I recently attended a retreat near the beach with a great group of women.  During a time of sharing, one woman related that she and some friends had gone down to the beach in the afternoon.  She had wanted to climb a somewhat steep embankment there on the beach in order to see from the top.  She said, however, that she was a little afraid to make that climb.  Most of the friends she was with climbed the embankment and called to her, encouraging her to climb up and see the beautiful view.  Another friend who had remained with her said that she would climb with her.  So, slowly and carefully, they climbed up the embankment to meet their friends.  The view was indeed as beautiful as they had said.  After a bit, her friends climbed to an even higher point.  They called back to her, “You have to come up here.  The view is spectacular!  You can see even more from here.”  She said that on hearing that and seeing the height she would need to climb, she thought to herself, “I don’t know – the view is pretty spectacular from right here where I am!”  She was afraid to climb higher, but the same friend who had initially climbed with her said she would again accompany her higher up.  So they climbed.  And when she reached her friends and looked around, she said that the view was truly spectacular.  They could see so much from that vantage point that was hidden from them on the lower point, including a pod of dolphins!  She was ecstatic and testified to how glad she was that she had overcome her fear and climbed all the way to the highest point.

As she was talking I thought how like our Christian life her story was.  The Lord calls us on with Him, and we are often afraid to go.  It means leaving the safety and security of what we know, of what has been good.  It means going into unknown territory and we’re not even sure we can make it.  Often, God will give us a friend to travel with and encourage us; but even in the absence of another person, the Holy Spirit is our ever-present companion on the journey.  Overcoming our fears, we reach the place where the Lord has led us and we’re glad, glad we overcame our fears, glad we made it.  The view is better.  We know the Lord more intimately.  We see and understand more of His ways; we ourselves have been transformed more into the image of Christ than we were before.  Then, after a time, the Lord calls us again to a higher place – a place where more is open to us, and we find ourselves struggling with the decision to climb yet again.  The place we’re in, we reason, is pretty spectacular, it’s filled with goodness, and we are tempted to think that it is enough.  We are satisfied here.  This is all of the Lord that we need.

I hope that if you find yourself in this place, that you, like the woman at the retreat, will decide to go on.  I hope you won’t be satisfied with what you have attained, that your fear or complacency won’t win out and keep you from experiencing all that God has for you.  I hope the Lord gives you a traveling companion to climb with you.  I know the Holy Spirit accompanies you.  And I know that you, too, will see and receive things from the Lord that can only be had in that place “further up.”  The view at the end of the climb will be worth the cost.  The riches of our inheritance in Christ Jesus can never be exhausted.  We keep discovering more all along the way.

A week after this retreat I began a two-week vacation in Alaska.  In the second week, we saw many of Alaska’s animals in the wild.  On a few occasions, we saw herds of Dall sheep, pretty white sheep that can live high in the mountains.  Our guide explained that their hooves are such that they can safely scale the crags and crevices of mountains in a way that few other animals can.  In part, this keeps them safe from their main predators, wolves and bears, who cannot safely follow on that kind of terrain.
As I watched them, I was reminded of the story I just related about the woman who conquered her fear and climbed to the height of the embankment at the beach.  Her feet had not slipped, she was able to walk on those high places.  She conquered her enemy – fear – and had enjoyed the victory.  Later I read Psalm 18.

“For who is God but the Lord and who is a rock except our God, the God who girds me with strength and makes my way blameless?  He makes my feet like hinds’ feet and sets me upon my high places.  He trains my hands for battle, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.  You have also given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right hand upholds me; and Your gentleness makes me great. 

God makes our feet like hinds’ feet (or like the feet of Dall sheep!) so that we can nimbly and safely climb on our own high places without fear.  We can experience the fullness of joy in the abundant life that Christ has promised us.  Not only is the view spectacular, but there, with our God, we are strengthened and trained to fight our enemy, one who is fiercer than any wolf or bear.  And there we travel with others whose journeys carry them to their high places.

One thing our guide said piqued my interest.  While the hooves of the Dall sheep were fitted to allow them to travel confidently and safely on those narrow and craggy mountains, their hooves didn’t make very good shovels.  By that he meant that if they were in a place where the snow was too deep, they couldn’t get to the food under the snow.  Their hooves were not fitted to move deep snow out of the way. 

So when the snow gets very deep, these hearty sheep look for places on the mountains where the wind is strong enough to blow the snow off the ground, allowing them to forage for their food in the harsh Alaskan winters.  Often these winds are upwards of seventy miles per hour, strong enough to blow seven to eight feet of snow off the ground!  What a picture this was to me of the Christian’s need for the power of the Holy Spirit in his or her life.  We need the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the obstacles that would prevent us from receiving all that God has for us.  Our flesh is not strong enough to overcome them, nor can we attain to the riches and blessings of Christ in our own strength.  Just as the sheep depend on the wind to enable them to survive, so we depend on the Holy Spirit.  And knowing they need the wind, the sheep actually seek out places where it is active and powerful.  We could take a lesson from them.  How often do we attempt the things of the Lord in our own power?  How often do we come up empty?  How often do we live as if we do not have the powerful indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit?

So bringing it back full circle, thinking of the woman at the retreat I am doubly glad for her.  My sister, you were made to climb.  You were made to enjoy the view from the heights.  You were made to revel in all the goodness of God.  If you are in Christ, these things are for you, too.  Keep climbing!

September 2010

This morning I boarded a plane in Fairbanks, Alaska, on my way home to southern California.  As I write this I am looking out the window of the plane onto a carpet of white clouds.  Breaking through that floor of clouds at various points are snow-covered mountain ranges as white as the clouds themselves.  Every now and then I can see through this floorboard of clouds to the earth below.

I opened to the psalm I’m reading today – Psalm 19.  It begins with familiar words, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.  Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterances to the end of the world.”

“Telling, declaring, speech pouring forth, knowledge revealed, utterances” – all of this “talk” is coming to us with no speech, no words, no audible voice.  And yet, they give their witness so that we know.  I can’t even see from my vantage point in the plane all of the expanse that God has made; I think the astronauts on the space station can’t either (thus the word “expanse”!).  But though the heavens are continually speaking, do we hear?  One evening a few days earlier in an Alaskan hotel lobby, a couple was talking to each other.  Their 4-year old son was standing about fifty feet away, impatient to get on the elevator.  From there, at the top of his lungs, he began to shout over and over again, “Mom!, Mom!, Mom!, Mom!, Mom!....” and on and on and on.  After about twenty “Mom’s” (no exaggeration!), and long after all the rest of us in the lobby had heard him, his mother turned around to answer him.  Clearly, she had learned to tune him out for lengthy periods.  It was a strong picture, though, as I ask myself, do we “tune out” the poured-forth speech of the heavens, the declarations that could reveal to us so much about the greatness of our God?

The psalmist goes on to declare that this God whose glory the heavens are revealing has words, precepts, judgments, commands that are pure, clean, true, enduring, perfect, sure, and altogether righteous.  They restore our souls, make us wise, cause our hearts to rejoice, and enlighten our eyes.  But I wonder how much the two parts of the psalm are connected.  If we can’t hear the “wordless speech, and the soundless utterances” of the heavens that reveal the glory of God, will we be able to recognize God’s words and His ways as pure, clean, true, enduring, perfect, sure, and altogether righteous?  Will we allow them to restore us, to impart their wisdom to us, to be the source of joy to us?  Will theirs be the light by which we walk?  Or might we, missing His glory, seek other sources of wisdom, restoration, joy, and light?

As I sit here on the plane, “listening” to the heavens proclaiming their revelations about God, I know they speak the truth.  It is just as they say.  And I long for their utterances to open my soul in greater measure to the words and the ways of this glorious God of whom they will never cease declaring.

(P.S.  Technically, this ” pondering” was not on a porch, but on a plane!)

August 2010

Thinking about spacious places brought me back to the Apostle Paul’s words in both 1 Corinthians 6 and 10 that all things were lawful for him, but not all things were profitable.  What makes something profitable in the kingdom of God?  I’m guessing we all know what makes things profitable here on earth and we could each generate a substantial list. 

I think some clues as to what is spiritually profitable come in those same two Corinthians passages when Paul continues to say that there are things that, while lawful, don’t bring much profit.  He says that not all lawful things edify and he suggests that some lawful things might actually end up mastering us.  Things that have spiritual profit are also things that aren’t ended by death.  Think of the works of believers that will be tested by a fire that reveals whether they were gold, silver, or precious stones (surviving the fire) or merely wood, hay, and stubble (only good as fodder for the fire).  When Paul speaks of things that will abide, he has a fairly short list: faith, hope and love, the greatest being love.  So, things that have spiritual profit undoubtedly partake of faith, hope, and love. And the love that is spoken of here is a sacrificial love that lays down its life for another, a love that doesn’t seek its own, but seeks to benefit others.

That concept of benefitting others has been in the forefront of my mind for some months now.  When David had received the entire nation of Israel as his kingdom, the Scripture states, “David knew that the Lord had established him as king over Israel and had exalted his kingdom for the sake of His people Israel.”  (2 Samuel 5:12)  David knew that what God had done for him was intended to benefit all of Israel.  To the Colossians, the Apostle Paul declares that the stewardship that God bestowed on him as a minister was for the benefit of the church.  That both men could walk in this knowledge and thus benefit God’s people was due, in part, to the humility that marked their lives.

Conversely, years after King David, God graciously granted another king, King Hezekiah, fifteen additional years to live.  2 Chronicles 32:25 summarizes those years in these words, “But Hezekiah gave no return for the benefit he received because his heart was proud…” 

For the benefit he received, Hezekiah should have returned benefit to the people, to the kingdom he ruled, and to his God.  What nullified that benefit was his pride.  One of the reasons the Lord hated false prophets is revealed in Jeremiah 23:32 when God says that all their falsehoods lead the people astray and do not furnish the slightest benefit to the people.  Here, too, the falsity of their words and the absence of the slightest benefit to the people are connected to their reckless boasting.

Much of what we see around us, what arises out of the human heart, is a belief that in order for something to be profitable, it must benefit me.  The boastful pride of life sets “Me” up as the standard of measurement by which I judge a matter “profitable.”  Spiritual profit, however, comes when the love and grace of God in our own lives results in benefit to others (often to our own hurt, or at least the subverting of our own interests).  A cup of cold water given in Jesus’ name, putting others’ interests above ours, bearing the burdens of another, serving rather than being served, being last rather than first, dying to myself – all of these yield spiritual profit when they flow from the benefit we have received from God (forgiveness of sin and eternal life are very good benefits indeed!).

So, perhaps our list of things that make for spiritual profit should include those things that edify, that don’t end up enslaving us, things that are eternal, things done out of the love of God, things done in faith and in hope, things that benefit others regardless of whether we are benefitted.  I suspect that this list will be very different from the one that reflects things that make for earthly profit.  I wonder, which list will we choose “to do”?

November 2009

I’ve been thinking lately about the narrow way.  Jesus said that the way is narrow that leads to life. But while the way to eternal life is narrow, once you’ve entered through that narrow gate, you are ushered into a spacious place.  In the psalms, David speaks of the Lord bringing him into a broad and spacious place.  Echoing this are Paul’s words proclaiming the liberty and freedom of the children of God.  This liberty was so great and so free that Paul twice declared that all things were lawful for him (whether all things were profitable was a different matter).  In this spacious and free place Paul states without equivocation that all things belong to the church, to the people of God (1 Corinthians 3:21-22).  In this spacious place there is grace so abundant that it covers all sin, love so lavish that it is beyond knowledge, things that are done exceedingly above and beyond all we could ask or imagine.

Because to be “in Christ” is to abide in this spacious place filled with love, grace and freedom, we who are in Christ ought to live in a manner that befits such a large place, not merely content to live in a small corner.  And as we live that way ourselves, we become a spacious place of love, grace, and freedom to those around us.  We become a place where there is room for lots of people, where they are met with the love of Christ and the grace of God.

Of course, there are a myriad of ways to make a spacious place so cramped and small that few people can fit and even those few do not flourish.  Think of the stories we have heard (or maybe the people you know or have watched on “Clean House”!) of houses so filled with clutter and junk that they aren’t fit to live in.  Some of the things that can cramp our spacious place, from the Scriptures, include traditions of men (think of your favorites), weak faith, strong opinions and preferences, spiritual immaturity, legalism, judgment, condemnation, favoritism.  That is only a partial list, and not everything on it would necessarily look bad to us. In fact, some of them masquerade as righteousness.  But they all make for a cramped place to live and leave room only for those who are just like us (a small party indeed).

I’ve been asking God to clean out of my life the clutter and things that crowd people out, things that make for a cramped place where only a few can fit.  I want to be a reflection of the spacious place that God has made for me in Christ. I want to love with the love that God has lavished on me in His Holy Spirit.  I want to possess a graciousness that flows from the grace God has shown me.  I want to live in the freedom that Christ has won for me and allow others not just to live but to flourish in that free place as well.  

I think I may even begin cleaning out my house!

September 2009

As the woman at the well was seeking to question Jesus about the acceptable place of worship, He announced to her that a time was coming, AND NOW IS, when all that had gone before would be changed.  No longer would worship be tied to place and procedure, but the Father would now seek true worshipers who would worship in spirit and in truth.  Because God is Spirit, His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and truth.  Place and procedure were fulfilled in Christ (as was all of the Law), and what was ushered in was worship in spirit and truth.  Jump ahead to something that Paul said to the Corinthians and to the Galatians about the Holy Spirit: that where the Spirit is there is liberty (freedom), and that it was for freedom that Christ set us free. So for us who now seek to be true worshipers, our worship in spirit and truth is inextricably bound up with the freedom that Christ has won for us.

I suspect that many of us who sincerely desire to worship God, try to effect a peaceable marriage between worship done according to the Law (place and procedure being paramount) and worship in spirit and truth.  In doing this we are perhaps doing something like Peter when he wanted to build three tabernacles, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus, incorporating the best of the Old Covenant and the New.  While worship that incorporates the Law and the Spirit  may seem as good an idea to us as the building of the tabernacles did to Peter, perhaps God would say a similar thing to us: “This is My Son, listen to Him.”  Christ and the new covenant He brought would overshadow and replace all that came before Him.  And I suspect that if we try to do this, we find ourselves being among those addressed by the apostle Paul when he says that to add the Law back into Christ is to fall from grace, and to make Christ of no benefit to us. 

We will have chosen a religious observance (albeit one that was ordained by God) instead of faith expressing itself through love. And rather than finding ourselves in a place where the Spirit is, a place of freedom, we will have unwittingly put ourselves back under bondage to the Law.  (From Galatians 5, but read the whole book!)

What does it look like to worship in spirit and truth?  Couldn’t Jesus have spelled it out in a little more detail, thus resolving many disagreements through the ages?  We often wish that He would have given us a “new” procedure to follow so we would know if we (and everyone else, by the way) were doing it right.  That He did not do so is in itself instructive.  The new command Christ gave us was not about how to worship in spirit and truth, it was to love one another as He had loved us.  So, rather than giving a new law by which we must worship God, He has given us characteristics of the worship the Father seeks from us: spirit, truth, freedom, love (I know this isn’t an exhaustive description, but it’s a pretty good place to start!).  Whatever “form” our worship takes, it is not the worship the Father seeks if those realities are not present in it.

I hope to be one who worships the Father with the worship that He seeks, worship that flows out of spirit and truth, worship that is filled with love and that abides in the freedom for which Christ has set me free.  And I desire to be that worshiper in the midst of a company of like-minded worshipers, precious saints of God, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ.  What a foretaste of heaven that will be!

June 2009

I’m intrigued when the Lord puts seemingly unrelated Scriptures together into one cohesive unit.  When that happens, it’s usually because He is using it to teach me or to remind me of something I may be forgetting.  That’s been the case for me lately with three passages.

“But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)

Luke says that Mary was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.  She was choosing at that moment not the earthly “bread” of Martha’s preparations, but the bread of life that proceeded out of the mouth of the Son of God.  I think she’s a picture of one who was not led astray by the serpent’s craftiness from the simplicity and purity of her devotion to Christ.

For Mary, the things that might have led her astray at that moment from the purity and simplicity of devotion to Christ were not evil things; they were not sinful things.  They were things that are practical and of earthly good.  She was being asked to join the sister that she loved in making preparations for their guest, whom they both loved.  What could be wrong with that?  How could a good thing like that possibly be the tool of a crafty enemy?  As Jesus spoke of the choice Mary had made, He did not frame it in terms of good and evil.  He framed it in terms of the one necessary thing, the good part, and the many things that are not necessary.  He said that Mary had chosen the one thing necessary, the good part, when she chose to sit at His feet and listen to His every word.  Martha’s preparations were certainly not evil, but neither were they the one thing necessary.  Perhaps pragmatic, they could never equal in importance the choice Mary had made.   Martha’s preparations distracted, worried and bothered her - so much so that she missed the one good thing for herself, and was in danger of drawing Mary away from it too.

It is perhaps easier than we know for our minds to be led astray from the purity and simplicity of devotion to Christ.  It doesn’t necessarily take sin to draw us away.  Our crafty enemy knows that sometimes all it takes to lead us astray is for our minds to be distracted, worried, and bothered by the earthly concerns that are common to flesh-and-blood people. Those concerns don’t even have to be frivolous, they are often very legitimate.  It’s just that they carry with them the inherent potential to distract, worry, and bother us.  In doing that they can lead us astray, drowning out the voice of our Shepherd, causing us to respond to the competing voices of earthly needs.  And when we are led astray, we are in danger of taking others with us.

What do we do with these legitimate cares that rise up, threatening to draw us away from our devotion to Christ?  We remember that we have a Father who knows every need we have and has pledged Himself to care for every thing that concerns us.  It is our loving and powerful Heavenly Father who has told us not to worry about such things as food, clothing, and shelter because He knows we need them.  Jesus’ word to us (remember, this is what we live on!) is to seek God first, His kingdom and His righteousness (read “purity and simplicity of devotion to Christ”), and God will add to us what we need.

I like Mary, and I like Martha (so did Jesus!).  I understand them both.  I know my flesh will always be tempted to side with Martha, to respond to the call of earthly bread in all its many forms.  But I pray I will choose as Mary did - to remain purely and simply devoted to Christ, seated at His feet, listening to every living word that proceeds from His mouth.  He is, after all, the Bread of Life everlasting.

February 2009

I love watching home remodeling shows.  I am always amazed at what the designers “see” in those old, run-down houses and how they are able to remodel, renovate, and restore them.  Damaged homes are made new.  Houses that have deteriorated through years of just being well lived-in are restored.  Often, my response to the finished product is something along the lines of,  “I never would have thought to do that!”  They all look different, reflecting the taste and style of designer and homeowner, and I love seeing all the varieties.

Probably for many of the same reasons, I love Jesus and this life in Christ.  God, our Creator and Designer, takes these broken lives that have been ruined by sin, that have deteriorated under the weight of life on this earth, and when invited to do so, He performs an extreme makeover on them.  The invitation for Him to come in and begin this grace renovation is our confession of faith in Jesus Christ and His work of atonement on the cross (Jesus’ death is the means of God’s forgiveness of our sin - already a good deal for us!).  At that point, our Designer moves into His restoration project.  God sends His Holy Spirit to live and work in us until we look like Jesus (the good deal for us just keeps on getting better!).  And we, too, come in lots of varieties - reflecting Designer and “homeowner.”

Just like any builder, God has many tools that He uses to bring His projects to completion.  One of the most prominent is the renewing of our minds through the word of God.  What we think determines our actions and, to a large extent, our feelings.  Ideas, even the ones we are unaware of, have incredible power to direct us.  The grid through which we receive information determines how we perceive it and what we do with it.  A simple example is to think about how the color of your sunglasses affects your perception of what you see.  When our minds are renewed in Christ, what we know changes, how we think about what we know changes, our understanding of what to do with what we know changes.  The word of God becomes the grid through which we examine everything that enters. 

[Caveat:  As I was reading this again, it occurred to me that the home remodeling projects shown on television are completed in a 30 or 60 minute program.  I have to remind myself that it really isn’t that easy or quick, that these are just the “high points” of a project that involved months- even years- of labor, mess, and upheaval (as anyone who has actually undertaken a renovation project will attest).  Likewise, God’s restoring and rebuilding work in us continues for a lifetime (ours!) and also includes labor, mess, and upheaval.  During these times, it helps to remember that whatever the cost, it’s all worth it in the end!]

“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be.  We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.”   “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”  1 John 3:2 and Philippians 1:6
September 2008

 It’s hard to be grateful for sad things.  They usually make us cry, or make us mad, or cause us regret.  We rant against them, perhaps we try to deny them, often we try to find a way around them.  But if we come to the place where we can make peace with them, they do become a source of wisdom and strength. 

"In the beginning You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish but You remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing, You will change them and they will be discarded. But You remain the same, and Your years will never end." Psalm 102: 25-27
August 2008