Month: December 2010

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Advent Repentance: Burn Away Everything

 

He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross.

Mal. 3:3

My good friend and fellow parishioner of Lamb of God Church, Jay Ferguson, wrote this prayer as a meditation for this year’s Advent season. Jay’s prayer puts into words the cry of our hearts: “Lord, deal with us. Cleanse us from sin, purify our consciences, renew our spirits. We want to be prepared for Jesus’ second coming and ready to worship and praise the Lord for his first coming.”

Father, in Jesus’ name, burn away every dream, desire, attitude, thought, feeling, word and action that is not a result of Your Spirit reigning in my life.

Burn away everything that is more important to me than my revelation of You and my relationship with You.

Burn away everything that hinders me from loving You with all my heart and loving my neighbors as I love myself.

Burn away everything that hinders me from hearing and obeying Your voice.

Burn away everything I believe about who You are and what You are like that is not the Truth.

Burn away everything in my heart and mind that causes me to desire to harm or destroy those who desire or act to harm or destroy me.

Burn away the lust of my eyes, the lust of my flesh and the pride in my life.

Burn away everything that causes me to desire to own or possess anything that is not rightfully mine.

Burn away everything that causes me to desire to lie or exaggerate to get what I want or impress or harm others.

Father, in Jesus’ name, I ask that I will be deeply intimate with You, filled with your Holy Spirit, free of pride, lust and fear, loving, patient, kind, tender- hearted, forgiving, joyful, thankful, grateful, humble, considerate, healthy, successful, prosperous and very generous.

Dr. James H. Ferguson

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The Manger and the Cross


We Can See Love Real and in the Flesh

And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Matt 1:20-21 NLT

The manger and the cross are not far removed. We tend to picture the Nativity as a pastorally-pleasing, sweet scene with admiring parents and grateful shepherds. We tend to view Golgotha as a horrid, ugly hill surrounded by hate-filled rejectors of the glorious majesty of God. Of course, truth exists in both these images, but often we fail to recognize that the Cross was planted in Bethlehem.

A Savior was born that day to die for our sins–the shadow of the Cross falls over the baby Jesus as he rests in the manger. Our kinsman redeemer, our sin-bearer, our ransom, our sacrificial Lamb was born that day in Bethlehem. The Cross and the manger meet in Bethlehem-Jesus is born to die for your sins and mine.

God’s compassion for us is all the more wonderful because Christ died not for the righteous or the holy but for the wicked and the sinful, and, though the divine nature could not be touched by the sting of death, he took to himself, through his birth as one of us, something he could offer on our behalf.

Leo the Great cited in Thomas C. Oden and Cindy Crosby, Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings, Lectionary Cycle C (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 31.

In this Child, in fact, God-Love is manifested: God comes without weapons, without strength, because he does not aim to conquer, we could say, from without, but rather wants to be welcomed by man in liberty. God becomes a defenseless Child to conquer man’s pride, violence, and desire to possess. In Jesus, God took up this poor and defenseless condition to conquer with love and lead us to our true identity.

Pope Benedict XVI, “St. Francis’ Role in Christmas,” Dec. 23, 2009.

The whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr . . . His birth and his death were but one continuall act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.

John Donne, “Christmas Sermon,” Dec 25, 1626

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Enfleshment

God Became Actual

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Phil. 2:6-8 NLT

Incarnation means enfleshment: Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. The great act of God: the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, took upon himself our human nature. Incarnation means that God is with us, near us, transforming us. The incarnation means that God cared and came among us to deliver us from ourselves.

Jesus Christ is God-Man. God in Essence cannot come anywhere near us. Almighty God does not matter to me, He is in the clouds. To be of any use to me, He must come down to the domain in which I live; and I do not live in the clouds but on the earth. The doctrine of the Incarnation is that God did come down into our domain. The Wisdom of God, the Word of God, the exact expression of God, was manifest in the flesh. That is the great doctrine of the New Testament—dust and Deity made one. The pure gold of Deity is of no use to us unless it is amalgamated in the right alloy, viz. the pure Divine working on the basis of the pure human: God and humanity one, as in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Oswald Chambers, Shade of His Hand: Talks on the Book of Ecclesiastes (Hants UK: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1936).

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The Marvelous Scheme

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). 

This blog is dedicated to the work of Christ on the Cross. Why? Without equivocation or hesitation, the Christian faith proclaims Christ’s death and resurrection to be the most important event in human history. To the skeptic, Christ’s death is meaningless–the tragic death of an innocent man. To the secularist, Christ’s death is futility–a death that could have been avoided. To the naysayer, Christ’s death is an example of the silliness and stupidity of religion.

Yet, the believer knells at the foot of the cross and weeps for he or she knows that Christ’s bore the suffering they deserved. Christ took their place and bore the punishment for their sin. Christ gave his life that we might live. But the cross is not just a place of repentance, but also a place of rejoicing: our greatest foes have been defeated. Christ is risen: death and Satan could not hold him down.

Yes, the very cross that seems folly to some is yet the wisdom of God. It is the marvelous scheme by which God satisfied both His justice and His love, and reconciles sinners unto Himself. And the cross that seems so weak and so futile to men–just a dead man hanging on a tree–is yet the power of the living God, by which He awakens the conscience and melts the heart; by which he wins the rebel, and justifies the ungodly, and brings the forgiven sinner first to holiness and then to glory.

J. R. W. Stott, “The Calling of the Church,” Daily Thoughts from Keswick: A Year’s Daily Readings, ed. Herbert F. Stevenson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980), 362.

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Holy Spirit Power For a Holy Ministry

The Holy Spirit in You

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses . . . .

Acts 1:8

In August of 1979, I attended Crystal Springs Institute (CSI), the training school for the Agape Force ministry located in the city of Lindale in East Texas. We were on a weekend mission of sorts, we called it the “trust God or die” mission. Every semester the student body was divided into teams of four guys, or four girls, and dropped off in various locations around the state of Texas. We were told to trust God for our lodging, food, and transportation. We were encouraged by the leadership that the Lord would provide the people to whom he wanted the Gospel shared. 

Our four man team was dropped off in downtown Dallas. As we were walking through the business district, a petite African-American lady stopped us and asked what we were doing. We were rather conspicuous with our sleeping bags, backpacks, and Bibles. We explained that we were on a short-mission trusting God for his provision, protection, and providential direction. She asked loudly and boldly, “Have you ever been filled with the Holy Ghost”? Two of my companions said, “yes” and one said, “no” and I hoped she would go away. She didn’t. We all gathered next to a park bench as she loudly and boldly prayed that the Holy Spirit would come upon us. 

In a plaza located on Commerce Street, she prayed for us powerfully and I will never forget it. That day, I first experienced the vocal spiritual gifts for the first time. I was forever affected by the Holy Spirit’s person, presence, and power. I felt strengthened by that power with authority for ministry and was freshly enabled by the Spirit to share Christ. In short, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit for ministry–a ministry that would last my lifetime. 

From that day to this, it has been the tendency of carnal Christians and a carnal Church to be more interested in power for performance, than it has been interested in power for purity. More interested in power for conquest than in power for Christlikeness. We need to stress that the power of the Holy Ghost is power for Christlikeness, before it is power to go out and do things that produce headlines in the newspaper. It is power to be like our blessed Lord in mind and motive and spirit.

Paul S. Rees, “Adequacy for Life and Witness,” Daily Thoughts from Keswick: A Year’s Daily Readings, ed. Herbert F. Stevenson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980), 363.

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Deep Supernatural Fulfillment

Joy in You

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

John 15:11

Joy is that deep, supernatural fulfillment that comes in knowing that we are experiencing and expressing the one who is true satisfaction, Jesus Christ. Joy begins with acknowledging that we are unconditionally loved, graciously forgiven, and eternally kept in Christ. Joy is released in our lives when we cultivate Christ’s conscious, constant presence.

Joy is not produced by celebration or emotional highs: supernatural fulfillment is imparted by obedience to God’s commands. Joy is not dependent on pleasant circumstances, but it is the fruit of finding and meeting Christ in the midst of all our circumstances both pleasant and painful. Joy is spontaneously experiencing the risen Jesus and sharing him with others.

Joy is not happiness, joy is the result of the perfect fulfilment of the purpose of the life. We never want praise if we have done perfectly what we ought to do; we only want praise if we are not sure whether we have done well. Jesus did not want praise; He did not need it, and He says “that My joy may be in you” (rv). The joy of Jesus Christ was in the absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice of Himself to His Father, the joy of doing what the Father sent Him to do—“I delight to do Thy will,” and that is the joy He prays may be in His disciples.

It is not a question of trying to work as Jesus did, but of having the personal presence of the Holy Ghost Who works in us the nature of Jesus. One of the consolations of the way is the fathomless joy of the Holy Ghost manifesting itself in us as it did in the Son of God in the days of His flesh.

Oswald Chambers, So Send I You: The Secret of the Burning Heart (Hants UK: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1930), 98.

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The Work of God

The Work of God Is to Believe

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

John 6:29

God never calls us to be adequate, but he always calls us to be available. We can be available to his Holy Spirit by trusting his promises through believing his Word. As we trust him, his Holy Spirit works in and through us touching lives, encouraging faith, and expressing God’s love. This is the work of God: trust the Christ that lives in you to minister the life of God to the people of God for the glory of God.  The overflow of Christ in you is good works and that is New Testament ministry.

That is the work of God. It is your living faith in the adequacy of the One who is in you, which releases His divine action through you. It is the kind of activity that the Bible calls “good works,” as opposed to “dead works.”

“Good works” are those that have their origin in Jesus Christ– whose activity is released through your body, presented to Him as a living sacrifice by a faith that expresses total dependence, as opposed to the Adamic independence (Rom. 12:1-2).

Major Ian Thomas, The Saving Life of Christ/The Mystery of Godliness (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988), 26.

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God of the Humble, Miserable, and Afflicted

God of the Hurting

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.

1 Peter 5:6 NLT

Humility is seeing yourself as God sees you: dark yet lovely (Song of Songs 1:5), weak yet strong (2 Cor. 12:9), and poor yet spiritually rich (2 Cor. 5:21). Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking less about yourself. Humility is not denigrating yourself by making yourself out to be less than the total person that God has gifted and called you to be as his servant.

Humility is admitting your weaknesses, calling out to God for help, and depending completely on his strengthening grace. Humility is surrendering yourself to God the Father by allowing him to do in your life whatever he pleases, irrespective of what others might say about you or do to you. Humility is not allowing people to walk over you, but humility is allowing Christ to live his life in and through you.

[God is] the God of the humble, the miserable, the afflicted, the oppressed, the desperate, and of those who have been brought down to nothing at all…. [It is God’s character] to exalt the humble, to feed the hungry, to enlighten the blind, to comfort the miserable and afflicted, to justify sinners, to give life to the dead, and to save those who are desperate and damned.

Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535)

HT: writing in the dust

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Eucharist on a Handkerchief

Jesus in the Bread and Wine

When he [Jesus] was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

Luke 24:30-31

Fr. Walter Ciszek was truly a saint of God. Called by the Holy Spirit to be a missionary to the Communist state of the Soviet Union, Ciszek deliberately entered Russia for the purpose of reaching prisoners with the gospel of grace. From 1939 and 1963, he toiled in various prison camps of the Gulag. Ciszek’s memoir, He Leadeth Me, was my Lenten reading two years ago, it is a book I will read again and again.

The quote below is a beautiful depiction of Holy Eucharist being provided in the most difficult of circumstances to prisoners who count the Body and Blood most precious.  No beautiful vestments, no towering cathedrals, no gorgeous vessels, etc.,  just the precious presence of our Lord and Savior in the bread and wine.

When I reached the prison camps of Siberia, I learned to my great joy that it was possible to say Mass daily once again. In every camp, the priests and prisoners would go to great lengths, run risks willingly, just to have the consolation of this sacrament. For those who could not get to Mass, we daily consecrated hosts and arranged for the distribution of Communion to those who wished to receive. Our risk of discovery, of course, was greater in the barracks, because of the lack of privacy and the presence of informers. Most often, therefore, we said our daily Mass somewhere at the work site during the noon break. Despite this added hardship, everyone observed a strict Eucharistic fast from the night before, passing up a chance for breakfast and working all morning on an empty stomach. Yet no one complained. In small groups the prisoners would shuffle into the assigned place, and there the priest would say Mass in his working clothes, unwashed, disheveled, bundled up against the cold. We said Mass in drafty storage shacks, or huddled in mud and slush in the corner of a building site foundation of an underground. The intensity of devotion of both priests and prisoners made up for everything; there were no altars, candles, bells, flowers, music, snow-white linens, stained glass or the warmth that even the simplest parish church could offer. Yet in these primitive conditions, the Mass brought you closer to God than anyone might conceivably imagine. The realization of what was happening on the board, box, or stone used in the place of an altar penetrated deep into the soul. Distractions caused by the fear of discovery, which accompanied each saying of the Mass under such conditions, took nothing away from the effect that the tiny bit of bread and few drops of consecrated wine produced upon the soul.

Many a time, as I folded up the handkerchief on which the body of our Lord had lain, and dried the glass or tin cup used as a chalice, the feeling of having performed something tremendously valuable for the people of this Godless country was overpowering. Just the thought of having celebrated Mass here, in this spot, made my journey to the Soviet Union and the sufferings I endured seem totally worthwhile and necessary. No other inspiration could have deepened my faith more, could have given me spiritual courage in greater abundance, than the privilege of saying Mass for these poorest and most deprived members of Christ the Good Shepherd’s flock. I was occasionally overcome with emotion for a moment as I thought of how he had found a way to follow and to feed these lost and straying sheep in this most desolate land. So I never let a day pass without saying Mass; it was my primary concern each new day. I would go to any length, suffer any inconvenience, run any risk to make the bread of life available to these men.

Walter Ciszek, S.J., He Leadeth Me (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).

HT: America