No Second-Hand Faith

Our Christian lives can easily dissolve into mere memories of former blessings, instead of enjoying a continued string of gracious and divine acts. I know this happens to older believers who fall to reminiscing on more spiritually invigorating days of yesteryear, but who today see very little as tangible evidence of God's grace. God tells Israel this through Jeremiah:

7 “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when they shall no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ 8 but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ Then they shall dwell in their own land.”

Remember the Alamo! . . . or, Egypt!!

Americans--perhaps, more Texans--recognize the above declaration as a stark reminder of how valuable the loss of life is when dying for a cause. The children of Israel would rally around another cry, "Remember Egypt!" For many years, Israel could reflect on her sordid past and remember a day when God's faithfulness overwhelmed them at the Red Sea event. God delivered them out of bondage and freed them to move faithfully toward the Promised Land. By the time of Jeremiah the prophet approximately 800 years have passed in which Israel has violated the law of God and spurned His love times without number. And they forgot God. His real presence was but a distant memory, and his works but a mindless mantra muttered by the irreligious and hopeless.

Then Jeremiah prophecies that no longer would they speak of the Lord only in terms of previous victories (Egyptian bondage), but of his present power to deliver them again, this time from Babylon's tight grip! No longer would they only locate God's glory in a story (even a great one) from the past, but they'd experience his power themselves. NO SECOND-HANDED FAITH HERE!

What Should We Remember?

Do we practice such a "once-removed" kind of faith? We expect it from the world don't we? I've golfed with unsaved friends who when lightening was spotted on the horizon, exclaimed that they'd want to get close to the "Reverend" because he was "in good with the man upstairs!" There, they imagined, was protection from the storm even if it came via someone whom they jokingly thought was "in good with" God!? What they sometimes exclaim in jest finds grounds in life doesn't it? It's blessing two steps removed--a sort of faith by proxy, if you will.

For Christians, too, there is the distinct tendency to let the living WORD atrophy into mindless clichés. The Infinite God becomes a story to be told rather than a life to be lived. "But that is not the way you learned Christ" (Eph. 4:20). "For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power" (1 Cor. 4:20). The Christian's life was not meant to be endured while vicariously living off the diaries of saints of old, but by faithing out the life of sainthood every day! Here is no surrogate lifestyle; this is the genuine article! And the crazy thing about Israel's Babylonian deliverance, and about ours, is that both are but one among many others--smaller to be sure--but too many to be counted. They ARE there, if we but had eyes to see them. The problem, it seems, is not in the absence of God, but in the dullness of our hearts.

What DOES it take to get our attention-- a tsunami, 911, or the death of a loved one? Can we, if we are wise, not see God in the myriad smaller ways he surrounds us every day? Indeed, his mercies are new every morning. "Those who seek me diligently find me" (Prov. 8:17b).

Living the Surrendered Life: Making It Practical

The following is thanks to Nancy Leigh DeMoss, from her book, Surrender: The Heart God Controls. Chapter Six,

"Full consecration" may be in one sense

the act of a moment,

and in another the work of a lifetime.

It must be complete to be real,

and yet, if real, it is always incomplete;

a point of rest, and yet a

perpetual progression.

--Frances R. Havergal

One of the clearest statements of the practical terms of surrender for every follower of Christ is found in Luke, chapter 14. In verse 25, we find Jesus surrounded by a large crowd. Unlike what we might be tempted to do, Jesus never played to the audience. He wasn't concerned about His ratings; He wasn't running for office or trying to attract the biggest crowd in town. He knew full well that when some heard His message, they would lose interest in His movement. But that didn't keep Him from being straightforward.

Jesus looked at the crowd of would-be disciples and said, in effect, "If you want to follow Me, you need to understand what's involved":

"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters"-and here's the heart of the matter-"yes, even his own life-he cannot be My disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple" (vv. 26-27).

There could be no mistaking Jesus' point. He was not offering His listeners some sort of weekend Christian experience, an escape from their problems, an anesthetic for their pain, or fire insurance from hell. Everyone listening to Jesus knew that a cross meant only one thing-death. He was calling them to come and die to everything that competed with His reign and rule in their lives.

In verse 33, He reiterated His call to total surrender: "Any of you who does not give up everything that he has cannot be My disciple."

Jesus' words in Luke 14 are penetrating because they are so intensely personal and practical. He did not speak in sweeping generalities; rather, He identified specific issues that must be surrendered by those who call themselves His followers-things like our relationships, our affections, our physical bodies, our rights, and our possessions.

It's one thing to have an emotional experience at a Christian gathering where you are inspired and challenged to surrender control of everything to God. It's another matter to live out that surrender once the emotion of the moment has passed - when the bus gets home from the conference... when you lose your job and the bills keep coming...when you find out you're expecting your fifth child in seven years...when your mate is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

ZEAL by J. C. Ryle. You Gotta Read This!

Some quotations really JUMP OUT at you. Here's one to save, re-read and utilize wherever you can:

Zeal in religion is a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way. It is a desire which no man feels by nature—which the Spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted—but which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called ‘zealous’ men. . . .

A zealous man in religion is pre–eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough–going, whole–hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up in one thing; and that one thing is to please God. Whether he lives, or whether he dies—whether he has health, or whether he has sickness—whether he is rich, or whether he is poor—whether he pleases man, or whether he gives offence—whether he is thought wise, or whether he is thought foolish—whether he gets blame, or whether he gets praise—whether he gets honour, or whether he gets shame—for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God’s glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it—he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry, and sigh, and pray. . . . If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, on the hill (Exodus 17:9–13). If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of ‘zeal’ in religion. (Practical Religion, 1959 ed., p. 130)

You Can't Eat a Chicken You Name!

For my wife's birthday, Phyllis and I were taken to lunch by church friends, Gary & Sue Appleby, former missionaries to Germany. Their adult daughter, Amy was with us and shared that per the norm they had raised chickens while in Germany. The idea was, of course, to eventually make a meal out of them. But when it came time they just couldn't bring themselves to kill those helpless little birds. Why? Because Mike (their son) & Amy had given names to them! And because they had named them, it just didn't seem right to turn them from pet to provision! There is something about naming that is very personal, even if it is just chickens!

God works through people, people with names. "No child is just a child. Each is creature in whom God intends to do something glorious and great. No one is only a product of the genes contributed by the parents. Who we are and will be is compounded with who God is and what he does. God's love and providence and salvation are comprised in the reality of our existence along with our metabolism and blood type and fingerprints." Jeremiah's name, Eugene Peterson writes in Run With the Horses, may mean "the LORD exalts," or "the LORD hurls." Either way, his name involves "the LORD." Whatever his names actually meant to his parents, he became a prophet of God, doing his oft unpopular bidding. He operated against the norm, went opposite the tide of human opinion. We in America, do not tend place as much emphasis on the meanings of names as upon who they represent (a parent's surname, a favorite uncle or aunt). What we DON'T want to happen is for our names to dictate our direction in life, to be only what others expect of us instead of what God expects. And that will likely go contrary to society's norm.

Don't Abdicate Your Role

"The French talk of deformation professionelle--a liability, a tendency to defect that is inherent in the role that one has assumed, as say a physician or a lawyer." Jeremiah was a prophet and "the deformation to which prophets and priests and wise men are subject is to market God as a commodity, to use God to legitimize selfishness. . . . A personal name, not an assigned role, is our passbook into reality. . . . Anything other than our name--title, job description, number, role--is less than a name. . . . We live by the stereotypes in which other people cast us that are out of touch with the uniqueness in which God has created us, and so live diminished into boredom, the brightness leaking away."

Here's The Point

"The only thing more significant to Jeremiah than his own being was God's being. He fought in the name of the Lord and explored the reality of God and in the process grew and developed, ripened and matured. He was always reaching out, always finding more truth, getting in touch with more of God, becoming more himself, more human." Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine (Isaiah 43:1).

Confronting Evil with GOSPEL POWER!

In his wonderfully current book, An All-round Ministry (online), are recorded the annual lectures of C. H. Spurgeon to his preacher's college in London. In "How to Meet the Evils of the Age" (1877), Spurgeon addressed himself to four evils. The first is "the return of superstition." This seems in principle to correlate with something of the postmodern mentality today. And though he aimed his guns at Ritualism, a sort of pastiche of Roman Catholic mysticism and protestant Anglicanism, his words still offer wisdom for us in how we hold to our beliefs. He says:

This superstition, too, is in harmony with the innate idolatry of the human heart; it offers gratification to the eye and to the taste, it sets up a visible priest and outward symbols, and these man's fallen heart craves after. It offers to save men the necessity of thought by offering an outward service, and furnishing a priest to do their religion for them; but, alas! it takes man off from the real and spiritual, it consoles him without true regeneration, and buoys him up with hope though he has not submitted himself to the righteousness of Christ.

What is the Remedy?

In short, he says, "I have only one remedy to prescribe, and that is, that we do preach the gospel of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in all its length and breadth of doctrine, precept, spirit, example, and power." I fear that we today (and I wonder if this applies to us ministers as well!) no longer fully believe in the simple power of the gospel to change the hearts of men? Our adherence to the truth may be nothing more than lip-service. Spurgeon goes on to unveil what was his conviction as to how mighty is such gospel truth:

The gospel, if it were fully received through the whole earth, would purge away all slavery and all war, and put down all drunkenness and all social evils. In fact, you cannot conceive a moral curse which it which it could not remove. And even physical evils, since many of them arise incidentally from sin, would be greatly mitigated [alleviated], and some of them for ever abolished. The spirit of the gospel, causing attention to be given to all that concerns our neighbour's welfare, would promote sanitary and social reforms, and so the leaves of the tree which are for the healing of the nations would work their beneficial purpose. KEEP TO THE GOSPEL, BRETHREN, AND YOU WILL KEEP TO THE ONE UNIVERSAL, NEVER-FAILING REMEDY [emphasis mine].

Even as hunger lies at the bottom of some fevers and maladies, it can be once again corrected by food. "Give the bread of life to the multitude, and the maladies and diseases of fallen humanity will be divinely removed; I am sure it is so."

I hope we are as well!

"Giv'n You a Number & Tak'n 'Way Your Name"

When I was young (1960's) there was a show on TV entitled "Secret Agent," ("Danger Man" in the UK) starring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent, John Drake. (Incidentally, he died 13 January of this year. He was 80.) Johnny Rivers sang the theme song, "Secret Agent Man," in which are these repeated words, ". . . giving you a number and taking away your name." Well, replacing names with numbers is, no doubt, the business of the clandestine world of espionage. They have to maintain some deniable distance in the event things go wrong. But,

God Personalizes

Not so in the everyday world of humanity. Giving names and NOT numbers is vital to our role as those created in the image of God. Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses, writes:

At our birth we are named, not numbered. The name is that part of speech by which we are recognized as a person. We are not classified as a species of animal. We are not labeled as a compound of chemicals. We are not assessed for our economic potential and given a cash value. We are named. What we are named is not as significant as that we are named.

Peterson reminds us that people don't necessarily remain the same throughout their lives. "Some people as they grow up become less. As children, they have glorious ideas of who they are and of what life has for them. Thirty years later we find that they have settled for something grubby and inane."

He then quotes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:

The name is the state of speech in which we do not speak of people, things, and values. . . . The name is the right address of a person under which he or she will respond. The original meaning of language was this very fact that it could be used to make people respond.

Society Depersonalizes

But we live in a society that relishes statistics and facts . . . the abstract. Here is where Peterson draws the significance of living according to our names:

Any time that we move from personal names to abstract labels or graphs or statistics, we are less in touch with reality and diminished in our capacity to deal with what is best and at the center of life. Yet we are encouraged on every side to do just that. In many areas of life the accurate transmission of our social-security number is more important than the integrity with which we live. In many sectors of the economy the title that we hold is more important than our ability to do certain work. In many situations the public image that people have of us is more important than the personal relations that we develop with them. Every time that we go along with this movement from the personal to the impersonal, from the immediate to the remote, from the concrete to the abstract, we are diminished, we are less. Resistance is required if we will retain our humanity.

It's Not What We DO, But Who We ARE

OK, maybe you've heard that. It is nonetheless quite true. We are not to be evaluated by our usefulness, or by how much others want us or don't want us. We are not defined by labels. The Lord said to Solomon, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time" (1 Kings 9:3). Notice he did not say, "I have opened the doors of the temple so that you can attend church, and show up only to return home again. No, he put his NAME there, meaning that this is personal, whole-hearted worship about which he's speaking. Like the Israelites, "One of the supreme tasks of the faith community is to announce to us early and clearly the kind of life into which we can grow, to help us set our sights on what it means to be a human being complete. Not one of us, at this moment, is complete."

We Are Always Becoming . . .

John said it, "Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). We're not there yet. But one thing is for sure, we are not simply a set of electronic circuitry, but a "poem" in the making, made by God (Eph. 2:10). We have been given a name--HIS name, and not a set or rules and by-laws (as good as they may be in their place). Don't let this world squeeze you into its mold (Romans 12:1).

Fascinated with JESUS

The goal of Scripture is an intensely personal love for Jesus possessing your whole being. The goal of redemption is your love-relationship, your love-life with Jesus. Christian living is living in love with Jesus. Prayer communion is looking lovingly into Jesus' eyes, thrilling to Jesus' voice, resting in Jesus' arms.

Christ's passionate lovers have bejeweled the history and heritage of the church. No Christian is greater than his love. Few today realize the intense devotion to Christ in the early church and in our sainted martyrs. The Holy Spirit can develop in us just as ardent devotion as He did in those days.

All other passions build upon or flow from your passion for Jesus. A passion for souls grows out of a passion for Christ. A passion for missions builds upon a passion for Christ. When Hudson Taylor was once asked what was the greatest incentive to missionary work, he instantly replied, "Love of Christ." William Booth's passion for helping the underprivileged, the derelicts of society, and for world evangelization was built upon his passion for Christ. The most crucial danger to a Christian, whatever his role, is to lack a passion of Christ. The most direct route to personal renewal and new effectiveness is a new all-consuming passion for Jesus. Lord, give us this passion, whatever the cost!

--Wesley L. Duewel, Ablaze For God