A Place For You.3

"Do not marvel when I say: A little while, and you will not see me; and not long after that, you will see me again. You will weep and be sad; but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful; but your sorrow will be turned to joy."

--Jesus

My eleven year old granddaughter and I sat on the couch last night watching the Grammy Nominations program.  After Taylor Swift's sensually suggestive performance, we talked about the transformation of young ladies like Taylor and Miley from family-loving innocents of light to fame-following instruments of darkness.  

I asked her what she thought these girls would say if someone had shown them, at the age of eleven, the script

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of their life  and the kind of things they would be promoting in their twenties.  "I think they wouldn't believe they would be doing things like that, grandpa," Vanessa replied.
____________________________________________ "The wicked strut about freely when what is vile is honored among men." -Psalm 12:8
____________________________________________ I pray that my granddaughter will continue to grow in her moral convictions and be a light to her generation who are easily duped by a wicked world system bent on violence and self-rule. A world that will not honor the King of Light, Love and Life.  A world that exalts death, destruction and disease while giving lip-service to compassion.  A world that demands tolerance to open mockery & disdain for all things sacred.

There is a sorrow that mourns for those caught in the web of deceit and the destructive power of sin.  There is a deeper sorrow that yields to fear when hope is overwhelmed by helplessness.  Imagine spending three years of your life in intimate contact with the Power that convincingly overcame the world.  Imagine the hope ignited in your heart for a world ruled by righteousness. Imagine the deep sorrow when hope was dashed at the cross by this rebellious world.  

Imagine the joy when Hope was resurrected!

Do not marvel, then, follower of Jesus, that darkness grows deeper as the vile strut freely about, making it harder to see the Lord.  While the world rejoices in less accountability and conviction, let us not lose hope knowing the joy we will see when Righteousness finally rules this world!

A Place For You.2

"Know this: 
if I go and prepare a place for you, 
I will come again, 
and take you to be there with me; 
so that where I am, 
there you may be also. 

Let not your heart be troubled: 
you believe in God; 
believe also in me. 

In my Father's house are many mansions: 
if it were not so, 
I would have told you. 

I must go away, 
but I will come again to you. 
If you truly loved me, 
you would rejoice, 
because I return to the Father."

--Jesus

I met a dad with a heartbreaking story. Seven years ago he took custody of his five year old grandson after the police found him outside his mother's house -in winter- without a coat. He soon discovered that his daughter, a pharmacy tech student, was hooked on meth. He hasn't seen or heard from her in the last four years. A son needs his mom; a dad wants his daughter...

Affection effects our lives in incalculable ways!

The story is told of a young college student completing a summer internship on a Navajo reservation. The respect for and tender devotion to them made such an impact that as he was preparing to leave an elderly woman approached him and, taking his face in her wrinkled hands, said, "I like me better when I'm with you!"

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Jesus, while walking this earth, lived his life on a much higher plane, a spiritual Himalayas, which we still view from our sandy heaps of manifest dullness.  He ever held in view our spiritual perfection, the perfecting of a love so complete and joy-filled, that we cannot now understand, but as we walk with the Master find a growing hunger for its effect.  Call it a heavenly addiction...

"Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love that grants a boon [request] unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of him who prays.

Love is one, and love is changeless.

For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected—not in itself, but in the object. As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine."

--George MacDonald,The Consuming Fire, Unspoken Sermons I [emphasis added]

Although the Perfecting, addictive Love of Jesus was to be taken away, the Master infuses his men with hope, a hope that, in time, changed not only them but the entire world. "No one has ever seen God;" wrote the beloved friend of Jesus, "if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."  The love that radiates in and through us so that we can, like Jesus, leave others saying, 

"I like me better when I'm with you!"

A Place For You.1

"I go to prepare a place for you."

--Jesus

In the beginning God created all things...good.  The idea of mankind was good...more or less.  A being capable of will, like God, that could remain independent and yet need Him, choose Him and demonstrate loving obedience to the Perfect Will reflecting His nature by acts of goodness, love and devotion to all his creation.  

In practice?  Not so much.  Second thoughts.  Within a short time "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." 

-Genesis 6:5,6

Dr. Frankenstein, meet your monster.  But even monsters need a place near their father's heart.  The creature pleads with the creator: 

[Creature:] "Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

 
[Creator]: "Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall."

 [Creature:] "How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me, Dr. Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me."

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, (p. 52).  

Suppose we could see clearly how monstrous our attitudes and actions make us, cut off from the purposes and meaning of our Creator.  

Suppose we had no recourse but with futility plead our case for His love and devotion, knowing full well His abhorrence to evil.  

Suppose Jesus had not come to walk among the monstrous and plead His father's Truth: that He daily gives Himself for us to know and understand Him, and in knowing be like Him.

Suppose we had no promise of the place He joyfully prepares for us...

This Generation.8

"Those who have chosen to follow me in this generation will one day sit upon thrones, and judge kingdoms and kings who have hardened their hearts and turned away from these righteous words."

--Jesus

Game of Thrones

Throughout my journey I've read, pondered, endured and practiced a variety of approaches to understanding Jesus' words.  It is not unusual to find "bible" teachers who conveniently exempt themselves from obedience to Jesus' words by impressive terminology like "dispensation", "hermenuetics", "systematic theology", and so forth.  But the only way to truly understand His words and His way is to practice them!

How does this quote from Jesus lend itself to obedience?  Doesn't it apply to the twelve apostles some time in the future judgement of the world?  Think that if you will, but I believe the "one day" pointed to a time when individuals, those who put into practice the righteousness the Righteous One came to teach us, would have the moral authority to "judge" kings.  We do this regularly here in the United States through our election cycles.  

The founders of America understood how critical this kind of discernment was to our survival as a free people:

   "But neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." -- Samuel Adams, (Skousen, The 5000 Year Leap (Kindle Edition Locations 739-742).

Have the leaders in our country "hardened their hearts" and "turned away from these righteous words?"  You be the judge!  Frederic Bastiat, an 1800's French economist, wrote:  "Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources.  This process is the origin of property.  But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others.  This process is the origin of plunder. ...men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.  History shows this quite clearly.  
...It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.  ...The consequence of this perversion is "erasing from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.  No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree.  The safest way to make the laws respected is to make them respectable.  When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law." --Bastiat, The Law

When today's American lawmakers both refuse to even read the laws beforehand and live under those they pass, they must be held accountable by those who  fearlessly live by Jesus' righteousness, and possess in themselves the moral authority to judge the actions of elected officials!

Rise up
O men of God, 
have done with lesser things.
Give heart and, soul and mind and strength 
to serve the King of Kings.

Don't think for a moment that we are not serving the King of Kings by living according to His righteous words and insisting the same for those who direct the affairs of our country!

This Generation.7

"Come unto me, 
all who are tired, 
oppressed, 
and sick of life, 
and I will give you wonderful rest! 

Receive my words,
and let me teach you, 
for I am gentle and kind. 
You will find rest for your souls. 

That which I ask of you, 
is for your benefit, 
and that which I demand of you, 
is light." 

-- Jesus

Do you believe Jesus because of His promises, 

Or do you believe the promises because of Jesus?

It is a vital distinction.

"What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and

hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter! The faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child—good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith. Those who rest in such a faith would feel yet more comfortable if they had God's bond instead of his word, which they regard not as the outcome of his character, but as a pledge of his honour. They try to believe in the truth of his word, but the truth of his Being, they understand not. In his oath they persuade themselves that they put confidence: in himself they do not believe, for they know him not.  

It is a dull-hearted, unchildlike people that will be always putting God in mind of his promises. Those promises are good to reveal what God is; if they think them good as binding God, let them have it so for the hardness of their hearts. They prefer the Word to the Spirit: it is theirs." --George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons I, The Higher Faith

 But what if, in our own childhood experiences, the promise maker was not a promise keeper?  What if we learn early in life that people say what they think we want to hear, or what they may intend to keep but can't or won't?  Gradually your childlike heart turns a little darker and you become...an adult!

As a school bus driver, it was painful to watch this grievous transformation: the merriment and curiosity of the childlike kindergartners to the wounded, dark-eyed, heart-hardened high-schooler.

Promises, then, are only as good as the one making them.  Broken promises produce broken people, while promises kept bring healing, strengthen faith and deepen our love for the PromiseKeeper!

This Generation.6

When it is evening, you say: "It will be fair weather, for the sky is red."
In the morning you say: "It will be foul weather today, for the sky is threatening."
With accuracy you forecast a change in the weather. How is it, that you have failed to discern the signs of the times? 

--Jesus

You've probably heard the one about the two pastors having a heated debate over the correct "eschatology" of the end times, when a third declares "I'm a pan-millienialist!"  The other two stop in mid-sentence to ask, "What is a pan-millienialist?"  "Everything will "pan" out in the end!", he chortles.

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An Historical Analogy

Let's say, for illustration's sake, that the majority party in Washington DC represents the evil monopolizing of political & police power to control the lives of millions of people.  In historical allegory, they would be the Roman Empire of Jesus' time, a brutal occupying power that used a country's own traditions and governing structures to impose their will, punish dissidents and confiscate treasure from the conquered.  


The Republicans represent the political minority that must bide their time for a chance to regain controlling influence of public affairs.  But they, however, are divided in their response represented by the "Establisment" and the "Tea Party" wings whose leaders grow more hostile to each other with each passing day, certain that their view of things is the proper tack to take in dealing with a formidable foe.  In a sense, this is the place the Pharisees and Sadducees held in the tense relationship between the nation of Israel and their foreign occupiers.  

(And for illustration's sake, the current administration represents the puppet government of "King" Herod who loved the title, lifestyle and notoriety of presumed power bequeathed by Rome and used it to bully his own people into submission...)

Undercurrents of rebellion filled the streets of Jerusalem led by various groups most notably the "Zealots" out of which Bar Abbas was born.  The Pharisee and Sadducee sects tried deliberately to keep a semblance of order in the midst of this turmoil and did not cotton much that would threaten the fragile "peace" the Romans offered.

Into this political house of cards Jesus was born.  Preaching strength through obedient love of the Father's Will and active love to one's neighbor AND enemies while demonstrating amazing command of nature, disease and language, He appealed to the hearts of individuals in ways over which the Pharisees and Sadducees could only languish. As the self-proclaimed Light of the World, he was not only a Beacon of Hope illuminating the way in dark times, he was (and is) a spotlight to expose the dark places in the heart; especially in those with a special calling to be light themselves but falter in times of trouble allowing their faith to flicker and their behavior to bruise.

Not unlike elected officials at every level of our own government, business and religious leaders as well, who read the "signs of the times" not as an opportunity to hold the line on principle, allowing adversity to strengthen faith and character, but as a chance through expediency to "get theirs" while they can!  And like every generation before us, we allow our debates to be reduced to doctrines, or ideologies, or which "leader" can promise the most "stuff", or worse yet, whether we should even get involved at all! Rather than discerning what God is up to --as Abraham Lincoln entreated--and positioning ourselves on His side, we pine and wring our hands in despondency!  

Jesus warned: adversity tends to make us fearful and fickle, great adversity more so -- driving love out of our hearts.  As His followers, what ought our response be? It is our duty to be resolved to stand firm in faith as we recognize the warning signs of impending difficulty; willingly, like Jesus, to lay down our lives for our friends in resolute pledge to life, liberty and the preservation of principle.

While the Pharisees and Sadducees were looking for credentials, Jesus was demonstrating God's Perfecting Will. The same Will that is at work today: making us as individuals fit for his kingdom of love, light, and righteousness – who by eternal choice of good are overcomers.

If you don't like what our country, this world is becoming, read the signs…and respond wisely!

This Generation.5

"Oh generation, who live your lives based on lies: how can you, being without truth, say anything worth hearing? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."
--Jesus

A favorite Veggie Tales story is Larry-Boy! and the Fib From Outer Space. An alien life-form invades the sleepy town of Bumblyberg in the form of a creature that looks like a bouncing ball with a face. It convinces Junior Asparagus to hide the truth of his dad’s shattered collector’s plate in an innocent “fib”. Before long the little “fib” has grown into a gigantic monster -with arms and legs- that threatens the lives of the entire community smashing through the town square with reckless impunity.

This children’s story serves, of course, as an allegory, because as adults we know that “fibs” don’t really grow into gigantic monsters that ruthlessly destroy people’s lives. Nor that there are super-heroes whom we can call with high-powered spotlights shining into the sky to save us from our folly. Nor that we should have defense mechanisms in place to warn at the approach of alien invasions…

A popular political joke goes something like this: How do you know if a politician is lying? When his lips are moving.

Followers of Jesus have debated -for centuries- the proper place we ought to have in public discourse. Jesus, of course, was not interested in political power structures and clearly dismissed attempts by the masses to make him king. Yet, a King he is, the King of Hearts, and never did he avoid the call to righteousness in individuals...kings and peasants alike. Nor did he avoid calling out the superficial and self-righteous for their hypocrisy.

A simple preacher from an obscure part of the Roman Empire in a time far far away, Jesus made statements that shook, not only that empire, but the power structures of every earthly kingdom since then. What if, as Jesus pointed out and we can only dream now, public officials actually told the truth, made principled decisions, refused to obfuscate facts for their own political ambition, lived by that truth and, God have mercy, actually said things worth hearing? More importantly, what if we actually had the wisdom to discern the warning signals when an alien invasion of Fibs are bouncing around the public square and the courage to say 

we will not live our lives based on lies!

Follower of Jesus: If not us, then who? If not now, then when?