The reality that I missed was that God is a God who truly desires to speak to His people.  He is still speaking.  He didn’t just speak in biblical times.  The Bible itself testifies that God still speaks.  While the Bible is our authoritative revelation and rule of faith, it is NOT a substitute for the voice of God in our lives and in our generation.  Actually, God loves to speak to us in very real and personal ways, especially by breathing upon the Scriptures in timely ways. 

God will never speak to us in ways that contradict the clear teachings of the Bible. 

But God will often speak in ways that confound our human wisdom and even upset our traditional beliefs, practices, and pet doctrines. He is not too concerned about human protocol or reputation.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying, ”Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.” (Jeremiah 18:1-2 NASB, emph. mine)

While it is true that God still speaks, it is equally true that God still speaks on His own terms.

He told Jeremiah to get up and go to the potter’s house and that He would speak to him there.  Suppose that Jeremiah had already made plans for the day?  Or that the potter’s neighborhood was not geographically strategic?  Or what if the potter was not part of Jeremiah’s target audience?  Jeremiah could have tried to get God to speak to him on his own terms.  But it would have been futile.

Most Christians have trouble hearing from God because we expect God to speak on our terms. It is in dealing with this issue that we find one of the most important keys to hearing from God.

We must fully yield ourselves to God in humility and trust from the outset.  This must happen before we expect God to speak to us further!  I think most of us subtly reserve the “right” to consider what God says before we actually commit to obey it!  This looks something like this:

“God, I really need to hear from You.  Please give me an idea of what you have planned so I can decide if this is something I think I can deal with.”

Have you seen this attitude in your approach to God?  I know that I have.  Or it might be even worse than this.  Some of us actually have made certain things “off-limits” when it comes to hearing from God:

“God, please speak to me about anything…except ________________ .  Let’s not go there at this point.  I am simply not ready to deal with that.”

It is really scary how humans actually try to define the terms upon which God is given permission to speak!  “God, I’ll do anything.  Just don’t ask me to confess my sin to my spouse.”  Or, “God, I’ll do anything but just don’t ask me to speak in front of people.”  Or, “God I am willing to do anything for You.  Just don’t ask me to forgive my father.” Or, “God I want to go forward with You, but just don’t bring up the issue of my sexuality.”  Or again, “God, I want to know Your will, but I am just not ready to take my hands off of my money.” And on and on it goes.

Do you see the self-centeredness in all these limitations we place on God’s voice?

Jesus reveals the single most important key to hearing from God in John 8:47,

“He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (emphasis mine)

There are two common Greek words that are often translated as “time” in our English Bibles.  One is chronos and the other kairos. They have very different meanings.  And you might not pick up on this in your English translation.

In our fast-paced world we are very familiar with chronos. This relates to the actual hours and minutes that fly by us each day.  We often are found to have “run out of time.”   There seems too little time to do all the things we are committed to accomplishing.  Chronos is a lot like currency and is more or less impersonal.  It can be spent, saved, and sadly wasted, but it has little meaning apart from what it is connected to. Here is an example of chronos:

When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” (John 5:6)

The more chronos we spend stuck in a certain pattern of life and behavior, the harder it is to break out of the habits that have been formed.  We can end up simply repeating yesterday and missing out on the opportunities at hand presently.  The text above refers to a man who had been crippled for 38 years.  That’s a lot of chronos spent in one position.  Muscles have atrophied.  Expectations have been downgraded.  Mindsets have become ingrained.  

But kairos is a different sort of word.  It has a more strategic sense.  Rather than the actual ticks of the clock, it refers more to timely opportunities that arise.  Kairos could be translated as “appropriate season.” We see an example of kairos here:

for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted. (John 5:4) 

I have never known what to do with this story of the Pool of Bethesda.  Was it simply superstition or were people actually healed there?  I’m not sure what the writer intended to convey.  But it is clear that the purported healings didn’t occur at routine times or intervals.  Instead they came at “certain seasons”.  The season could be discerned when there was a peculiar “stirring up of the water.”  I love this!

The water did not bring healing because it was magical.  It brought healing when it was connected to the proper kairos.  The same can be true in our lives.  Our lives can cooperate with God in bringing real healing and fruitfulness into our world…if we can discern the kairos and not be slaves to chronos.

It is wise to have a personal calendar and to intentionally place the most important things on the calendar before things of lesser importance fill up the spots!  But even when we are intentionally scheduling by priorities, we need to be sensitive to our Lord’s kairos seasons.

Are you willing to drop what you are doing if you suddenly see the water stirring this year? What if God wants to do something that you didn’t plan for?  I pray that we will all be wide-open to special opportunities the Lord may place before us this year.

A fresh season of prayer may be just around the corner; or an increased illumination in the Scriptures; 0r of influencing people.  It could be an opportunity in your business or ministry, that is God-sent and if recognized could take you to a new level. It could be God moving you to be more generous with your resources. It could be a new approach to your parenting that will profoundly bless your children.

Let us pray and ask God to lead us…and then be ready to not only recognize the stirring of the waters, but to adjust our chronos to embrace it!

This is what happened. I was alone in the upstairs of my parents’ home. I was in the middle of my first pastoral assignment (which was a bivocational setting). I was extremely tired and spiritually dry. I had no idea how much I had been relying upon my own strength, personality and intellect. When Moses had his encounter at the burning bush he was amazed because the bush did not burn up. The flame was coming from supernatural sources and NOT the limited resources of the bush! This was not what I was currently experiencing during my ministry at Pine Prairie Freewill Baptist Church. A week before the event I’m describing I had made a declaration to the Lord, “God, unless You do something to help me, something to change me, I’m going to quit the ministry. I’d rather play golf on Sundays than experience more of the pain and frustration I’ve been having.”

This was not a threat. This was a cry of desperation. Deep in my heart I knew I was called to serve the Lord. But I also knew that the trajectory I was on was NOT good. I knew I needed to seriously change my approach to ministry. But I had no clue about what to do. This is where The Normal Christian Life, the Christian classic by Watchman Nee, saved my life and ministry! It was Nee’s chapter on The Value and Meaning of Romans Seven that impacted me.

On that afternoon exactly 22 years ago I had a “Copernican” sort of revelation. God showed me the secret of living in His strength and not my own. He actually told me that I could quit the ministry. In no uncertain terms: “You can quit now.” This was not what I expected! Then the Lord continued, “If you ever accomplish the dreams you feel I’ve given you for life and ministry, it will be My doing and not your own. Just walk with Me today and let Me take care of your ministry.” Something in me suddenly yielded to God in that moment. I quit, on the spot.

And what happened in the next moment was nothing short of my own Day of Pentecost. Such a mighty infilling of God’s Spirit filled that room and house and my own soul. I wept for joy. Then I laughed hilariously. And I laughed and cried for several hours that day. What a mercy it was that God revealed to me the secret of living in His power that day.

I love to remember that experience each year at this time. It helps me to approach the New Year in the proper frame of mind. Yes we should dream and plan and hope for great things in the coming year. But we must remember that we must abide in Him and allow Him to live and work through us. We simply do not have what it takes without Him!

May 2012 be a year of exchanging our strength for His! A year of looking to His righteousness and not our own. A year of moving in the power of His Spirit and not the energy of the flesh! A year of seeing God do what only God can do!

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11)

Notice the progression of the words good news…great joy…for all people.  The good news if properly perceived and received should result in a joy so great that it can’t be kept a secret!  I find in this announcement of Christ’s birth a powerful key to life-giving leadership and daily living.

 Where did this great joy come from?  It came down from Heaven.  This means Heaven is a place of great joy.  Why is that?  Because God is a God of great joy!  He’s the only truly sovereign being in the universe.  Sovereignty relates to having both the freedom and the power to do whatever you decide to do…whatever pleases you.  As human beings we have only limited freedom and limited power.  But God has never failed to accomplish anything that He has planned.  For this reason He is an “unfrustrated” God!  Think on that.  An existence without frustration is no doubt a very happy one!

 This joyful message that comes to us in Christ is none other than a revelation of Heaven’s God!  The Bible says that Christ was the fullness of God in bodily form and that He was  “anointed with the oil of gladness above all his brethren.” (Ps 45:7)  It takes the gladness of God to truly proclaim and reflect the good news!  There are too many sad believers trying to convince suspicious people of good news.  Our lives must tell the story!  The atmosphere around us needs saturation with God’s goodness.  Check out this prophecy:

“I will saturate the soul of the priests with fatness, and My people will be satisfied with My goodness,” declares the Lord. (Jer 31:14, NASB margin)

Glory to God!  I think that we see the same principle here.  Don’t miss it.  God’s people must get their joy from Jesus and not from other people or their circumstances!  As our souls are saturated with the goodness of God, then the folks around us can start catching on to the truly Good News!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court for 30 years. At one point in his life, Justice Holmes explained his choice of a career by saying: “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”  What a sad indictment.

It’s not possible to truly proclaim and reflect the good news with a lean soul!  I still agree with George Mueller:  A preacher’s first priority is to get his soul happy in God!  But what’s true for the preacher is equally true for all Christians: get the joy of God, the atmosphere of heaven, in your soul.  Then when you serve people they will touch the goodness of God.

Joy incarnate.  That’s what Christmas is about.  Heaven’s joy invading earth’s sorrow and darkness.  We need more incarnations of Heavenly joy!  Being filled with the Holy Spirit is to incarnate the joy of Heaven.  May you experience the great joy of the good news this Christmas.  Hallelujah.  Merry Christmas!

5. Gratitude is powerful and liberating.  The Bible gives us several accounts of God’s miraculous power being released to bring deliverance and victory for His people…as they praised and thanked Him!

King Jehoshaphat was up against the armies of at least three nations all at the same time.  He was desperate and understandably afraid.  So He prayed.  And the Lord answered.  God said, “The battle is Mine, not yours.  I’ll do the fighting for you.”  Then God instructed the king to place the singers out in front of the army.  The army of Israel was led into battle with praise and thanksgiving.  When they arrived on the battleground, the enemy was already slaughtered.  Confusion had come upon them and they had destroyed each other! 

It then took three days for the Israelites to carry away all of the spoils of victory!  Such are the benefits of praise and thanksgiving.  The spoils are great!

On another occasion, Paul and Silas (traveling preachers), had been beaten badly for preaching the gospel and had landed in jail, where they were in chains.  The Bible says that at about midnight they were singing hymns of praise and thanking God….and suddenly there was an earthquake and everybody’s chains got broken off!  The jailer got saved and probably all the other prisoners as well.

Gratitude first changes the atmosphere of your own heart and thoughts.  Then when vocalized in praise to God, it has the power to change the atmosphere outwardly too.  Demons can’t bear the heartfelt and vocalized praises of Jesus.  They get fearful and confused.  Literally. 

Praise and thanksgiving will accomplish what armies cannot do.

Praise and thanksgiving will accomplish what no medication can do.

6. Gratitude must be taught.  Let’s be real here.  None of us was born with a deeply grateful heart.  We all came out of the womb fussing.  Little people take everything for granted…unless they are taught otherwise.  And without the influence and power of God’s Spirit working on us, we’d all remain self-righteous, ungrateful snobs.

Gratitude does not happen by osmosis.  You can’t take a pill, go to sleep, and wake up in the morning a totally grateful person.  It takes time to renew your mind.  We must recognize the spirit of ingratitude, complaining, and entitlement that pervades our society and to some degree our own inner world.  These thoughts must be arrested and denounced!  And then replaced by intentional thanksgiving and praise.

It takes time to turn a big ship around.  But it all starts with turning the rudder.  Keep thanksgiving on your lips and you will be a long way down the road to spiritual maturity and blessing! God will be honored.  And there will be spoils to gather for yourself as well!

3. Gratitude follows honor like fragrance follows a rose.  If I honor you, that is, if I hold you in high esteem, then I will be grateful for your involvement in my life on any level.  I will not have to work hard at it.  It will be spontaneous. When a person receives a benefit from someone and is ungrateful, rest assured the recipient does not hold the benefactor in high honor. 

Romans 1:21 says that because people refuse to honor God they become ungrateful.  Ungratefulness is the first rung down the ladder of depravity.  It’s a slippery slope.

4. Being grateful is in your best interests.  A grateful heart is a protected one.  God has promised to give grace to the humble and to oppose the proud.  Humility will lead you to gratitude and the further blessings that will come.  Satan’s wretched schemes have little foothold in our lives…unless he can tempt us to be ungrateful.

Thanksgiving is also therapeutic.  I thankful heart is a healthy one! Grateful people live with less stress than resentful people.  They sleep better too.  Renowned psychiatrist Karl Menninger observed that perennially grateful people are seldom mentally ill. You may watch what you eat and exercise regularly, but if you are a complainer who is ungrateful, you are poisoning yourself from the inside out.  Literally.  You will pay the price for ingratitude physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

 Furthermore, a thankful heart is an attractive one! Anyone feels more at home where he/she is appreciated and celebrated.  If you regularly express thanks and appreciation to those around you they will feel edified in your presence.  They will want to come back!

God is the same way!  One reason that Jesus was “the friend of sinners and tax-collectors” was because they appreciated what He represented.  They acknowledged the gift that He was to them.  They knew He had something that they needed.  And they were more grateful than the self-righteous religious folks. 

If you’d like God to show up in your life more regularly, then try appreciating Him for who He is and what He has done for you.  Make a conscious effort to vocally praise Him multiple times each day.  Stop taking His favors for granted.  Stop breathing His air without thanking Him for it.  Stop living on His earth without acknowledging it.  Stop enjoying good food and friends without recognizing that this was God’s idea! 

To be continued…

I haven’t stepped on the bathroom scale to do the damage assessment yet.  I kind of figure it makes sense to let things sort of settle out before I formally renegotiate with Mr. Gravity.  It’s  like being upside-down in your mortgage.  You wonder if you’ll ever have any equity in the arrangement!

Yes, it seems that gravy and gravity go together.  It’s a law of physics.

If only the pounds would go away as fast as the gratitude does!

As much as we talk about the importance of gratefulness and giving thanks and being gracious…somehow in our busyness and shallowness we simply move on with our schedules and lives.  And gratitude seems to evaporate.

I’m praying that this year will be different.  Actually, I have faith that it will be different.  This is because I believe my heart was deeply impacted by the Holy Spirit this time around.  So in an effort to see that gratitude becomes an enduring attribute in my life (and possibly yours as well), I want to do a couple of posts this week to rehearse some of the things God brought home to my heart during this Thanksgiving season.

1. Gratitude springs from mercy received.  That is, it’s only as you see your blessings as undeserved that you feel real gratitude.  If you think you deserve the blessings you may feel happy and prosperous and even temporarily content.  But you will not be overflowing with gratitude.

If you are a real Christ-follower, then you should realize that you didn’t choose Him, He chose you.  And the same merciful Christ who opened your eyes to see your need of Him, graciously forgave your sins and gave you His Spirit to dwell in you.  The Saviour could just as easily have passed you by.  He was not obligated to deal so mercifully with a known rebel like you (or me!). 

Why did only one of the ten lepers return to give Jesus thanks?  As a Samaritan “outsider”, he deeply realized that he was treated far better than he had any right to expect.  It was mercy.  The nine somehow felt they had it coming.  Perhaps they believed God finally made things right for them.  Regardless, they didn’t have a deeply grateful response.

2. Where entitlement grows gratitude shrinks. This thought closely follows the previous one.  The more I think that I am owed something, the more likely that I will NOT be grateful when I receive it.  The more affluent a people becomes, the more that a spirit of entitlement will try to creep in.  This is a law of human nature.  Sadly, our country has become a cesspool of entitlement…on both the left and the right.  Greed and entitlement can be blamed for our country’s financial mess. 

The “land of opportunity” has become the “land of entitlement”.  Earlier generations of Americans saw this land as a place where they had a chance to make it, if they worked hard and disciplined themselves and saved and lived wisely and prayed. 

Many younger Americans today feel disillusioned about this.  Part of this hopelessness is that they have assumed they have a right to a nice job and salary because they borrowed money and got a college degree. It should be easy, like everything else has been. This is entitlement.

But there’s also this feeling among Americans today that the government bails out the fat cats on Wall Street (by the billions of dollars) and leaves the ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.  Somebody explain to me how this is not entitlements for those at the top of the food chain?  

Somehow, I don’t think any of this is what the founders intended.

I love America.  It’s my home.  I’m here because I want to be here.  But the Bill of Rights was never intended to be a Bill of Entitlements.  Our constitution doesn’t guarantee anyone (or everyone) success.  It doesn’t guarantee that those with money and power will be generous and unselfishly concerned for others.  Nor does it guarantee that those without money and power will be handed it by others.  

(To be continued in the next post…)

In the November 3rd reading from My Utmost For His Highest, Chambers is discussing the meaning of Galatians 2:20,

I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

Chambers says that this verse speaks of a union with Christ that can never be experientially realized unless we are willing to seriously deal with our own selfish independence.  He says that surrendering my independence to the Lordship of Jesus is something that I must do; something that God will not and cannot do for me.  Chambers continues,

It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus.

A number of people through the years have told me that they often feel beaten up after reading Chambers.  I too have greatly felt challenged by Chambers, but not beaten up.  If the goal in my life is on par with Galatians 2:20, then I should be aiming for the, “but Christ liveth in me.”  Right?  I mean, this is the only way a renegade from God can end up bringing Him glory.  I must allow Him to invade my life and fill it with Himself.

But this doesn’t happen by osmosis.  And it doesn’t happen while I’m sleeping.  Or while I’m avoiding dealing with the hard reality that there’s something in me that doesn’t want to yield to anybody, let alone God. 

But if I will go all the way over and make a clean break with my individualism, then something wholly unknown to me can happen.  Chambers wonderfully describes this exchange in our reading:

Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable

Chambers, like the Apostle Paul, was not giving us a theological treatise on our “positional” identity in Christ in Galatians 2:20.  He was not just talking theology.  He was discussing the actual exchange of life essence and power that he had undergone upon deeply surrendering everything to Christ.  As soon as a person does this they have real and tangible access to the resurrection life of Christ.  It moves from the theoretical and objective, to the reality of an experiential union with Christ Himself.

Has the break come in your own life?  Have you signed away your own rights so as to become the life-slave of Christ?  The Spirit of God waits for the break to come.  When it does He will bring a union with Christ into your soul that you can never know outside of this surrender.

But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it properly… (1 Timothy 1:8)

A map is a very helpful tool – if one uses it properly.  Its uses are many, some noble and some ignoble.  A map is most helpful when the traveler knows her present location and desired destination.  If either one of these data points is missing the map will be of limited value.

Most people use a map to intentionally get somewhere.  However, some people use a map to avoid certain places.  Someone who is traveling across country to visit an aunt is not thinking about avoiding places.  He simply is plotting the most efficient and/or pleasing route to the place of his loved one.

But someone who is a fugitive uses the map in a different way.  He looks at the map and immediately wonders where he might be recognized, where he might be exposed, where he might be found out.  Accordingly, he plots his travel with the motive of avoiding certain places and people.

Though it’s highly unlikely that any of us easily admit the identity of a fugitive…we often fall into that category!  The Pharisees in Jesus’ day approached religion on fugitive terms.  Of course they didn’t see it like this.  Jesus was referring to these very pious people when He said:

You do search the Scriptures because you think that by them you have eternal life.  Yet it is these that bear witness of Me and you refuse to come to Me that you might have life. (John 5:39-40)

Their goal for the Scriptures was all wrong.  Their’s was an ethic of avoidance.  They felt that if they could keep themselves separate from sin and sinners, they would thereby make themselves acceptable to God.  They failed to realize that in this approach they were not actually pursuing God! They were not going toward God’s heart.  They were simply trying to move away from sin.  And there’s a huge difference!

A big part of the problem was (and is) that it is impossible to live in this world and be totally removed from the fact of sin.  Furthermore, the Biblical doctrine of “original sin” tells us that sin is more than an outward fact.  It is an inward alienation from and independence toward God.  There is a sinful disposition in all of us.  To truly separate one’s self from sin would require an escape from the very nature you were born with!  But how can a leopard change its spots?  Or a thorn tree produce figs?  It cannot.

But if you could somehow get God Himself to take up residence within you, then anything would be possible.

So the person with the external, Pharisee approach to religion and righteousness, must work very hard at avoiding the kinds of things that would expose the inner fugitive!

This is why Jesus always seeks to move people away from a piety that majors on externals toward a faith that is rooted in a heart-transforming relationship with Himself.

If you find this subject helpful, you will enjoy this audio teaching.

Apparently, scientists are learning that after the initial creation of the universe there was a fog permeating the cosmos.  This fog consisted of neutral hydrogen atoms.  This would have made it nearly impossible for light to proceed/pass.  Here’s an excerpt from an article that explains this a bit more:

“When the universe was only 780 million years old, this neutral hydrogen was quite abundant, filling from 10 to 50 percent of the universe’s volume. But only 200 million years later, the amount of neutral hydrogen had dropped to a very low-level, similar to what we see today. It seems that reionization must have happened quicker than astronomers previously thought.”

There are several theories concerning what happened way back to clear the fog in the universe.  This “reionization” apparently happened quickly, bringing about sudden changes regarding the freedom for light to travel/proceed within the universe. 

At this point I think it is interesting to consider the first three verses of the Bible:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. (Genesis 1:1-3 NASB)

Some folks have suggested a “gap” theory between Genesis 1:1-2 and 1:3.  Possibly millions or billions of years could have occured between the periods depicted by those verses.  Even Biblical literalists should be able to acknowledge this. Skeptics have long poked fun at the Bible for not having “light” showing up until verse 3 in the creation account.  But scientists today are telling us that light was apparently locked in by cosmic fog…until something very quickly changed the atmosphere of the early cosmos so that light could proceed.  Go figure.

I’m not trying to make any huge statements about science or even about my/your approach to the Bible.  But what I will say is that the research that I’ve been reading about has made me realize yet again that there’s a ton more to learn both about the universe, the Bible, and the Author of both.

What I’ve been reflecting on in this post causes my heart and mind to flow out in worship of Almighty God.  He is God and there is no other.  He upholds all things by the word of His power.  The Psalmist, without a doubt, was saying far more than he comprehended at the time, as he penned:

For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. Psalm 36:9

But he understood one thing: there are things we can/will never know…unless God turns the light on for us.  May He turn the light on in our darkness today.  Amen.