“Love makes it impossible to harm another, so love fulfills all that the law requires.
To live like this is all the more urgent, for time is running out and you know it is a strategic hour in human history. It is time for us to wake up! For our full salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.
Night’s darkness is dissolving away as a new day of destiny dawns. So we must once and for all strip away what is done in the shadows of darkness, removing it like filthy clothes.
And once and for all we clothe ourselves with the radiance of light as our weapon.
We must live honorably, surrounded by the light of this new day, not in the darkness of drunkenness and debauchery, not in promiscuity and sensuality, not being argumentative or jealous of others.
Instead fully immerse yourselves into the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, and don’t waste even a moment’s thought on your former identity to awaken its selfish desires.”
(Romans 13:10-14 TPT)
You can’t fight hate with more hate. You can’t fight darkness with more darkness. These are not your weapons. Put them down.
Instead be transformed. Rest in God’s love so you have an overflow of love to give away. Be empowered by the grace to change to become who God created you to be. Walk in the light as he is in the light. Clothe yourselves in the light of Christ.
Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness, the nourishment of the mind with his truth, the purifying of the imagination of his beauty, the opening of the heart to his love, the surrender of the will to his purpose. -William Temple
As I walked home, heading into the sunset at the end of a relatively warm February day, I was thinking about events of the past few months. I have seen so many false starts and travelled down so many fascinating, but distracting rabbit trails that these months have needed to be a time of prioritizing and realigning with what is truly important.
I love the razzle dazzle of experiences of signs and wonders beyond anything I thought I’d see in my lifetime, but signs point to something. What do they point to? This, for me, is a time of going back to the basics of the good news, and the nourishment of simple truth.
God said he has a plan and a purpose. What is it? Yesterday, a man from a place where it can be very costly to follow Christ, reminded me of a passage of scripture. It was written by John the Beloved, the man who rested his head on Christ himself at their last meal together before Jesus was crucified.
I remember how profound 1 John 5 was to me as a teenager when I first read it in a paraphrase by J.B Phillips. As one who felt like I never fit in, this gave me assurance that I belonged.
“Everyone who really believes that Jesus is the Christ proves himself one of God’s family. The man who loves the Father cannot help loving the Father’s own Son.
The test of the genuineness of our love for God’s family lies in this question—do we love God himself and do we obey his commands? For loving God means obeying his commands, and these commands of his are not burdensome, for God’s “heredity” within us will always conquer the world outside us. In fact, this faith of ours is the only way in which the world has been conquered. For who could ever be said to conquer the world, in the true sense, except the man who really believes that Jesus is God’s Son?
Jesus Christ himself is the one who came by water and by blood—not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. The Spirit bears witness to this, for the Spirit is the truth. The witness therefore is a triple one—the Spirit in our own hearts, the signs of the water of baptism and the blood of atonement—and they all say the same thing. If we are prepared to accept human testimony, God’s own testimony concerning his own Son is surely infinitely more valuable. The man who really believes in the Son of God will find God’s testimony in his own heart. The man who will not believe God is making him out to be a liar, because he is deliberately refusing to accept the testimony that God has given concerning his own Son. This is, that God has given men eternal life and this real life is to be found only in his Son. It follows naturally that any man who has genuine contact with Christ has this life; and if he has not, then he does not possess this life at all.
I have written like this to you who already believe in the name of God’s Son so that you may be quite sure that, here and now, you possess eternal life.
What is truth? The Spirit is truth.
What is God’s purpose? To give us life now and eternally.
What is his plan? Jesus. From the beginning it has been Jesus. In him alone we live and move and have our being.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke. The dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off! My heart was free! I rose, went forth, and followed thee. Amazing love! How can it be, that thou, my God, should die for me?
Don’t worry about having the right words; worry more about having the right heart. It’s not eloquence he seeks, just honesty.
Max Lucado
I remember, as a child, listening to two women disagree about the proper way to do something in church. Both believed that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing well. Both believed there was a right and wrong way to do things. Both believed their way was the right way. Voices were rising, but not in praise. Finally one said, “Well, we’ll just pray about that and see who God listens to.” She stomped off.
That scenario stuck with me. Even as a child I knew something was off. I didn’t know how to pray properly. In fact, nothing scared me off praying with other people more than being told I was doing it wrong by those who seemed to be in God’s favour. (I wrote about that here in Praying Naked).
Today I was reading this passage in the fourth chapter of Philippians. Amusingly (to me anyway), it comes right after the Apostle Paul urges two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to make more of an effort to be of the same mind as the Lord and get along with each other. Immediately I the memory of the two “prayer warriors” from my childhood.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
Let your gentleness be evident to all.
The Lord is near.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (verses 4 to 7)
I’ve been in a lot of religious settings in my life. Sadly, I’ve witnessed a lot of broken hearts in the wake of “doing things right” when right was defined by a person or institution whose need to be right surpassed the need to be gentle and extend love and grace to those who didn’t measure up to their standards. Even the disciples argued amongst themselves about who Jesus liked best and who would be greatest in the kingdom.
Servants, slaves, and employees may jostle for positions of greater trust and authority through superior performance. It’s their way of trying to earn security by being the most useful and therefore most valued asset. There’s a reason why Jesus told them, before he was crucified and rose again, that he considered them friends. Their position was secure because he loved them. That’s it. It’s all based on love. And he asked them to love one other as he and the Father love.
I am so painfully aware of the number of wounded believers rejected or left behind or still scrambling desperately for approval by those who determine themselves to be most loved. Somedays it feels like grief. Someday I just want to weep, but I am reminded that I am guilty myself of turning this whole prayer thing into some sort of me-first competition too.
There is so much more to this one-anothering thing than we think. All I know is that we are urged to be one in the Spirit. Unity is not to be found in our efforts or methods. Unity is found in God. God is love. He cannot love us any less than he already does, nor can he love us any more than he already does.
I am loved. You are loved. Let’s start praying together by rejoicing in that fact.
You are always and dearly loved by God! So robe yourself with virtues of God, since you have been divinely chosen to be holy.
Be merciful as you endeavor to understand others, and be compassionate, showing kindness toward all.
Be gentle and humble, unoffendable in your patience with others.
Tolerate the weaknesses of those in the family of faith, forgiving one another in the same way you have been graciously forgiven by Jesus Christ.
If you find fault with someone, release this same gift of forgiveness to them. For love is supreme and must flow through each of these virtues.
Love becomes the mark of true maturity.
Colossians 3:12-14 TPT
Many of us long to be understood. We want to explain the background behind the reasons for our actions. As I often told my children, and now my grandchildren, an explanation is the history behind a decision. It is not necessarily the validation of a decision. An explanation is an explanation, not an excuse. Whether we hurt someone intentionally or unintentionally, their pain is still pain.
A young child hits back. A mature adult doesn’t need to.
Somedays I need to do an accounting. I need to remember times when I have been forgiven for doing or saying things meant to hit back. I write down memories of times when grace was extended to me for my graceless acts of immaturity. I give thanks for people who showed me kindness when I was flailing in pain, striking out at anyone I perceived as a potential threat and when it seemed only the foolish would trust again. Instead, they gently, humbly, and patiently demonstrated God’s true nature.
When I look at the people who have had the greatest effect on healing the deep wounds in my heart, they are all people God brought into my life to show me there was such a thing as love that was not self-serving. They made time. They listened. They were not put off by my raging. They were not afraid of how being associated with me would make them look. They made it possible to believe in more than the disappointing behaviour I had seen demonstrated by immature or false Christians. They showed me the kind of love that drives away fear and nurtures fertile ground for faith to grow.
On these accounting days, when I look, when I see, when I understand how costly it was to love someone in as much pain as I used to be, how can I justify offering less mercy than I have received?
Today I am thankful for the mature ones who patiently extended love to nurture my spiritual growth. Twenty years ago, when I told one of them I was losing faith, he said he would hold onto faith for me because he knew I would eventually begin to comprehend how much God loved me.
I want to be like Jesus because that guy let me see Jesus in him.
A song came to mind today. I remember linking arms with friends as we sang it around the campfire when I was young and naïve, and perhaps a little too trusting. The song is “We Are One In the Spirit.”
I believed in the ideals in the song. I still do. Fifty years later, having observed at least fifty demonstrations of decimating attacks on “each man’s dignity and each man’s pride,” and experiencing lots of opportunities to forgive, I still cling to the hope of the unity the Apostle Paul describes in Ephesians 4.
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
We have some maturing to do. In the same chapter he writes:
I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Are there good reasons for separating? Of course. Dangerous people who refuse to change remain dangerous. A parent who loves two children will move an aggressive bullying sibling away to another room protect the other. The object is protection for one and restoration for the other. We have far too many examples of situations where habitual abuse in churches was covered up using 1 Peter 4:8 “love covers over a multitude of sins,” as justification while ignoring Ephesians 5:11, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” One is about extending grace for growing-pain type sins and the other is about not tolerating a pattern of serious sin with potential long-term consequences, whether for one person or for thousands.
One instruction has grace for the faults of immaturity while the other prevents harmful, ungodly ideas and practices from becoming established. That discussion requires more time and space than this blog post allows today. I’m talking today about the chafing that occurs when we rub shoulders with fellow-believers who still have rough edges, in other words, all of us.
I saw these roses in the landscape patch between an apartment building and the sidewalk as I walked to the grocery store. I grabbed a photo on my phone because I liked the circle they formed. Usually, I edit out the flaws in my flower photos before I publish them. I tell people that if a photo of mine doesn’t have a time/date stamp on it, assume I have adjusted something. I did zap a couple of aphids on this one, but I left fading colour, browning edges and uneven pigment just the way it was. To me, the image represents a circle of unity with grace for imperfection.
I heard a wedding sermon in which the officiant gave a pep talk to the bride and groom. He talked about the admonition to forgive and forbear. (Colossian 3:13)
“Who knew that forbearing the daily annoying stuff would be harder than forgiving the exceptional major stuff?” he asked, speaking of his own experience.
I’ve noticed that one of the major reasons for splits in places where people once gathered with every intention of bearing with one another in love, are often triggered by the opposite character qualities of humble, gentle and patient. Instead, they jostled each other with arrogance, harshness, and impatience.
Sometimes we find ourselves side by side with prickly people. Graham Cook calls them “grace-growers.” Their presence in our lives is not so that we can fix them (or develop protocols for their removal), but so the Lord can allow the annoying qualities that continually rub us the wrong way to smooth our own rough edges.
Jesus said we would be recognized as his disciples, but not for our ability to shun the flawed and those who fail to fall in line with shunning practices. We will not be visible representatives of Christ for developing perfect theoretical doctrine, for “maintaining the pure DNA” of our particular sect, for either indulging sinful practices or condemning people still in process, or for becoming successful by the world’s definition. He said his followers would be recognizable. You’ll know who they when you hear people say, “Look how they love one another!”
It’s like they are one in the Spirit or one in the Lord or something.
It is not the job of the vine to hold up the trellis.
When religious institutions divert energy that should go toward producing fruit into maintaining their own structure, they are more a hindrance than a help.
Show me the fruit.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22,23 NIV}
Be warned. This may contain what some consider to be negativity and too much information, but I want to be transparently honest. I struggle with pain. I hate it. It wears me down. Some nights are worse than others, but the other night was a doozy and left me crying in exasperation. To top it off, when I did manage to sleep, I had a nightmare.
In the dream, someone close to me went to the authorities and accused me of a horrendous crime I would never commit. The police came and arrested me, and I was dragged into court. I was innocent! In fact, I am a fierce defender of the safety of the ones I was accused of hurting! I have sacrificed years of my life for them! I passionately defended myself. But no one would listen in this crazy kangaroo court.
In the dream, I felt anger and rage that anything so ridiculous could happen. Strangely, the awareness of real-life pain wove in and out of my sleep and it felt like the dream cops were the cause of the electric shock-type pains that travel through my body and the severe muscle spasms I get in my legs. I couldn’t stand. I was so angry I tried to bite the officers restraining me.
When I woke, I was still angry. I knew I was innocent! I wanted to give those people in my dream the same treatment they had given me. I’d shoot them all with tazers! I’d twist their joints with ropes! I’d jab their guts with a bowie knife! It took a while to calm down and convince myself it was just a dream.
My body still hurt though. I was grumpy all day. I’m a little slow sometimes, and not just due to coping with pain and lack of sleep. Sometimes I just don’t get it.
Two of the words I’ve been thinking about for Creative Meditations for Lent this week are passion and innocent. In the dream I knew I was innocent. In the dream I fought passionately against the injustice of the whole thing. It didn’t dawn on me until I was looking at photos I took of a place called “Ecce Homo” in Jerusalem, that there could be a message in the dream. I have prayed Philippians 3:10 many times. “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection [and the part I’m not as fond of but include because it’s a part of the whole picture] and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…”.
Jesus was innocent. Jesus was not emotionless. He was tempted in every way we are. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) God created us to naturally want to protect our bodies and souls from harm. If he was also human, how could Jesus control a passionate drive to defend himself from the false accusation from a disciple he loved? Did Jesus feel the powerful urge to strike back at those striking him? How could he love these people? How could he say, “Father, forgive them…?”
Jesus was fully God and fully man, but he emptied himself to live as a human, subject to the limitations of humans. [Christ Jesus] “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8) It was his connection with the Father and Holy Spirit that demonstrated what it is to be fully human living in right relationship with God the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit. He came to reconnect us to the Father. He left the earth so the Holy Spirit could come and fill us, comfort us, and renew us.
The worn stone pavement thought to be the location of the old Roman garrison under an ancient building in Jerusalem is called Ecce Homo – “Behold the Man.” These were Pilate’s words as he handed Jesus over to the soldiers who were no doubt demonically inspired to do their worst to him there.
The song, “Behold the Man” comes to mind today.
Like a lamb to the slaughter They led Him away He was battered, bruised, and beaten For the sheep who’d gone astray…
Through the scourging and the beatings He never said a thing…
Behold the Man Really look at Him And then you’ll understand
Charis: Subject to Change 