Truth, Grace, and Time

The lost nature of a human soul.

It seems that even talking about this in Christian circles makes you some negative person to be cast out from all the positive people.

Being lost is a thing just like not wanting to be found is a thing. I love the line from the book, “We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place, we’re going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost.”

Lost souls end up separated from God eternally. It’s no small accident, it usually comes from a constant effort to avoid and escape God. Hell is not a tragedy because it exists, hell is a tragedy because no one has to go there.

After a lifelong journey of telling God, “Hey I’m gonna do things my way, you have no claim on my life and I’m making my decisions based on me and not you, it’s hard to imagine that we can’t imagine the result of such a statement people make to God.

What you earn from a lifetime of separating yourself from God, is an eternity of life separated from God. A lifetime of situating yourself away-from-God , be assured He will excuse you from His presence.

There are lost souls, Jesus said it’s a broad road and many will find it. And that there is a narrow road and very few find it.

I’m afraid for so many American Christians who hold almost no theological understanding about sin, repentance, the need for forgiveness and for Christ to indeed be the Lord of my life who gets to have His way in me.

I pray for souls who have never surrendered their life to the Lordship of Christ. It looks a little like the following prayer…

Forgive me Lord for the ways I have done wrong to you and done wrong to others. I know that justice demands payment for wrongdoing. I deserve to pay it all back but I can’t afford it. Thank you for dying on the cross and making the broken parts of my life be whole again. Thank you that your payment on the cross can be my payment. Thanks for adopting me as a child into your family. Thank you for putting your Holy Spirit in me. Give me the strength, courage and perseverance to walk in your ways with the strength you provide. Thanks you for starting this work in me and the promise that you will bring it to completion. Amen!!

Being lost is a thing, being found is a thing. I pray you are found and forgiven and the stance of “the lost” and the stance of “found, forgiven and adopted” would be for you, as night and day as they truly are.

Some one liners from todays reading…

If God is God, then I am not.

If God has the first claim on my life then I don’t.

The great drama of life is to feel something. If we aren’t participating in the Kingdom, then pleasure in our bodies is the next best thing people choose.

Irony… engaging in bodily pleasures actually deadens feelings, thus we need a bigger hit to achieve the next high.

Gratifying self opens us up to a place where nothing is forbidden. Why becomes why not?

When knowledge isn’t centered on God, God releases us to a nonfunctional mind.

At the core is the first statement, a heart that has made me god in place of God.

On a different note , I appreciate the Martin Luther way of looking at a scripture.

1. Ask God to apply this verse to your life in as many ways as possible.

2. Make appropriate confessions based on your applications.

3. Thank God for anything related to the verses truth.

4. Offer requests of God based on that verse.

So I went to one of the Psalms for today Oct 2, so Psalms 2, 32, 62, 92, 122 and chose 62:1

“For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”

1. My soul has a difficult time waiting or being silent. There’s always a rush to fill in the blanks. When faced with something, I race to my version of its salvation. Waiting to see what God wants to do is not my inclination. I spend a lot of mental energy on my fortress or my defense of myself or my God(as though He needed my help!). I am shaken based on the amount of time I think about solving things.

2. Do I leave room for God to work or fill up all the space with me? I need to let God work out the salvation of the issues that lie before me. But also act based on the Holy Spirits direction. I need to choose what I think about recognizing it is my choice to dwell on things in my thought life.

3. I thank God that He is working out things for His glory. I’m thankful that He is even more mindful about our life and world than we are. I recognize the gift of someone else being my rock, salvation and fortress. Recognizing the futility I even my best efforts at those things.

4. Lord help me to walk through the moments of my life able to see the great gain of waiting on you and living in your strength and protection. To yield my good plans to your even better plans that might not look anything like my own.

There’s no vitality without reality.

One of the greatest ids in the coaching world is film. Film don’t lie. Players can have all sorts of perceptions about what just happened, but we can look at it on film and it will tell us exactly what happened. The sooner we get to reality, the sooner we can coach you up to take things on in a different way. But if we can’t get to reality, we can’t fix anything.

The Bible speaks plainly about the human condition. Society wants to argue the point, but watch any newscast and see if Paul’s repeat of Psalm 14 statement isn’t true…

¹⁰ “There is none righteous, not even one;
¹¹ There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
¹² All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
¹³ “Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
¹⁴ “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;
¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood,
¹⁶ Destruction and misery are in their paths,
¹⁷ And the path of peace they have not known.”
¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Romans 3:10-18

Humanism says the human heart is basically good and just needs a little instruction from time to time. But how many four years olds need to be instructed on behaving badly. Every good trait that I wanted for my children had to be guided, reinforced and sometimes forced. I never had to teach them how to be selfish, how to be sneaky, how to be mean to their sister, those things we come by naturally because as Jeremiah said…

“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick: who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9

WE live in a day where people can’t hear anything honest, just positive puffery. I’m all for encouragement, but the intro message to any improvement is that there needs to be something different going on. In the case of my players, as long as they string together a series of excuses for why they can’t seem to get a job done, there will never be any improvement. At some point coaching them becomes futile. You just trust that one day they will come around and ask you, “what can I do to get better?” When we get to that point players grow by leaps and bounds, it’s a beautiful thing.

The same is true in our walk of faith, the good news starts off with acknowledging the bad news. I pray that reality will bring us to the vitality that God intends for His people!!

A promise and a job description.

I appreciate the promised land metaphor as compared to our walk with the Lord. The invitation goes out for people to be engaged in God’s Kingdom and while a yes answer offers a whole multitude of promises, just like the Israelites there is much work to be done to live in the fullness of all of God’s promises. God’s presence and power are an overwhelming part of the story for Israel and for our lives. But the Israelites needed to be engaged in driving out the enemies of God.

While this is largely God’s effort, we have a role to play as well. It reminds me of a book titled “Real Christians Don’t Dance.” with the dance crossed out. In one chapter the author addresses this idea. “The largest responsibilities in my relationship with God are all His: His grace, His love, His forgiveness, His faithfulness, and His mercy– without these, it would be impossible for me to know Him. But many duties are also mine: my faithfulness, my whole-hearted love, my obedience, my honesty, my confession, my repentance. No one, not even He, can do them for me.”

Spiritual formation is a task that we need to be engaged in beyond simply responding to the gospel message. Jesus in His ministry was giving people words and actions to demonstrate before our eyes what His Kingdom was all about. Just like the Israelites had an assignment to claim the Promised Land, with God’s help (which is a huge Clause in this sentence!!), God invites us into His Kingdom, but it means we need to pay attention to arrange our lives around His priorities when we generally love to arrange it around our own priorities. Which includes but is not limited to washing the feet of the one you know is about to betray you.

Being formed into Christlikeness is as big a task as taking over the Promised land. For whatever ways we feel overwhelmed by the task, God invites us to tasks that aren’t too big, and maybe it’s going to take years to complete the task. But the good news is that “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, until the day of Christ Jesus.” Phil 1:6

Ideal verses reality: In the world of “best case scenario” you can have a discussion about how to handle any given situation. The scenario never really accounts for all the variables that life throws into those scenarios and it’s those variables that are the challenge in most cases.

We talk about character and making the right choices and setting up a framework to persist in the joy of continued right choices… and everyone lived happily ever after… but as the book points out, we are trained up in a world familiar with wrong and evil and sometimes embedded beliefs put our choices on autopilot.

Embedded beliefs: values held so deep down inside of us that we are unable to express them until we come across someone else whose embedded beliefs are quite different than our own. One of my embedded beliefs that has run into conflict with people is personal responsibility. I was never raised with any idea that some external source was going to ever come bail me out or guilt me into something that another wanted me to do. In my ministry life I have seen so many who live in the very opposite of that and even feel the Pastor’s job is to manipulate, hound, coerce, chase after, etc, etc, etc… I’m a firm believer that the Holy Spirit is the one people need to follow and I really have no interest in following people around and being the Holy Spirit for them. An individual’s growth raises and falls mostly on the effort any of us put into it. While we have some reasonable ways we can help each other, in the end, each of us will stand before the Lord alone and give an answer for ourselves.

All of that to speak about how many of our choices can be on autopilot based on values we hold so deep inside of us they are almost inexpressible, thus the verse “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. There is something about the natural person inside of us that is inclined to the wrong thing, so we see contrast that Paul speaks of as the “mind set on flesh which is death and the mind set on the Spirit which is life and peace.” Romans 8:5-7.

What’s really needed here is an acknowledgement of this dilemma that is part of this journey for us. It’s the awareness that we need to be retrained in certain situations to honor God’s way when we are tempted to run it the way in which we are all too familiar. To receive God’s grace when the old way rushes in and do see His bright smile when we begin to take those steps to walk it out His way.

What makes this an individual journey is that all of us have a very different set of embedded beliefs. What makes it common for us as a group is that we all have this struggle to get past our past, temptations, inclinations and press into having the “mind of Christ.” Prayerfully we’ll have as much grace and encouragement for each other as Christ has for us.

Today is an interesting read and an even more difficult choice about what to write about. I feel like this is one of those moments I could head in so many different directions and that those different directions might distract rather than enhance.

The last line of the opening paragraph grabs my attention, “The function of the will… is to organize our lives as a whole and to organize them around God.” What catches my attention is the ease of the sentence, but the difficulty of the two words “around God.” All of our lives are organized around something, the key is to have God at the center of the organizational structure.

Volition is a word we seldom use, some of you maybe even decided to look it up! Volition: “The faculty or power of using one’s will.” the book goes on to say,

“To Choose” The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. There are choices to be made, those choices take you somewhere.”

“One must have some object or concept before the mind” We never choose a thing we don’t know. We have to be at least somewhat familiar with the choices we are about to make. This is one of the reasons being in God’s word is so important. It’s the only way for us to familiarize ourselves with one of those choices that would be God’s. This is the part where our will comes into play. Will I choose God’s way or will I choose my way.

“And some feeling for or against it.” Feelings of joy for the result of a right choice. Feelings of satisfaction while making the right choice for the right reason. And to be honest, feelings of regret because you know this isn’t the right choice. Probably the worst being apathy, I don’t care, God your invited to blink right now cause I’m doing it my way.

Back to the well-kept heart, it’s capable of responding to life around it in ways that are defined by God as good, right, and just.

What about my choices today will lead me to life: or choices that are available today that would steal life from me or others. Feelings certainly come along for the ride. But how do I learn to enjoy the good feelings that come from being at the center of God’s will and learn to step away from those feelings that come from making the right decisions for which people will react negatively to me. My children, co-workers, parishioners all want their pound of flesh when truth is spoken and they don’t want to hear it.

We have to acknowledge our feelings and even enjoy them in the good moments of life. But we can’t let them overrun us in moments when truth trumps feelings. This is the moment when our will has to be stronger than our feelings. It’s about a long range view in those moments and not just the tyranny of hurt feelings in the moment.

The whole.

I think we tend to compartmentalize our lives or don’t give enough thought to how one thing relates with the whole. Our spiritual life is only about times when we are doing spiritual things. That my body is a separate entity from my emotions or relationships. That stress in my relationships doesn’t do something to me spiritually or that my emotional life gets undone when I am physically sick or hurting.

The chapter is trying to help us establish that link between all parts of us AND that spiritual formation in Christ leads to a better place for all of those compartments as well.

“ The result is the love of God with all our heart, soul, mind,and strength… Each piece of that will be a source of strength or weakness to the whole person depending on the condition it is in… a person who is prepared and capable of responding to the situations of life in ways that are good and right… are persons under the direction of a well-kept heart.”

The phrase in there is the “well-kept heart.” When do I know if I have a well-kept heart?

Psalm 86:11 “Teach me your way o Lord that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that may fear your name.”

Psalm 17:3 “Though you probe my heart, though you examine me at night and test me, you will find that I have planned no evil; my mouth has not transgressed”

Psalm 19:14 “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

Psalm 27:3 “Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.”

Psalm 51:17 “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”

And on and on it could go. Go to Bible gateway and look up the word heart then read anywhere or skip down to Psalms.

There’s no deception worse than self-deception. There’s nothing that offers more freedom than absolute honesty in a relationship. When we get to the point where these verses are more than words on a page but the honest desires at the core of our being then we have the fertile ground of a well-kept heart. That ground will grow some pretty radical stuff that will bring His life to all parts of us.

I have two highlights that struck me today.

1. The most important part of spiritual formation is not about how to act just like the primary problem in life is not what we’ve done. It’s all about who we are in our inner life that is the issue. Take a hot issue like guns for example. There is a temptation to talk about the gun and the need for controlling it, when no one wants to talk about the moral issue of a heart that has such blatant disregard for human life that they will shoot into any car, house, school and have no thought about killing a fellow human being. What’s going on in the heart and mind of someone who commit an act like that?

That’s an easy one, but are any of us off the hook because we gossip, lust or spend selfishly? It’s who we are on the inside that determines who we are on the outside. Very seldom in our day do we even consider the moral character problem inside of a life that creates the external visible action that we all know is wrong. Our Christian faith suggests there is a link, humanity can’t seem to even see a link.

2. The author uses love as an illustration of the above. If we simply believe that love is an act we can generally muster up some energy for it for a time, but over time or in moments when we get overwhelmed these traits of being patient, kind, not envying, not boasting, you know the 1Corinthians 13 definition of love, these ideals can fade. I really enjoyed the line about true love when it said- “the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others.” Sometimes a person expresses a thought that is a new way to say it. I pray for God to help me with a genuine inner readiness to meet their need and be open to the idea that maybe there is something God asks me to do to be part of that. Looking into the glorious joy of being, His Hands, His feet, His voice in the world.

Not a human “do”ing, but a human “be”ing.

Externals, internals and the trap we can fall into.

Today’s chapter warns us of an external focus in our work of spiritual formation. Traditionally this problem is referred to as legalism. We fall into the trap of measuring our growth (and the growth of others that we seem to be monitoring) based on externals. In the New Testament these issues centered on Jewish laws and customs. In todays world it’s more like “real Christians don’t…” fill in the blank, the old line might have been, “don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew and don’t go out with girls that do.”

We put some “outside of the heart” qualifiers for faith that we can measure and even maybe comply with, but our heart can still be in a broken place and we can’t see it because we’re checking off all the boxes of “right” behavior. The verse that Jesus said about “you wash the outside of the cup and of the bowl, but inside you are full of greed and indulgence. Clean the inside of the cup and the outside will be clean as well” could easily be applied here.

It’s easy to try and make this about polishing the outside, but in the case of the pharisee in this verse, it’s the greed and indulgence that are the issue. We all have this emptiness inside of us. And where there is a void, things will rush in. The question for us as individuals is what are we using to try and fill that void that isn’t Christ.

Colossians 1:27 ” The riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” What does it mean for Christ to be my hope? To focus on this internal relationship with Jesus.

“God is most glorified in me, when I am most satisfied in Him.” -John Piper

Action-based-outcome/relationship-based-outcome? I was going to be done at the Piper quote, but I still feel like we can fall into the trap of working hard at action-based-outcomes, i.e. behavior modification for the sake of fixing myself.

What has more value is a relationship-based-outcome where my love for Christ means I’m choosing forgiveness because I want to bring Him honor and not just a duty or an “ought to.” Even the “ought to” can become legalism. So the thing I really need is grow in my love for Christ so that the choices that naturally flow out of me are rooted and established in a deep desire to honor my Lord.

If I say anymore, I’ll just be rambling!!

A. W. Tozer used to talk about the “roots or the fruits.”, which comes first? We typically judge things by the externals we see. We mostly act shocked when we see some external thing from someone that shocks us, How could that be? The Bible says, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Thus, the reason inner transformation is so important.

From the book, ” The revolution of Jesus is one of character (who you are when no one is looking, my addition), which proceeds by changing people from the inside through an ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and one another. It changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings habits of Choice, bodily tendencies and social relations.”

Then a definition of Spiritual Formation: “The Spirit-Driven process of forming the inner world of the human self so that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself” That God’s way becomes my way, not only in my actions, but also in the more difficult world of my reactions. This is where we see where our heart is at. If I have an enemy that I see in the distance, can I brace myself to have a positive interaction with them, even though I know they are spreading all sorts of lies about me out in public? The answer to that is generally yes, but can I have a positive interaction when someone blindsides me in person when my defense mechanisms are on high alert? In that moment I generally slide into some outward passivity, but my internal dialogue is at a fever pitch of what I would really like to say. When will I learn to smile immediately at someone acting as my enemy.

As the book says, I’ve been able to dress up what was in my heart, but the internal dialogue sometimes doesn’t honor the Lord and my thoughts demonstrate that my character isn’t where it needs to be yet. It’s what I love about reading the gospels, Jesus interacts with people in very chaotic conditions and yet the words He speaks are the words people need to hear in a way that they need to hear them (stop with the delusion that Jesus always was Minnesota nice). Sometimes his grace poured out, sometimes an outright challenge to their thinking, and sometimes totally reframing their outrageously broken ideas with obvious truth that they were missing.

There is a journey we are on to have what goes on in our inner life matches what goes on in our outer life. To focus on fixing the outer life without addressing the inner life is where we fall short. To address these things that go on inside, will be how things get fixed on the outside. That’s why this is the Renovation of the Heart and not Renovation of the Behaviors.