Which Image

Which Image

I stood before the mirror, two images did I see;

One had a heart surrendered in worship to the King.

The other image, head held high, “my life is my own” did decree.

I stood before the mirror, two images did I see;

The call of the Savior to each was clearly given,

Deny yourself, take up your cross and come, learn of me.

I stood before the mirror, two images did I see;

One responding with a heart for grace and truth, cried out “make me like You again”

The other me, I could see, cared little for the souls of men.

It’s only concern, I have learned, was how others may benefit me.

I stood before the mirror, two images did I see;

One was the image of the Savior, living life through me.

The other – pale, empty, vain – was the image of me serving me.

I stood before the mirror, two images did I see;

The only question that remained,

As I turned to face the day,

Is which image would I be?

The Two Rich Men

In a span of just a few verses, Luke introduces us to two very wealthy men, the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-30) and Zacchaeus the very wealthy tax collector (Luke 19:1-9).  Jesus is in the last months of his earthly ministry.  For over three years Jesus has been traversing the Judean countryside, traveling from village to village and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.  It is hard to imagine there are any in Israel that have not heard of Him and formed some opinion of this rabbi from Nazareth.  Each of these men knew about Jesus.  One man came to Jesus seeking instruction on inheriting eternal life.  The other man came to Jesus just curious to see the man causing all the uproar.  One man, Zacchaeus the curious tax collector, experienced a change of heart in the presence of Christ and his life was forever changed.  The rich young ruler left with his heart unchanged and saddened.

The differences between the interactions of Christ with each man were determined by the need of their heart and where they needed to allow faith to take them.  Each man had the opportunity to profess faith in Christ and propel them into eternal life.  The young rich ruler viewed eternal life as something with dividends and benefits down the road.  He had evidently not heard “I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly” or “from your innermost being will flow rivers of life”.  Jesus is about the hereafter but He also is about the here and now.  To each man Jesus offered, and still offers to each man and woman, life in abundance now; the foretaste of eternal life.  So, Jesus gave to each the opportunity for faith to reveal Him to them as the Christ and to act on that revelation.  This is the grace of God.  We cannot come to this understanding on our own.  Our hearts must be enabled to know Him and our need of Him.  This was the case of Peter when he made his pronouncement “You are the Christ of God”.  Jesus informed him that this realization did not come by natural means but by God’s working.  This is the grace of God and when it happens it must be seized, believed and confessed.  It is the case for everyone.

Jesus gave the rich young ruler several opportunities to accept the truth of Christ, profess that faith and act upon it.  First, the young ruler called Christ good.  Jesus seeking clarification, because the rich young ruler needed clarification in his own heart, asked him why he called Him good when no one is good except God alone.  There and then this man had the opportunity and the empowerment to believe and profess faith in Christ.  He had the chance to say “I believe you are the Messiah, I believe you are Immanuel, God with us.  I call you good because I believe you are God.”  He did not say it because he did not want to believe it.  If Christ is not God then He is certainly not good but vile because He claimed to be equal to His Father.  As with this young ruler, our calling Jesus Christ good, a great teacher, a moral example, a great religious philosopher are only platitudes.   They are defenses against dealing with the real question concerning Jesus.  Is He Lord and Savior or not?  If He is, then He is to be believed and obeyed.  If He is not, then He offers nothing but lunacy.

Jesus presses on in His examination of this man’s heart.  (The examination was not for Christ’s sake but for the patients.)  Christ tells him to keep all the man-ward commandments.  This young man said he had been doing these since a boy.  He knew keeping these commands were not the whole answer so he asked “what do I lack” – Matthew 19:20.  Jesus, according to the Mark 10:21, looked at this young man and “loved him”.  Jesus wanted this young man to know the truth, be set free by the truth and live the abundant life that comes from the Truth so He gave him another chance to profess Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah of God.  The one thing he lacked was Christ, the most important thing.  Jesus did not tell him to keep the Godward commands or even sum them up by telling him to “love the Lord thy God with your heart, soul, mind and might.  Jesus equated obedient faith in Him with the keeping the Godward commands and with loving the Lord.  “Sell what you have, provide for the needy and come follow me.”  The realization was there.  The understanding was there.  The empowerment was present.  Life now and forever was in his grasp.  To his heart Christ spoke, because He loved him, “do you believe in Me”?  Eternal life and abundant life are predicated on this belief.  This rich young ruler could not confess it with his mouth or confirm it by his actions.  He left the presence of Christ sad because he had many possessions and had chosen the temporal over the eternal.

It has been said Jesus was only asking the rich young ruler to only be willing to part with his possessions.  That may well be true.  He did not ask Zacchaeus to part with all his wealth.  We will never know this for sure.  What we do know is that Christ thought so much of him, loved him so much, He was ready to give him the same relationship with God known by Abraham.  God had told Abraham essentially the same thing He told this young man.  Isaac was everything to Abraham yet he was instructed to take “your son, your only son, whom you love” and offer him as a sacrifice to God.  Relationship with God, eternal life aside, meant so much to Abraham that he was willing to obey.  When the issue had been settled in Abraham’s heart, God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac and from that time on called Abraham His friend.

He wanted to call the rich young ruler His friend as well.  He wants to call us friends.

Zacchaeus, by comparison, was drawn by curiosity to just see Jesus in person.  We are not made privilege to the conversation and the fellowship between Jesus and Zacchaeus that day.  What we do know is during that time Zacchaeus grasped the revelation of faith, seized it with his heart, professed it with his mouth and confirmed it with his actions.  “Look Lord, I give half my possessions to the poor and if I have cheated any man, I will repay him four times the amount.”  It was a confession of what Zacchaeus believed in his heart.  “I believe you are the Christ of God, the Messiah, Immanuel.  You are God with us!”  The dividends and benefits were immediate; “today has salvation come to this house”.  Abundant life flowed and it changed Zacchaeus and affected those around him.

May we listen closely to Holy Spirit as He seeks to clarify issues of our heart. He works relentlessly to reveal Christ in us, transform us and give us life.

May we be quick to grasp faith, shout it from the roof tops and live it in the streets.

Looking at us, Jesus loves us, and longs to call us “friends”.

Further Up and Further In!

The Laver

Moses was given very specific instructions regarding the construction of the tabernacle.  Every detail was covered from the various materials for the curtains, how to construct the curtains, the type of wood to be used and where, the precious materials, the specific size and construction of the furnishings of the tabernacle.  Read through the account in Exodus to see how detailed the instructions were, even down to the attire of the priests.  My point here is two-fold.  First, our God is a God of the details.  He leaves nothing to chance.  So, do not ever think who you are or what you are going through is not important.  It may not be to anyone else.  But it is with Him.  He told Moses how to the ring curtains were to be made so they could be hung and joined correctly.  Remember, hairs on your head…numbered.  Lily of the field…provided for.  The lowly sparrow…knows it.

Our God, the creator God, the God who gave us Himself, can be loved, can be trusted: purpose in your heart today to love Him and to trust Him.  Confess it to yourself.  Confess it to Him in praise and adoration.  Ask Him to enlarge your heart.  Way too many folks out there have a Grinch issue when it comes to the size of their heart towards God.  I do not want to be one of them.  The Father, by the workings of grace, will expand our hearts.  He desires to expand our hearts.  He works to expand our hearts.  Let’s let Him.

The second reason why it is important to know how detailed the instructions were that Moses received directly impacts the next article of the tabernacle we want to learn from, the laver.  The furnishing of the tabernacle like the altar of sacrifice and the Ark of the Covenant had very specific dimensions for length, width and height.  The laver did not.  Moses was told the material to be used to construct the laver, where it was to be placed in the tabernacle and how and when it was to be utilized.  No dimensions were given regarding its size or its shape.  The other items of the tabernacle also came with specific instructions for handling and transportation.  The laver did not.

It was constructed from the highly refined brass mirrors owned by the women of Israel.  It was positioned in the courtyard of the tabernacle between the altar of sacrifice and the Holy Place.  It was filled with water.  The priests were instructed to stop at the laver and wash their hands and feet before they proceeded with their ministry unto the Lord in the Holy Place.  A solemn warning accompanied this directive, “that they die not”.  Understand that extreme care and caution were used by the priests as they prepared for their ministry in the tabernacle.  They along with their garments were meticulously prepared, cleaned, for service.  The sacrificial system of the tabernacle was a messy, dirty affair, just like life.  It was often down right hard work, just like life.  The priests, once pristine in their clean linen garments, themselves ceremonially clean, were now dirty.  They were in need of a cleansing, in need of a time of refreshing, before moving past the first curtain into the chamber known as the “Holy Place”.  The laver was there for the purpose of cleansing and refreshing.  It was indeed a wash basin.

See the picture of the priest moving from the altar of sacrifice toward the laver.  The highly refined brass of the laver reflected his image and revealed his need for cleansing.  The water it contained provided the means for the priest to be cleaned and to be refreshed.  It equipped them to move further up and further in to God’s presence.

The Word of God is our laver.

It is a mirror for us of our current spiritual condition and where we need cleansing (James 1:22-25).  It also amazingly reflects what we are called to be in Christ Jesus.  Like the laver, it is not bound by size dimensions.  It is limitless in its scope and in its power.  It has relevance in the life of the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich.  It is concerned over what we label as the most trivial of things to the grandest.  The Word of God makes no such distinction.  Its impact is profound. Yet it finds its greatest means of transportation and distribution in and through the lives of those who believe.  The Word of God does cleanse and refresh us, but the cleansing and refreshing is so much more that we have imagined.  The Bible is not a dead book.  It is more than a history book.  It is more than a religious book.  It is more than a book to be read.  It is a book to be encountered.

When we encounter the Word of God, we are encountering Christ.

Revelation 19:13 tells us that the name of Jesus is “Word of God”.  No wonder He would say to His disciples “you are clean through the Word which I have spoken to you” – John 15:3.  And so are we.  In His prayer as our High Priest, He asked the Father to set us apart and prepare us for His service (sanctify) by the Word of Truth.  He then added “Your Word is Truth” – John 17:17.  Paul tells us Christ cleanses His church through the “washing with water through the Word” – Ephesians 5:26.  The emphasis here is not on a one time cleansing occurring somewhere in the past but an ongoing encounter.  The Word of God does cleanse, it does refresh and it empowers us.  It is our spiritual milk – I Peter 2:2.  It is our spiritual bread – Matthew 4:4.  We need the Word of God for spiritual sustenance.  Hebrews 4:12 tells us the Word of God is living and active.  We need to allow it to be alive and active in our lives.

In order to proceed deeper into God’s presence, we must encounter the laver, the Word of God that lives and abides forever.  We have been invited to come “further up and further in”.

We Need The Word

It is no accident the Apostle John chose the Greek word “logos” to uniquely identify the deity of the Lord Jesus (John 1:1-4; 14).  It is also the word James is inspired by the Holy Spirit to employ when describing the means the Father used to bring His will to fruition in the new birth (James 1:18).  In the Greek culture, which was religious to the point of paranoia and superstition – they had an altar erected to the “unknown god” in case they had overlooked the worship of some deity as they did not want to offend it (Acts 17:23) – the philosophers had come to use a word to embody all that was good and pure and honorable and noble about a supreme being.  It essentially embraced all the highest and loftiest aspects of all their understanding of their deities.  All these characteristics were said to reside in this being or thought, the fullness of all the worshipped entities in one supreme being.  The word they chose is of course the word “logos”.  Except the Greeks had one problem.  Their “logos” was so pure and high, such a lofty idea and concept, it was beyond knowing or encountering.

So John proclaims in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Word (logos) was with God and the Word (logos) was God”.

Thank God for the grace of God.  For in Christ Jesus, the Logos of God, the unknowable is known and we may have intimate relationship with that which is too majestic to encounter.  For John and James both proclaim that in God’s “Logos” there is life.  The idea becomes reality, the concept is our Creator and our Savior.  We are not longing and searching for the unattainable.  Revelation 3:20 – “I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me.”  Intimacy of encounter.  Relationship.  Fellowship.  I John 1:3 – “…our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”

We are so limited in our understanding and vocabulary to adequately discuss the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Logos of God and of man.  What we must know is the Greatest of the greats, the Purest of the pure, became flesh and dwelt among us.  Christ is not just the epitome of our hopes and aspirations for what we want God to be like.  He is God.  He said Himself that “he who has seen me has seen the Father” and “my Father and I are One” – John 14:9; John  10:30.

If we are going to find peace, purpose and fullness of life in our life, it will only be through Christ Jesus.  “He who has the Son has life.  He who does not have the Son of God does not have life” –  I John 5:12.

Let us take one step further.  It is no accident that Christ is referred to as the Word and that we are given new birth through the Word of truth.  Peter will tell us that we were “born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which lives and abides forever” – I Peter 1:23.  When we encounter the Word of God, we are not just experiencing thoughts, reflections and meditations about God.  We are in fact experiencing and encountering Christ, the Logos of God, and the Author of the new birth.

So the question becomes why do we shy away from the scriptures?  To encounter the scriptures is to encounter Christ.  And to encounter Christ is to encounter life!

We life in a marvelous age and yet for all the advances in science, medicine and technology we have lost something crucial.  We have lost the personal encounter with the God who loves us and gives us life.  No, I am not saying we are not saved and not going to heaven.  This is beyond these fundamentals.  We do not encounter the Word of God and so we do not encounter Christ.  And because we do not encounter Christ and His life, our lives get out of balance and we look for the advances of man or the next relationship to set things right in our life.  Not ever going to happen.  We are always going to need one more prescription, one more gadget, the next greatest and latest of whatever it is that will set things right.  Folks, what we need is Jesus.  In Him is the fullness of life.

There is a solution for what ails our hearts.  It is the Word of God.  Over the next several weeks, find some time, 5 – 10 – 15 minutes a day –  we all have time we can spare – or more if you desire and read the Word of God.  Many who read this have a time with Christ in His Word.  For those who do not, start you’re reading in the gospel of Matthew or John.  Encounter the Christ.

The second part of the prescription is memorization.  Wait.  Don’t stop reading.  It is easier than you think and the benefits, mercy, the benefits.  Do it with your kids, your spouses,  your co-workers or by yourself.   As you begin to work on memorizing key verses and passages of the Word of God, something remarkable will begin to transpire in you.  It is called life.  It provides hope, joy, peace and love.

Colossians 3:16 is an excellent first scripture to put to memory.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

This is a bedrock scripture all believers should know and live by.  Write it down on an index card, print it on a post it note or several post-it notes.  Put them on your computer monitor, bathroom mirror, and refrigerator or wherever you will see it.  Work at it a word at a time, then a phrase, then a sentence.  Pray it.  Sing it.  Meditate on it.  Encourage one another with it.

Amazingly, as you take the Word of God into your heart, transformation will begin to occur.  And the life of God will begin to reign in your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  When we encounter the Word of God, we are encountering Jesus!

Know Him.  Go further up and further in.

Glorious Encounters

Bless the Lord O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name.

Before we proceed any deeper in our walk through the tabernacle, there are a couple of things that are very important for us to understand. First, remember that the opportunity to encounter Jehovah God starts with Jesus. We cannot encounter the Father or understand anything of His love without first going through the gate of new life, the transforming life that comes through faith in the Only Begotten Son of the Father. Because we have been born again, not by the will of man but by the will of God, we are become children of God. We have been adopted into His family. To the Jews of His day, it was an amazing thing that Jesus called God His Father. We do not understand the intimacy of the word “father”. The Jews did though and they understood the intimacy it embraced and the uniqueness of the relationship it contained. So, when Jesus referred to God as “Father” or “my Father”, they knew what He was saying. The religious leaders considered it blasphemous for Jesus to call God “Father. Now consider this, Paul tells us in Roman 8:14-17 that because we have received the spirit of sonship, we can rightfully cry out (and should cry out) “Abba” which means Father. We have a unique relationship with our creator God because of our faith in Christ Jesus. We can and we should have an intimate relationship with the Father. Explore it, let the relationship grow, love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, with all your might! Let the Father nourish, protect and uphold you.

The other thing that we need to understand is the difference between what the worshipers of God in the tabernacle experienced and what we experience as we spiritually visit the stations of service in the tabernacle and learn their lessons of spiritual service. The priests in their tabernacle duties did not get close to the presence of God until they had entered into the room known as the “holy place”. The service performed at the brazen altar and at the laver, our next study stop, was just that to them, required service. There was no divine encounter. There was no life changing revelation. There was no knowledge that they were in the presence of the Almighty God. To them it was a means to an end, but to us, a means to an end, sort of, kind of, but also, no. Our end or goal is the intimate, personal encounter with our Father. But bless the Lord, we do not have to jump through hoops or go through a scavenger hunt list of things to do before we get into His presence.

In the time you set aside every morning to purposefully enter into His presence, He is there. When you are practicing the lessons learned by the altar of sacrifice, His Holy Spirit is there. When you are offering yourself to the Father as a living sacrifice, He is there. The divine encounter that is so life changing and upon which we are so dependent is not at the end of a tedious process. It is in every step of the process. He will consume the sacrifice we offer, ourselves, with all of our faults, fears, hurts, failures (polite way to say sins), strengths, gifts and on and on. In the consuming of our sacrifice, He encounters our lives and He transforms our hearts and our minds.

Now, every morning (I say morning because that is the time I meet with Him) when we are offering ourselves up to our great God, will the “ground shake” or the “heavens open”. No, there will not always be the feeling of the grand emotional encounter, which, when it does happen, really feels good. If every time we presented ourselves before God there was this great emotional event, we would ultimately devote ourselves to pursue that feel good feeling and miss the mark. We are to be pursuing the Father. We serve not by feeling or by emotion. We serve by love in faith. And while love does, thankfully, have an emotional element, it also, thankfully, is much more than emotion. At times I am offering myself to God and I feel nothing. He is there though. He is working, purifying, and conforming my life. There are times I weep. There are times I find myself grinning from ear to ear. There are times I find myself being very vocal. There are times that I am as silent as the grave. There are times of deep exploration of my heart. There are times when the focus is on everyone else but me. Our encounters with the Father will be as multi-faceted as He is! What a world of potential for us to explore.

For the priests of the tabernacle, their service at the brazen altar and then the task they performed at the laver were just that – service and tasks – necessary for them to do in order to move on toward the tent of meeting and the presence of God. For us, these “service and tasks” are not burdens but joys. They are venues from which grace flows. They are means of His Spirit wooing our hearts, inviting our heart to come “further up and further in” into the heart of the Father.

Our Father is encountering our lives. Make yourself available.

Love to you all.

Bless the Lord.

Back To The Altar

I hope you are carrying with you today the knowledge of how loved you are by the Father and how important you are to His heart!

I hope that each of you is seeking to chisel out 5, 10 or 15 minutes a day to find that place of solitude, surrender and commitment to God.

The declaration of Jesus for your life is “I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly” – John 10:10. Professing Jesus is Lord and being born again is the beginning place for us, not the end. It is the shot of the starter’s pistol, not the finish line. It is the arrow, not the target. We have entered through the gate, through Christ, into a new world of wonder and surprise, literally, into a life we could never know apart from Jesus with the promise that serving upon serving of life in abundance awaits us! A new life, Abundant Life! Do not be content to have entered through the gate and go no further. To do so frustrates the plan of God for His Kingdom as well as for your life. It frustrates the Grace of God that seeks to lead you into intimate relationship with the Father. It will frustrate you!

When you are physically hungry and decide to go out for a meal. You get yourself cleaned up, drive to the restaurant of your choice and enter into its lobby. The smells tantalize your senses. Then what? Do you proceed to the hostess station to be seated or do you just plop down in the lobby area letting the delicious, inviting and aromatic smells entice your sense of smell? As wonderful as the smells are and as much as you enjoy them, they are not the purpose of your trip. You would not sit in the lobby for 15 or 20 minutes and then decide I am full, I have had enough and leave the building. No, you would go deeper, wanting to broaden the experience and allow them to seat you so you may enjoy to the fullest the pleasures that are available to you.

For us to not be seeking intimate audience with the King of Glory is more foolish than going to a restaurant and being satisfied with just smelling the fare. David declared “in thy presence is fullness of joy and at thy right hand (that is where Jesus is, the right hand of the Father, and this refers to personal, intimate knowledge of him) are pleasures for evermore” – Psalm 16:11. No wonder David would cry out “O taste and see that the Lord is good” Psalm 34:8.

The desire, the goal, that I believe God is wanting to work in your life, through the truths we can learn from the tabernacle and apply to our lives, is to teach us that God’s presence is intimate, accessible and practical. These truths will lead us into and teach us processes that will take us deeper into God’s presence.

Remember Romans 12:1, 2. Paul tells us that our basic worship is to present ourselves as a living sacrifice. This entire passage has the connotation of continually doing this process, over and over, again and again. Remember we discussed earlier that the cross was Christ’s altar of sacrifice. It is where He ultimately surrendered Himself to do the will of His Father. The cross is also our place of sacrifice and surrender. While we are not going to be physically hung on a cross to be put to death, spiritually we identify with what Jesus has done. We are able to make His sacrifice ours. We are able then, spiritually, to follow His example of love and service and offer ourselves to our God. Consider then what Jesus said to the 12 in Luke 9:23 following Peter’s confession that they, the disciples, believed “you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” – Jesus said “if any will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me”.

It is critical, as we learn to pursue Jesus, as we learn to answer to the heart of the Father to “know me” that we understand, practice and experience a time of surrender and submission. It is where grace leads us and where grace teaches us to cry out with our whole heart “not my will but your will be done”.

O taste and see that the Lord is good!

Encounter Him today. Do not let anything stand in your way.

Great grace and great blessings to you all today.

With His love. 

“We trust, not because a god exists, but because this God exists.”

– C. S. Lewis

Six Things To Know

There is a companion book you should read as we journey through James’ letter.  It is the Book of Proverbs.  I encourage you to read through the Proverbs.  As you do, I trust that you will see from the Book of Proverbs to this short letter to Jewish believers of Christ some 1000 years later, the cord of spiritual truth, weaving through these books, seeking to knit our hearts together with the Father and with one another in the fellowship of believers.

Beloved of Christ, the Father has such great hope for your life.  Do not allow your focus and your affections stray from His Great Heart – Jesus!  Do not allow your concept or attitude of the One who loved us and gave Himself for us be determined in you and for you by the misconceptions of the world, or by your own intellect and reasoning.  Trust in the Lord with ALL of your heart and don’t learn on your own understanding.  Position yourself squarely in the center of a surrendered heart, humble and broken, hungry to know Him.

Since James is the earliest of all the New Testament books, I find it very interesting that the first lesson we are taught concerns hardships, disappointments, troubles, problems, difficulties and how we are to respond to them.  Understanding and living in James 1:2 -4 is so critical to our relationship with Christ.  In all reality, if we do not “get this right” in our hearts, our relationship with Christ will be tumultuous, at best, full of questions and doubt on our part.  We will not know the peace of God that passes all understanding which Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:7.  We will not know joy that is unspeakable, inexpressible and glorious, Peter wrote about in I Peter 1:8.

For those who will answer the call to come “further up and further in”, we are going to experience more clearly and more intimately than ever what Paul meant in Philippians 2:12, 13 when he said “continue to work out your salvation (that is your personal, intimate relationship with the Father), with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.

Before we nose dive into James, I believe that there are 6 important lessons for us to learn from the 3 verses of James 1:2-4. I think it is important for us to have these in our hearts and minds as we move forward. These are not listed in any order as to importance.  They are all important.

One – The Father has a purpose and a plan for your life with eternal ramifications. (Your life is of much more value and worth than what you have ever considered)

Two – For you, personally, the Father’s working in your life is redemptive in nature. (He is seeking to realize His purpose and plan for your life)

Three – The Father’s working in your life is to be redemptive for others. (Christ lived redemptively for us; we are called to live redemptively for others. Your life is an open letter from the Father to others for them to read, and know Him. You are a visual aid for the love and forgiveness of Christ.)

Four – Do not let the circumstances and problems you face define your life.

Five – Do not let the circumstances and problems you face define your understanding of the Father or dictate the framework of your relationship with Him.

Six – The Father is always positioning us so we may know Him, encounter Him.

I John 3:1 – How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

I join with the Apostle Paul today and in asking the Father to give you all the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

Blessings to all.  Further Up and Further In

Papa Tom

“We trust, not because a god exists, but because this God exists.”

– C. S. Lewis

Choosing The Right Fuel

As surely as the sun rises each morning, our hearts are going to find something to which we will bow down and to which we will yield our lives.  I do not even want to begin listing the things we find to worship because I cannot list them all. I might not list the very thing that at this point in time is becoming an object of worship in your life and you might think because it was not listed you are okay.   We cannot neglect the searchlight of the pure Word of God.   We must allow it to shine into every corner and every crevice of our lives.  The Word of God is our safe guard.

We were made to worship.  That is only part of the truth.  Specifically, we were made to worship the Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth.  We are designed to delight in the Lord, to experience the fullness of His inexpressible joy.  It is only as we fulfill this purpose through our commitment to the Lord Jesus that our lives have fulfillment and contentment.

Nearly 20 years ago, while on a business trip and in a hurry to get home, I whipped the family vehicle into a gas station to fill up the tank and head home. I was tired and preoccupied as I went through the motions of filling the tank.  Once I finished pumping and paying for the fuel, I jumped back into the van, started it and headed out of the parking lot.  I got about 10 feet.  The engine sputtered, coughed and died. I tried to start it but nothing.  The engine tried valiantly to start but nothing.  Then it dawned on me, diesel. I had grabbed the nozzle for diesel and had put diesel into a gas burning engine. I was two hours from home.  A wrecker had to be called and the van towed to a service center. My wife had to drive an hour to pick me up.  We were out money and time.

It was an honest mistake.  The nozzle fit the opening of the gas tank.  The handle was the same shape as the one for gas.  It felt the same.  The diesel pumped like gasoline, the diesel filled the tank like gasoline and it even had some of the same properties as gasoline. But diesel is not gasoline.

We often hear the skeptics and unbelievers say that Christianity is a crutch.  Well, as I sat in the passenger seat of the tow truck that evening, the truth began to dawn on me. I began to understand everything in life from which we seek to find peace, love, support, shelter, satisfaction, etc., other than in the great heart of our God is the crutch.  As long as I gave the van the fuel it was designed to run on, I never had a problem.  The moment I put something different into the tank, it needed a crutch, in this case a tow truck, to get me where I needed to go.

The life and love of the Father we know is not a crutch.  It is the fuel of the engine of our life.  Yet we seem to have a propensity to make it look like a crutch to the world because we are trying to fuel our lives with a mixture of worship to Him while erecting shrines, idols and altars in His temple.  The truth is that Jesus is calling for us to rise and walk in newness of life but we cling to other things.  We allow any and everything to fuel our hearts.  We frustrate the grace of God.  We frustrate ourselves.  Our lives are hobbled.

Riding in the tow truck, I was frustrated, angry, embarrassed, impatient, worried and on and on.  A perfect reflection of how lives become when they are fueled by anything other than intimate relationship with the Father.

How can a young man cleanse his way? By living according to your word. Psalm 119:9

Your Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11

Oh Father, please give us hearts for You, for your Word.

If we do not allow the Word of God to permeate our hearts. If we do not permit our hearts to be thrilled, challenged, convicted by the Word, 0ur lives will be a hodge podge of conflicting beliefs. We will be confused. We will not know His peace and we will be strangers to the very Heart we long so much to be close too.

My heart cries out today. I am concerned that if we honestly surveyed the landscape of our hearts, we might find strange altars of worship in various stages of construction. How can we know? If they are there, how can we change? Relationship with the Father. Glorious, wonderful, beautiful encounters with Him through Christ our Lord. Read His Word. Encounter His heart, His desires and His will for us. And His heart, desires and will for us is all GOOD! The Father is not seeking to just take away. No, no, no. He is seeking to add to each of our lives life, and in abundance.

Survey your heart today. Present yourself at the only altar we are to have in our life, the altar of sacrifice and service to Christ the King. Yield your heart, your will, and your desires to the one who gave His life for us. Submerge yourself into His Word. Let the Word work in your heart. Let it cleanse, purge, cut away anything that challenges your worship of the Father. Become doers of the Word, not hearers only, deceiving yourself – James 1:22.

Are you making that time to be with Him?  Are you surrendering to His good pleasure?  Are you allowing yourself to sanctify, set-apart, the Lord in your heart?  Are you allowing Him to fill you with the fullness of Himself? The engine of your life will run cleaner, more efficient, more caring, more loving, more tender, more hopeful, more powerful, more fulfilled and with more love and commitment to the Father and to those around you than advertised!  Guaranteed by the manufacturer.

Father, we do not want our life in You and our love for You to stall. Please make us tired of the sputtering and powerlessness of our lives. Let us respond to the invitation to know You, to draw closer to you.

Your heart is seeking to soar. Let it.

Further up and further in.

“We trust, not because a god exists, but because this God exists.” – C. S. Lewis

Shut In With God

There is a chorus I learned many, many years ago. It has been resonating in my heart the last several days as I have been thinking about and meditating on the importance of the altar of sacrifice. It goes like this (you may all bless the Lord you get to read the words only and not hear me attempting to sing) –

Shut in with God in a secret place.

There in the Spirit beholding His face.

Gaining more power to run in the race.

O how I love to be shut in with God.

Consider the promise God made to Moses in Exodus 25:8 regarding the building of the tabernacle, “…have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.”  How amazing! These have to be the most promising, most hopeful, most helpful and most uplifting words spoken. This promise was repeated again when Solomon began building a permanent temple. God told Solomon that He would live among the people – I Kings 6: 13. As the temple was being dedicated, Solomon prayed these words, “Will God really dwell on earth with men? The heavens, even the highest of heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” However, God does Solomon even one better, no longer does He dwell in the construction of men; now He dwells in the very heart of those who have committed their hearts to Christ.

We need to get this truth burned into our minds, stamped into the innermost parts of our hearts. We desperately need to grasp the unlimited love and life this opens to us. God wants to be in intimate relationship with us. He has always made provision for that fact. He did for the Israelites with the tabernacle. He did it again with the building of Solomon’s temple. Now consider that this God is proclaiming He wants to live, have residence, in our heart! He wants to have active participation in every aspect of our life. In fact, He will not settle for less for us or from us. He wants us to have life and experience it to the fullest. To this end He works diligently to hone, refine, and purify our lives.

One of the great purposes accomplished in our lives as we lay our life before God is the refining that occurs. The altar of sacrifice is a place of surrender to His purpose and plan. It is a place of acknowledgment, surrender, confession, cleansing and empowering.

Paul would write these words to the followers of Christ in Rome regarding their own personal altar of sacrifice. The words in parenthesis and italic are my thoughts, not Paul’s.

Romans 12:1, 2

“I beseech you (plead with you, get down on my knees and beg you) brother, by the mercies of God (not in our own will or power but through His power and strength) that you present yourselves as living sacrifices (we have to have that personal altar of sacrifice) holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service (this is true spiritual worship – side note: there are a lot of ways to say and show “I love you Lord” but none purer, none more pleasing that shutting yourself in with the Father and abandoning yourself to His good pleasure).

Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the good, acceptable and perfect will of God is. (The result of the offering of ourselves is we will not be made after the image of the world, following after its empty values and allurements but we will be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Now think about this, wrap your heart around this truth. We can have such an encounter with God, become so intimate in our relationship with Him that our minds are reborn and we more clearly conformed into the image of Jesus. The result is we will know and be empowered to gladly do the will of God).”

This is life changing stuff! I can present myself to God. Offer all of me, the good and the bad. I can offer the secret me with my fears, doubts, failures and sin. I can offer all my pain, all my hurts, all my mistakes, my regrets, the grudges I needlessly carry, the illness I have, the bitterness, the questions, the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations I have. You get the picture, all of me; all of you.  I follow the pattern of the early sacrifices of the tabernacle. Everything is laid before and dedicated to the Lord. He wants it all. The Father will make me over fresh and new. It is not really a makeover though. It is a new creation. I get the opportunity to be renewed in my heart and mind. The weight of me trying to succeed and fail is gone. The hope of Christ in me reigns supreme. The peace of God upholds me. The love of God empowers me. Why would I settle for less? Why would you settle for less?

No wonder my heart encourages me to sing “Shut in With God”!

Come To The Altar

Growing in Grace – Post # 7

Blessings.  God’s best to you today!

The first article encountered upon entering the courtyard is the brazen altar. This piece of furniture was also known as the altar of sacrifice. It was here that the animal sacrifices were slain and offered with fire to the Lord.

For us, the brazen altar of our experience is the sacrifice of Christ. Beginning in the garden and culminating on the cross, Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice, not just for the nation of Israel, but for the sins of the whole world. It was on this altar that Jesus fulfilled John the Baptist’s proclamation to “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”. The cross represents to us a place of a surrendered will and a yielded heart.

There were several offerings that an Israelite could make to the Lord. There were offerings of livestock and of grains. There were sin offerings, guilt offerings and fellowship offerings. All the special feasts or days of celebration that the Israelites were directed to observe involved the altar of sacrifice. There was no by-passing the place of sacrifice. To avoid the altar of sacrifice would prevent them from enjoying fellowship and communion with God. There was no by-passing the place of surrender. Jesus could not by-pass the altar of the cross. The brazen altar, the cross is a place of accountability, confession and surrender. For us to grow spiritually, this place of surrender must be prominent in our life. We cannot ignore or try to by-pass this aspect of our relationship.

Now the great thing for us is that the price for sin has been satisfied in full by Christ. As I mentioned previously, the tabernacle and its worship experience was not designed for the unbeliever but for the believer. So for us, what the brazen altar represents can only be understood and appreciated and experienced by followers of Christ. It is a place where we acknowledge, daily, our need for Christ in our lives. It is a place of complete surrender where we lay before the Lord, daily, our lives. It is here where we voluntarily submit our hearts and minds to the will of God. It is here we learn to cry out not our will be done but your will be done. It is at this altar of sacrifice where we daily begin to prepare our hearts to go deeper into the love relationship with the Father.

Do not be in such a hurry to start your day that you do not take time to offer yourself to the Father. Do not love the comfort and security of your temperpedic (hopefully none of you have one as I do not mean to single anyone out) so much that your schedule does not allow you to take time to cry out to the Father, “You are the Potter; I am the clay! Make me; mold me after your will!” You cannot afford to miss the opportunity to place your life into His hands and allow Him to refresh, renew, and invigorate your spirit. We desperately need this time. God does not need us to take this time but He LONGS for it. He LONGS for us to be in this love relationship with Him. He LONGS for us to go deeper in our knowledge and understanding of Him. He LONGS to be allowed to be intimately involved in every facet and every detail of your life. When we seek to bypass the altar of sacrifice, we cheat ourselves; we hinder His good pleasure, and find ourselves having to rely on our own strength to make it through the day. 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind with all your might!

The relationship is started, the partnership has begun. At great cost has the Father made the way for us to be in intimate fellowship with Him. We are able to enter into this communion because of grace. Grace led us to salvation, but Grace will also lead us; enable us to go deeper into the revolution of His Life. Grace now shows us the investment we can make of our lives and empowers us to do so. This is the reason that Paul would somewhere in the opening salutation of his letters to the early churches always be moved by the Holy Spirit to write “grace be unto you”. Grace has provided us Christ. God’s grace led us from darkness to light. God’s grace enabled us to realize that we were separated from God and helpless to change that in ourselves. Grace pierced the darkness that shrouded our hearts and minds to the love of God in Christ and let us know this is the means to ending our helpless separation from God. Grace wrapped itself around our hearts and said our situation was not hopeless. Grace wraps itself around our hearts and still says our situation is not hopeless. God is Love. God loved so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). In my years of knowing Christ, I have tried to come up with a fancy, heart wrenching definition for grace. However, I am not sure that grace can truly be defined. It must be experienced. And the experience defines it in our heart. Grace is simply God at work in us. Grace is the activity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our lives. It is the activity that led us to Christ and it is the activity that leads us to be conformed to His likeness. Grace is the Word of God at work in our hearts and minds. Grace is the revealing of a sin problem, an obedience problem so it can be dealt with and replaced by the life of Christ. God’s grace is the communion and leading of the Holy Spirit in our life. It is the knowledge that Christ is present with us, always and everywhere. Grace is encountering God through corporate fellowship with other believers. Grace is praise and worship that arises in our hearts when we begin to sing to our Great God. See, you cannot define grace, at least I can’t. I have decided I do not want to. To define grace would be to confine it and that I do not want to do.  

The Father has unleashed grace into your heart. You must unbridle it. You must let Grace be free to do its perfect work. My sincere hope and prayer for you is that you will begin to understand through the practical spiritual practices we are exploring in the tabernacle how to let Grace be free to work in our hearts.

This is the process we started when we confessed Christ as Lord. This is the process to which the Father has committed all the resources of heaven. This is the process of following Christ. The altar of sacrifice and surrender. It is where we first encountered new Life in the Son. It is the place where we must continue the pattern of surrender of self.

Find your altar today. Some of you are at home when you read this. Some of you are at work. Somewhere, find that quiet place, and offer yourself fresh and anew to the God who loved us and gave His Son for us. Let Grace take wing. Then, through the working of Grace, purpose to find a place, a time daily, to offer all of yourself to Him that loves us and gave Himself for us.

God Bless.