Wisdom, come here!

After a quick reading of Proverbs 2 and some meditation on Isaiah 40, I’m realizing that I need a massive spiritual overhaul to even begin to walk in the the light of wisdom.

Sages and scholars from ages past and present will attribute the ability to think, act, or prepare for the future as being wise or at the very least, not being completely stupid. Riddles and stories meant to portray wisdom and its effects will most likely involve an ant because ants are known for their teamwork and ability to sustain themselves through winter due to preparation during summer months, when provisions are abundant.

But biblical wisdom goes above and beyond. Though all would agree that timely preparation and the ability to foresee and plan accordingly is an aspect of wisdom, the idea of the wisdom of God is so cross-current and backwards to our natural disposition that the writer of proverbs says it must be sought out, like silver and gold. What makes heavenly wisdom so completely different from earthly wisdom?

All through the word of God it is made clear that wisdom from above comes by having a mindset from another realm. Wisdom of God is rooted and springs from another time, place, reality, and age. Biblical wisdom differs from earthly wisdom because it is not of this age or place. Pulling wisdom from another realm into the here and now makes that wisdom seem so contrary to itself because we cannot grasp living life contrary to how we want to. But that’s exactly what the writer of Proverbs said wisdom is, living like you’re from another time and place.

Are there any wise among us?

No kingdom without pressing in. No kingdom without violence.

Luke 16:16 “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.”

Matthew 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

In order for true Christianity to permeate the heart  (what I mean by true Christianity is that belief in Christ as the son of God and in the devotion to living a life fully dedicated to God) there must be a violent disposition to lay hold of Christ and to follow through on the promises of His word.

The kingdom of heaven suffers violence. What does this mean? What is causing violence upon the kingdom, what is the clash? I believe it is the way of the world that is in violent opposition to the way of the kingdom. The love of money, the love of pleasures, the idols of possessions, and the unwillingness to be obedient and submissive to truth are all enemies of the cross of Jesus and the kingdom rule which that cross inaugurated.

In order for the kingdom to come we must be more violent in fighting for righteousness than we are violent to gain pleasure and ease. Violence implies resistance and where there is no resistance to the spirit of this age and love of the world then I wonder if there is any kingdom dynamic present. It takes focused energy to encounter the manifestations of the kingdom but it takes little to no effort to encounter manifestations of the spirit of this age. Violence of heart against the fleeting pleasures of sin is not enough; there must be a violence within to pursue holy lifestyles and to experience God himself, personally and tangibly.

What does it profit us to stop halfway in the journey? It would be like a man in a burning building fleeing the dangers of the burning top floor only to stop on the stairs and declare his safety and trust that the fire will not spread to the downstairs! Eventually the whole house will be ablaze. We must be vigilent in pursuing the fullness of the kingdom lest we be in danger of false safety.

Who is Jesus Anyways?

I am currently looking into who Jesus actually is. I’m in a group that is exploring what the bible really says about the God-Man and as I delve deeper into the subject I’m beginning to realize that most of my thoughts about the man that I love and serve and have given my entire life to….are based more on culture and tradition or even human sentiment than the actual truth of the person.

There are things that I know Jesus is not. And this is where my thoughts start; He is not the Father’s errand boy. Jesus isn’t the guy who did the will of the Father because no one else would or because He had to make His Father proud or to avert the Father’s wrath. Though there are elements of these realities that may have aspects of truth, Jesus was and is God himself. Jesus is the image of the Father and the fullest expression of His heart. He is the co-equal, co-creating, co-nature of the Father, or as the saints of old have said, He is the only Begotten Son of the Father. He is equal and like Him in every way because He is Him in every way.

Also, Jesus is not superhuman. And my head just exploded. What does it mean to be fully God and fully man? It is difficult to say both aspects with clarity at the same time, so I’m just focusing on the “fully man” part. You want to know what this makes me think of? Poopy diapers. Really, Jesus was a baby and did all the things babies do. Which just makes me think of how much He really does delight in His creatures, that he would become one. And though poopy diapers is in no way the best description of what it means to be “fully man”, it is a thought provoker on the topic that is helpful in moving us out of stuffy traditions that may be hard for the common person to relate to. By the way, Hebrews says that He became like us in every way just so He could relate to us as we are, hence my boldness in saying that He needed to be changed as a kid.

I’ll stop here for now just because I’m getting the sense that this will be a series of posts with much meandering along the way, bunny trails in abundance as it were. Feel free to weigh in on these matters as well. One thing is for certain, we could spend years searching and mining these ideas and thoughts and I may just well do that. If there is one thing that is wise time management it is searching out who Jesus is.

I’ll leave now with this thought from saint John, the so termed “disciple whom Jesus loved”: “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose even the world itself could not contain all the books that would be written. Amen.” John 21:25

The dilemma and the remedy…

There is trouble stirring in the middle east. The trouble is the rage of the nations towards the Lord and towards the Jewish people. Psalm 83:2-4 says, “Behold, Your enemies make a tumult; and those who hate You have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, and consulted together against Your sheltered ones. They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more.”

The present situation with political leaders in Islamic nations is almost the exact same as these verses. I wonder if these leaders know they are practically quoting these scriptures to their own condemnation.

But the Lord has a remedy and a solution for the rage of the nations. It’s gentiles. The prophet Isaiah saw it yet to come and prophesied this realtiy of gentile intercession for the nation of Israel; “I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” (Isaiah 62:6-7)

There is a prayer movement sweeping the earth right now. Small town churches, inner city congregations, messianic Jewish communities and global ministries are taking up the call of intercession for Jerusalem because of the zeal of the Lord of Hosts for Israel’s destiny to function as a light to the nations and a diffuser of the knowledge of the glory of God. As a church, it is our destiny and function to provoke Israel into their destiny by praying and fasting on their behalf. We are to lay down our lives in prayer for this nation to move into its prophetic destiny and the fullness thereof. Start praying church.

Holiness, Sanctification, & Being Justified by Faith

Holiness can be a scary word. It evokes in some an angry preacher, standing on chairs and yelling about fire, smoke, and brimstone…….nothing wrong with that. In others it can stir thoughts and feelings of doctrinal messiness and “works” based theology……..again, not so bad. Very few are there who think of holiness and it’s implications with joy and happiness. Why is this?

First of all I would just like to throw a wrench. What if holiness could be a wonderful, happy, blessed thing. What if it was intended to be a “fun” thing. Imagine a bunch of churchy people enjoying lives of happy holiness, knowing full well that Christ’s cross and shed blood was the only thing saving them. I hope and pray that we can get to that utopian like state of being…..and I believe we will.

In order to “get there” I think it would be beneficial to define and describe the difference between justification by faith and sanctification by works or more accurately, partnership with the Holy Spirit. We, as Christians, are and always have been…….and will always be, justified by the cross as a gift that no man besides Jesus could give. We are fully redeemed from the curse of sin the moment we call on Jesus’ name. Does that mean we are free of the curses’ effects on us? No. This is where sanctification begins. The day we call on the name of the Lord and believe in Him we are redeemed and given a new heart, however, we are just beginning a new way of living in which we must choose the direction of righteousness as led by the Holy Spirit. Justification is salvation and it’s free, we can’t earn it. Sanctification is costly and we must choose it, day by day and choice by choice. This is our part in the deal. We must show God our sincerity and love for Him by the way we choose to live before Him, and this is why He gives us the Holy Spirit, to help us walk out our love. Holiness should not be a scary word. Holiness is an overflow of love from our hearts. It is agreement with God’s plan and purpose for our lives. Holiness should be happy because it is a joyful thing to worship our Redeemer and we worship not just in singing love songs to Him because He went to the cross but in living rightly before Him as a way to honor what He did on that cross.

On the prophets…

I’ve recently been reading the prophets of Israel in the O.T. Right now I’m in Habukkuk and it’s so good. You wouldn’t generally regard him as a major of the minor prophets but I have a feeling that he is the most quoted of the minors. Verse after verse and line after line is jam packed with weighty truths that one may constantly hear in theological conversation and yet few would place it in Habakkuk’s writings. I thought I’d share some of the most profound lines here so as to perhaps increase your hunger for these fiery men of God that few take time to read thoroughly.

“For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe though it were told to you, says the Lord.”

“Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy one?”

“But the just shall live by faith.”

“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

“In wrath remember mercy.”

“The Lord is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet and He will make me walk on my high hills.”

“The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.”

“His glory covered the heavens and the earth was filled with His praise.”

“You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.”

These are just a few of the more powerful words that Habakkuk delivered in a time of trouble. What a comfort they must have been to the afflicted and what an abrasive thing they must have been to the comfortable.

So what is your favorite prophetic book at the moment, why??

Of Christ…

John 7:46   “No man ever spoke like this man!”

Those around Him, who kept His company and beheld Him in the flesh reported none other than statements of truth when they truly saw Him, for He is the truth (John 14:6) and by His nature He evokes truth from those who are hungry and seeking for it. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The statements that the officers made, “No man ever spoke like this man!”, were statements of truth though they sought to kill Him. Perhaps they sought to kill Him because He made things black and white, that’s what truth does. It divides. Truth in and of itself is a sword, a cutting device, it peirces.

The Word made flesh had never been seen before this time in history, therefore; “No man ever spoke like this man!” No one had ever said the things Christ said because no one before or since was the fullness of God in a human body. The officers saw the truth, that no one was like this man, His words and ways were different. No other prophet was Jesus the Messiah and yet Jesus was much more than any prophet. He was for the first time, God in the midst of the natural world by natural means and totally unequalled in speech, deed, and character. What the officers said that day was truth. It was a provocation from within them to speak a word of truth because they were encountered by the ultimate Truth, with eyes and a mouth, radiating the unending, incomprehensible totality of the nature of YHWH that up to this point they had only heard stories about. This is Jesus of Nazareth, the truth and there is none besides Him.

“Anyone contemplating the life of Jesus needs to be newly and more deeply aware every day that something impossible, something scandalous has occured: that God, in His absolute Being, has resolved to manifest Himself in a human life (and is in a position to make this resolve effective!) He must be scandalized by this, he must feel his mind reeling, the very ground giving way beneath his feet; he must at least experience that “ecstasy” of non-comprehension which transported Jesus’ contemporaries, Mk. 2:12, 5:42, 6:51. They were amazed, beside themselves, stupified, overwhelmed; their reason abandons them.”      Hans Urs von Balthasar

The Gospel of the Kingdom…

The word gospel is a noun and a verb, a thing and an action. When Jesus’ disciples asked Him for a sign of His coming and of the end of the age, one of His many responses was, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” (Matt. 24:14). One of the signs of the end is us preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

I had always heard it said that the gospel must be preached in all the nations before the Lord’s return but that is only half of what He said. In other words, it’s not just the good news of salvation, the gospel, that would preceed His second coming, rather it is the gospel of the kingdom. Well, the question then is this; what’s the difference between the gospel of salvation and the gospel of the kingdom? Though they are inextricably linked they are, paradoxically, very different. The hinge on the gospel of salvation is mainly repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. The hinge on the gospel of the kingdom is demonstration of power through signs and wonders, restoration, and expressions of another age and another kingdom. The gospel of salvation is an inward, spiritual reality that moves into the outward exression of the gospel of the kingdom and its demonstrations and visible proofs like healing, prophecy, revival and raising the dead. The gospel of salvation is the key into the door of the gospel of the kingdom. There must be both aspects.

If this is true then we surely must receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who is the seal of our inheritance of the kingdom we aim to preach (Eph. 1:13). This is what the prophet Joel saw and prophesied (Joel 2:28-32) as the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh. To preach the gospel of the kingdom we need the outpouring of the Spirit as a release of demonstrating the power of the kingdom we belong to (Acts 1:8). Truly the Spirit must be poured out on all flesh (Acts 2:17-21, Joel 2) if we are to preach the kingdom gospel and if we are to do greater works than Jesus did, which was a promise to us from His own lips (John 14:12).

The one thing Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them was how to pray (Luke 11:1) and the one thing He commanded His disciples to do before His ascension was to wait in Jerusalem before they undertook the work of the kingdom (Luke 24:49). The gift that was to enable and activate the gospel of the kingdom was the gift and promise of the Father in sending the Holy Spirit. The progression of kingdom preaching exists in the promise of it (John 14:12, Acts 2), the command to do it (Luke 24:49), and the release of it (The book of Acts).

In our day and in our time we need laborers to lay hold of heaven and bring it to the earth, we need people of prayer. In order for the kingdom to come to the earth we need those who will preach the kingdom and demonstrate it like Moses and Aaron did in the Exodus when they were sent to free the people of Israel from the kingdom of Egypt. We need laborers who wait in the place of prayer until they are endued with power by the Holy Spirit to preach the kingdom with demonstrations of the power of the kingdom in which Jesus is the ruler and head of. In my opinion, we do not need more missionaries. We need laborers. There are more missionaries doing work in the field (which is needed) than there are intercessors laboring for change in those fields. There must be both working together or else the earth will never be prepared for what Jesus wants to do on the earth through us.

I realize that I need to develop this a wink more, in the meantime let me know what you think.

Being a set watchman, the call to rememberence!

Those of us who have agreed with the call and vocation of being an intercessory missionary (watchmen) must realize that we are called to two primary functions. This twofold calling is most easily pictured by two outward realities flowing from an inward life of wisdom and understanding by the means of watching and of praying. Within the context of perpetual watchfulness and prayer it is essential for us to understand the implications of these two realities.

One of these implications is that of remembering. Watchmen have a mandate to remember the Lord, His promise of things future and His faithfulness in times past. His promise of things future is the aspect of our reality in prayer by prophetic intercession, the calling to proclaim and to contend for that which He has promised. The other implication is that of remembering His faithfulness to all generations. We cannot truly contend for the breakthrough of His promises if we do not remember His faithfulness in times past. It is imperitive for us, as we look into and await the end of the age and His longed for return, to remember His perfect leadership, His perfect track record, and the many ways He has romanced us up to the present. The call to being a watchman is to remember Him and to proclaim Him. This is really all about Jesus and His coming Kingdom. If we aren’t confident in His love, i.e. His leadership and faithfulness, then we very well could be shaken in that day. We must cultivate an ability to remember Him, in all the various seasons of life and with that reality we must also cultivate a prophetic spirit with which we call forth His nature and promise to the earth.

Psalm 77:11-15 gives us a clear understanding in this reality. It says, “I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember your wonders of old. I will also meditate on all your work, and talk of Your deeds. Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary; who is so great a God as our God? You are the God who does wonders; You have declared Your strength among the peoples. You have with Your arm redeemed Your people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph.” Amen.

“It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing.”

The reference above is from John 6:63. Jesus tells His peeps in this chapter why He has come; because He is life and He wants to give them life. This truth explains a lot in Romans 7 and 8.

Romans 7 is basically Paul’s thought on the law, its purpose and function, and its work to show the depths of human depravity and lack of moral, intellectual, and spiritual good. In this chapter Paul uses the pronoun “I” 32 times in describing his attempt to fulfill the law in his own strength and zeal for the truth of the law, seeing as how he describes it as being holy, just, and good (v. 12). Paul tells us time and again the importance and goodness of the law and he tells us time and again how he attempted to walk in it. The summation of all this comes to us at the end of this chapter in verse 24, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” The bulk of chapter 7 is depressing.

As he proceeds however, he gives thanks to God for Jesus Christ. Chapter eight then is Paul’s joy and understanding of the person and work of Christ to fulfill the law and to send us help in walking it out. In John 16:13 Jesus tells us that the Spirit of truth, when He comes, will guide us into all truth and help us in it. This is Paul’s realization in chapter 8 of Romans. Previously he had addressed the law as it pertained to him (the pronoun “I” listed 32 times) but in chapter 8 he addresses the law through a different filter, no longer his own self but the Spirit of Christ dwelling within him. There are 20 references to the “Spirit” in chapter 8 with which the chapter progresses into a more optimistic hope and joy in walking out the law that so burdened him when he had set himself up beside it in chapter 7. But now, in chapter 8, he is renewed, refreshed and invigorated by the law of the Spirit of Christ working in him to enable him to walk in the law (8:1). The summation of this chapter, much different from the end of chapter 7, is encouraging and uplifting. Verse 37 states, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerers through Him who loved us.”

What a wonderful and encouraging thought: the Spirit helps us. In what the law was able to do in showing us our need for it but inable to do in helping us attain it, the Holy Spirit is able to do in us by showing us the truth of it and helping us to walk in it, if indeed we are sons of God and have His Spirit in us. The difference between the law and the Spirit is this; the law, though it is good for life and living, brings death because none can bear its implications while the Spirit, highlighting the work of Jesus to fulfill the law, gives us power to walk in it, if we remain in Him and bear His fruit (John 15).

Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us – eternal life.        1 John 2:24,25

Thank you Holy Spirit for helping me. Thank you for your meekness in teaching me and encouraging me. Thank you for conviction, repentence, and renewal in Jesus Christ, in His body and in His blood. Thank you for revealing to me all things that the Father has in the Son and the Son in the Father. Help me to step into the interaction of the Holy Trinity, the intimacy of three in one and you in me. I love you, I want to know you. Teach me today to walk with you, to know your person and to know your work. Amen.