End of Days ...

From time-to-time on city streets, or at a crowded event, someone holds up a handwritten sign declaring “the end is near”.  Doomsday prophets have filled our ears with impending warnings of imminent doom for centuries.  Even poor Al Gore was recently lumped into this category for simply pointing out the logical conclusions of global warming.  Fear abounds from terrorism, nuclear holocaust, pollution, and disease.  Our financial future looks negative at best and the energy crisis seems insurmountable.  So have we finally arrived at what the Bible calls the “last days”?

The Bible is full of prophesies.  The future is foretold to those who believe to give them critical insights into the plans God has.  The entire Old Testament is full of prophesies related to the Messiah.  When Jesus walked this earth, He fulfilled every prophesy in scripture that preceded Him.  But prophesy did not end at the cross, or for that matter only with Biblical writers.  The “gift of Prophesy” is one of the gifts God’s Holy Spirit gives to certain believers throughout all of time and memorial.  It has its place in the building of His church.

But how do you interpret the prophesies of Christ’s second coming within the Bible itself.  And even if you could accomplish that, how do you tell the folks with real prophetic gifts from the just-plain-nut-balls out there?  Is there any point to knowing the future anyway?  Herein lies a difference between the casual observer, and the true believer in our creator God – those who have learned who God is, are able to trust Him, and rest and find peace in knowing Him.  Prophesy transitions from impending warnings of doom and coming condemnation to merely news reports chronicling the nearing of our last journey home.

Prophesy itself presses the fear button in so many believers hearts because they cherish the sins they currently commit.  The idea that this behavior must end, or they must end with it, frightens them.  People who call themselves Christians spend every waking moment digging for answers from prophesy, trying to correlate news stories from CNN with scripture texts.  They anticipate this political outcome with that prophetic message.  And most often, the end result of their study is the “end of all mankind”.  This strikes fear in them.

When you understand what salvation is, prophesy becomes something entirely different.  When you see your NEED of a savior, sense your own unworthiness, and find yourself changing through God’s awesome power despite your own failures – prophesy becomes something else.  Fear subsides.  Trust and peace replace it.  And the need to interpret every minute detail into the next “sign” of the time simply goes away.  Not because we do not want Heaven to come, but because the Kingdom of God is at hand – it is here already – it begins to live within you – right now.  The “life” we seek is not a far away goal, it can start here and now.  Mind you, the perfection we seek may still elude us, but the basis of how we live can change today.

So what truly is the end of days?  Is it really an end of human life?  No.  Scripture does not teach that mankind itself is to become an extinct species.  Not because we don’t constantly try to kill ourselves and our planet with behavior that defies all logic and embraces evil with both hands.  No, if it were up to us, we would face a true end to our species.  Al Gore’s warnings of global catastrophe are real.  They are predictable consequences of what we do today.  But despite our suicidal desires, intentions, and actions; God will not allow us to destroy ourselves completely as a species.  He will intervene to preserve us from ourselves and from the one who desperately seeks our destruction.

But the end of days is no less real.  An end of days is coming, scripture teaches that as well.  But it is not an end to our days, it is an end to the days of the evil one.  It is Satan who sees the writing on the walls as omens of his own destruction.  It is his last days.  It is he who is to die, to burn, to cease to exist for all eternity – to be no more.  It is he who feels the weight of the clock ticking away at his own life.  While he may not age, he senses his impending demise.  And there is no escape from it.  This knowledge drives his furor into a frenzied pitch and focuses his anger on the beloved followers of his enemy God.  He seeks to inflict as much pain on them as he can, to punish the one who will finally put him out of existence.  Before he goes, he wants to spread pain as far as possible. 

This is the true nature of evil.  Evil is not content to hurt only itself.  It loves no one.  It cares for no one.  It seeks only to hurt anyone and everyone it can.  Evil wishes to spread itself like malignant cancer through every nerve ending it can find.  It is evil that must end.  It is evil itself that faces a true end of days.  So in an ironic twist, evil seeks to have man believe he must share his fate.  Evil seeks to have man believe there can be no hope for him.  Evil seeks to have man choose to follow it to the grave, and therefore positions the end of days as our end, instead of his.

Motive counts.  God does not use fear to illicit allegiance.  Satan does.  God uses only love to lure.  He uses the power of love to change, forgive, and overcome – as only love can do.  For after all God is love.  This great controversy that has plagued the universe since the discovery of self, and the love of self, has had one clear truth; it would not last forever.  The war will end.  There will be a winning side.  And it was always going to be God.  The reason for the duration of the conflict has been for the participants to be able to see clearly both the nature of evil and the nature of love.  We are all that is left in the universe who still needs to see this difference and decide for ourselves who to serve.

Those poor misguided believers who look to apply the war in Iraq or Afghanistan to a particular biblical text are missing the point.  Whether it is a “sign” or part of a prophesy or not, is only marginally relevant.  What is keenly important is beginning to understand who God is.  What love is.  And how Salvation works.  These things are of utmost importance.  They supersede prophesy. 

Embracing the Kingdom of God now, makes prophesy become like watching a news ticker on TV.  We replace all fear, with eagerness.  It is not death we are embracing, it is eternal life.  It is not the end of this world we are looking forward to, it is the beginning of the next one.  It is not leaving our loved ones we wish to avoid, it is embracing them, all of them, even the ones we have lost to death in this world, in a perfect world to come.  And most of all, it is the end of the hell of separation from our God, that will truly come to an end.  We will be able to be with Him.  Right next to Him.  Sitting at His feet.  Listening.  Worshipping.  Loving.  And learning to live in a way we cannot now even begin to comprehend.

When I see a handwritten sign carried by some sayer-of-doom declaring the end is near, I respond by saying, I sure hope so.  It is time for evil to end.  And it is ONLY evil that faces an end.  Not us.  We are saved through the blood of Christ; a gift from the only God who was willing to save His own creation and define love forever by doing it.  There is no enlightenment, or reincarnation, or alien ascendency in our future as those false gods offer nothing to us but empty words and painful repetitive cycles.  There is however a real salvation occurring right now in hearts of men by a real God, the only real God, the only God who saves.  This is yet another reason to find Him, know Him, and respond to His love.  The only future worth knowing is one with Him in it …

Vigilance ...

Gethsemane was the place where the fate of humanity was sealed once and for all.  It was done at night.  It was late, there was an air of gloom clouding the night sky.  Our Savior God burdened with the frailty of humanity began to sense for the first time the horror He would endure as the presence of His Father would be hidden from Him.  It was not His own physical pain He dreaded, not even His earthly death at the hands of His own creations.  It was FAR worse than that. 

His Father would have to withdraw from Him as even though He was innocent, He carried with Him our guilt, our burden, our evil, and our pain.  Fear gripped Christ as He began to wonder if after having taken on this stain, perhaps He would be unable to shed it.  Perhaps, once tarnished with the weight of our iniquity it would forever separate Him from His Father, not by choice, but by design.  Evil cannot exist in the presence of His Father, it is consumed by it.  Perhaps after taking on this stain, He might forever be exiled from Dad, forever separated from Love, forever alone carrying our burden.  Perhaps reconciliation could not be won by the power of Love, perhaps evil is just too strong.

This was the nearly infinite burden that Christ must face that night in the garden.  His human nature longed to escape the weight of this burden.  As He sweat drops of blood from His brow, and wrestled with the thought of prolonged separation from His Father (the definition of Hell), He sought comfort from His closest companions.  He had asked for Peter, James, and John to simply pray with Him, and pray for Him; but instead of vigilance during the time when He needed us the most … we slept.  And it seems the followers of Christ have learned nothing from the lessons of the garden as the most common enemy even today of our spiritual passion, our spiritual vigilance, is sleep.

The fate of the universe was in jeopardy.  Our Savior needed the support of His creations the most in all of His life, and we were found sleeping.  Angels must keep silent.  The universe of unfallen beings look on in horror, and are restricted from the comfort they long to provide.  Even God says nothing.  He had only one venue for support that night, it was in us.  But these circumstances did not prevent us from our shame.  The direct request of our Lord and Savior did not impact our actions.  Not just once, but several times, He pleaded, and we slept, until truly alone He settled into His fate.  Whether He would endure the Hell of separation from God for eternity or not; He would face His cross so that we might be redeemed.  Even if our sin was to be His undoing, He moved forward to see us returned to the side of His Father.  This is the very depths of love, the very depths of sacrifice.  And while He labored with this decision, we slept on.

One of the true lessons of the garden is that WE are NOT to be depended on.  Our vigilance, no matter what the circumstances, is truly worthless.  We have proven it over and over.  Our failures extend beyond our ability to see, and yet we seem to cling to the notion that somehow, we can “help” our God out in the process of saving humanity.  We cling to the idea that God can somehow “rely” on us for accomplishing His purposes for man.  Wake up, sleepy heads, you’ve begun to dream again.  The lesson to be learned yet again here from Gethsemane is that human weakness is more powerful than spiritual necessity.  We have no strength to offer our Lord, only failure upon failure.  It is only when we depend upon Him completely that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

I find I have no voice when I contemplate the depth of love that was extended to save me from my sin, I have only tears.  I weep at my record of sleep when I was needed most, and even now, at my pressing desire to return to the comfort of oblivion.  I wish I could have been there in the garden to put my arms around my Lord and just cling to Him during this time of His great travail.  To have offered comforting words.  But what could I have said?  Hang in there Lord, after all I will be saved by what you are going through, and I am so worth it … NOT!!!  The truth was and remains that saving me is NOT worth the agony He was going through.  I chose my fate.  I choose my evil all the time.  My life is the mess I made of it.  The truth is, seeing Him in that condition, I would have rather gone ahead and accepted my doomed chosen fate, and sent Him back to the perfection He deserved.  Better me in Hell, than Him in Hell.

But Christ would not have it.  Love did not think that way.  Love decided the worthless piece of garbage I was, was worth the precious blood of Christ.  More than that though, Christ decided in the garden to exchange His own permanent fate of separation with God for mine.  He was willing to endure ultimate separation if He could restore me to our Father.  And I believe it was this sacrifice He made, more than even His life on the cross, that ultimately proved Love could conquer ALL.  God could accept Jesus back at His side, as He was willing to sacrifice more than His own life, His very existence for all time on our behalf.  Jesus faced His own death, with the uncertainty of His ultimate ability to return to His Father.  There was NO more He could have given up for us.

And we slept.  We slept then, as we sleep now.  Our Lord knew this, He compared His coming to keeping watch on the thief in the night.  The thief does not come in the daylight, he seeks the cover of darkness.  So His counsel to us was to keep watch, to be vigilant.  In fairness He asked this of us, before that horrible night in the garden, when we would prove our unworthiness of His requests.  But His advice is no less real or meaningful than it was then.  The fate of our world is nearing its end now.  The time to live as if there is no God is growing shorter and shorter.  His return is nearing.  As it does, the darkness in the world, the desperation and intensity of evil rises and the level of pain in everyone’s life grows stronger as predicted.  We ache from it.  We moan and groan from it.

But we do not have to.  The plan of our Salvation begins and ends with freeing us from sin and the pain it is inseparable from.  We can live without being slaves to evil desires and abhorrent behavior.  We can live free, fully surrendered to a God so willing to prove His love to us.  We can start now, start today.  The perfection of our characters is within our reach if we but fully surrender our will to His.  It is His strength we require.  It is His vigilance we need.  It is Him alone that will change our behavior from self-service to the service of others.  We know this is possible.  We have seen it done, in our lives.  And like our forefathers before us, like the apostles of old, we have tasted failure because of our lack of vigilance.

The days we “forget” to surrender our will, are the days we fall back into our pain.  So much is our need of Christ.  We need Him to do the work we are incapable of, and now with our new lesson learned, we need Him to remind us that we need Him all the time.  After all, He alone is vigilant, the garden and our personal histories can attest to this fact.  We begin to discover the true meaning of the text that Christ is the “author and finisher” of our faith and our salvation.  He not only begins the process, but praise His name, He finishes it in us, for us, perhaps in spite of us.  I cannot imagine I will ever be done thanking Christ for the sacrifice He was willing to make in that dark dark night in the garden for me.  I will never be worth it, as He alone is worthy.  But I will honor it, uplift it, and most of all – I will accept the gift He has given, the whole gift and praise Him for it…

Survivor ...

There is a popular show on CBS entitled survivor where real-world contestants cooperate as well as battle each other to become the sole survivor and win a million dollars.  At the beginning the smarter players attempt to form alliances with fellow team mates, even inside their own designated larger teams.  Eventually both larger teams lose enough members to force a merger when then individual strength and skill become a larger factor in moving forward.  Generally at this point in the game, the lies escalate, and trust can save you or see you sacrificed on the altar of greed.  I wonder where I am in the game?

To be free to experience the joy my Lord intends for me requires trust.  I must trust that what He says, He means.  That the promise and delivery of His gift to me is real, it works, and it matters.  If I can’t get past surrendering self, I will never fully trust Him, and therefore never fully experience what He has for me.  And let’s face it, where it comes to surviving we are keen, observant players.  We have spent a lifetime honing skills to see us survive, not surrender.  We are inclined to eat the bugs if necessary to stay alive.  We will do most anything to preserve ourselves.  And we have a history of doing it this way.

History and habits form character, and it is not easy to suddenly put the brakes on character and do an about face.  Where it should be an easy thing to let go, and let God, neither seems realistic if given our past.  We cling to the notion that our survival depends on us, and if we allowed even God to take that role, we would somehow immediately perish.  How sad.  This is the distinctive mark that we have bought into the false assumption of control in our lives. 

We think that somehow our actions give us control.  But they do not.  We do not control our health although we can decidedly influence it.  We do not control the weather, or the earth’s responses to our pollution, even though we can influence it.  We do not control our relationships, our jobs, even our money lies in a bank hopefully shielded by our government.  We control nothing.  Yet we foolishly hold on to the idea, that somehow in spite of all these facts we control everything.

In our last discussion we discovered that to win we must die daily.  Therein lies the rub, how do I allow myself the thinking that my will, or my control, must be put on the altar daily?  I equate survival to self-control and independence; not to subservience to God and complete dependence on Him.  The American dream runs counter to every precept of Christianity.  I do not work, but yet I receive.  I do not earn my home, I am given a mansion instead.  I do not deserve eternal life and freedom, I am given it in spite of what I deserve.  I do not see value in me that anyone should love me, yet God values me personally so much He literally died to take my place, and save me from eternal separation from Him.

It is not the suicide of body I seek, but the suicide of my character.  I wish to be reborn, not into simply an altered form of sinful desires, but completely absent from them.  I wish not to leave a hole where once were loaded evil intentions, but instead to fill it with service for others in actionable deeds.  I want to want His will.  I want to want His life, His character, His perfection, even His cross.  This means that my life must have less value to me, than my deepest motives and intentions.  More important to remove impurity than to survive a slave to it.  Better death than bondage.  Better rebirth than simple death.

I want nothing of sin or evil to survive in me.  It must be pursued to the farthest lengths of my mind and soul and eradicated by the loving hand of my Savior.  I must learn total submission.  To begin I must want it, and therefore the first of my prayers to want what He wants, to need what He needs, to do what He does.  Someone once told me that if you struggled with being a horse-thief for example, it would do you little good to be forgiven for your sins, surrender your will to God on the topic, and then get up and go hang out all day with horse thieves.  The idea was that we should protect ourselves from influences that would inspire us to fall.  It sounds good, but is not needed.

The thinking that goes behind this premise is missing the absolute lack of motive.  What do you call a person who no longer wants to steal horses, even if they used to be a regular horse thief?  Reformed perhaps.  Recovering maybe.  But when even the desire to steal is removed completely, even the temptation is removed, the thought of continuing in conquered sin becomes repulsive.  The “used-to-be” horse thief can hang out with whoever, as he is made free from his former self. 

Let’s face it, every one of us is afflicted with sin, and could easily inspire someone else to commit another travesty if they are so inclined.  Even if not by intention, we often hurt each other, make each other angry, and tempt each other to do wrong.  We will likely not see in our lifetimes a time or place where everyone is in harmony.  The real world is full of horse thieves, former or practicing.  The billboards advocate us to evil, the media follows suit.  We will never be free from it in this place of woe.  But we need not be slaves to the old triggers that launched us into negative behavior.  He died to free us from all of that, including the subtle innuendos and psychological stimuli that once led to our doom.  We are to be truly free.

If only we can keep our instinct to survive out of His way.  In this, I love the prayer of the publican in the days of Christ, when he uttered … “have mercy on me a sinner.”  The publican knows his condition.  He makes no false claims of purity.  He makes no excuses for the sins he has committed.  He begs for mercy from a God who longs to give it to him, and his prayer is answered.  Our God knows our dysfunctions.  Our God knows our mental instabilities, our eccentricities, the things we think are cute about us that others may offer a different view of.  Our God can save us, despite our chemical imbalances whether self inflicted or genetically inherited.  Our God can bring clarity to the sin-sick or evil-diseased mind.  Our God can lift the veil of evil and show us His truth.  He longs to do so.

Building trust is a process as well.  Trust is not something we generally give unconditionally to anyone that asks.  Even God knows that trust must be earned.  And so He is faithful in every dealing with us, even when we change the terms, disobey, and bring shame to His doorstep.  He is a 100% God, who offers us nothing short of 100% of Himself.  He offers His love, His protection, His shelter, His comfort, His healing, and since we required it, He even offered up His life to pay our debts.  He has done everything He needed to in order save us from evil.  On the cross of Calvary came the best words in the English language – IT IS FINISHED.  To further quote Bill Gaither’s famous next line in his song by that name … “the battle is over!”

We were not meant to keep fighting a war that is already won.  We were not meant to further arm ourselves and face our demons in our own strength.  We are sheep, in simple need of a shepherd.  The shepherd fights and defeats the wolves, the mountain lions, and even our own sense of direction.  The shepherd feeds the flock, and insures it is watered.  The shepherd does ALL the work.  The sheep sit around and eat, drink, and know they are loved by a shepherd who cares deeply about every one of them.  The shepherd gladly gives up his night life and searches for the one of us, namely me, who intentionally wanders away from the flock, and finds themselves waiting to be dinner for the predators that remain in the world around us.  But the Shepherd intervenes.  He will not allow the wolf the victory over the crying, stupid, will-full, sheep.  Instead He scoops up the defiant lost battered sheep in His loving arms and carries him again back to safety in the fold.  The shepherd does not rest.  He is ever vigilant, ever watching.

It amazes me how often we think of ourselves as the shepherds, instead of our proper role as the sheep.  It amazes me how often we remove God’s ability to control our lives thinking we have a better idea or method of doing so.  It amazes me that so often we find ourselves having wandered away from the flock, and into the thicket just waiting to be eaten, when instead loving hands find their way around us, and take us home again.  We are sheep folks.  Christ is our shepherd.  Our survival has never been dependent on us, as we would have been long ago dead if it were.  We are here because of His faithfulness, not our own.  We are here, because He loves each of us.  And He wants us to see the freedom and magnitude of what he offers.  Little by little if that is how slow a sheep must go to understand it, but make no mistake His offer is larger than you are experiencing today.  His freedom is better than anything you have ever known in your life.  And best of all, it does not have to wait to begin.  It starts NOW!!!

Winning Wars ...

There is a secret in the Bible containing the keys to victory.  Calling it a “secret” seems a bit out of place in that God did not intend for it to be hidden from us.  But given how badly the Christian church of modern times has misunderstood and misrepresented the gospel, the plain truths of this secret seem to have gone back into hiding from our eyes.  To begin to reveal and re-establish it again we must begin by separating routines from more important regular behaviors.

Ever hear a memorized prayer repeated by someone?  I am not talking about “the Lord’s prayer” or the 23^rd Psalm being recited by someone.  I am talking more about the prayers like … “now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep”.  Often these kind of memorized prayers become just a series of words to the speaker.  Very little time is given to examining each word, each phrase, and then putting meaning behind the message. 

The same thing tends to happen at meal time.  We ask for God’s blessing (when not too embarrassed by our faith in public) over our food, as Christ did being our example.  But after a while, praying 2-3 times a day to bless food gets to be routine.  We say the same 3 or 4 prayers, or slight variations on each, over and over, until most of what we get out of our prayers is a routine habit, not a meaningful request to “bless” our food.  Let’s face it, few of us expect to break 5 loaves and 2 small fish for over 5000 eager listeners (as the remainder of our example story would have listed was the “blessing” requested).

But as we have discovered, the real meaning of Salvation is to be saved from our sin, from ourselves, and made free from our pain, free to love.  This saving process is not something intended to start once we get to heaven, it was intended to bring us immediate relief.  It was intended to ease our suffering and bring us even closer and closer to our God right now.  We have learned that once we eliminate “self” trying so desperately to take on the responsibility of removing sin from us, and instead surrender completely to God who alone is capable of such feats – that real victory is not only possible – it is real, it is here, and it is now.

But the process of Salvation is not one that is begun and ended in a day, as our dependence on Christ cannot last for only a day and be deemed sufficient.  We depend on Christ for our entire lives, each and every day.  Contained herein is the secret I was talking about.  What was it the apostle Paul said, “I die daily” (1 Cor 15:31).  What did he mean by that, obviously it could not have been a physical death?  Only Kenny on South Park seems to be able to do that (of course he is cartoon).  Paul was talking about dying to self.  Removing self from the process of getting rid of sin is how surrender begins to work.

Daniel the Prophet of the Old Testament, seems to take Paul’s practice and raise it up a notch.  For Daniel, he opened his windows that faced old Jerusalem (where the temple that had contained the physical presence of the Lord in those days was located) and prayed 3 times to God, thanking Him every day.  No, this was not a meal prayer.  And when you consider that worshipping a “foreign” God in the land of Babylon should have seen him killed, he was never embarrassed by prayer in plain sight.  This was Daniel’s daily ritual and it not only saw him through the Lion’s den; when you examine the life of Daniel in the Bible, you find almost no faults in his character.  Outside of Christ, he sets an almost perfect example of humble service.  Was his secret the same as Paul’s?

But lest you think that the number of prayers is the secret to success, let’s step back even further in time, all the way before the flood to the days of Enoch.  Enoch raised the game of Paul and Daniel, by actually walking with God on a daily basis.  The 2 grew so close that eventually … “God took him” home with Him.  Enoch was translated to heaven without seeing death, and at that time, with only the hope of a savior, not having seen the implementation of Gods plan to save us.  Enoch lived in days like ours, for Christ compared the days of Noah with the last days on planet earth.  Wickedness surrounded Enoch, the likes of which we are only recently beginning to experience once again here on planet earth in our day.

But surrounding horrific conditions did not prevent Enoch from walking with God every day, talking with God every day, depending on God every day, and surrendering to God every day.  In so doing, Enoch was made pure, and Enoch was taken to heaven without seeing death – a first fruits example of what will occur at the end of days.  The horrible conditions of being taken captive by a foreign dictator with absolute power over life and death, did not stop Daniel from praying.  Nor did the horrific oppression of the Roman Empire, and established Jewish Church stop Paul from dying daily.  Nor have we any excuse not to find ourselves being able to surrender in the world we find ourselves in today.

It is not the surrounding horrific conditions that bring about purity.  It is not the number of times we pray to God throughout the day that somehow increases our righteousness on a scale.  It is the meaning behind our petitions that counts.  It is the deep need we feel when we utter the words of surrender that make the difference between meaningless routine, and life altering change.  We are not asking for an unknown “blessing” over our meals.  We are asking that our God SAVE US from the sin we would otherwise commit right in front of Him.  We are asking that He intercede for us, dominate our natural sinful instincts, and save us in spite of us.  This is the meaning of dying daily.  And it must occur each day without exception, at the beginning of the day, in order for us to face the day.  Moments before our prayer of surrender, are moments of extreme risk of failure on our part.  We have demonstrated this countless times.

All through scripture, when servants of God have sacrificed daily to His will, they have found themselves the beneficiary of God’s success.  Note, I did not say that THEY were successful; I said they were the beneficiaries of God’s success.  Victory over sin does not belong to man on any level.  We screwed up in the garden, and have not recovered since.  No, victory over sin is the domain of the Lord.  He proved it already living a perfect existence prior to earth, and then on it, in human form.  Christ lived even His life on earth, in daily dependence on His Father’s will.  Even His dying prayer in supreme agony was a surrender of His earthly will, to that of His Father’s divine will.  And He succeeded.  This is our secret.

How sad, that the power of the gospel has been lost sight of over the years.  What an aching commentary on Christianity that we remember forgiveness, but have lost reform.  We replaced loving each other with judging each other, and in so doing, we polluted the gospel to the point where we look just like the world, and the world has NO reason to seek answers from those who claim the name of Christ.  Relying on self has been the core of ALL sin, and making self responsible for removing sin in our lives has been the devils greatest achievement in the Christian church at large.  As long as we continue to embrace the idea of independence over complete surrender, we are doomed to fail, doomed to miss the blessings God intended, and doomed to never see the road Enoch walked.

It is time to wake from our collective sleep.  It is time to put oil in our lamps, the oil of the Spirit.  It is time to forsake the ways of our past, and embrace the truths of our present.  The Kingdom of God is come.  It came many years ago.  It came to free us from our sin, not keep us enslaved to it.  It came to remove the pain and ugliness that ALWAYS accompanies every sin in our lives.  Sin is not the reward, it is the punishment.  Freedom from sin is the reward, and this is what Christ died literally to give us.  We must humble ourselves before God, and daily surrender to His will.  Not on a mere intellectual basis, not because it is a habit we form, but because the purification of our lives depends on it.  This is the secret that lies in plain sight in the Word.  Let us become different as we experience Salvation in our lives every day, rather than simply hear about in the lives of others.

Spitting in the Face of God ...

It is unthinkable isn’t it?  Even for someone who does not believe in another form of religion, human decency would prevent them from spitting in the Pope’s face, or in the Dali Lama’s face, or in Billy Graham’s face.  I may not agree with another person on a spiritual basis, or subscribe to their line of thought, but spitting in their face seems all but impossible.  So for a Christian to think it is not only possible, but plausible, that they are still – spitting in the face of Christ, is all but unthinkable – yet true.

During His trial here on earth, Christ suffered perhaps more than anyone has ever suffered at the hands of men.  The war was between Christ and Satan, but Satan refused to lift one of his own hands to do the dirty work of torture and death.  Instead he used men.  Inspired and insighted by Satan, men were the willing tools of the entire night of ridicule, torture, and death that came to the Creator God.  It was not Satan who spit on his redeemer, but men, who refused to see divinity wrapped in so lowly and humble a package.

The hardest part I believe, was knowing that within Him is the complete power to end it all.  Christ could have stopped everything by just letting a glimpse of His divinity show through the human veil of His suffering.  This is how He had cleansed the temple a few times before.  He allowed men to see a bit more of Him, and they fled from the source of purity as their shame required.  But during this farce of a trial, He remained silent.  Had He debated these men, He could have obtained a pardon, for His truth, was no match for their lies.  He had to remain silent in order that the conviction might stand, and the sentence be carried out.

Men spat in His face.  And He did not try to return the insult.  Rather, some of His few words were, … “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.  Christians having the Bible, and the benefit of hindsight, often like to compare what they might have done with the Biblical record in these situations had they been there instead.  Our collective instinct when presented with the horrors being inflicted on Him, would be to try to stop the proceedings.  Break Him out.  Save Him.  We were not the only one with these thoughts.  Even then countless unfallen angels, must obey the instructions of their God, to allow this to occur.  Against all their better instincts and judgments, they must watch and do nothing to prevent the torture and death of their Lord and King.  How tested heaven was.

So perhaps even if our salvation must allow His death to occur, at least we would not participate in His torture, or His humiliation – would we?  One other difference between the Jews and Romans who took part in this His night of agony and death was our basic set of beliefs.  The Jews thought Christ to be a heretic, to be an instrument that threatened the very religion He had created.  The Jews thought that if they did not put a stop to His heresy, the entire faith might be destroyed.  So He must die.  The Romans thought Him to be merely another Jewish extremist criminal.  Their racially based hatred in trying so long to subdue this rebellious people led them to despise Jews in general, and particularly the criminals they were able to actually catch.

So when they spat in His face, they were trying to humiliate someone they believed to be a threat of one kind or another.  We know who He was.  We know what it took for our salvation, and theirs.  And while it was not our own hands that took up the whip, the spear, the cross, the crown of thorns – it was still for us that this price was paid.  So how could we ever spit in the face of this much love?

I have heard some people talk about “Cheap Grace”.  The concept is that since God will forgive us all of our misdeeds each time we ask Him, we can do whatever we want to as Christians and simply ask for forgiveness later.  This idea cheapens the value of Grace, and is a part of one of the most insidious deceptions ever to attack the souls of men.  To an extent, because it is true.  It is true that each time we ask forgiveness from Him, He forgives us everything.  The problem with attempting to leverage this idea for a more corrupt advantage however, is that the farther we choose to walk away from Him, the less likely over time we are prone to return and ask forgiveness again.  At some point, we just stop asking, choosing to do the things we “enjoy” rather than seeking His will.

When I refer to this idea as “Cheap Grace” there is another reason as well.  When you sin, or embrace evil, you make it necessary again for the enormity of the sacrifice He offered to redeem you.  It stops being Roman and Jewish hands that drove the nails through your Savior, it becomes your hands by proxy.  As you continue to sin, again and again, it is less and less the Roman hands who drove a spear through His side, and more and more your hands.  As He attempts to interfere with your acts of sin, offering you a way out before you complete them, but you stubbornly choose to complete the sin you were in the process of committing – it is you who spits in the face of Christ.

Your spit, your hammer and nails, your twisted crown of piercing thorns, your spear, your cross, and your tomb.  The weight of your sins required all of this from your Creator God in order that you might be spared a life of slavery to the sins you embrace.  He would have died for only you.  To save only you.  And the salvation He offers, only you can accept for yourself.  He does not recoil from the insults you hurl at Him.  He does not leave you, because you disobey and deserve the fate you run towards.  He does not resist the nails, or the torture, He must endure to free you, because He loves you this much.  Even with your own hands as you slay Him, He dies for your redemption.

It is not the Jews, or the Romans, who need to be blamed for the death of your Savior.  The blame is found in the mirror of self.  Each of us, singularly are to blame, and collectively should share the burden of this.  The burden is NOT the guilt, but the understanding of what sin would lead us all to perform.  Sin, if left unchecked and embraced, would lead each of us to kill the savior sent to save us.  Sin is the anti-God.  When we embrace deviation from all that is good, we embrace slavery to all that is bad.  We forsake life for death with our sins and our actions, even the ones that seem so small, and harmless.  They all lead to the same result – the death of our God himself, at our own hands, our spit in His gentle face.

The Grace our Lord gives to us, was bought at tremendous price.  It was paid for in self-restraint, humility, suffering, ridicule, and even death.  The entirety of unfallen worlds, and beings, remained in check following the commands of their God and ours, to not interfere, and allow Him to die.  The enormity of this sacrifice will never be fully understood.  Why my God would do this for me, is a question I cannot answer, save to say I am His child, and He is my Father.  I am the most of unworthy, I will never deserve this, I must then learn to accept the gift He has offered.  And rather than try to be worthy, I should learn how to submit, and to serve.  For it is in service that I will find His will more closely.  It is in humility I will understand His peace so much more.   And it is in obedience to Him, that perhaps finally I can learn to stop spitting in the face of Christ …

Accountability ...

The new buzz word since the departure of the Bush administration has become accountability.  The idea is that we will hold someone responsible for the tasks they have been assigned to fix.  If they fail, they will be held to account.  Crooked CEO’s could be held to account for fraudulent or perhaps even stupid actions and decisions.  I imagine the thirst for “justice” is fairly pent-up at the moment, and this new buzz word may hang around for a while. 

It is unfortunate, but there are those in the Christian community who are more than willing to accept the truth that God is the only being capable of freeing them from their evil nature.  However, their willing acceptance of this truth is coupled with the idea that if they then continue to embrace evil, God is ultimately responsible for their evil.  Accountability can safely be transferred to God, leaving them free to do whatever comes their way.  They have correctly embraced the freedom of the gospel, but have forgotten what the gospel actually is for.

Every single individual will ultimately be responsible for the one singular choice they make – whether to accept or reject the gift of salvation God has to offer them.  This decision is monumental, as it is a life changing decision.  It has effects both here and now, as well as an entire plan beyond the scope of this world.  And unfortunately because of free-will, it is not a one-time only non-revocable deal.  Having chosen to embrace the gift of God, you remain free to change your mind and ultimately reject it later.  It is not a decision that robs you of your free-will, therefore it reinforces it.  You do not have to recommit every other day, or after every mis-step or mis-deed.  It is neither your good deeds that save you, nor your bad deeds that cause you to lose out on salvation.  It is a simple choice to follow God or not.  To accept His gift or to reject it.

One of the real problems with evil, beyond its addictive nature, and its destructive nature, is its repetitive nature and the impact it has on the overall decision making process.  Any repeated behavior becomes habit over time, even instinctual.  When engaged long enough it becomes a part of who you are at your core, and can wind itself into your genetics to be passed on for generations to come.  If evil is allowed to run unchecked it spreads like a cancer as fast as it can go, taking over every facet of mind and body, attempting to crowd out even the thoughts of a saving God alternative. 

Accepting yourself as an evil creature by design, with no ability to change yourself, is ONLY half the way to salvation.  It is not accepting yourself and therefore your evil nature as just who you are, that God is looking for.  He is looking for you to complete the thought, and embrace His power to change you.  This is the GIFT of salvation itself, a life free from evil.  That is what He is trying to give you.  Your condition is not an excuse to stay evil, it is a recognition of the need for change only He can provide.  Recognition is a wake-up call, it’s time to change, not fall back to sleep.  Recognition is not supposed to be a snooze alarm.

Those who cling to evil, do not yet see it in its truest form.  They remain deceived by its meticulous marketing campaign, refined over the last 6000 years, by the master crafter of every form of evil.  Ever since the talking snake lied in the tree in the Garden, the lies have only gotten bigger, better, and harder to uncover.  Evil has only one recourse since its failure and ultimate extinction is guaranteed – it must work harder to inflict pain wherever it can on whoever will buy this form of junk.  Satan has spent his existence glorifying that which would destroy you and criticizing that which would renew you.

Think of the emptiness that follows the pursuit of power, control, wealth, and even living forever.  All men die.  And so ends whatever wealth, health, power, or acquisitions they have managed to accumulate in their meager time on earth.  Yet all these empty vain pursuits are so glorified by Satan they become the very fabric of the American dream.  Work hard, earn a good living, buy your own home, and make life better for your kids.  Problem is, since you have no control, you can do all these things and accomplish nothing.  In the end, having achieved all these things, the meaning is still missing, because service has been all but forgotten in the chase.

Serving the poor, the destitute, those in prison (who may well be guilty, but like you, their guilt does not change their need) – these actions are considered under the category of charity which can be excused in other forms such as giving money to United Way, in church, or to the occasional homeless guy.  Actual serving of others with our own hands, feet, sweat, and time are hardly ever even considered.  Service suffers from the pursuit of our life goals (all of which have been highly influenced by evil).

Our perceptions are warped.  We must remove the shackles from our eyes and see evil for what it truly is – pain incarnate.  Pain in a box.  Pain in a shiny wrapper.  Pain for you, for those who love you, for those you love.  Evil is nothing but pain for everyone.  Every variation of evil leads back to pain.  Christians who have the audacity to declare they can sin whenever they want to, cause God is in charge of fixing them – are effectively saying – I like the pain I live in, and want to keep hurting me, you, and everyone else, cause pain is fun.  Sin is not the reward, it is the punishment.  Freedom from sin is the reward.  To not act in a way that causes pain, is the goal.

Holding on to sin, or evil, in any form is like holding a sharp knife to your own naked body, and begin cutting things here and there.  “Cutters” in our society are restrained for their own good by “thinking” people.  The reason is that the “cutters” do not recognize the pain they inflict on themselves.  They like it.  They like the feeling of cutting into their own flesh.  “Normal” people see this is as a problem.  Yet the damage evil causes is just as real as cutting oneself, or even others.  Not all of the consequences of evil are as immediate to see as cutting yourself, but often the delayed consequences carry even more damage when finally seen.

The entire point of salvation is not to accept a life of sin, it is to embrace a life free from it.  You are accountable for your decision to accept God’s gift.  In accepting this gift of freedom, you are allowing God to change what needs to be changed in your life.  In every facet of your life.  Remember that like cancer invades many things and poisons everything it touches, so evil invades your desires, your thoughts, your ideas, the very core of who you are.  To remove evil, God must begin removing, and recreating these parts of who you are down to the very core of your being.  But you can trust Him.  The things He removes, He recreates the way they were intended.

He will take away your emptiness and give you purpose.  He will identify you uniquely from every other living being who has ever lived on planet earth or who will ever live on it – and speak to your heart, heal your needs, restore your hope, and be your God.  Your life is His gift to you.  He will remove all that plagues it, all that creates pain and chaos, and give you peace.  This is the gift of God.  A reason for hope itself.  Freedom from evil that will last through eternity is the agenda He brings to you.  Isn’t this what everyone needs?  Isn’t this exactly what you need?  Will you accept a restoration with your God?

Out of the Dark ...

Gloria Estefan had a very inspiring song she used to sing entitled “Coming Out of the Dark”.  I believe she wrote it after a fairly serious car accident / personal tragedy in her life.  From time to time I still hear the powerful chorus repeating in my head and I wonder to myself, are we Christians ready to finally come out of the dark?  Are we ready to depart from spiritual Babylon and leave her to her own condemnation?

In order to answer this question the first thing you need to do is separate criticism from counsel.  Maligning motives, negative language associated with inner thoughts and feelings, tearing something down, - these are all forms of criticism and tend to inspire a defensive response in the listener.  It should not be confused with statements of fact, or even opinion, that run counter to traditional thinking. 

Telling someone they are “doing it wrong” is not the same as telling someone “they are bad”.  You could be trying to tie a necktie for example, and be doing it wrong.  This can be fixed with a little advice.  Being “bad” is more of a subjective criticism and much harder to recover from.  And to carry the example a bit farther, often there is more than one way to tie a neck tie, or even recover from “being bad” so no-one who offers advices or counsel should believe they have an absolute lock on truth.

But in order to come out of the dark, I think it is important to realize how we got here, and where the dark is.  Most people associate darkness with evil, and simply believe the acts of the church members are like those of the world, therefore this is a call away from performing evil acts.  But I do not read in this text (in Revelation for those who are looking) as a call to perfection, but a call away from confusion that surrounds us.  I believe this is a call to clarity that will lead to perfection, but not the one without the other.

When you look at “the world” and “the church” the similarities are astounding.  In point of fact it is quite difficult to tell the difference between the two.  Christians that are bold enough to declare their faith seem to get caught in acts of betraying it left and right.  Christians who try to be quiet about their faith (the greater majority by far) find themselves engaged in all the “bad” behavior of their worldly counterparts, albeit seeking forgiveness for the trespasses.  Divorce rates in the church are just as high as in the world.  Drug addiction plagues both.  Alcoholism is found everywhere.  Sexual misconduct.  Judgmentalism.  In and out of the church, it looks no better.

This is the very definition of darkness.  But why is the church lingering here?  At its core, Christian churches have abandoned the idea of the “gift of Salvation”.  We have replaced the “gift of being saved from sin” with “sanctification is the work of a lifetime”.  We have replaced the simple joy of accepting the gift, with getting “ready to meet God”.  In short, we have substituted the work of surrender to God for victory over sin, with a partnership with God where we both work on our own problems.  But partnerships do NOT work.  And so Christians get up from their knees trying harder and harder, and failing more and more, until they just stop trying altogether.

We are in this darkness not because we fail in our actions, but because we fail in our thinking.  We would not be here if we finally learned what it means to surrender our will.  To give up to win, not to try harder.  To trust that God will not let us slide back into bad behavior, but longs to free us from it altogether and forever.  The relief and the peace that comes from this knowledge is the very siren call that will lead us all away from the darkness.  This is in fact the call away from confusion.  The call away from the focus on self.  It is time to relearn submission.

These days the name or term “fundamentalist” is applied to Christians with the same accuracy as the “Patriot Act” is applied to preserving our personal freedoms.  Christians have all but lost sight of their own fundamentals.  For instance, Christians the earliest variety and therefore most pure (closest to Christ) were the first group of people on earth to adopt communism.  They pooled all their wealth, sold everything they had, lived in one accord, and gave to each according their need.  Mind you, their form of communism, was built on the foundations of belief in Jesus Christ as their Savior, so it was far from Godless, but it worked, and they followed it for many years.

The first group of Christians were so disinterested in which government was in power, that they willing accepted their lot in life, even if that life was one of a slave.  They went about their duties performing them to the best of their ability, and honoring God all the day long.  They did not rebel.  They did not seek freedom of body.  They sought and found freedom of the soul.  Today’s Christians seem bent on not only being involved with Government, but literally controlling government so that they can enact an agenda that will prevent others from performing moral misdeeds, while losing complete sight of freedom of the soul.

The first group of Christians did not have extensive wardrobes.  They worked and labored for their food and lodging.  They taught those they worked with, ate with, worshipped with, and were in prison together with.  Believers were regularly put in prison for their radical beliefs, either by the established religions who did not want the competition, or by the governments who did not understand their radical beliefs.  In either case, believers did not rebel, they merely continued the work inside of the prisons they were sent.  In these conditions, can you imagine Christians trying to preserve a collection of jewelry to wear.  More than likely that would have either been sold for money to give to the poor, or been stripped away from them by their persecutors.  In either case, humility was far easier to achieve.

The first group of Christians taught with power and miracles and wonders followed their message and ministry.  Today we don’t even trust God enough to let Him conquer the sin within us, preferring to do the work ourselves.  With a record of abject failure in this regard, we have lost all belief that miracles could be worked through us.  And with our focus so bent inward, were we to have a miracle worked through us, the attention would go to us.  The glory, the credit, the honor, and the power – would be considered embodied in us, for this is our inherent nature we have yet to learn to sacrifice on God’s altar.  Until we surrender and become devoid of self, we remain ill suited for the working of miracle through us.

Yet the call remains, … “come away from her my people”.  Christ calls us from the confusion we have so surrounded ourselves with both inside and outside of our temple walls.  He calls us to the clarity that will embrace surrender.  The realization that you cannot, but God can.  The trust in God, that He will.  And the praise to God, when He does.  The abject death of self is on our horizon.  And once we experience it, we will no longer be “doing it wrong”.  We will stand apart from the masses.  We will be a light on the hill, though it will never be our light, but His light that shines within us.

I long to be a fundamentalist, who understands the fundamentals properly.  I wish to know what Salvation means.  I wish to know how to love.  I wish to know what freedom from sin is like.  I wish to know what it is like to serve with no expectations.  I wish to be immersed in the depths of Christ and completely dead to self.  I wish no more to embrace evil, but only to understand it properly so as to avoid it forever trusting in my God to save me from its bondage.  These are just a few of the fundamentals I wish to know.  For now I see only through a glass darkly, but the call remains to … “come out of the dark”.