Where ‘Self-Help’ Comes From

H. Jackson Brown has suggested 21 ways by which we can achieve success in our lives. I’m going to take issue with my own use of the word ‘we’ here, but I’m also going to take a brief look at the Biblical foundation for every one of these principles over the next little while. And, I’m going to be rather vocal about the frightening roads these ways of thinking can lead you down, and why these steps need to be carefully tested and approved in application. You can find the suggestions here. And I’m not going to spend 21 posts on these things alone, but rather, I’m going to alternate between these and some insights I’ve been having over the past few dry weeks.

First, my complaint about the use of ‘we’ is that it can be taken to imply that we are the only operative parties in acting towards the fulfillment of these parts of our lives. This is patently not true, and so I preface my remarks on Brown’s suggestions with this: It’s not in ourselves that we can find the fulfillment of these things – please, make no mistake, they are valuable points to consider and they do truly offer beneficial suggestions- but in Jesus Christ, His teachings and His life. And it is by looking towards Him that we are given a proper perspective on their value.

I also want to make it clear that the tile of this post is itself a comment on what I’m trying to say. ‘Self-help’ is impossible. It’s not within our abilities to save or to sanctify ourselves, though we have every possibility of damning ourselves to Hell if we try. Neither is it possible to fulfill the righteousness within which these things fall. Biblically, Christ lived a fully righteous life and that life is what provides redemption for our own unrighteousness in arrogance and pride. So I’m going to say it plainly. I believe that ’self-help’ is arrogance beyond belief. We cannot make ourselves ‘good people’ any more than we can pull the moon out of the sky. We can’t remedy the darkness in ourselves by ourselves.

I’m not going to go into the first of the suggestions for success tonight, but I will put it up for you to think about:

1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Keeping Company With The Dead

The various records of Christ’s deliverance of the Gerasene/Gadarene demoniac(s) are the subject of this post.  You can find the accounts in Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39.  The Bible study I attend is chugging along through Matthew, currently, and the phrase arose as part of the discussion we were having last time we met.  I was struck by the passage, and immediately thought about the teaching on the new birth that’s coming out of Bethlehem Baptist, John Piper’s church, of late.  While these three accounts are too long to put in the post, I will include a relevant section of John to meditate on.  I know I’ve put this in here before, but I’m going to return briefly to it.  It’s John 3:1-15.  Longish, but good:

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’  Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’  Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not marvel that I said to you, “you must be born again.”  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’  Nicodemus said to him ‘How can these things be?’  Jesus answered him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?  Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?  No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven. the Son of Man.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’”

I refer to John because John makes explicit reference to the necessity of being reborn in the life of a Christian.  It’s a rather inadequate metaphor for something far vaster and inexpressible; namely, the fact that there is a necessary purging from the body and the spirit of the Christian in Christ, and that such a cleansing is meant to accomplish only one thing…the raising of the dead to a new life, one freed from everything that has interfered with how God is glorified in the accomplishment of His purposes.

What has struck me with such clarity of late is the fact that the Gadarene demoniac, in his oppression, lives among the tombs.  Earthly markers of things that have passed, depending on one’s religious persuasions, into the earth or away from the earth.  These are two very different things.  But that’s a side track.  The man possessed by demons, who was called Legion, spent his life amidst charnel houses.  This is an explicit connection of the things of Satan to the things of the earth, and furthermore, an explicit connection of the work of demons to death.  I think I’ll need to look a little further into this next time.  right now I’m not properly focused.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Easter Sunday: The Resurrection Miracle – New Birth

It is tradition in many churches to observe a sunrise service on Easter Sunday, wherein those souls who really, really want to have a good cup of hot chocolate in the morning will get up at 5 or so to spend time with fellow silly people; or, if they’re particularly foolish, stay up all night, in preparation for the service. I fall in the latter category, because if I’m asleep, I like to be asleep. Regardless, the sunrise service is, hopefully, the first step in the redemptive resurrection of Jesus Christ. We walk in the steps of those women who, early in the morning, rose to go and prepare the body of their Lord, only to find that He had risen. We rise early because God’s mercies are new every morning, especially on this one. He is risen indeed.

This is the third and final Easter Weekend post, where I hope to put together the reflections of the past few days and come up with a tie-together to end part II of TRUTH. I’ll be turning to a new posting style come this week, as befits the new birth that I’m going to talk about briefly today.

Let me first say that A World Apart has given me some insight into a number of things, but that it’s reached its limit for now. There’s only so much you can say about rebirth, about resurrection and redemption – the three Christian R’s, intertwined but distinct. It’s a good idea to put them in the proper order. For our redemption, Christ was resurrected that we might be reborn. He is sole mediator. But what does that literally mean?

I find that I’m really not getting into the meat that I want to get into in these most recent posts. They’ve been completed out of a sense of obligation, but I don’t know to whom. They’ve been dealing with some of the truths of the Christian faith, but not in any way that you can really hear them. That, I can’t do. Most cuttingly, they’ve become too intellectual even for me. I find reading them is rather tiresome, and that’s not where I want to be with them. So onward and upward, as we’ll hear coming up in Prince Caspian, to be released very soon. I’m looking forward to it with a great deal of excitement and hope. It’s probably one of the most carefully thought-out allegories in Lewis’ Narnia, and I pray that Walden has remained faithful to it.

That’s slightly tangential, so I’ll move on. I was planning on looking at two major themes today: the legacy of Christ and His resurrection; and rebirth.

What is the problem most people seem to have with accepting the gospel? I’ve said that Christ is the gospel, and Him alone. If that is the case, then what do people find so repulsive or so worthy of conflict? If you look back at the passage from Isaiah in yesterday’s post, you’ll find that God knew what He was saying when he inspired Isaiah in prophecy. There is certainly nothing in the form of a whipped, crucified, bloody man that one would find appealing…at least not in any normal moral sense, so that is certainly true. Paintings, sculptures, classical understandings of Christ have beautified Him, making the suffering servant palatable and robbing the Isaiah passage of a great deal of its significance (Hmmm. Interesting thought for a later post). I read the passage in church on Good Friday and I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in it, and I tried to convey some of that sensation to the congregation. It may have succeeded, and if so, to God be the glory. So on the one hand we have a stinging picture of our sinfulness punished in Chrsit, and on the other we have a feelgood, holiness-emphasizing canon of illustration regarding Christ. Where’s the joy in a holy (and wholly) unreachable God-Man, so pure in his appearance that we cover our eyes or avert them from his radiance? Well, I’d like to suggest that the joy comes from knowing that He’s alive, that He is as pure and good and holy as He looks, and that in Him, in the destruction and rebirth of something beautiful, sin is atoned for. With this in mind, let me return to the question of Christ’s appeal. I’d like to think that what people find repulsive is the knowledge of their own sin, their own shame and their own failure, all lifted up on the cross for all to see. That’s the core of repentance, by the way: Humility and maybe even humiliation, your darker places dragged out into the light for people to see. And that’s the core of what Christ did for us. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be spotless before the radiant and holy Father. He dragged our sins out into the open and put them to death with His own death, and was then resurrected after having completed the task. ‘It is finished’ echoes through our minds once again in this.

If we accept Christ’s sacrifice as genuine, then what we have now is the remnant, the carry-over once-for-all atonement. That, too is what people find so difficult about the gospel. That Christ has his eye on things and his intercessory cloak on right now, watching, weighing, judging. That we are part of the redemptive plan of the world, and that we can be forgiven. See, we like to live in our failures, not have them forgiven. We don’t think we can ever be worthy of what has been done for us. You’re right. We can’t. We like to wallow in failure because it proves our own points. With new birth, it’s all put away. The afterbirth is discarded, and the new child looks up into Daddy’s eyes and smiles.

Happy Easter, and Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Sabbath Sacrifice

Darkness covered the land from about the sixth hour until the ninth hour, it says. Voices were stilled, quiet descended only yesterday. Today, the Son of Man is dead. I’ve called this Sabbath Sacrifice because it was unlawful to touch or prepare a dead body on the day of Sabbath in the Jewish faith. Thus, Christ was laid in a tomb unwashed and unpreserved. A borrowed tomb, as he was unable even to afford a burial plot of his own. So perished the great Son of Man. A day of darkness indeed.

If any among you have seen the play or the movie “Amadeus”, you will recognize the analogy I’m about to draw. The final scene in the movie is the shrouded body of Mozart dumped unceremoniously into the grave of a pauper, shoveled over with a careless spill of lime and some dark earth. It helps to remember the life he lived in preparation for that scene, and on the Saturday of death in the Easter event it helps, too, to remember the life of Christ in the darkened tomb that haunts our inner vision. So as we meditate on Christ’s burial this day, focus on His life, focus on His accomplishment in both life and death. And in that meditation, bear one thing in mind, because that’s where I’m going to start: Christ, before he died, while praying in Gethsemane, spoke these words according to John:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one”. (John 17:20-22)

Christ prayed not just for those whom he loved, his disciples, but also for those who would come to love Him through the words that they bore. One of the most transcendent prayers of glory in the Bible, prayed for all of those who have been redeemed in Him.

I wrote last time about the contemporaneous nature of Christ’s sacrifice, and tonight (still Saturday as I write this), I want to speak about that in greater detail, preparing you for part three, which is the resurrection miracle and the gift of re-presentation.

The sacrifice Christ made for us, that God made for His children, was and is in love. In Philippians 2, Paul writes these words:

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:4-11)

Which resonate in the pronouncement of Isaiah 52:13-53:12:

“Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you- his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind- so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows; and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes, we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. by oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”

That’s a lot of Bible, but the content boils down to this (in three separate books by three different authors at three different times, no less): Jesus is the man of sorrows, who bore all of our suffering, all of our guilt, all of our wounds, that God might be glorified in Him. So as we turn again to the death of sin in the death of Christ, turn to it again with these thoughts.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Good Friday: "It is finished", Complete Atonement and Forgiven Debts.

This is the first of the Easter Weekend posts. I’m excited, because last year I wasn’t maintaining this blog with enough regularity to warrant such mediations. This year I can call them breaks in a pattern! I”m hoping to look at a few things in some detail for this one.

You may have noticed, over the past few months, that I’ve been sticking around several themes in Christianity. Centrally, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and peripherally, what results when Christ is preached and when He is allowed to change lives. Good Friday is the beginning of the three days that are the core of the Christian faith, the assurance of salvation, the completion of Jesus’ earthly ministry and heavenly mission, and the reason for the celebration of the Christian life. This post is part one of a three-part reflection on what this Easter weekend means to me this year. It’ll all come together in the end.

The title of this post is composed of three things: the words “It is finished”, the statement “complete atonement” and the acknowledgment of one part of the Lord’s Prayer as a central point of the day. I’m going to look at each of those briefly, and try to pull in some of the thoughts that have been arising as the last little while has been happening.

The statement ‘it is finished’ is, interestingly enough, recorded only in the gospel of John, although all four gospels record Jesus uttering a loud cry just before he breathed his last. In all cases, there is a great gravitas in the final minutes of Jesus’ life, a sign of something pivotal happening in his crucifixion and death. John makes it clear what this is. With the great ‘it is finished’, Jesus is speaking to a number of things. It is firstly the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 21:22-23:

“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

which raises some interesting points. For example, what crime did Jesus commit that would cause him to be put to death? And how is the land defiled if a man remains hung all night on a tree? These are areas of interesting speculation, but draw one away from the intent of this first point: Jesus was cursed by God in being hung on a cross. So, too, were the thieves beside him, but even in that curse, Christ could look at one and say today, you will be with me in paradise. In his death lay the potential for redemption even outside of the condemnation of the law

Jesus is also speaking to the work of redemption that God set in motion for man. In the crucifixion of His Son Jesus, God has declared the complete work of fall and redemption, atonement and justification. Christ came into history at a specific point by our reckoning, but (when you think about it), instantaneously in His. God sees both sin and redemption contemporaneously, and that’s what makes Christ’s atonement so incredible. I’ll look at that in just a minute. Hard to wrap your head around, but worth thinking about. Christ is the fundamentally important point of the entire work of the Bible, because it is in Him that everything is fulfilled.

Additionally, Jesus is speaking to the work of his earthly ministry. All that needs to be told about Him, all that is necessary, has been said. He is the gospel. Not his actions, because not all are recorded. Not his teaching, because he has said “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt.7:12). Not ‘this is what the Law and the Prophets mean,’ although that is implied, but that is what the Law and the Prophets are. No, what ‘It is finished’ speaks to is the truth that He has done what was required. Everything else is going to be trying to understand that.

Which brings us ’round to complete atonement. If the message of Christ is complete, and if He is the gospel truth, then all that we need to believe is that what we are told about atonement through the precursors in the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New is valid and that it applies to us. Amazingly, it takes the comprehensive insights of multiple authors to arrive at that conclusion in the Word. To return to the point I suggested not too long ago, the contemporaneous understanding of Christ’s atonement means that by its very nature it is complete and universal. It covers all of mans’ sin because all of mans’ sin is that which is in perspective. I’m going to look a bit more at this on Saturday.

Finally, to round off this post (much longer than I had thought it would be), I want to look at the phrase forgiven debts, related as it is to the Lord’s prayer and to what I’ve been saying prior to this. Atonement is one of those fancy theological words that can be said much more simply in ways like this: Debt forgiveness, prices paid, account credited. Financial terms for a spiritual transaction. The great debt that we have towards God — for not killing us in our sin, for example, and for sacrificing His own Son to overcome it — and its only repayment in Christ Jesus is what truly needs to be thought about in this time. Today is the day of Christ’s death, and it is a cause for jubilee, because in it all debts have been forgiven and all credit history erased. Praise the Lord for what He has done.

Blessings;.

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – The Offensive Christ

I like Star Trek, now and again.

I’ve long since lost all shame in admitting that, but I say it now because to many, the Ferengi may not stand out. Orange skinned, huge-eared, capitalist. A commercial society…no relation at all to the real world. One of their favourite pastimes is the sexual technique known as oo-mox – rubbing the lobes of their ears, which are erogenous zones. And, just like the Ferengi – remember, no relation at all to the real world , people like having their ears tickled. They like hearing that they’re good, that what they do is going to earn them a place in heaven or a higher state of enlightenment, or that it’s going to end up well for them regardless of how their life is lived. I’m going to say flat out that they are dead wrong. There is no hope past this life except for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is the essence of what it means to be Christian. To understand that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, the only life.

Doesn’t really tickle the ears that much, do it now? But this is the offensive Christ, the man crucified for the sins of the world, for its people, for all time. This is the Christ who was publicly humiliated, and who Christians should preach so that they might be aware of their own sinfulness and Christ’s untainted glory for them; his sacrifice, for them. In everything He is to be raised up, and that includes jobs, churches, schools, homes. Everywhere we are, so He is to be.

Yet people find it so hard to do. We can’t measure up, we say. We can’t do it. no. We can’t. But He did. And when this Christ is preached, when this Christ is preaching, then we are offended. We are shown who we are, and we don’t like it.

Christians love it. But they don’t always recognize that that love might be misplaced, that the love that we have for Christ should not be for the fact that He made us good, but rather that He was the only one good enough to cover our wretchedness. We have none of it. But yet, we love Him for showing us that He has prevailed. This is the offensive Christ.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Sufficiency V – Grace

At long last, a return to the Sufficiency Series, this time with the upward-looking aspects of the sufficiency of Christ and his teaching in a post-modern world. I’ll begin tonight with a quote from 2 Corinthians 12:7-11, familiar to all who have looked at themselves and seen the truth of the weakness of the flesh.

“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations [God gave me], a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me ‘my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. for the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

So let’s think about sufficient grace for minute. This point of Scripture is going to be foundational as we move ahead with the examination of sufficiency, because it addresses the very things I’ve been talking abut thus far.

First, ‘my grace is sufficient’: That is, all other things are insufficient in weakness but His grace, to look at it conversely.

Second, ‘for you’: Spoken directly to Paul, but by extension to the ‘you’ who reads the text, in the curious symbiotic relationship between a reader and the text, between the word and the audience.

Third, ‘for my power’: Inextricably related to grace is power; my grace is sufficient…for my power…’. God glorifies Himself in giving grace and in claiming His sovereign power over human frailty

Fourth, “is made perfect in weakness.”: Further to three, God actually reflects His very nature as outlined by Scriptures in making Himself perfect in weakness and dependency. Lest heresy should come from my keys, let me make that clear. God Himself is sufficient in grace, demonstrated through perfection in His power and our weakness. There’s a lot to be drawn out of that tiny phrase, and since this post is meant as an overview and beginning of examination in sufficiency, let me leave it there for the time being and switch to talking solely about grace.

So what is grace?

I may have mentioned a definition of it before, but regardless, it bears repeating. Grace is, in my opinion, the extreme form of mercy that allows God, in His absolute power, holiness, goodness and glory to see His Son’s righteousness in place of our own sinfulness if we profess Christianity and believe it in our hearts. I say absolute because by rights, we should not exist as worshipers of Christ in the state of sin we are born to, and by rights, we do not warrant the sacrifice of Christ despite any illusions of righteousness we may possess. But in perfection also lies grace, for perfection as we should define it is the consummation, the apex, the completely highest point of all that is good, taking good to be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

In other words…grace is the cleansing of profanity in thought, deed and action from the soul and the body.

And Christ’s sacrifice expresses this perfectly.

More next time.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

The Prodigal – Farsightedness

One particular phrase in the parable of the prodigal sticks out to me just now, and it’s important to think about it with a little more clarity. I’m going to reiterate the verse here, and then think about it a bit.

Luke 15:20
“So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.”

But while he was still a long way off…I have heard this story and read it many times; it’s been applicable in a few different situations. But only recently has that particular verse struck me with its potency. While the repentant son was still a long way off, and while he was still on his way to meet his father once again, probably lost in the regret and sadness of humiliation, his father saw him and ran to him. How powerful a picture this is!

Father God, filled with compassion, sees us in our repentance from a long way off. While we’re still getting there, He’s overwhelmed with love and runs to us, hastening the comfort and welcome that we don’t deserve and are often too blind in our own sorrows to see. He throws His arms around us as we are prepared to abase ourselves absolutely before Him, unworthy, we think, to continue be called by the name of His child. Even as I write this, I’m struck with some of the incredible meaning of this compassionate act. And with the absolute forgiveness and love that our Father brings to us in our pain, not anything that we bring to Him. If you think about that, too, you run into some pretty amazing stuff. There’s nothing that we can bring to Him. Even our repentance is as naught. How many people do you know that take the time to hear you speak your pain and then act to comfort you and demonstrate that all is forgiven in an embrace? How many people do you know that don’t hide a grimacing mind behind a smiling face? I know I can certainly say that I’m guilty of this thousands of times over. But even in that, God comes to us. He sees us from a long, long way off, and runs with all haste to comfort us in sorrow and in shame.

One more to go;

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

The Prodigal – Foolishness

When he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in the land. Lack of foresight, combined with a liberal dose of greed.

Who are we to squander our inheritance on foolhardy living? Our prodigal did…where did he end up? Here, in this passage, stands a condemnation for those who waste their blessings, and then, because God is faithful, there also stands a tremendous hope. He was welcomed back in to his father’s house despite his wastrel life.

I’m not advocating poor stewardship to receive greater grace at all. What I see here is a warning to those with foolish and wastrel hearts. There are reasons why I get called judgmental and arrogant. Not all of them…in fact probably none of them are without merit. But there are Biblical bases for the condemnation of transient pleasure through intoxication or promiscuity, and I see nothing wrong with trusting them to be the true Word of God. Lest we get into isegeting ourselves into the text, however, we must be careful to test and approve.

Again, I say that our foolishness is still acceptable to our Father in heaven, if we come before Him and truly repent of it. So much in the world depends on the essential, genuine heart of the follower of Jesus Christ that we cannot hope to conceive of it, and repentance is one of the characteristics of a heart working for His glory. So let us repent of our foolishness, keeping in mind 1 Corinthians 1:25 – For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men”.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

The Prodigal – Pride

It’s been days since last I posted, and I’m exhausted. Five days seems like a long haul yet, but something comes…something comes. Forgive me for not revisiting this sooner.

Humility receives the gifts of the Father. True humility, that is. ‘My son, who was dead’ comes back from the death of self. Here is the beginning. ‘My son, who was lost’ is the helpless man who cannot find his way without guidance, without the hand of the Lord. Here is the beginning.

Pride comes in many shapes, many forms. It can be overt, in arrogance, or insidious, in self-sacrifice because ‘I can’. Grumbling at grace, fighting with everything in us against mercy and generosity.

Do you know what I mean?

Selah

Jealousy is wounded pride, hurt selfishness. The brother who was faithful is not feted, as the brother who was unfaithful is. Forgiveness brings reward; abasement in contrition of heart is worthy of the Father’s greatest blessings. ‘My son, you are always with me, and everything that I have is yours’ is a gift, unheeded and unnoticed. Are you…are we…really able to dare to hope such a thing? Do we live it?

These are the elementary truths of this great story. Pride brings sorrow, grief and destruction. Hope comes in repentance and contrition, bringing nothing before the Father and coming away with everything. Imagine the face of the unworthy and once-arrogant man as he sits at his father’s right hand, as he eats of the bounty increased in his absence. Imagine the tear of joy, the single bright gem of love that trickles down his face when the bearded and haggard face of his father presses to his neck and the cries of rejoicing come muffled from a fleshless shoulder.

Selah

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.