City of Refuge

Nov. 4, 2011

This “Christian life” you and I enjoy should not be possible.

Have you considered God lately?  This Being who is so “other” than we mud creations?  Those who “met” Him were often reduced to quivering puddles.  In trying to describe Him, writers resorted to using “He was like…” yet their comparisons still defy reason and demand our imaginations swim in deep water.  His moral perfection is so high, there should be another word for it.  He is the perfect One, in exquisite communion with Himself.  He did not create life because He was lonely.  Life sprang from His lips as easily as love pours out of our mothers.  Every star, planet, the globe on which we spin, the matter our eyes and instruments have not discovered, and every beating heart that surrounds us is and was an extension of Him because He is life.

His ways are higher than our ways.  The source of His thoughts are rooted in a time that existed before what we now call eternity.  His holiness is such that we can only bear glimpses His true self.  He is currently the object of worship for a myriad of creatures we cannot begin to understand or imagine.  He is not an old bearded man, seated with dignity, on a giant chair.  He is not a herculean figure, rippling with muscle and strength as He brandishes a lightning bolt.  He is God.  And we cannot describe Him nor should we ever be able to “relate” to Him.

Have you considered yourself lately?  If Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, was the “chief of sinners,” where does that leave me in that hierarchy?  Granted, he could not join our chorus of “Well, I haven’t killed anybody,” but didn’t Jesus say if we have hated we have killed?  We were created in God’s image yet are now so marred we bear as much resemblance to His original design as a forest does after the fire has felled and charred every tree and decimated the ground cover to a mix of dirt and ash.

It is popular right now to become a “radical follower” of Jesus, and this of course is a pursuit demanded by the greatness of our God.  But do we really believe that these exercises of will even begin to scratch the surface of “putting to death” our “deeds of the flesh?”  We are a mess.  Our best efforts, our best attempts at living under the control of Holy Spirit, are crayon drawings not worthy of displaying on the refrigerator.  The words imperfect or unholy are not adequate to describe our depravity.  The word depravity is not sufficient to explain our vicious rebellion. We are human.  And we cannot describe our God nor should we ever be able to relate to Him.

God defies explanation.  So does the gulf between His holy perfection and our self-righteous blackness.  This is why the Incarnation is such profoundly Good News.  This perfect One drew back the curtain and stepped down into our world.  Light invaded darkness.  Spirit took on flesh that was in turn filled by Spirit.  Spirit-filled flesh wrestled and surrendered.  To death.  He was supernaturally transformed into something He had never experienced.  And His reason?  So that our flesh could be transformed into something we have never experienced.  God became human.  Jesus became sin.  And we cannot describe Him nor should we ever be able to “relate” to Him.

And yet we do.  In Christ, we are “holy in His sight, without blemish, and free from accusation.”  This is grace.

He is God.  We are human.  He is light.  We are dark.  He is perfect.  We are not.  The division between us and Him should have been impassable.  “When His disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, ‘Who, then, can be saved?’  Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”  We cannot describe Him nor should we be able to relate to Him.

And yet, in Jesus, we stand.

Ezra 9:15 — O LORD, God of Israel, You are righteous!  Here we are (standing) before (Your Presence) in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in Your presence.”

Walk WITH Jesus,

Jim

Sept. 30, 2011

The missionary stood on our stage, with moist eyes.  In a confident but cracked voice, she had just summarized her and her husband’s lives.  Showering with a scorpion, rooming with rodents, and providing for a group of orphans who didn’t speak the same language was not what these two had imagined decades ago while raising their own boys.  I knew her summary fell humbly short.  She didn’t mention the longing to see their grandbabies whenever they wished.  She didn’t proudly boast about notignoring God’s call, choosing instead to leave the comforts and security of retiring in America.  She didn’t give room for the jealousy that must surely creep in on occasion, the frustration over other peoples’ “normal” lives.  She didn’t rehash the friends, and probably family, who shook their heads in disbelief and boldly wondered aloud, questioning their motives.

“The battle is losing heart,” the missionary spoke quietly.  All of the personal wrestling her and her husband grapple with, every single day, were captured in five words.

Weeks later, at 2 am, while struggling in my own heart, the missionary’s words played on a loop in my head.  I had been awake for hours, tortured over not just my own messes and failures, but the hurts of the people in my pastoral care: the woman diagnosed with an untreatable, debilitating and painful disease; the impending divorces; the marriages stuck in neutral, headed for the gas chamber, but blind to the danger; the jobless; the hopeless.  “How do we not lose heart when there seems to be no answers?” I asked God.  “How do we not lose heart when situations are so stuck and every day is the same battle?”

Our Father directed me to Psalms.  I found what I knew was there: unflinching honesty and a powerful and loving God big enough to shoulder our complaining.  The Psalmist also displayed an unwavering faith, most often expressed near the end in words like, “But God, You are faithful… You are loving…”  I also saw something new.

I had never noticed how many of the Psalmists’ prayers were expressed almost as wishes: “May our enemies…” and “Please, God, come in Your power and…”  So many of the Psalms stop without revealing the end of the story.  No tidy resolution wraps up the problem with a conveniently packaged answer.  We don’t know how it turned out.  Yet each is still imbued with a powerful, sometimes fought-for trust that God is who He says He is.

Holy Spirit asked me, “Does who I am change based on what’s happening to you?”  I knew the answer: He can’t change.  Yesterday, today, and forever, and all that.  Not that I take my theology from music, but a great line from Casting Crowns says, “You are who You are no matter where I am.”

I then sensed the answer I had been waiting for.  It’s still not completely satisfying, but it is truth.  “Because I am who I say I am, then fight as if I am who I say I am.”  If the battle is losing heart, our confidence must be in His heart.  When our cries to Him grow weak as our spirit fades (Psalm 61, 77, 142, and 143) we must, with Nehemiah, “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight!” (Neh. 4:14.)

Losing heart is a function of forgetting who God is.  Therefore gaining our heart is a result of restoring our focus on Him.  Not losing heart comes from never letting His life and His character leave our vision, even when circumstances shout a different story.  My missionary friend understands this truth in ways I might never experience.  Despite the daily needs, the meager supplies, and the physical toll, she holds onto a picture of God, given when her heart was fading.  This is her faith, shaking a fist not at God, but at the flesh within that dares to rise up and question Him.  Esther 2:11 — Every day (Mordecai) walked back and forth near the courtyard of the harem to find out how Esther was and what was happening to her.

Losing heart is a function of forgetting who God is.  At sometime after 2 am, my heart strengthened, just a bit, as Holy Spirit graciously brought back who He is.  According to one faithful missionary couple, He is the One who walks back and forth near us, to find out how all we adopted orphans are faring.  We can’t always see Him.  We suspect He takes a day off now and then.  But to gain our hearts, we must trust He is near and fight as if He is by our side.  Every day.

Walk WITH Jesus,

Jim