Month: May 2011

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The Daily Office

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The Daily Office is a structured service of Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer performed as a community or individually as an act of worship to God and intercession on behalf of the people of God. This regular cycle of daily prayer orders the life of the Christian. The cycle brings rhythm of life around which other “normal” activities can take their proper place. The practice of the Daily Office is a little known outside of liturgical communions and denominations. However, the value of this daily spiritual discipline is proven those who keep its hourly obligations:

The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. It is confirmed in work. The morning prayer determines the day. Squandered time of which we are ashamed, temptations to which we succumb, weaknesses and lack of courage in work, disorganization and lack of discipline in our thoughts and in our conversation with other men, all have their origin most often in the neglect of morning prayer.

Order and distribution of our time become more firm where they originate in prayer. Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions, demanded by work, become easier and simpler where they are made not in fear of men but only in the sight of God. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col 3:23 ESV). Even the mechanical is done in a more patient way if it arises from the recognition of God and his command. The powers to work take hold, therefore, at the place where we have prayed to God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1970), 64.

The daily lesson readings (Psalms for the day, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel) can now be found here in the English Standard Version (ESV) with audio files. Also, these audio files can be selected for podcast into your mp3 device for mobile listening.

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Fruit Bearing vs. Fruit Producing

Fruit Bearing Is the Overflow of the Life of Christ in You

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

John 15:8

Fruit bearing is the overflow of the life of Christ dwelling in us. Fruit producing is attempting to live the Christian in our own power. Fruit bearing is the result of faith: fruit producing is striving and struggling. Fruit bearing abides in Christ bringing rest and peace. Fruit producing is rules and self-effort never knowing if one has done enough. Fruit bearing produces good works that last for eternity. Fruit producing is short-lived and only gives the appearance of true Christianity. We are called by Christ to be fruit-bearers not fruit-producers: fruit is borne when we allow enabling grace to work out the life of Christ in us (John 15:1-5; Gal. 5:16-24).

Fruit is not what we do, but who we are; not our activity, but our Christlikeness; not our relationship to people, but the condition of our character. Do you remember what James said in his epistle? “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26). The “spirit” there means breath, and a body without breath is dead. Stop breathing–and folk will bury you! In other words a living breathing body breathes, and a living faith breathes with divine action. A living faith breathes with the activity of Jesus Christ. That is why the Lord Jesus, in John 6:29, said. “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”

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.”

Major Ian Thomas, The Saving Life of Christ/The Mystery of Godliness (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 25.

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Striving vs. Abiding

Struggling vs. Receiving

For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Jer. 2:13

Striving is living the Christian life by our own effort: laboring, straining, and sweating to make something happen in our walk with Christ. Striving is our vain attempt to earn Christ’s approval, love, and forgiveness. Striving endeavors to earn God’s good graces, achieve God’s promises, and fulfill God’s vision all in our timing and in strength.

Abiding in Christ is holding steady in the presence of Christ trusting his promises by faith irrespective of the challenges, trials, and tribulations of our lives. Remaining in faith and looking to Christ to be our sufficiency in the midst of our inadequacy keeps us in his constant, conscious presence. Only by abiding can our ministry efforts have an outcome that will last for eternity.

Abide in Christ: so will you bear much fruit. Not a vine is planted but the owner thinks of the fruit, and the fruit only. Other trees may be planted for ornament, for the shade, for the wood–the vine only for the fruit. And of each vine the husbandman is continually asking how it can bring forth more fruit, much fruit. Believer! Abide in Christ in times of affliction, and you shall bring forth more fruit. The deeper experience of Christ’s tenderness and the Father’s love will urge you to live to His glory.

Andrew Murray, Abiding in Christ, Chapter 19.

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Sweet Fragrance

Sweetness Poured Forth

The house was filled with the fragrance.

John 12:3 NLT

Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing.

2 Cor. 2:15 NLT

You meet a Christian with a sweet spirit. You wonder when and where that godly nature was nurtured and developed. You compliment them and ask about their background. In the telling, they describe multiple trials and setbacks. Yet, they did not grow bitter, but better. They walked through their circumstances trusting God’s loving and gracious providence. They refused to believe that God was being unjust to them. They only could see God’s hand glorifying Christ in their midst. They found in their suffering their heart’s desire: more of Jesus. As a result, their character was transformed and a sweet spirit was developed. Their kindness, optimism, and faith rise up as a sweet fragrance of worship to God and an aroma of life to others.

By the breaking of that flask and the anointing of the Lord Jesus, the house was pervaded with the sweetest fragrance (John 12:1). Everyone could smell it and none could be unaware of it. What is the significance of this?

Whenever you meet someone who has really suffered — someone who has gone through experiences with the Lord that have brought limitation, and who, instead of trying to break free in order to be ‘used,’ has been willing to be imprisoned by Him and has thus learned to find satisfaction in the Lord and nowhere else — then immediately you become aware of something.

Immediately your spiritual senses detect a sweet savour of Christ. Something has been crushed, something has been broken in that life, and so you smell the odor. The odor that filled the house that day in Bethany still fills the Church today; Mary’s fragrance never passes. It needed but one stroke to break the flask for the Lord, but that breaking and the fragrance of that anointing abides.

Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life (CLC, 1977).

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What the Blood of Christ Does . . .

Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deedsso that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Heb. 9:14 NLT

The blood of Christ is clear confirmation that Christ died a sacrificial death to pay for our release from the captivity of sin and bondage to Satan’s schemes. In other words, we owe our salvation to the death of Christ. His blood removes our guilt before God (1 Pet.1:18-19), cleanses ours stricken consciences (Heb. 9:14), gives us bold access to the Father (Heb. 10:19), on-going cleansing from our sin (1 John 1:7) and conquers all of Satan’s accusations (Rev. 12:10-11). Jesus’ blood condemns death and in that death, the penalty of our sin was paid.

The expression “the blood of Christ” means not only that Christ shed His blood, but that He poured out His very life before God. In the Old Testament the idea of sacrifice is that the blood, which is the life (see Genesis 4:4), is poured out to God, its Giver. When Jesus Christ shed His blood on the Cross it was not the blood of a martyr, or the blood of one man for another; it was the life of God poured out to redeem the world.

Oswald Chambers, Biblical Ethics (Hants, UK : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1997), 60.

 

 

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When Trials Befall Us

 

Refined by Fire

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6-7 ESV

We live in the midst of the fallout of the fall: sin has affected every area of creation and all aspects of our lives. Disappointment, pain, and trouble are significant ingredients of our daily lives. Ill-timed, unexpected tragedies can shape our lives for the better or make our hearts hard through bitterness. Our choice: trust that God is sovereignly working or become angry that life is not going our way.

Some trials come upon without our choice: some trials are self-inflicted. Whatever their source do not become despondent, depressed, or despairing. God is giving us our heart’s desire: Christlike character, Holy Spirit intimacy, and Fatherly guidance.  By faith, we must trust that our Heavenly Vinedresser is sovereignly cultivating Christ in us.

Let us not then be disturbed, neither dismayed, when trials befall us. For if the gold refiner sees how long he ought to leave the piece of gold in the furnace, and when he ought to draw it out, and does not allow it to remain in the fire until it is destroyed and burnt up: much more does God understand this, and when He sees that we have become more pure, He releases us from our trials so that we may not be overthrown and cast down by the multiplication of our evils.

Let us then not be repining, or faint-hearted, when some unexpected thing befalls us; but let us suffer Him who knows these things accurately, to prove our hearts by fire as long as He pleases: for He does this for a useful purpose and with a view to the profit of those who are tried.

St. John Chrysostom (c.347–407), “Homily on the Paralytic Let Down Through the Roof”

HT: Christian Classics Ethereal Library

 

 

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What Worship Does to Us

The Presence of God Changes Us

When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.

Psalm 73:16-17 NIV

Worship takes place when we acknowledge that we are not the Creator, we bow our hearts, and adore the eternal Lord. In worship, we recognize the infinite beauty of God, his unsurpassing love, and his omnipotent power as the God of the universe. In true worship, we submit our lives to his will, embrace his all-encompassing love, and trust his great goodness. Worship changes us: we are renewed by the Holy Spirit, our thinking is transformed by the truth, and our hearts are warmed by his love.

One of the greatest discoveries of my Christian pilgrimage has come with the realization that the primary importance in worship is not what I do but what God is doing. In worship, God is present, speaking to me, and acting upon me. It is in worship that God feeds, nourishes, and cares for me. And it is in worship that he gives me his grace, surrounds me with his love, lifts me up into his arms, affirms me as a member of his community, and sends me forth into the world with a fresh vision of his work and a new concern to live for him.

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 66.

HT: Webber Quote of the Week

 

 

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Joy that Springs Forth

 

Joy: A Heart Fulfilled in Christ

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Col. 3:16  NKJV

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 is knows that we are unconditionally loved, graciously forgiven, and eternally kept. 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 (1 Thess. 5:16-18).

The loss of joy does not make the world better — and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the courage and impetus to do good. We have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,), 36-37.

All our life is like a day of celebration for us; we are convinced, in fact, that God is always everywhere. We work while singing, we sail while reciting hymns, we accomplish all other occupations of life while praying.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215 A.D.)

HT: Christian History Blog

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Kingdom of God Is . . .

jesus-teaching

Parables of Jesus

The Kingdom of God is like . . . (Matt. 13:31).

Last year at Lamb of God, we studied the parables of Jesus. Jesus continually used parables to explain the nature and purpose of his kingdom. In an earlier post, I defined the Kingdom of God as the presence of the future–a foretaste of heaven. The Kingdom is an advance sample of what heaven will be like when we sit and enjoy the unparalleled presence of God. The Kingdom of God advances as men and women’s hearts are conquered through the power and love of the Cross. The Kingdom rules internally, but does manifest itself outwardly through the healing of the sick, deliverance from demons, joy in forgiveness, and relief for the least, lost, and lonely.

In essence, the Kingdom of God is the royal rule and reign of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in our hearts now and this internal reign will be fully manifested to the world upon his Second Coming. Contrary to the notes in the Scofield Study Bible, the kingdom is present now in this life and then will be fully realized in heaven.

Signs of the Kingdom’s presence in the life of the believer . . .

1. Born from Above: A supernatural change of heart performed by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit (John 3:5).

2. Lordship of Christ: Jesus rules in our hearts leading and directing our lives by his most beneficent rule (1 Peter 3:15; Rev. 11:15).

3. Cross-Centered: The death, burial, and resurrection of Christ has transformed us. Our motivation is changed from self-centeredness jerks to Christ-centered servants (2 Cor. 5:15).

4. Presence of the Holy Spirit: A life lived in the realm where God is present. This abundant life is typified by righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17).

5. Manifestations of the Spirit: Healing of sickness, deliverance from demonic oppression, and overcoming power from sin. The Kingdom advances as lives are taken out from under the domination of Satan and brought into the righteous rule of Christ (Luke 4:18-19).

Jesus answered, ‘My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.’

John 18:36 NLT