On Being Born a Second Time.5

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though they die on this earth, will live again. They will be given eternal life and not perish! I have told you, already many times: If you believe you will see the glory of God.

--Jesus

How many times and ways does Jesus need to tell us something before we believe Him?

Do we not, as humans, have a fascination with the possibility of the afterlife?  Millions of people spend millions of dollars to read the reports of other humans who testify to going "where no man has gone before..."

Proof of Heaven

Heaven Is For Real

90 Minutes In Heaven

 To Heaven And Back

Is the testimony of a neurosurgeon, medical doctor, child or pastor more or less convincing than the Lord of Life himself?  These kinds of "testimonies"always remind me of listening to programs like "Unshackled" or sitting in missionary conferences at church and longing for a great testimony that I was sure would make me a powerful witness for Jesus.

But is the real measure of our walk with the Lord Jesus how many books we sell, making the NY Times best seller list, a feature segment on a radio program or speaking engagements?

The ostracized Samaritan woman Jesus engaged at the well of Jacob testified to her townsfolk about the man who "...told me all that I ever did" and resurrected a new heart in a life beaten down by bad choices and insufferable cruelty. 

The response to her report?  "Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony..."

The true measure of our testimony to things eternal is that it brings people face to face with The Truth.  

• the truth of our individual existence
• the truth of the consequences of the choices of the will
• the truth of our ever growing obedience--or disobedience-- to the revelation we've received
• the truth of how the camera of our own life has revealed more or less of Truth to a dying and corrupt world
• the truth of whether or not we overcame the very struggles of faith Jesus the Man overcame in his sojourn on earth
• the truth of our need for a Savior!

For if Life could be given simply by thrilling-out-of-body-experiences would not the Lord of Life allow every human being that kind of faith-altering moment?

Is it not faith that moves me to offer a child a cup of water in the Name or tenderly telling the hope of forgiveness and newness of Life greater value than weeks on the best seller list?

On Being Born a Second Time.4

God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through his son might be redeemed.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned; 

but whoever does not believe stands condemned already,

 because they have not believed in the name of God's only son.

--Jesus

con·demn  

/kənˈdem/

Verb Express complete disapproval of, typically in public; censure. Sentence (someone) to a particular punishment, esp. death: "the rebels had been condemned to death".

Synonyms convict - denounce - censure - sentence - decry - doom redeemed  past participle, past tense of re·deem (Verb) Verb Compensate for the faults or bad aspects of (something): "a disappointing debate redeemed by an outstanding speech". Do something that compensates for poor past performance or behavior. It comes to this, as it always has, what does it mean to "believe in Him?" Each of us individually can only provide the answer, but this may help, from our dear friend George [emphasis added]: Do you ask, 'What is faith in him?' I answer,  The leaving of your way,  your objects, your self,  and the taking of his and him;  the leaving of your trust     in men,     in money,     in opinion,     in character,     in atonement itself,  and doing as he tells you.  I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this necessity—this obedience.  It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ.  The work of Christ is not the Working Christ, any more than the clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and not in him who wore it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe about Christ rather than in him, get the comfort they do, is that, touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a little in the live man inside the garment.  It is not wonderful that such believers should so often be miserable; they lay themselves down to sleep with nothing but the skirt of his robe in their hand—a robe too, I say, that never was his, only by them is supposed his—when they might sleep in peace with the living Lord in their hearts. Instead of so knowing Christ that they have him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins—the way to madness of the brain, and despair of the heart.  Some even ponder the imponderable— whether they are of the elect, whether they have an interest in the blood shed for sin, whether theirs is a saving faith—when all the time the man who died for them is waiting to begin to save them from every evil—and first from this self which is consuming them with trouble about its salvation; he will set them free, and take them home to the bosom of the Father—if only they will mind what he says to them—which is the beginning, middle, and end of faith.  If, instead of searching into the mysteries of corruption in their own charnel-houses, they would but awake and arise from the dead, and come out into the light which Christ is waiting to give them, he would begin at once to fill them with the fulness of God. 'But I do not know how to awake and arise!' I will tell you:—Get up, and do something the master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple of his. Do not, I pray you, worse than waste your time in trying to convince yourself that you are his disciple notwithstanding—that for this reason or that you still have cause to think you believe in him. What though you should succeed in persuading yourself to absolute certainty that you are his disciple, if, after all, he say to you, 'Why did you not do the things I told you? Depart from me; I do not know you!' Instead of trying to persuade yourself, if the thing be true you can make it truer; if it be not true, you can begin at once to make it true, to be a disciple of the Living One—by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him. We must learn to obey him in everything, and so must begin somewhere: let it be at once, and in the very next thing that lies at the door of our conscience!" from The Truth In Jesus, Unspoken Sermons II,

On Being Born a Second Time.5

"How is it that, that even after so much learning, you are not familiar with the most basic truths? If I have taught you such things, using earthly examples, and still you fail to comprehend, how will you understand if I speak to you of heavenly things?"

--Jesus

A Horse Theology

Failing to understand what Jesus means is, sadly, the plight of humanity.  That alone accounts for the vileness and corruption we suffer with from generation to generation, individual to individual, race to race, nation to nation.  Thinking we know what He means may, however, be a worse condition than the first!  How many people of the religious persuasion content themselves in their "bible studies" to knowing syntax, context, history and hermenuetics, while failing miserably in obedience, i.e., transformation from the core of their beings living out what He means?

An epiphany of sorts occurred to me one day while standing next to my mare.  I realized that of all the domesticated animals, a horse may most closely resemble the relationship man has with God.  For a horse, if left to roam for food and water, does not need, nor even seek, a relationship with humans.  They are, in fact, quite lazy, self-willed and fearful, and would for the most part rather be left alone.  But without a relationship with a Master, they cannot reach their inherent potential!

In order to have a relationship with a horse a trust must be formed by helping them overcome their natural inclination to fear and self-will.  Mutual respect is achieved by patience, diligence and communication.  For even though a horse does not understand human language, nor our will for them, they are created with the ability to figure out what we want. By giving a "cue" for the desired action, my mare can learn, one step at a time, that I want her to, say, drop her head when I pull down on her lead rope.   At first tug, there is resistance until she figures out what I want.  It may take hundreds of gentle tugs to get her to a point where that action becomes a part of her instantaneous response to me.  With diligence, building lesson upon lesson, we are able to do wonderful things together!

Jesus, our Master, told us that we have One Teacher, who, with Perfect Will communicates in language beyond words on a page.  The very Breath of God who enlivens our spirit, heart and mind to try to do what He directs us until, with patience and diligence, the things he means for us become a very part of our response to the challenges of this life.

Every human being born into this world has but one purpose: to become a disciple of Jesus. How else will they reach their potential for Love if not learning from the Master?

On Being Born A Second Time. 2

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the breath of God is spirit. The wind blows where it wishes, and we hear the sound that it makes; still we do not know from where it comes, or where it will go. So it is for those who are born anew by the breath of God.

Consider these examples: No one weaves a piece of new cloth into a ruined garment, for the new piece which is stronger will merely pull the old cloth apart, and the tear will be made worse. Neither do you put new wine into old wine flasks, less the old flasks burst, and the new wine spill out, and the investment be lost. Instead you store new wine in flasks that are new, and both are preserved.

--Jesus

I have a friend, a wonderful lady and faithful follower of Jesus, Deb O. She has patiently, lovingly cared for her son Gary who has been "handicapped" for many years. Although I don't know the details and can only guess at the weight of the burden she's borne,  I am convinced of this: As wonder-filled as it would be to see Gary healed and returned to a semblance of "normal" life here on planet earth, how great will that moment be in the presence of the Great King when Gary's voice is free to release the pent up flood of grateful love & thanksgiving for his mother's tender care. 

There is a reason we must wait for moments like these: we don't have the capacity in these mortal bodies to contain that kind of glory!

New garments; New wineskins; New Life!

On Being Born a Second Time.1

Do not marvel when I tell you that you must be born anew.
Truly, I tell you: 
      unless you are born anew, 

you will not see the kingdom of God.
Except you are born
     of water and 
     the breath of God, 
you will not enter into the kingdom of God.

--Jesus

Two criteria for entering the Kingdom of God:

I.  

Water or natural birth.  

The first birth gives existence.

All things are possible with God, but all things are not easy. 

It is easy for him to be, for there he has to do with his own perfect will: it is not easy for him to create—that is, after the grand fashion which alone will satisfy his glorious heart and will, the fashion in which he is now creating us. 

In the very nature of being—that is, God—it must be hard—and divine history shows how hard—to create that which shall be not himself, yet like himself. 

The problem is, how far to separate from himself that which must yet on him be ever and always and utterly dependent, that it shall have the existence of an individual, and be able to turn and regard him—choose him, and say, 'I will arise and go to my Father,' and so develop in itself the highest Divine.

II. 

Spirit or God-Likeness.  

The Second Birth gives Conscious Desire

It is the absence in the man 
      of harmony with the being whose thought is the man's existence, 
       whose word is the man's power of thought. 

It is true that, being thus his offspring, God, 
      as St Paul affirms, 
cannot be far from any one of us: 
were we not in closest contact of creating and created, 
      we could not exist; 
as we have in us no power to be, 
         so have we none to continue being; 

but there is a closer contact still, 
       as absolutely necessary to our well-being and highest existence, 
        as the other to our being at all, to the mere capacity of faring well or ill.

For the highest creation of God in man is his will, 
   and until the highest in man meets the highest in God, 
    their true relation is not yet a spiritual fact. 

The flower lies in the root, but the root is not the flower. 
The relation exists, 
         but while one of the parties neither 

• knows
• loves 
• nor acts upon it

 the relation is, as it were, yet unborn. 

The highest in man is neither his intellect nor his imagination nor his reason; 
all are inferior to his will, and indeed, in a grand way, dependent upon it: 
   his will must meet God's-a will distinct from God's, 
   else were no harmony possible between them. 

Not the less, therefore, but the more, is all God's. 

For God creates in the man the power to will His will. 

It may cost God a suffering man can never know, 
 to bring the man to the point at which 
he will will His will; 
but when he is brought to that point, 
and declares for the truth, 
that is, for the will of God, 
he becomes one with God, 
and the end of God in the man's creation, 
--the end for which Jesus was born and died,--
is gained. 

The man is saved from his sins, and the universe flowers yet again in his redemption.

With his mind and heart he cries:

'Father, hold me fast to thy creating will, that I may know myself one with it, know myself its outcome, its willed embodiment, and rejoice without trembling. Be this the delight of my being, that thou hast willed, hast loved me forth; let me know that I am thy child, born to obey thee.'

adapted from various MacDonald sermons, especially Life

The Great Commission.18

"These words I have spoken to you, that in me, and in your obedience to them, you might find peace. In the world you will experience pain and trouble; but rejoice, for I have overcome the world."

--Jesus

Pain & Trouble

In this communication rich world our pain & trouble are magnified beyond comprehension.  Politicians and pundits will argue incessantly about solutions to the pain and trouble.  Well meaning debates, but in the end futile.  Is there enough security to prevent every act of lawlessness?   Are there enough doctors to heal every wound? 

But the fact that we are aware beyond our ability to process only serves to illuminate for us the wonder of Jesus' statement, nay, the wonder of His being!  Tragic deaths, senseless carnage, irresponsible leadership, unconscionable corruption, accelerating deterioration, unfathomable apathy, brazen brutishness, global unrest all work to define the brightness of the light that exposes the darkness of the human nature, and the power able to destroy that darkness.

For one said, "is God bound to forgive sin or to destroy sin?"  To put behind sins awfulness for all time by eternal choice of the Beloved is the work of overcoming.  Each step toward obedience is that choice.

May we be ever grateful for the work of Pain & Trouble as our constant reminder to trust in Jesus and His power to overcome!

The Great Commission.17

Whoever hears the words that you speak, hears me; and those that despise you, because of your words, despise me. In rejecting me, they reject the Father who sent me. So, endure the criticism of skeptics and nonbelievers for my sake. Stand firm, and in so doing, you will be blessed.

--Jesus

As a school bus driver not infrequently did I have to reprimand older students on the use of the “F-word.”  Usually the reprimand came with a solemn warning: “if you limit your vocabulary to one word for all parts of speech, you’ll soon find you’ll be reduced to pointing, grunting and clubbing each other to communicate ideas.”  

If one believes in Natural Law and the Creative Mind behind that law, then it makes sense that the idea of the Truth of a thing has something to do with the purpose the Creative Mind gave it.  Does it not follow that if that Creative Mind also created the ability in the created to understand the truth of a thing then we--the created--have some obligation to search for it?  Our ability to understand the truth lies in the individual and is subject to each one’s own temperament, curiosity, hunger, intellect, spiritual affinity, maturity, perseverance, teachable-ness, honesty and openness.

Jesus, early in his teachings, took a child into the midst of an argument between his disciples on the issue of "greatness".  Visually he was able to not only demonstrate the character of his kingdom--childlike loving obedience to the loving will of the Father--but the Truth of the link between that character, himself, and his father.

Here at the end of his ministry he again teaches that the link is inexorable to the worst mischief man can devise.  If his words are alive in us, the very meaning of the logos of God, in God, is God that became flesh which beloved apostle John came to grasp in the opening of his gospel, alive in a way that demonstrates that link to a corrupt, unbelieving, rebellious world then we can stand, like Him, firm in inspired confidence.