From The Sheep Pen

“Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.” Luke 15:1

Lately, I’ve been intrigued by a television series, “The Bible: A.D.” Despite liberties taken with God’s truth in the New Testament and some lame attempts to provide a back story for Mary and fleshing out rather insipid disciples, the shows present a fairly believable, historical picture of what Jerusalem might have been like in the first century.

What’s particularly striking are the scenes showing the multitude of people who lived in Jerusalem- Jews, Greeks, Ethiopians, and Romans, people of different races and heritages all crammed together. There are no consistent population records for the time so the estimates are anywhere from 30,00 to 80,000. During the Jewish festivals and particularly during Passover the number swelled to a million or more. In narrow congested streets, people were pushed together en masse. Jerusalem’s ordinary people eked out livelihoods cheek to jowl with their neighbors, but intrigue, unrest and undercurrents of rebellion against Rome’s violence were never far away. Rome’s brutal might was always prepared to crush Jewish dissenters. The first century was not a peaceful time. Violence and contempt for God is as old as the fall of man.

We forget the circumstances Jesus encountered when He preached in Jerusalem. The Gospels describe the multitude of people who surrounded Him everywhere He went, often crushing Him so that He had to leave for safety and preach from a boat or hill top. The multitude was a mixed crowd of the curious, the scoffers, the desperate and especially those who loved Him and believed in Him. Luke says it was sinners and tax collectors who “drew near to Jesus to hear Him.” It was the lost sheep of Israel who crowded around Christ, jostling and pushing their way closer and closer to hear His voice because He gave them hope and love. It was not the learned Pharisees who came to hear the Word because they had already rejected Jesus in their hearts. I imagine they kept a respectable distance away from Jesus, not wanting to touch Him nor the sinners pressing closer to Him.

Being in Idaho it’s difficult to imagine Jerusalem sized crowds. Here open space rolls for miles toward a distant horizon. The population is among the lowest in the nation. How can we begin to fathom Biblical multitudes, especially the unruly population pouring into Jerusalem and swelling an already overcrowded city.

I lived in New York City where 8 million people exist together. I often took the subway during rush hour and it was not a pleasant experience to be crushed up against total strangers. New Yorkers have the unique ability to avoid eye contact and become invisible behind newspapers, shopping bags and earphones. I developed a need for “personal space”on subways. But in the process something has gotten lost.

Often in church we are exhorted to press into the Lord’s Presence, to push through for the Holy Spirit and to draw ever nearer to Jesus. It’s an invitation to the believer’s heart to approach God one or two steps closer and then push through even more until there is no distance separating us.To press through means we have to get close enough to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. More than that we have to be so close that Jesus can touch us. We have to take a risk like the woman with an issue of blood. She pushed her way through the chaotic crowd , got close enough to touch Jesus’s hem and was healed for her faith.

There can’t be any “personal space” cocooning the Christian from the Lord’s presence. We resist getting close to Jesus and to one another, physically and spiritually because this idea of body space arises out of pride and control. We say to one another – and to the Lord- this far and no farther. I can hear just fine in my private space without actually being touched by You. We place boundaries on intimacy with Jesus and set ourselves at the outer fringe of the multitude, alongside the scoffers, doubters, curious and Pharisees. Instead let us position our hearts in the innermost space where sinners, tax collectors and a desperate woman pressed as close as possible. God promises us his adopted children that “nothing can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus.” It is not distance apart from but being drawn into inseparable closeness to Christ which is the most personal space of all.
Friede

“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5

Signs of spring are everywhere. My daffodils have already come and gone, the robins visit each morning to breakfast on worms wiggling in the damp earth and daylight lingers well past 8:00. Winter is gone – except for the sudden snowstorm which practically blinded me last week with saucer -sized snowflakes in the headlights. I have a favorite bookmark: “Blossom by blossom the flowers appear.” That’s how a mountain spring comes, practically unnoticed until suddenly it is in full bloom.

Yesterday I saw another harbinger of spring: a jogger in shorts and T-shirts, a hardy early bird of sorts. It was 42 degrees out, I had the car heater cranked up and had to marvel at his dedication, especially since at first glance I thought he was running barefoot on the sidewalk. I think he must have had on running sandals but it looked like his feet were naked in the cold.  I couldn’t get the picture out of my head.

Then at church a word came forth about allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to God and to each other, by metaphorically taking off our shoes. When we stand before God in prayer, we are on God’s ground not ours.  Moses was told by God to remove his sandals because the fire he saw burning, the fire he was approaching was  on “holy ground.” It was not to be approached profanely. I think of that story: Moses’s turning aside to see the strange sight, the fire of God’s Spirit burning in the wasteland, God’s voice, the command to acknowledge the Lord’s Holiness. It doesn’t get much simpler than this picture: God is God, Moses is mortal and then there beckons an invitation for a   relationship: “To love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.” This is the first and the greatest commandment as set forth in the Torah. It is the reminder that in God’s holy Presence, we have to come vulnerable and naked. Loving God requires our coming to Him without our shoes on.

Jesus adds the second commandment, “To Love our neighbors as ourselves.” He always deepens the call of God. He broadens the invitation God made to Moses by inviting us closer to Himself and to the Father. Could it be that we’re to approach one another similarly, also vulnerable, without anything coming between us? Not only yes, but it is the yes of Jesus showing us how it’s to be done. Just hours before He was crucified, He celebrates Passover with His disciples and washes their feet. Most of the time the message we get from this story is that Jesus takes on the servant’s role, that He humbles Himself to do the most menial task and that He is washing their filthy feet just as His death would wash away all our sins.

But it is also that before Jesus could wash Peter’s feet – and the others’- He had to take off Peter’s sandals. The shoes had to come off. That which protected the feet of the disciples when they were literally walking with Jesus in Galilee and Judah now had to be removed. There in the Upper Room was Holy Ground   right in front of their unseeing eyes. Perhaps Jesus didn’t actually remove 11 pairs of sandals. Perhaps the shocked disciples saw what He was doing and slowly began to unbuckle their own sandals. What emotions must have been churning in their hearts as they did so, awaiting the intimacy of the Lord’s washing hands!

I was touched by the pastor’s Word and considered the shoes all of us were wearing:  me in patent leather flats, other women in dress shoes, teens in flip flops or slippers, men is tough construction boots and sturdy cowboy boots. Many folks wore athletic/tennis shoes. Little kids kicked off shoes and ran in their socks.

What do shoes tell about us? How well do shoes reveal our self- identities ? I wonder if there are subtle reasons for our choice of footwear. The shoes I put on often often reflect my mental attitude and my spiritual disposition more than anything else.  We wear shoes to keep our feet from the elements and from harm.  Some wear shoes for comfort or to protect their feet from injury at work.   Some wear special shoes for medical problems. Hippie types come in Birkenstocks and sandals. Some wear their vanity; some their independence and pride. Some just want to be comfortable and casual and put on anything within reach. Some show off wealth or try to hide poverty. The disciples wore sandals for a reason and so do we still.

When Jesus removed the disciples’  shoes, He was also removing the one protective layer which came between them and intimacy with Him. When we come before God in prayer or into relationship with our “neighbor”,  those idolatrous things our shoes represent also have to be unbuckled, untied, undone, slipped off and removed. Jesus calls us to Himself but He wants us on His ground which is holy, not ours which is muddled and muddied. Pride, self protection, emulating idols,  vanity, health, sports and recreation, gritty independence – what’s worn in the heart and displayed on our feet comes between us and God , between you and me. Of one thing I am certain: I cannot remove my “ spiritual sandals” by myself. Even this simple thing is beyond my ability for I fail over and over. Without Jesus loosening my protective shoes which I’ve worn too long, comfortable, familiar shoes which I think are useful, but are really worn out, beat up and useless, how can my feet be washed in and for humility ,  fit to trod onto Holy Ground, to love God and my neighbor? I have to come barefoot and for that I need my Lord.

Friede

Today I listened to opera. Yup, that esoteric, high brow music sung by stout tenors and regal sopranos in foreign languages which most ordinary people avoid like the plague because it is mostly unintelligible. It often puts wary  people right to sleep or into a frenzied escape. Many find it to be irrelevant and “weird.” Dan would have preferred some   raspy , cigarette- infused honky tonk from Willy Nelson but, hey, I was home by myself. I cranked up Pavarotti, et al, over the vacuum cleaner’s whine and listened to some of the most sublime voices on the planet. As their powerful voices stretched into the stratosphere, into seemingly impossible ranges of pure sound – without benefit of any instruments lifting them along – it was the next best thing to flying.

I am not an opera buff by any means. I’ve only attended a few live operas in my entire life, and assuredly my husband had a sound nap during the performances. Without an English version of the libretto I can’t understand 99% of what’s being sung on stage even if it is in a language I know. Why then does opera move me so deeply? What is the attraction?

It is the voices. In fact opera is all about the human voice and the emotional/ psychological/ spiritual depths it can express. The voice in opera is central to everything else going on, the reason for the musical  score, acting and dramatic story. Today I listened to  exquisite voices  singing about things I didn’t understand and yet, was  still deeply moved. It is the singer’s voice which works itself into the heart and soul, not the text. Interestingly, the word comes from the Latin opera which means to work or labor. Watching an opera singer perform it is easy to understand the concept of laboring in song.

What moved me was hearing The Voice, God’s Voice behind the voices of  opera singers , for their  talent and gifts can only come from the Lord. It was God who created Adam with a voice box and a powerful sets of lungs. The Lord God created us in His own image and likeness. He gave men the same creative power to speak His Word, to create as He did with speech. Or not. James says that we have the power but that…

…Out of the same mouth  come praise and cursing. James 3:10

I’d like to point out that the tongue without the accompanying human voice would be useless.  God gave us both for His purposes. What then can be said of our ability to sing? And to sing like angels, at that?

God wants us  to speak life into creation but can it be that God also desires us to sing  ourselves right back to Him? I like to think that Adam and Eve sang all the time in the Garden before the Fall and that there were incredible,  soaring songs of joy, songs of praise, songs of mystery and songs of wonder. Perhaps they were the very first “opera stars”, able to hit bigger notes than Pavarotti or Maria Callas could ever hope to imitate. Perhaps, the Lord God sang right along with them and through them because He loved His children so much He could not hold back His own voice from them. God’s Big voice and man’s smaller voice blended  in perfect, glorious harmonies.  It’s an image to make  me want to sing at the top of my voice! Then came the fall – and the singing on planet earth changed. We have music and we have have opera, but it is cannot possibly come close to how it once was when man sang with God. Now, it is labor.

In the Book of Job, it implies that God never took away man’s singing. Job asks, and proclaims:

To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:6-7

We still sing. There is a tiny melody in the heart which can’t be silenced. Our voices encased in mortal bodies still desire to reach the heavens like operatic stars. Singing is in our spiritual bones and a sign that despite all our waywardness, God Himself is still singing over us!

The LORD your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

The Hebrew word for singing is to “joyfully cry out with loudness.” Throughout its history as a nation, Israel sang loudly, cried out to the Lord whenever they were beset by their enemies. Their songs resounded throughout the ancient world, revealing Yahweh to the pagans. David wrote  psalms extolling God’s covenant  faithfulness to His people. Mostly David sang out of joy and love for his God.

Sing to the Lord a new song./ Sing to the Lord all the earth./ Sing to the Lord, praise His Name. Psalm 96:1-2

As the people of God, we sing to  praise Him and to reveal Him to others. If we are gifted with great voices, if we have operatic gifts, literal or metaphoric, it is not for ourselves but for God’s glory. Our Lord prayed, “lead us not into temptation”, especially the temptation of self glorification. If we have  a great voice, there is the danger of becoming self indulgent, temperamental and idolatrous. Humility and obedience to God’s Word is needed to kick the “diva” right out of us.

On earth our voices may shatter crystal or we may barely croak like a frog, but it won’t matter in the end. Revelation gives a glimpse into heaven and clearly shows that those who believe in Jesus will all be singing to Him and for Him forever and ever. Amen.

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”… Revelation 5: 11-13.

It will pure joy,  an eternal, divine, musical opera, without labor ever again.

Friede

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. John 20:1

I wonder at the wonder of today, Easter Sunday. Today Christians the world over celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. We rejoice that the tomb in which Jesus was laid to rest by Joseph of Arimathea is empty.   The stillness , the quiet peace within the tomb attests to an unheard of event in human history. “Come look and see,” the angel proclaims. Do not fear. He has risen. He is not here. Behold the place where they laid him.” Mary Magdalene runs to find Peter and John and tells them the news. They do not believe her witness until they stand at the tomb, dumbfounded themselves.

What is not to wonder? Who has ever  given witness to  such an event  elsewhere? As the song says, it make me want to tremble with holy fear, knowing that the same Jesus who was most cruelly crucified and assuredly died on the cross is gone from the tomb. He arose from the dead. In Him we are reconciled to God to receive eternal life. Instead of weeping with grief at the loss of our Teacher, we sing joyfully to the Savior of mankind: Alleluia! Halelujah! He is alive. Jesus is alive!

This year’s Easter is very special. Something, or rather Someone indescribable stirs my soul for I am coming out of a long Lenten season. From Ash Wednesday until now, for exactly 40 days it is as if I’ve been in a grey place, a landscape which is neither pitch dark nor in bright light but like where  I’ve not had enough inner light to write or pray devotedly.  Because of some medical complications, I’ve had to depend on others more than I like. I had to give up a lot of control and freedom. It was like being doubly blocked in and blocked off.

That was then. The Spirit of God can remove all boulders   far away from the hindered heart. Now, the weighty malaise is gone. Christ’s grace and mercy poured out from his long empty tomb through time’s tunnel right into April 2015. When invited, the Holy Spirit shows up to comfort, heal and encourage. Grey twilight is only temporary. Dawn breaks open each day to God’s promises of adventure , mystery and untold joy. Just as on Easter morning when Christ was victorious over death, just as Easter this morning celebrates that victory, just so does the Holy Spirit stand ready to empower us against death of every kind. It causes me to tremble also!

Well, were you there when the stone was rolled away?

Were you there when the stone was rolled away?

(Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble)

Were you there when the stone was rolled away?

Johnny Cash

Friede

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments.” Joel 2:12-13

It is Ash Wednesday. Today marks the beginning of Lent in Christian churches around the world. Whether or not we’ve had special prayers or liturgies today, this begins a season to deepen our walk with the Lord and to reflect on Jesus in the Gospel as He moves toward his final Passover in Jerusalem.  The forty days of Lent are meant to pay attention to the prophet Joel’s admonition: to fast, weep, mourn and repent as we look forward to Easter.

I am on retreat this week at a monastery. Ash Wednesday was  commemorated today with a special service. Earlier this morning I received the sign of ashes on my forehead and surprisingly, that touch filled me with deep emotions, even to the point of tears. To be thus marked, I could not forget that I was once lost without Christ who found me in the ash pile. Through Jesus and because of Jesus, I am not longer the same woman. The ashes remind me that my old self is gone, incinerated so to speak, and I have been reborn. As other people walked out of the chapel bearing ash marks on their heads, I saw our commonality as Christian believers, not  the differences in theology or practice. Like them I am “saint in the sinner”, a spiritual work in progress. It was both humbling and encouraging.

Sometimes the “old man” in me tries to make a comeback. Pride, anger, lust, envy, greed and sloth skulk around like rabid rats in an abandoned shack. If I’ve stumbled and fallen short, I need to repent and humble myself before God. In the Bible the Israelites put on sack cloth and threw ashes over themselves as a visible sign of repentance. Whenever they finally turned back to God, whenever they cried out to the Lord to save them from disasters or from their enemies, they repented loudly with wailing, old rags and ashes.  It was acknowledgment of their sins against the Most High God.

In the psalms David  repeatedly cries out to God in repentance. Psalm 51 especially reveals David’s penitential heart after he had committed adultery and murder. He acknowledge his transgression against God alone and the evil he’s done  before God first and foremost. He asks to be purged with hyssop and to be washed from his uncleanness. He cries out for renewal, to receive a clean heart, for his sins to be blotted out. Even as he was most likely covered as required in sack cloth and ashes,   David’s heart cry was to be completely clean again in the sight of God.

This Psalm in all its humility and beauty of language should move us in the way the prophet Joel  spoke. God always desires for His people to return to Him  in repentance.   And while we may weep, mourn and fast in repentance, it’s our heart He searches out, whether it is still proud and rebellious or whether we are broken before Him.

Will your heart change this year during Lent? Will there still be anxiety and hurt marking the soul on Good Friday or pride on Easter Sunday? Or will there be a cleansing, not from soap and water washing away ash residue, but from the Holy Spirit downpouring  Jesus’ saving blood on our sins?

I won’t fast this Lent by giving up chocolate or coffee or junk food. .  I’ve tried that before and have always failed miserably. I always, always fail when I try to gain God’s grace through my own efforts and then feel the heavy weight of guilt for not having lived up to some external  standards. I no longer have to earn God’s forgiveness by rending my garments – or even my flesh.   His grace abounds like air and light all around me free, beautiful and ever available. He gives it to a contrite heart and a broken spirit, the heartfelt sorrow  David expressed in Psalm 51.

The  prophets tell us there are times  for sack cloth and ashes.  For me Lent is such a time.  But instead of pointless  and proscribed religious  do’s and don’ts,   let us seek the Holy Spirit  instead and listen closely as He reveals  secret, hidden faults. He will  always gently convict us   in  areas where we  need to return to God, where we need to weep, mourn, pray and fast.  His is  the voice of God in all the penitential psalms, calling His children to return. We cannot escape the sound of love calling us to repentance:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

O Lord, the answer to your Voice is “Yes.”

EAG

… ‘Remember the word that I said to you, A servant is not greater than his lord; if
they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. John 15:20

Last Thursday I was driving to Boise again for another appointment. As is habit I surfed the radio stations to keep my mind from meandering off road. A bit of news caught my attention. A radio personality gave  an “just now” update on that morning’s National Prayer Breakfast held  earlier in Washington, which takes place each year on the first Thursday of February. It has been going on since 1953 and has been attended by every United States President since that time. This year was no exception, but President Obama’s remarks have since generated a furor of controversy. It’s not my intent to enter that distressing fray right now.

It was reported that the President had specifically mentioned the imprisonment of Pastor Saed Abedini who has been held for  almost three  years in an infamous Iranian prison and has suffered cruelly for preaching the Gospel in Iran. President Obama indicated in his address that he had visited Pastor Saed’s family during his January 21st  visit to Boise and “that we’re doing everything we can to bring him home. “ What that means politically  in light of the  Iranean nuclear arms discussions is unclear, but at the very least it means that Pastor Saed and his family are not forgotten.

One of my friends,  Shannon,  has been in contact with Pastor Saed’s family for some time because she has great compassion for Naghmeh and her two young children. She told me  that  recently  Naghmeh had called for a three -week fast and prayer for her husband whose health is deteriorating because of the beatings he’s received from his captors. Shannon is on an update e-mail list for Pastor Saed and joined in the fast. I called her when I heard the encouraging news . Of great interest, and not reported in any media, is this fact. The President of the United States came to Boise and to the Abedini family right after the days of fasting and prayer. Mrs. Abedini was not  officially informed of the presidential visit until shortly before. Is there a connection? Of course there is – especially for everyone who prayed.

During his speech at the Prayer Breakfast President Obama read from a letter which Pastor Abedini wrote from prison and which according to the President, he received after his Boise trip. He quotes Saed from his letter.

“Nothing is more valuable to the Body of Christ than to see how the Lord is in control, and moves ahead of countries and leadership through united prayer.”  And he closed his letter by describing himself as “prisoner for Christ, who is proud to be part of this great nation of the United States of America that cares for religious freedom around the world.”  (Applause.)

The prophetic fulfillment of Pastor Saed’s very words  about the Lord being in control and  moving ahead of earthly leaders through prayer strike the heart. Surely the words written by Saed, “a prisoner for Christ” also recall Daniel’s words after he prayed to God for revelation:

Daniel said, “Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, For wisdom and power belong to Him.It is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men And knowledge to men of understanding.… Daniel 2:20-22

I might even view   President Obama’s  implied reference to  Daniel’s prophecy as  spiritual irony, which seemed lost on him  in its context.  It   recalls   Jonathan Cahn,  speaker at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast when he  warned about the harbingers and how Isaiah’s warning prophecies were unwittingly spoken by those in power.

The fuss over President Obama’s very questionable remarks  earlier in the  speech will die away and cease being newsworthy as soon as the next media hungry event occurs, but as Christians who truly are Jesus’ servants, we cannot forget  those who are  His “servants in chains.”  Jesus had a great deal to say about servants and masters in John 3:16, Matt 10:24, John 15:20, Luke 6:40 and Acts 17:11. In each case the Lord tried to teach his disciples that in their relationship they would also be servants as He was Servant. But then in John 15:20 comes the difficult news: As Jesus suffered, so would His disciples. As He was persecuted, so would they be persecuted. As it was, each one of the apostles as well as Paul was martyred. Pastor Saed understands relationship to his Lord very well as  a prisoner for Christ.

Jesus’ words are difficult to hear. We are  not persecuted for our faith. In fact, the present age of Christian persecution leaves many of us bewildered. How did this happen? How is it that in the modern, civilized 21^st century barbaric acts against believing Christians are spinning out of control? If we are honest, human fear makes us  ask ourselves.  Could I suffer for Christ as does Pastor Abedini? Am I afraid of what I might be called to endure?

Jesus spoke of the Last Days and warned what would happen to those who believed in Him  during that time. But it is Jesus  who  calms   all  our fear of persecution because we have something the rest of the  unmoored and anchorless  world does not. Or rather we have Someone,   in the person of a Savior who promised to be with us in every trial, in every fiery time and season. We have the promise of a loving, just and righteous God that He and only “He changes times and seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings… and light dwells with Him” even in the darkness .  Jesus will provided everything that is needed at the time it is needed.  Through faith in Christ alone who overcame death and the grave, I will not  fear  any rattling of the saber  nor   chains of persecution.

As we await whatever will happen,  Mountain Life Church can pray for those imprisoned for the Gospel. Specifically, shall we not join to pray for Pastor Saed and all of his family? Shall we not  pray for our President that he responds  what was  promised through the very words he spoke on Thursday?   God who heard Naghmeh’s prayers in January  hears, will respond to our united prayer on his servant’s behalf.

For more information and a petition to release Pastor Saed:

http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign

For the   full text of the President’s talk, here is a link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast

EAG

Truly, truly, I say to you, no servant is greater than his master…John 13:16

Imagine this scenario.

There is a need in your church for someone to take on a particular ministry. Your Pastor makes the request to the body, but the body is slow to respond. A lot of hands suddenly become heavy as boat anchors. The request is neither long term nor difficult – and it is something you know how to do. So you say, OK, I’ll take that on. You certainly don’t need to serve in one more area, but at the time, the request seems worth while and reasonable.

The task requires a little extra time and a small dose of effort. It takes place in the background of churchy things, as much ministry actually does. You show up dutifully and follow through. But then by the second or third time, you notice things. First you notice that you’re all alone in this. Then you notice that others appear to be doing far more important things than what you are doing. Mostly you notice an awful lot of folks who tend to mill about, chatting, drinking coffee, having a lot of time on their hands – precious time which you’ve now given over. You ask yourself that impertinent question: “And where were they when Pastor called for help? “

Suddenly, your response to serve becomes burdensome and meaningless.  Inside of fruit, there is the tiniest seed of resentment which grows too quickly. Instead of your heart quickening with joy and love, your heart constricts into a coil. You feel put upon and invisible. You no longer have the heart of a servant.

Does this scene sound even faintly familiar? As Beth Moore often puts it in her videos, “Am I speaking to anyone out there?” Indeed so. I am describing myself more than any one else more times than I want to admit. Recently as I struggled through a similar episode, the Lord reminded me of a different story.

It is the last few days of Jesus’ life on earth, shortly before His crucifixion. Knowing all things that will take place, Jesus partakes of the Passover with His disciples in the Upper room. He eats supper with them and ministers to them one last time for one reason only – because of how fervently He loved them.

“Then He said to them, With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” Luke:22:15

Jesus then leaves them with a final, unforgettable lesson about being a Servant.  After supper,   He kneels down in front of each one and with the true heart of Servant, he washes twelve  pairs of filthy feet.

… He rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that He poured water into a a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.”John:13:4-5

Jesus’ fervent desire was to eat with His disciples for the last time, but was it not also His fervent desire, his divine burning love which held their filthy feet, washed them clean and toweled them dry? About to die most horribly, Jesus , the Word made flesh and Master of all Creation, knelt down to do a slave’s work.

I can picture the story so clearly. Jesus; the perplexed disciples; the laden Passover table. Jesus’ garment folded on the floor. The towel knotted around His waist. I know this Servant Lord and what He endured for our salvation just hours later. I know the price He paid for our transgressions prophetically fulfilling Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. The Jesus whom Isaiah described as “smitten by God and afflicted, a Man of Sorrows, wounded for our iniquities, despised and bruised”, the Messiah whom the prophets never got to see is the Servant Jesus with the bowl of dirty water washing His friends’ feet.

My ministry  complaints are infantile  in the light of Jesus’ majestic, humble,  fervently loving  servanthood.

Imagine another scenario. Who else might have been in that Upper room? Who else might have witnessed Jesus washing feet?

Before the Passover, there are servants already in the Upper Room. The Word tells us that Jesus instructed Peter and John to prepare a room for the Passover, but it doesn’t give any details. Perhaps, just perhaps, there were house slaves bustling about for the Passover celebration. Someone had to help Peter and John  prepare the food, to set out all that was needed. Someone had to buy all the ingredients, cook the food, bring in the special Passover dishes. Someone had to provide Jesus the water and the towel. Working silently these unnamed servants watched Jesus and the twelve during the meal,  anticipating  their needs. And surely there were those who cleaned up the table and the room after Jesus and the disciples went out to the Garden.

I am touched to the heart by this picture of unknown, unrecognized servants who themselves served the Lord. What did they think about this strange Rabbi and his small band of followers? How could they have ever been the same after being witness to Jesus’ shocking actions in the Upper Room? Surely their lives were not the same. If I were there, would I not have done anything and everything to serve Jesus with all my heart? Wouldn’t even the most menial, ordinary task to serve Him be a privilege like no other? Wouldn’t I have run to the well for water and gladly taken the sodden towel from Him? Pleasing my Lord as His servant-slave would be all that I fervently desire!

Then why would being a servant of Jesus, for Jesus be any different now? In fact it is not. Being His Servant  is never about us at all.

EAG

“Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” Genesis 32:24

This last Saturday and Sunday we had the privilege of being prophetically ministered to at Mountain Life Church by Pastors Jonathan and Elena Wilkins, friends of our pastors from California. They’d been here about two years ago and I was very excited about their returning. Why? The reason is simple. The last time Pastor Jonathan spoke something into my life that he could not possibly have known, something specific which few people know about me and my deepest longings. His words could only have come   under the Holy Spirit’s direction. The short prophetic encounter flipped a switch in my understanding of the prophetic. It wrecked me for a week.

Don’t misunderstand. From childhood I’ve known about the Holy Spirit, theologically that is, as One Person in the Trinity. But, I did not “know” the Holy Spirit. I had no clue what “Person” meant, that He is real and that He still operates in men and women. Truthfully, I have had to unlearn almost everything that I was taught. Or more specifically, what was kept hidden and not taught. It is to my ongoing bafflement – and probably to God’s great ongoing amusement -that He plunked me into a charismatic, Pentecostal Church under the guidance of Spirit filled leaders. Smile, if you must.

I knew that Pastor Jonathan would bring powerful, encouraging Words to our leadership. This time as I listened to him and Elena speaking to others, I was struck with how much God loves His children and His Church. He knows us more than we know ourselves and certainly loves us infinitely more.

Over and over I heard the word “tenacity” being spoken over our team. It seems we are a tenacious bunch at Mountain Life Church and it seems that God is actually pleased with that. No matter what our age or circumstance, each person has endured difficult seasons. Despite all that, the Word is that we have held on to the Lord’s promises with tenacity and God will be faithful to fulfill His Word.

On Saturday there was a large photo on the screen which looked like El Capitan, the mountain in Yosemite which was recently in the news because two young climbers had “free climbed” the notoriously difficult Dawn Wall. Surely, the choice of photos was not accidental.  As Jonathan prophesies, I stared at it.

The word tenacity means holding onto or gripping something with purpose and almost dogged determination. It implies extreme endurance and almost a stubborn, beyond reasonable going after something we want.   That would certainly describe the two rock climbers who clung to El Capitan with their fingers, with every inch of strength because their lives depended on it.

Tenacity is the dogged persistence of Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord in Genesis 32:24. In fact, his grip on the angel was so strong that his hip was dislocated in the struggle.

When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.… Genesis 32: 25

Jacob held on with a painful, dislocated hip until he got what he wanted. That is tenacious, unrelenting holding on for something not yet received. For his tenacity of endurance Jacob received a new name from God and became the Father of the Israelites.

Tenacity is Job who refused to “curse God and die”, no matter how   dreadfully he was tested. Despite losing everything he had, family, possessions, health, and receiving instead condemnation from his friends and wife, being blamed for the evils which befell him, Job clings to his Rock and continues to bless God.

Though he slay me, still I will trust in the Lord.” Job: 13 :33

For his tenacity of trust Job was given more family, possessions and even longer life than he had before.

Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. Job 42:12

Tenacity is the woman with the issue of blood told in all three synoptic Gospels. She had endured for many years at the hands of doctors who could not cure her. Finally, desperate for healing she seeks out Jesus and in secrecy touches His garment. As the story goes Jesus felt power going out of Him, finds the woman and heals her because of her faith.

            Be of good cheer, daughter, your faith has made you well. Matthew 9:21

Hers was tenacity born of desperation which showed up as clinging, tenacious   faith,  even just for  Christ’s hem. For that she was healed by the Lord and got what no one else could give.

Like the climbers on El Capitan, we also cling tenaciously to a mighty rock. But ours is the Lord, the Rock to whom we run for safety and deliverance. He is stronghold, fortress, salvation, refuge, shield and the one who is always beyond our natural resources.

The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I
take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. … Psalm 18:2

From the end of the earth will I cry to you, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. Psalm 61.2

The New Testament reveals Jesus as the Rock, the foundation of the Church he would build on earth.

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. … Matthew 16:18

The gates of hell won’t prevail  against us in Christ Jesus if we hang on tenaciously to Christ the Rock.   Even when our grip becomes  feeble, we will not slip and fall off the mountain.   If Christ is for us, nothing can prevail against us.

I may question my own tenacity but I never have to question Jesus’ or the Father’s or the Holy Spirit’s. Human perseverance and relentlessness and tenacity for righteousness is nothing if not the reflection of God’s own character. Hasn’t God pursued mankind tenaciously  since the Fall and sent Jesus finish the work? Did not Jesus persevere to the end, holding on to the Father even to the end? And will He  not put all things firmly under His feet in Revelation’s final vision?  The Holy Spirit’s   never ceases  breathing God’s Word into and over us.   We become tenacious for the things of the Spirit because God’s love for us is tenacious first. His Word relentlessly goes forth  in its purposes and will not quit or return unfulfilled.

Christ  the Word  is  the Mighty Rock. Hold on to Him with  tenacious, determined, dogged   faith. Be just like  like Jacob, Job and the woman.  While it might look like you are precariously gripping  insurmountable mountains,   Jesus  will not let go of a single precious finger of your hand in His.

EAG

“For I am your servant.” Psalm 143:12

In the Bible there are almost 800 Old Testament references to servants.  It is  a major theme in God’s Word and as such demands our attention. In the New Testament, Jesus   became the Suffering Servant prophesied in Isaiah 53.   He taught his disciples repeatedly about becoming servants and His Word still calls  us to be like wise.  That also demands our attention.

One of the most popular television shows   is “Downton Abbey”, the Masterpiece Theater series about an   English country house,  home of an  aristocratic family  and the vast network of  servants which keep family and household running in the manner to which all are accustomed. Everyone is fascinated with the lives of the rich and the famous, but especially so with British high brows. This show allows American viewers to be like a fly on silk- papered walls, listening in on the very private lives of people far beyond our social reach. What makes the show so interesting is the secondary story line Downstairs, where the staff works,   resides and  serves the  Upstairs family under the eagle eye of the Butler Mr. Carsten.

I have never had a servant.  I don’t have need of any.  Even if I had a servant, I wouldn’t know what to ask of her, what to expect or how to treat her properly. As an  independent minded and more than a bit stubborn American, the notion of  having “servants”  is foreign.  I’m more comfortable doing for myself than having another person “serve” me. At those unwelcome times when I do I have to ask for help, it is not easy to let go of independence. We value that independent spirit so greatly I fear it stems from  pride more than anything else. Pride demands that we rely on our own resources, on our own control and  will  rather than on God. It keeps us from true servant hood as Jesus taught and lived throughout the Gospel.

Few or none of us come from the privileged upper class  and so we get our ideas of “servants”  second hand from  fiction.  We are also centuries away from the brutal world  Jesus walked in, a divided world of  powerful masters and a vast  society of  servants,  slaves and bond servants.   It was  far removed from the  gentility  of   Downton Abbey. Servants in ancient Israel were not like the starched maids and liveried footmen of television. It’s a world I know nothing about for   in a classless society like ours, how can we relate to being a servant when everything screams   for our  selfish  entitlement? Very simply, Jesus invites us to live very differently in the world , just as He lived differently from the world. He sets the bar  very high for his followers.

Mark.9:35 …”If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

His disciple must be last – and he must be the servant of all. He is to be the servant of servants. It doesn’t get any lower than that, does it? Today I have to ask. Have we somehow missed the core of Christ’s teaching in this area?

But you say, that’s not the case. Look at all of our Christian ministries. Aren’t we servants because we’re always  serving others? We have this outreach and that mission. We serve the poor and the community and the church, etc., etc., etc. Isn’t this what Jesus meant?

No, it is not.

What Jesus did say is that His servant “… must be the very last” and what one therefore has to assume is that in Christ servant hood is a state of being, not a condition of doing. We’ve confused two very different concepts, “the servant” and “serving.” As Christians we understand serving very well because,  well, it’s what we do as Christians, but we haven’t understood Jesus’ deeper invitation.  Jesus could not go about His father’s business unless like David, He had the heart of a servant.  We also first have to be servants before we can serve.

Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as ransom for many.”

Matthew 10:24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

A servant in Biblical times was NOT like any character portrayed in Downton Abbey and certainly not like the imperious butler Mr. Carsten who rules over his domain like any great lord of the manor.   In Jesus’ era a servant was the same as a slave or bond servant. It was someone without any rights to himself, who was bound to his master in body and soul. His life was to do whatever was asked of him, no mater how lowly the request. The servant had no identity of his own, except as the servant of the one who had bought him.

This is what Jesus invites us to be – His servant – because  we are not above our master. As He was to  the Father so are we to  become.  He asks us to belong to Him alone because He is the one who owns us. We surrender everything to Him without question because we know Him as our personal Savior. It is not a matter of serving. It is a matter of dying to every independent thought, desire and deed apart from Christ.

Rom 14:8  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord, so that alive or dead we belong to the Lord.

Mother Teresa puts it this way: “I belong to Jesus. He must have the right to use me without consulting me.”

In the Scripture from Mark, Jesus  reveals to  the squabbling disciples that not only are they to be servants, but they are to be the last of all – the servants of the Servant. Under the power of the Holy Spirit  on Pentecost, these same  disciples  later understand what  Jesus meant and they all identify themselves as servants. The epistles of James, Peter and Paul  begin with them being    “a bond servant of Jesus Christ and it is an ongoing identity with Paul.

What an unsettling  idea for those of us who still harbor the notion that we can somehow get around Jesus by our Christian acts of service!  Apart from  Christ- like servant hood, Christian serving still  tries to control, holds to its own rights,  picks and chooses  ministry, is free  to walk away  when things  get too messy,  and  calls its own  shots for how, when and whom we serve.

Oswald Chambers hits the mark painfully for me on this: “It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people’s feet.”  The image of a door mat is extremely unpleasant and odious and I wrestle with his  choice of words.  But when I look at what The Lord did for me, how He lived and died to free me from bondage,  how could I refuse anything He asks of me, even lying down for another.

The easy response  is to serve as we’ve always served because we know how and it is really not that difficult.   However,  to   acknowledge  Christ’s Lordship over us by  agreeing  to  become  His servant without rights or consultations, binding  ourselves 100% to Him  out of love, that is much, much harder.

EAG

If you were asked, “What is the best gift you received for Christmas this year ?”, what would you answer? Of course most of us would try to focus on the intangibles, on the expected: celebrating Jesus; being with Family and Friends; etc., etc. But surely, there was a little something special wrapped up under the tree or hidden in   your Christmas stocking that delighted your heart!

My special gift which came early is a fountain pen! Yes, I know. Admittedly, I am a dinosaur without an I Phone, who doesn’t text, a former English teacher who gets excited by journals, writing paper, colors of ink, the heft of a pen. Admittedly, I am a real writing snob when it comes to writing materials, especially my pens. I use a computer out of necessity, not by desire. Keyboarding is faster, but typically I spend an inordinate  amount of time editing one or two paragraphs rather than just writing page after page. Pen and paper don’t allow excess  attention to minutia.

There’s something very unique about writing with a pen which doesn’t happen with a computer. A different creative process takes place when I hold a pen and move it across the paper from left to right. The eye, the hand and the brain all engage together and coordinate. Thoughts emerge almost as if they’re etched upon the blank surface. I’ve missed writing like that.

My pen is blue plastic, bought on Amazon,  made in Germany and has a nib as smooth as silk. It is fat and practical and refillable. The best thing is that I don’t end up with messy blobs on the paper or inky stained fingers. Did I say it was made in Germany?

Today my pen ran dry. I’ve been using it for over a month and today the words became increasingly fainter. It was time to put in a new cartridge. Unscrew the base, pop in the new filled cartridge and it’s good as new. With it refilled, I can write another month or longer. The used cartridge lay on the table and caught my attention. It is not very big, two or three inches long and holds only a tiny bit of ink, no more than an ounce at the most.

And yet, what an extraordinary, truly amazing thing it is! For this small volume of ink ended up as thousands of words expressing hundreds of thoughts, ideas, dreams, joys and sorrows of the last weeks  of 2014 and the first days of 2015. What was basically nothing but a dark, formless fluid in a disposable cartridge has taken shape as words, as the language expressing my mind’s musings, my heart’s searching and sometimes as my soul’s most private longings for God. Out of such   inky, murky  unknowns  emerge God’s gift of language making.
Scripture is filled with language makers, those who have dipped their quills into the ink and recorded God’s Word which the Holy Spirit breathed into their minds.

My heart is stirred by a noble theme                                                                                                   As I recite my verses for the king;                                                                                                        My tongue is the pen of a skillful writer. Psalm 45:1

Psalm 45 is one of the royal psalms in which the Psalmist was reciting a wedding song written for the king on his wedding day. As he recites/sings the verses he likens his tongue to a pen in the hand of a skilled poet or writer. It is an apt comparison because both the tongue and the pen have the power to praise and give life – or to pull down. The psalmist is stirred by noble thoughts. His “ink cartridge” is his overflowing heart for the king whose majesty he declares and whom he extols with high praise.

Whereas the tongue blesses or curses immediately, the pen affects the Ages. There is the Bible. There is also Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto.  Their authors dipped their quills into very different ink wells. I think of  Martin Luther translating the Bible into German  and wonder how many Holy Spirit  ink pots he must have used for that great work. The story  is told that Luther threw  his ink pot at the devil who was harassing him. The stain of the ink is still seen on the walls of Luther’ s imprisonment in Wartburg. His translation of the Bible  has changed the world.

As for me, my pen needs be  as my tongue speaking to all who  come across this blog.  I ask  the Holy Spirit  to  stir my heart to noble thoughts so that  with my  blue Christmas  fountain pen I honor Jesus , so that I can extol His goodness, praise His majesty and reveal His beauty. Indeed, I have much more than another  ink cartridge when I run dry again for   I purchased  a whole ink bottle filled with blue  ink. It contains an entire library waiting to be written into words , into “verses for my King.” What a  gift to be His “ready writer” with the Spirit’s  endless ink well to dip into.  Thank you Lord, for such a wonderful privilege.

EAG