must be a couple of dissenters wondering when I am going to hurry up and get back to the truth. Well, I hate to disappoint anyone, but the message of freedom is the simple truth of God’s Word and any counter-message is a lie.
How often we compromise our freedom and settle for some cheap imitation—we were not meant to live like some torpid chicken on a fast-track to slaughter, beak and feet removed, wings clipped off, steroid injected, anti-biotic ridden, disease infested—and force fed through a hose. That’s a picture of what religion can do to us when we get caught up in it’s web. It chokes everything that has the potential to be alive right out of us.
My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence? (Galatians 5:16-18, The Message Bible)
God’s design is that we are to be able to move and roam about, sort of like free-range chickens are apt to do. Healthy-active-organic chickens cost a bit more down at the corner market and taste far better on the barbecue for a reason—they are raised the way chickens were meant to be raised.
Being caged up by religion isn’t the life for you and me.
And we can’t very well follow Jesus if we are all couped up by religion like frustrated mass-production chickens.
Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
-John Calvin
I hate silly religion.
If I only had a nickel for every time I have traded the freedom I could have had for a lie and if I could have another nickel for every time religion has conned me into believing it would give me the very thing it couldn’t—I’d be sitting on my own island sipping a cold drink making afternoon plans to play a little golf. Religion for many of us has become our security blanket—some of us would prefer good old-fashioned religion over having Jesus any day of the week. After all, without religion our teenagers will get tattoos—and have babies while they are at it. Without religion our husbands will find new brides or our wives will divorce us and run off with younger men.
And ultimately—without religion—believers will leave the fold.
I suppose these are legitimate concerns. But the approach—much less the solutions (that religion has to offer), only worsen matters. Just when you are hurting, angry, lonely, doubting, or need it most—religion is no where to be found.
David wasn’t all too fond of what religion had to offer either:
I hate all this silly religion,
but you, God, I trust.
(Psalm 31:6, The Message Bible)
At best—religion is a time waster, an emotional hymn, a good pot-luck dinner, and pretty stained glass windows—in other words, religion is nothing we can’t live without. And at worst—religion robs people of the truth of God, which is just one more reason I hate silly religion so much. God never demanded that we love religion or join it’s loveless parade of works.
Instead, God has invited us to a wedding feast of endless bliss.
When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them ‘in their place.’ The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious. It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it’s freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived…
-From the Introduction to Galatians, The Message Bible (Eugene Peterson)
Religion is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
If Jesus came to bring us freedom from anything he came to bring us freedom from religion—he came to deliver us from it’s death-grip. It wasn’t restraint Jesus came to deliever us from so much but it was from the old code of rule-keeping and polishing up our own spiritual resumes if you will. And nothing has changed—plenty of the same old thing goes on today.
Do you ever wonder why non-believers find us so difficult to get along and converse with? Maybe one of the big glaring reasons is our fascination with passing out a thousand rules instead of simply sharing the glorious freedom offered within the gospel message? Jesus didn’t suffer and die so that we would have the freedom to merely keep a couple of rules.
Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. (Galatians 5:1, The Message Bible)
I am convinced that religion is largely responsible for a good number of church people who are straight on their way to hell. So much for the separation of church and state—I’m one person who would rather see religion get the you know what out of the church.
There are some who have no understanding to hear the truth of freedom and insist upon their goodness as means for salvation. These people you must resist, do the very opposite, and offend them boldly lest by their impious views they drag many with them into error. For the sake of liberty of the faith do other things which they regarded as the greatest of sins… use your freedom constantly and consistently in the sight of and despite the tyrants and stubborn so that they may learn that they are impious, that their law and works are of no avail for righteousness, and that they had no right to set them up.
-Martin Luther
Some of you must to be shaking your heads and saying by now—Come on Ken, there has to be some rules, you are giving people the idea that they can live any way they choose and still be a Christian.
I have said nothing of the sort. I will concede—the gospel of grace is abused—but we don’t pull the medicine off the shelves just because some would use it recklessly. What I have said is that we want rules instead of relationship. We like religion over Jesus. We’ll take self-serving outward religious fashion shows over inward and uncomfortable revivals. It’s much more difficult to be genuine than it is to be religious. And it’s much more advantageous when it comes to our fragile and attention-starved egos to follow a man-made code than to follow the Son of the Living God. Let’s face it—we want people to pat us on the back when it comes to our being so religious, so giving, or even so Christlike—we’ll trade the freedom that’s ours for an ata-boy not even thinking a split second about what we are giving up to get the small worthless token.
11-12 The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”
13a Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. (Galatians 3:11-13a, The Message Bible)
God understands something that we just can’t seem to get through our thick skulls: A heart set free doesn’t need rules any longer. If you want the unadulterated-unfiltered-cold-hard truth—our hearts never needed rules to begin with. Our hearts were plenty lost without any help. Rules or no rules, we were wretched without Jesus.
You see, a heart set free wants to follow Jesus—it doesn’t need seventy-five rules about how to do anything. Rules got us no where before Jesus and I can’t understand what on earth makes us think they will post-Jesus. Seriously—it’s like learning where to get a spectacular gourmet meal and then returning to the place we were paying the same money to get a maggot covered plate of slop—as if we never found the new restaurant. Maddening behavior really.
What possesses us to return to rules and religion when we have Jesus?
If you but love God you may do as you incline.
-Augustine
I’ve stumbled across a story from the life of President Abraham Lincoln a time or two now about an appointee within the president’s cabinet that would try to challenge and stimy the president every chance he got. A friend of honest Abe’s finally came to him and asked why he didn’t have the pesky man replaced. Lincoln, in turn—told his well-meaning friend a story about walking down a country road one day and coming upon a farmer who was busy plowing his field with a horse-drawn plough. As Lincoln approached the farmer he noticed a jumbo sized horsefly on the back-side of the working horse and figured it couldn’t be helping the poor horse concentrate on the task at hand. Lincoln—in an attempt to help the farmer out, went to simply brush off the little pest. As Lincoln raised his hand to take a swat, the farmer protested—Don’t do that, friend. That horsefly is the only thing keeping this old horse moving.
The moral of the story for today’s lesson is simple: Religion is nothing more than a jumbo horsefly and there are those within certain circles of the church who’d like you to do anything—and I stress anything—other than contribute to freeing people from living under the irritating and deadly oppression that religion represents. Those caught up in the facade of religion do not like any one who messes with their religion and they are not afraid to tell you so—to mess with religion is to mess with God. Many church leaders feel the need to use religion to do the same exact thing the farmer was doing with the horsefly—use religion and the endless rules that accompany it as a means of motivating others to live the Christian life.
These preachers of bondage wouldn’t know freedom if it hit them upside the head. In his letter to the Galatian believers—Paul had something entirely different to say than what the peddlers of religion in his day were preaching.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a ‘law man’ so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not ‘mine,’ but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. (Galatians 2:19-20, The Message Bible)
There is a better way.
It’s called freedom—and it can be a rare commodity in some circles.
Luther, in speaking of the good by itself and the good for its expediency alone, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest—a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour—a day of joy and cooperation in the work of Christ’s creation. ‘Keep it holy’, says he, ‘for its use’s sake—both to body and soul! But if anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day’s sake—if anywhere anyone sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it—to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty.’…
-Samuel Tayler Coleridge (1772-1834), Table Talk
The enemies of freedom are many—but I’d have to say that religion is it’s fiercest. If that surprises you it shouldn’t.
Religion has never been about the love of God but about the works of man. Nothing has changed since the inception of man’s oldest institution. More is done in the name of religion to keep people down and hold them back from actually following Jesus than any other single thing. For a people who should be as free as anyone—us Jesus-followers—we sure can be a pretty bound up and tightly wound people. It’s one thing for our younger brothers and sisters in the faith to be all hung up on keeping a list of rules that they feel they must follow to please God—but it’s altogether for us who ought to know better by now. Shouldn’t we be following a person instead of a set of steps to spiritual success after all? Doesn’t any measure of spiritual success for the Christian come down to following Jesus?
Jesus has written his law of love on our hearts if we know him at all—we can toss aside our note-pads.
It’s a bit disheartening to read about all the rules we should be keeping when Jesus said nothing of the sort. He summed up the new law of love in a single sentence. We, on the other hand—have volumes and volumes about the traditions and religious dogmas of man.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. (Galatians 2:21, The Message Bible)
Is it time for you to stick a fork in religion and get back to pursuing your relationship with Jesus?
Freedom is transformative.
-President George W. Bush, May 1st, 2008 (Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month)
No matter your political persuasion—or non-persuasion—there is no arguing the effects that freedom can have on a country (of course it’s not so smooth at times or unopposed as we are seeing in other parts of the world—and then there are the blatant abuses of freedom here at home that may very well prove to be the undoing of our great democracy). More specifically though—I’d like to look at the impact that freedom can have on one solitary human heart.
Like the slave girl that Lincoln purchased (see previous post) and her subsequent decision to stay with him after learning she was free to go where ever she pleased—freedom is a liberating and moving force. Freedom has the power to transform a life like no other power on earth. Just ask a prisoner upon their release from prison.
God loves us with a love that sets us free.
15-16 We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over ‘non-Jewish sinners.’ We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good. (Galatians 2:15-16, The Message Bible)
Some of us are up to our eyebrows in legalism—so caught up in the snares of rule-keeping that we don’t even bat an eyelash at it’s death-hold on us anymore.
The religion God promotes is never about rigid rules but it’s always about transforming freedom.
Two criminals were crucified with Christ. One was saved; do not despair. One was not; do not presume. ~Augustine
Author and pastor Mark Buchanan re-counts the following in his book Your God is Too Safe:
There is a story about Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. He was inspecting the Berlin prison. As he walked through the hordes of shackled men, they fell pleading at his feet, protesting their innocence. They claimed to be falsely accused, models of virtuous living, completely innocent of all crime. Only one man didn’t do this. Frederick called to him, ‘Prisoner, why are you here?’
‘I robbed a man, Your Majesty.’
‘And are you guilty?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
Frederick called the guard over. Pointing to the man who confessed, he said, ‘Release this man immediately. I will not have this scoundrel thief kept here where he might corrupt all these fine, virtuous, and innocent men.’
Buchanan continues…
That’s the lovely irony of confession: The one who actually confesses gets out of prison…
God’s economy is rather quite simple—God grants pardon only to those willing to admit their offenses. Keep in mind, one of the two criminals who hung beside Jesus confessed his guilt and praised Jesus as the Son of God and the other did not—he was too busy giving Jesus guff about being the Son of God. And it goes without saying which one went on to eternal torment and which one to eternal joy.
39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ 42 And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ 43 And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23:39-43, ESV)
Will you confess your sins and see the Messiah’s innocence?
You must know you are guilty.
It is only the guilty who confess and look to the Cross who get to go free.
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