Disciples

The word disciple literally means a follower or student of a teacher, and the question being answered is what does it look like to make these disciples, to fulfill Jesus’ last command on earth to go and baptize men and woman, not to leave them damp with a prayer of good luck for the future, but to teach them everything commanded by their Lord.

God did not create man to walk through life alone. All men walk through life in community with friends taking the form of many varied and unusual relationships, but nonetheless, only the twisted, lonely man goes through life without any human bond. And surely most would answer they seek companionship out of a need for joy, out of a need to remain human. One pair finds community over a game of chess and coffee, and the other through intense stretching of each other’s mind in the field of science. Yet however varied, they all do so understanding, and more importantly feeling the benefit of knowing another who is like them in the most basic sense of sharing humanity. We were built to share parts of ourselves with others, whether there is much in common or only a mutual liking for chess and coffee and nothing else. A minimal mutual interest is the most basic requirement of relationship, and is itself almost riskless requiring little genuine love or self-sacrifice. If a game is the common link between two people, then the sharing of life needs to exceed little more then a common joy and the reciprocal disappointment when one of the players calls checkmate. But what of brothers or sisters who have the highest good in common? Surely this bond requires much more depth then the bonds needed to play a friendly game of chess. If the meeting ground of the two is the infinite grace, and unmatched worth of an infinite God, then there is infinitely more of the persons that must be shared. Perhaps this forms the command to sacrifice all of ourselves and consider the well being of others as more important than our own.

C.S. Lewis said we should indeed be merry in our relationships, but that our merriment should be of the most severe kind, as two people that have taken each other seriously from the beginning. When people who have Christ as their new life enter into relationship, it is required to work itself out in the upper reaches of heaven and never in the low valleys of earth where we once roamed. To share life like those who have mere hobbies to unite under would be more foolish then the man who only nibbles on crackers for his daily meal when an endless feast is arrayed on the table before him.

The call of Christ to make disciples is a call to take each other seriously, not in the solemn sense of the word, but to have significant, weighty relationships centered on the bond of Jesus. In talking about intentional discipleship between two believers, we assume that one has walked deeper and more obediently with the Lord and can truthfully say as Paul did, “follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” To make a disciple is not to create a carbon copy of oneself, but to point a person to Christ, to point them to the true source of life. Jesus in the only true vine and he commands us to abide richly in his love. “Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” The purpose of discipleship is for someone who has tasted the sweet fruit of Jesus’ love to point the other to the orchard of grace and life that is single-hearted obedience to Christ. Only the Spirit can change hearts, so we are left with the job of pointing; pointing through our day to day mundane actions, through encouragement, through prayer, through the sharp sword of scripture.

What good would it be if we did Christianity alone without help from those who had gone before us? This is the natural course of things. None of use would know how to read if someone more efficient at reading had not instructed us in the way that reading works. I need men who have walked with Jesus more deeply than I have to point me to him. I need men who have laughed and cried more then me and have trusted in Jesus to be who he is. I need men who have yearned for the Lord on deep levels I haven’t discovered, and I need men to teach me how to obey the Lord when my flesh fights with all its might. I need wiser men to be obedient to the call of Jesus to make disciples. And I must be obedient to Jesus to point the way along the road that is life, even if I have traveled but a few miles more.

Birthday Part 2

(This being Birthday Part 2 is a continuation of Birthday Part 1)

Some weeks it has been a daily and even hourly struggle to hold onto truth and keep the thoughts of my mind restrained. I could walk you through many dim valleys and high mountains I have traveled through this summer, but for the sake of time, I will save the journeys for talks over good cups of coffee and skip to the last miles of the road that leads to at least some amount of sense and clarity. There were three beacons that served as truth to get me through. The first a beam of hope my heart held onto, the second a truth that acted as rock to stand on, and the third a gift from Jesus that gave life no human could bring.

The beacon of hope was this. In the middle of the whirlwind of mental and soul distress, somewhere down deep, I knew it would all eventually end, that there would be a calming of the storm. Now I didn’t know how long it would be until it came, but somewhere in me, I had a peace that it would all end in something good. It is impossible to fully know oneself and often impossible to even have a vague outline of what you really are. But in these moments when I felt I knew almost nothing, God allowed me to KNOW that it would end well. I clung to this like a life raft, knowing that a good end could only mean that a good God was leading me through the raging ocean. This hope allowed me to keep walking, keep praying, keep searching scripture, until God showed me the second becon of truth.

The truth came out of my prayers to understand if God had intention in all of this, and if the cause was rooted in spiritual warfare or if I had just opened a new part of my brain that wouldn’t allow me to rest? Ultimately I don’t know the cause, and the answer isn’t of great importance, but the thing I found out was this. That regardless of the cause, God was allowing it to happen for some good purpose in my life and for his glory. I held onto the illustration of traveling through a dark, trap-laden cave being scraped up and bumping my head along the ceiling, but a cave that eventually opened into glory. We would be foolish to believe that God does not ALLOW us to travel through such caves to refine our faith. He does so not out of indifference but out of the very opposite of indifference being love. He loves me enough to lead me through dark places to rip out the dead parts of my soul and replace them with light. This picture gave me direction, that as long as I didn’t sit down in the cave and give up that I would reach its end. As long as I kept crawling along the jagged floor, I would reach the opening into daylight. God was not bringing me along this road by random chance, but with intense purpose and love.

(Still not done! Sorry! I promise the next part will be the last and will have a hope filled ending)

Birthday Part 1

Birthdays are a strange cause for celebration. Not that they are unnecessary, but if you really think about the end for which we celebrate year intervals of a persons life, you will realize we rarely celebrate these days to any end that actually matters. We inflate balloons, bake cakes, and hand out presents, but if we are not careful we will rejoice no further than recognizing our mere existence for another 365 days. We may as well mark every 24 hours that our heart continues to beat and our lungs continue to be filled with oxygen, and truthfully, I hope we do remember every day as a day God has worked and faithfully sustained us, and on a more grand scale, this type of acknowledgment should be all we celebrate on days we link with our births. Not just being, but how we continue to be; By God’s fierce goodness and unchallenged love.

Well today is my birthday and since I find it pointless and stupid to celebrate me alone, because there is rightly NOTHING to celebrate if we are to celebrate good things, I want to celebrate God in me, the only hope of a reason to celebrate; and in rejoicing over God’s greatness, there is much to talk about!

My last blog entry was after week two of camp at Pine Cove. A week later marked the beginning of what I consider to be a God enabled trial of faith. I remember exactly how it began, with me leaning over a washer in a dirty laundry mat in Tyler, and wondering, quite innocently at first, whether my belief on Jesus for eternal life was purely genuine enough to receive his gift. It was a small seed like question thrown onto the soil of my mind that quickly started to take deep roots and grow and consume me at a rate I had no power to control. I suddenly was so overwhelmed with doubt and fear of my eternal security that I had to leave the flurry of social interaction around me and escape to a local park a few miles away, where under the shade of a great oak tree, I prayed and read through John for hours. Gripped by sorrow, confusion, and more doubt, I lay literally incapacitated only able to cry to Jesus for something besides what was happening.

The problem for me was the word “believe”. I didn’t know if I had believed correctly enough to be forgiven. Some may see this as a trivial question thwarted with a simple, assured answer or with effortless faith, and in the middle of my doubt I would have agreed with you, but the means by which to defeat such feelings was not where my problem lied. It was in my minds ability to rest in simple faith. With every assurance of scripture would come ten doubts, every moment of relief and hope would be interrupted with the sound of a thousand lying bees pushing out soundness in the faculties of my logic. I couldn’t escape from my mind. It is a weird thing to loathe the thoughts of your intellect, but to have no power to cast them out or to stop giving notice to them. If you haven’t experienced this feeling of enslavement to your mind, it goes something like this, or at least it worked like this for me.

1)A general uneasiness would roll like a dark cloud over my soul as to the truth of my salvation.

2)I would open up to what I knew to be one of hundreds of passages about salvation through faith such as, “whoever believes in him (Jesus) should not perish but have eternal life.”

3)But what does believe mean? I have believed in the sense that on a deep level I have asked Jesus to forgive me, but how do I know that belief is genuine? Would not the true test of that believe be changed action brought about by the new belief?

4)When I look at my life, I see struggle, sin, fear, and apathy in many areas, so is this proof that my belief isn’t really genuine?

5)On the other hand I have overcome certain sin and changed in how I relate to people, but how do I know this was from the Spirit of God at work in me and not just my own will power?

6)This brings up the question of how in a given situation, I can know I do things by the Spirit and not just out of a desire for self advancement. Maybe my reason for love is deeply rooted in knowing I will eventually receive love back from that person or from an admiring onlooker who sees my “noble” spirit.

And on and on I would go thinking in irrelevant circles leading to more unwanted doubt, but not seeming to be able to stop. It is quite pathetic to read back over the way i was thinking, but this went on for some weeks until God finally through obvious situations in my life that pointed to his active preserving of me as his saint, allowed me to find some solid rock to stand on to catch my breathe. But the new enemy of my un-baptized fleshly mind has continued to haunt me throughout the summer at times, always leading to doubt in different areas of my beliefs, not just my salvation. My mind at its darkest moments was coaxed into questions about the very idea of God and absolute truth.

(I know its kind of a downer so far, but I'm being called to go eat my birthday dinner at a some fancy restaurant…can’t complain! But I promise to tell of the glorious part of all this tomorrow :) )

Week 2

I considered my chance to read over coffee this morning more valuable than a lengthy entry, so i have only a few minutes to share my week. My second cabin was challenging in that the 9th graders i had grew up in church, but for most it was little more than empty words and to my eyes little passion was perceivable for Jesus. The first two days saw little opening or honesty on their part, but the Spirit moved half way through the week in a powerful way, opening the eyes of two of my campers to the gospel leading toward faith in Christ. God knows if they have truly been adopted as his children, but i am hopeful that change of heart and spirit was true and not just head knowledge. That they did not simply acquire and understand knowledge as a scribe, but as a prophet they gazed into the burning that is God to see the deepest love. That they can now say that Jesus is their treasure is what i hope is truth now for them.

On a separate note i have been reminded once again through the book The Pursuit of God, that to know God as a person is my one and overpowering goal of every second of my life. That "God wills that we should press on into his presence and live our whole life there. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed." I wish i had more time to write about what God has been teaching me, but time has run out! I am continually amazed by the depths and joy that is knowing God and pray that i will know him all the more in Spirit and not just head knowledge. To dare to utter the meekest syllable to the Center who holds every molecule, every star, every human in place is a terrifying thing apart from the quality of love, yet our Creator is love and thus we can utter all the louder that He would truly be the center of every thought and longing for true life. "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You."

Amen

Diamonds and Smoke

Untucked shirts and the ceasing of chants and various yells marked the end of week 1 at Pine Cove. I truly believe God was made more real and viewed more accurately in the lives of most of my cabin, but for the other few, we can only wait and pray to the God who grants belief to the dead. It was a week of exhaustion, reliance on God, and brokenness at times. But overall, a week that will last for eternity more then most weeks of my life, not because of my own good doings, but because of a lack of the ability to escape trial and hardship, a lack of a place to run from situations not pleasing to my natural flesh. And for this i am most thankful to the Father. In the few minutes i have, i want to share two things that God taught me this week that have stuck in my mind.
The first has to do with God showing me the utter death that is existing apart from Christ. There is something about spending every waking and sleeping moment with eight graders or really anyone for that matter, that allows you to see what people are really made of. The hopelessness of one of the kids in my cabin was made visible to my soul during a time of worship. He was a camper i had talked with extensively about his need for Jesus, but not wanting to submit to God, he continues to live on the treacherous edge of a "form of religion" without submission or the receiving of grace. The beauty of Christ surrounded my lifted affections as the room was filled with the praises of the King, this child standing in front of me perhaps thought it foolish that we would sing so fervently to someone unseen. And in that moment i started to cry for him. I could sense the death and meaninglessness that surrounded his life, and at the same time, the light that is Christ in me seemed much brighter in contrast to his darkness. I wanted him to know what i knew, to taste what i was tasting, to eat what I had feasted on. But for all my longing, i realized it was only the Spirit that could make his heart soft. Tears welling up, voice shouting, i pleaded that God would change his heart. And now we come to the title of this entry, Diamonds and Smoke. Even in my moment of brokenness, unspeakable joy was right there with me. The joy that comes when a child discovers he has a natural talent for sports, or the confidence that comes when a man learns he is the descendant of a proud line of forefathers, the joy that comes when you realize you have come into something radiant and bigger than yourself. When two similar bodies of bone, flesh, and pumping blood become completely different because one is more real than the other. And that is precisely what it was, i realized i was more real then the lost soul in front of me. What we lived for, what we had been saved to was completely different. Myself to the infinite river of life and him to nothing but fading things, myself filled with the ultimate reality, himself worshipping the empty creations of the reality. And there we stood, my soul clashing like a diamond against a cloud of vapor or fading smoke. A diamond that was created for the streets of heaven where I will spend forever worshipping the one who takes living phantoms and makes them perfect, radiant, real, worthy to stand in the presence of the consuming fire. For we will be made like him! We are so much more than flesh and bone in Christ!

You will have to ask me about the other thing...i need to get some lunch before opening day...

Pray for me this week that i will rely on the strength of God, that i will be a champion of weakness, that i will do nothing for the approval of man but for God alone, and that i will remember that my number one priority is not to love these kids but to know God first and then to love.

Love you guys...and by guys i mean guys and gals!

Week 1

In an hour i will start camp meetings, shortly followed by the first flood of campers into pine cove. Im sitting at Starbucks of course being filled by the Spirit for an intense week of loving on 8th and 9th graders. This last week of orientation, while slow at times, has been a time of growth and learning. My understanding of suffering for the Lord has deepened and this is the thing i am most exited about going into this week, that i may be pushed to a point of exhaustion, lack of patience, lack of love, and complacency, that in my utter weakness and inability to do anything good, I will turn to Christ and be overcome by the power of the Spirit. I just read the story of David and Goliath. Cliche for going into a week of facing the monster of adolescent teens, i know. But the power and assurance of God's character runs like fire through the veins of David, surrounds him with a potency of confidence completely of God and not in his own ability. Goliath is a "champion" of men, of his own physical strength and ability in battle. He is no weak warrior of Gath to be tossed about by those who rely partially on God as the nation of Israel did, but a wall of impenetrable confidence in himself. David is a champion of weakness. He is weak in himself having little more then stones and a sling but he comes with a tenacity in the strength of the God of Israel. See what he says to Goliath...I love it!

"You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but i come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and i will strike you down and cut off your head. And i will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands."

David is a warrior of weakness because he knows God is a fierce opponent who will not have his name defiled! The battle is the Lord's and i am lacking strength!

Father, i ask you, the one who gives to those not lacking faith, that you would break me down to the point of suffering for your name that in my weakness i may be moldable by your Spirit and given strength that is unquestionably other than myself, and i will then see your strength and not my own. Remind me that the battle is the Yours, and i will run forward with a fire in my soul ready to do whatever you have asked because i know you are a destroyer of iniquity and a lover of the broken down. Holy, Holy, Holy are you unchangeable King of lilies, chipmunks, and the souls of immortal men on knees of reverence.

Pray for me!!!

Eternity

I have recently understood something about myself I never thought to be out of the ordinary. I realized that I don’t want to die, that I fear death. Of course this fear is anything but out of the ordinary from the worlds view, from those who have landed on earth and claimed it as their home. But this view is out of the ordinary for people who don’t belong here, and Jesus said I do not belong here forever. If eternity were an ocean, we now live in the midst of one drop, and for myself, much of my energy and concern goes into focusing on this one drop. Rarely do I take account of the expanse in front of me. But here is the peculiar thing, for us individually the vast ocean of eternity is in a sense determined by this drop. I mean of course for those who are being sanctified, what we did in the midst of our one drop will one day be presented to our Father to see what mattered for eternity. I shudder at the thought of standing in front of the throne of God, not because I question his love or grace in the cross of Christ, but for this reason. I fear the regret I will have when I finally have the eyes to see life the way my Father sees it. Surely on that day, I will say, “If I had only known!” But I do know! The tattered book right next to me tells me two things I beg God that I would believe! The first is that for every man, “his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” And the second that the righteous will not be put to shame, while the wicked will perish. Their fate, which David reminds us to remember, is death. These two truths matter to me because they cut through the veils of deception my broken eyes see through here on earth. The lies of my old self whisper every time I try to do good. The lips dripping with poison are not my own, they belong to the old person that wages war against what I have said is truth. When I want to do things that will survive the purifying fire of God’s testing, evil is right there fighting against the work of the Spirit. Paul cried, who will save me, this wretched man that I am! Help Jesus! Through you we have the Spirit of life and peace, the power to see what is real. Baptize my eyes! If only I saw my actions through the testing question, “will this matter for eternity?” Sadly, many days go by which my answer to this question would have to be searched for to long, often only to find a quiet dissatisfied heart unable to speak in the light of forever. But Jesus heals, he transforms, he renews the dead bones to live with flesh and life, and he can heal my eyes, my heart! For your glory and my joy, teach me how to see, to love the things you love, and never to worship thing that will be incinerated due to worthlessness or to head the opinion of man who has only a breath! Beautiful Jesus, wrap my heart and soul up in the flood of your purifying changing love. Sweet Jesus Christ, more precious than honey and much gold! I love you!

Good Friday

Today we solemnly celebrate the day our Lord was nailed to a piece of wood and appeased the wrath of his holy father, and I am one of the many who brought about his furious anger. We all could surely list the more blatant and horrendous offenses we are guilty of, and yet the most simple, or at least simple to our blind hearts, have led toward this fury.

I am thankful, for I see the beauty of creation and my soul is stirred and takes pleasure, but to the wrong end. In the midst of my inner stirrings, i recognize i have been wired to enjoy things and naturally, to give praise.

But i have not praised you...i thank the pleasure beauty brings me.

I worship, for a hot cup of coffee enhances my senses and i love the sensation it brings me as bitter smooth liquid flows down my throat, and steam delights my sense of smell.

But i am an idolater...i worship an idol that is dead.

I constantly exalt, for i have put my trust and satisfaction in the words and opinions of others, i have found comfort for my short circuiting soul in a cone of ice cream, i have numbed sorrow with inanimate objects, i have tried to push back the clouds of sorrow by drowning out death with music, conversation, technology.

But i glorify the mortal...and refuse to come to the immortal Creator.

I have lied, cheated, lusted, hated, cursed, worshiped idols, enjoyed the creation rather than the creator.

I was your enemy, hated you with every fiber of my being...And what have you done with my offense. Did you simply erase sin and cancel my offense as someone decides to erase a pencil mark with no consequence.

NEVER!!! You focused the fullness of your hate for evil, you spilt pumping, warm blood over the leather of whips, over the planks of wood, over the steel of nails. You propitiated you wrath, you satisfied your anger, but not onto the offender. How great the Fathers love for us! "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Romans 3:25"

Thank you Jesus for your love for us. While we were evil sinners, you took our wickedness upon thee and paid for it in full. I can't not begin to thank you for your sacrifice! I love the Lord!

Prayer Part 1

I have realized over the break that i know close to nothing about prayer! So I have dedicated a good part of the break to seeking Jesus’ heart and example in this most sacred of disciplines. In the words of Andrew Murray, I have enrolled myself in the school of prayer as an ignorant student who knows very little on how to follow the example of Christ. Up till now tradition has guided most of my schooling. By this I mean I have learned by the way of mimicking the prayers of more mature believers in church settings, as they most likely followed the generations before them. Is this mimicking beneficial? Of course! Through the Spirit, I have learned from the prayers of others that follow the heart of Christ, yet I have also learned the pattern Christ warned against, “do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues…to be seen by men,” and after the empty words of those, “babbling like pagans.” It is the latter examples that worry me and my consistent prayer of these empty words have exposed my lack of understanding. Do I pray empty words? Do I have faith prayer works? Do I know Jesus’ heart behind prayer? Does prayer change the mind of God? My lack of personal study and Spirit led interest has kept me from feasting on solid food, has kept me from graduating from the elementary levels! As Murray says, “As long as we look on prayer chiefly as the means of maintaining our Christian life, we shall not know fully what it is meant to be!...The highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other works.” The delight of prayer is the flavor and aroma of the lives of the saints before us. Martin Luther said if he did not begin his day with two hours of prayer, he considered much of the day lost to the devil. Prayer in Jesus’ life was as regular as his heartbeat, always slipping away and awakening early to talk to the Father.

So I have been reading books, listening to sermons from men such as Piper, Chandler, and Driscoll, studying the word and whatever else I can find to try and understand prayer and ultimately to learn to pray, that my joy may be increased as God is glorified. There’s my intro…and actually as I read over it again, it seems quite serious like I haven’t talked to anyone or laughed in a few days! HaHa! That’s funny! Anyways, I plan on trying to write a little of what I have learned every few days in hopes that it will move whoever reads this to enroll in the school of prayer where Christ is the perfect teacher, ready and willing to instruct all who come to learn. So be encouraged and check everything I say with the Bible, because as I said, I am mere infant in this school.

Lord, the way of prayer is simple enough for a child to cry Abba, yet its deepest mysteries unfathomable to the eldest saint. I plead the highest ignorance to the means by which I could ask for anything at the feet of the consuming fire. Lord, teach us to pray! Is my cry, my heartbeat. You are a great teacher and so I have faith. Teach us Lord the most perfect way that we may enter into the beauty of prayer and thus have power to do your work on earth. Enroll us in the school of prayer! Amen.