Philippians 2

I've been reading Philippians the last couple of days. There's a passage in Chapter 2 that I feel like I'm supposed to post "as is", without comment. May the Lord make this come alive in your heart, freshly breathed from Him just for you.

Philippians 2:3-11, New King James Version

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.

And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

May this be exactly what you needed to hear today.  

My Reason for Being

I want to keep this Post as brief and to the point as possible. I think the Lord keeps speaking to my heart about these things because He wants me to keep focus. This is a high-level review of the simple principles of life.

How do I justify the space I take and the air I breathe in this world? By one thing and one thing only: by walking and growing and fulfilling my small part in His infinitely larger dreams. At the personal level, His dreams are customized for me and for you. Apart from Jesus, I cannot come close to getting my part right, not in a way that He would call right. It's also true that I can't play your part in His dreams and you can't play mine. 

Let's be clear that everything I say about me applies to you, too.

So, what do His dreams include? Since it would be quite arrogant and foolish of me to think I understand more than a smidgen of His plans and dreams, let me say up front that I can only share the glimpse that I have.

Doing My Part

Sometimes I think of my Christian walk as a sort of partnership with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a hugely weighted-towards-God, one-sided partnership, for sure, but there are bits in there that depend upon me. I've been trying to think of a way to describe this one-sided "symbiosis" between God and those He is rescuing from destruction. I'm sure that "symbiosis" isn't quite the right word, but it's the best one that comes to mind right now.

The more people He gets to rescue, the more children He gets to love and share Himself with, and that's what He wants. He really wants to spend eternity with people who are totally unlike Him and then are so completely transformed that they conform to the image of His Son. 

He's not looking for ways to keep us out of eternity with Him. Quite the contrary, He's looking for ways to bring us into eternity with Him.

His existence doesn't depend on us the way ours depends on Him. In that sense, He doesn't need us, but He very much wants us. He can live quite well without us, but He doesn't want to. His desire to love us is so extraordinarily strong that He has gone to a great deal of trouble and anguish to bring us aboard His "Love Boat".

Our Reason for Being

We know that God is the Creator. When we say that, we are usually talking about "creating" as thought it's just something He does. But it is much more than that. Creating isn't just something He does; it's something He is. To put it in human terms (forgive me, Lord! Human terms are the best I can do!), He is wired to create. It's like He can't stop. He loves to create because He loves to be known, to share life and enjoy life with what He creates. When He shares life, He is sharing Himself because life isn't just something he gives, life is something He is (John 5:26).

Before making this creation in which we live, I think that He probably indulged in many creations. After all, eternity for Him extends backwards as well as forwards. For Him, time extends in all kinds of ways that we literally cannot imagine. He made angels long before He made us. He made the four living creatures around the throne (Revelation 4:6) long before He made us. Long before us, He made the wondrous beings that Ezekiel described. No one knows what else He made long before us.

Don't Feel Bad for Job

The Book of Job is easy to misunderstand and misuse. You just can't grab any verse out of the book and say that it's a clear statement of truth as God sees it. Many of the characters' statements are truth as they see it, but they happen to be seeing and saying it wrong. At first blush, many of their statements may look and sound like truth but are actually skewed versions of truth. At the end of the story, it's clear that God wasn't at all happy with those skewed versions of truth. After all, skewed truth is untruth and is even more dangerous because of its subtle resemblance to the real deal. 

So, here's my non-theological, high-level view of what REALLY happened in the Book of Job. The Holy Spirit took me through this book during a very tough time in my life, through things not of my choosing nor of my doing. I was deeply changed through that season, changed for the better.

Quick Hitters

A short collection of things I think about.

1. He alone is the Creator. Everything else and every other being, no matter how angelic, other-worldly, supernatural, long-lived or powerful, is something He made and owns with absolute ownership. He answers only to Himself.
   
2. He is not limited to the dimension or realm in which we live. From our viewpoint, His reality is uncountable dimensions. From His viewpoint, His reality is a single dimension that encompasses EVERYTHING.
3. His nature, character, and essence go so far beyond what we can comprehend or even imagine, that – though He Is One – He is One in such a way that we can’t really grasp it. So, He shows us His Oneness in three very real personages: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s a deeply inadequate way of saying it, but it’s the best I can understand, and even that just barely. Even though I don't really understand it, I fully believe it.
4. As Creator, He has absolute, unlimited right of ownership over everything and everyone. Absolute and unlimited.
5. Nothing stops Him but Himself. He is always true to Himself and fully consistent with His fully consistent nature. You can't limit Him, I can't limit Him, nothing can limit Him. 
6. He has no internal contradictions. He will never do, think, want, or feel anything contrary to His perfect nature.
7. He gets to do anything He wants, anytime He wants, and He never owes me – or you – an explanation. That can be a scary thought, but when I'm surrendered and trusting in His Son and in His wonderful plans, it's not scary at all. In fact, it's a good thing.

Less is More

In the previous post ("The Ultimate Ambition", July 28, 2013), I wrote about what it means to be truly in love with God. Here are a few more thoughts along those lines.

The more we become emotionally invested in the things that are on God's heart and less emotionally invested in the things are our on our hearts -- well, the better everything becomes and the more our lives have real meaning in His eyes, as He defines real meaning.

I have to put this in human terms, always a less than satisfactory way of describing God and His ways, but it's all I can think to write for now: Is my happiness tied up in His happiness? Or, so long as I'm happy, do I really care whether He is happy? In that last sentence, substitute the words contented, satisfied, and fulfilled for the word "happy". Go ahead, take a moment and try it.

Ask yourself:

• So long as I'm contented, do I really care whether He is contented?
• So long as I'm satisfied, do I really care whether He is satisfied?
• So long as I'm happy, do I really care whether He is happy?

The Ultimate Ambition

It's now 4:00 AM on a Sunday morning. I've already been up for a couple of hours. It wasn't what I wanted, but the dog had other ideas. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I started reading and praying through a few Psalms. The Lord was kind and met with me this morning, stirring my heart to share a few thoughts.

The closer He draws us to Himself, the simpler everything gets. The highest ambition a person can have is this: to be carried away in His dreams, to desire the fulfillment of His dreams more than anything. I want us all to lose ourselves in His dreams!

Is God Angry with You?

Do you feel like God is angry with you? Believers often struggle with repetitive, unresolved sin issues in their personal lives, failings that they can't seem to get beyond. It's easy to see God as angry...angry with me, angry with you...because of our sin failures. We often see our Heavenly Father through the same filter that we viewed our earthly dads. In most cases, that's a bad thing and gives us a very poor understanding of our Heavenly Father. I certainly hope that my sons don't use me as the lens through which they view God the Father.

Here is the main thought of this Post: If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, a true believer, you are not subject to God's wrath. You are subject to His correction, but not His wrath. There is a huge difference. His goal is to fix you, not to punish you. His goal is to conform you to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29) so that He may love on you and enjoy your company forever. His correction will be complete, not half-hearted and not half-way. He knows what it will take to get to every last drop of badness. His ways may seem rather strong and stern at times, but His correction will not be done out of wrath.

All My Desire

It's Sunday morning. I'm ready for church a bit early and some verses I read an hour ago are still speaking to me. The first one is Psalm 38:9: "Lord, all my desire is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from You." 

He knows what I need and what I'd like to have and have happen, all of it. I've put it all in front of Him. But that's not what I want to be wrapped up in. Me getting wrapped up in my stuff and you getting wrapped up in your stuff is normal, common, every-day existence. But that doesn't make it right or good or desirable. It definitely doesn't make it the best way to live. In fact, it's a poor way to live, a way that doesn't end well.

I don't want to be normal, whatever that is.

More Than Forgiveness

My mind and heart keep coming back to foundation thoughts. By now, you know that I've been a Believer for over 40 years, but I won't pretend that I've been a particularly devoted Christ-follower for all of that time. For some of it, I've been a lackadaisical Christ-follower. Even worse, there have been times when Christ-following was completely on the back burner, as much out-of-sight, out-of-mind as I could make it. I'm not going to get into my details. You have your own details, and I hope this post will help you get through some of them.

Maybe it's that I'm getting old enough to sometimes remember things from long ago more clearly than I remember things from last week. Failures and foolishness from long ago have been coming up in my quiet moments. Whatever the reason, I see that I need more than forgiveness. 

All or Nothing

With a title like All or Nothing, the theme of this post is obvious. The Lord Jesus Christ, the soon coming King, doesn't want lukewarm followers. He doesn't want  followers who abandon Him when things get rough or who are choked out by the cares of this world. He doesn't want followers who do things in His name but who don't have what He defines as a relationship with Him. And when you think about, this really is about how He sees things and what He wants, isn't it? It's not about Him doing things my way or Him having a relationship with me on my terms. This isn't about the Potter doing what the clay wants, the clay's way. This isn't about Him fitting into my comfort zone; this is about me fitting into His comfort zone. And His comfort zone is quite different from what lazy, rebellious, sinful, self-deceiving humans want it to be.

It's pretty clear. All or nothing.

 

The Free Gift That Costs You Big Time

I celebrated my 62nd birthday a few days ago. Maybe celebrated is the wrong word for it, but you know what I mean. Frankly, I'm feeling a bit surprised that I made it this far. Looking back, the path of my life is littered with lots of presumption, ignorance, and self-interest, along with many glaring instances of failing to put even the most obvious of two's with another two. I have fallen very short on God's scale. Sometimes I haven't even been very high on the human scale. And that's just the little bit I'm aware of. There should be no doubt that He's protected, forgiven, blessed, and carried me -- and you -- many more times and at much greater depth than any of us are aware. We just don't get it, at least not by much, and we see only a very small portion of how good He is to us. 

And that makes me think of grace, the Saving Grace that results in our eternal salvation. What does it cost?

Without getting too high-falutin with the words and logic, here it is, as plain and simple as I can make it. By the way, High-Falutin = fancy, highbrow, self-important, and deliberately showy. You  know, putting on airs. It comes from the Dutch word verlooten, for stilted. I do come from a long line of Dutchmen, so it's okay for me to use words like that, especially about myself. 

Discussions about the cost of grace often end up in arguments about Faith and Works. Avoiding that for now, my conclusion is that Saving Grace costs me absolutely nothing and yet it costs me absolutely everything.

Can't have it both ways, you say? Follow along, I think you'll change your mind.

An Old Warhorse

In 2011, there was a movie titled "Warhorse". I didn't see it, but I've read that it was pretty good. That, however, is not the subject of this Post. Here I'm sharing a metaphor that came to mind several years ago, long before the movie. I don't recall now what stirred the metaphor to life, but I do know that God was in it and that He used it to speak to my heart. I'm certainly no expert on horses or on warhorses, for that matter, so if my historical accuracy is a little off, please bear with me. It's my metaphor, after all.

The Christian's Bottom Line

The thoughts in this post apply only to those who truly belong to Jesus Christ, fulfilling all of His requirements to be with Him for eternity. After all, it's His requirements that set the standard, right? If you're not sure about your standing with God, do yourself a favor and read my post titled "Prayer of Christian Renewal". It's in the blog archive (the upper right side of your screen) for March, 2013. Read it and pray it for yourself.
Now, back to the topic at hand.
This life can be over-taken with pain, physical and emotional and spiritual pain. There are times of great sadness, struggle, hardship, anxiety, separation, and loss. There are times when our bodies suffer. There are times when we feel spiritual pain, sharing in the breaking of God's heart over the brokenness of His creation. Can anything make us say it was worth it?

God's Ferrari

God has a way of putting us in our place. He has to, if there's ever going to be any hope of us being what He wants us to be.

Back in the 90's, there was a stretch in which I was regularly hearing from God, regularly sensing what was on His heart, able to pray those things back to Him, seeing frequent answers to those prayers, and experiencing what it's like to be part of His wonderful encounters with others. I'm not much of a car guy, but somehow a car analogy popped into my head. It felt like God and I were really moving smoothly and in style. It was great, sort of like I was His Ferrari. A Ferrari Testarossa, to be precise. 

[Right about now, you may be thinking that they'll let just about anybody write a blog. Well, they will. You want me to be honest, right?]

Things with God went on like this for awhile. It was like being on an extended mountain-top journey with Him. Then one day, in the seeing that God gives to the eyes of the heart, I was looking down on a narrow road that passed between two steep hills. The hills were covered in dense green vegetation, something like you might see in rural Tennessee. From where I was high up on one of the hills, I saw a car, a sad example of a car, sad even for a junker, barely moving down the road from right to left at what must have been about 20 mph. It was an old sedan, what we used it call a land yacht. It was dented and rusted and beat-up. It had peeling, mismatched paint. The pillar behind the driver's door was pushed in, taking part of the door with it, as if the car had been T-boned at some point in the past. The tires were wallowing in an off-center, uneven, out-of-synch wobbly sort of way that says the frame and axles were bent. The car was struggling along and wasn't anywhere close to comfortable or reliable. It was transportation, but just barely, and definitely not the kind you'd want to be seen in or have to take very far.

I watched this scene for a few seconds, wondering what it was all about. Then the Lord broke the silence. He said, "That's you."

Hard Questions

The older I get, the simpler it gets. Being a follower of Jesus Christ, that is. Because of His death and resurrection, I am forgiven and am being transformed by His persistent Lordship at a far deeper level than any self-help program can reach. Self-help programs fail for the same reason that the Old Testament law failed...both depend upon me to get it right.

The Old Testament law has a lot in common with modern self-help programs, especially when the self-help is taught from the pulpit. They both depend upon my sin-management skills, my "pull myself up by my bootstraps" skills. Some folks have more personal discipline than others and so are better at sin-management, but sin-management won't work in eternity, not even for the very best among us. Fully replacing the sin-nature with God-nature is the only thing that will work in the long long-term.

God's intends to transform His children so completely on the inside that sin-management becomes a thing of the past. Don't get me wrong; I'm not  putting down sin-management. Sin-management is far better than sin run amok. Sin-management is good, but it's not the long-term solution. What God wants for us and from us goes far beyond sin-management. 

With Absolute Ownership, Trust is a Must

What is God like? There are some attributes of His character and nature that we can describe and talk about. Fully understand, no, but we can make good assumptions about them. For instance, He is all knowing, all seeing, all powerful, and eternal; He lives by His own standards and is always true to Himself. He alone is able to create something from nothing. Anything less than these and He wouldn't truly be God.

I have learned something about how this applies to me. In short, He gets to do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, and He never owes me an explanation. It's so important to get that: HE IS GOD. HE GETS TO DO WHATEVER HE WANTS, WHENEVER HE WANTS, AND HE NEVER OWES ME AN EXPLANATION.

If that's all we knew about Him, it would be a very harsh and scary statement. It that's all we knew about Him, it would be very hard to trust Him. If that's all we knew about Him and He could at any time be capricious or flighty, that would be His right and I should be very frightened. So it's important to review a few other things we know about God.

What is Truth?

A lot of folks think that something becomes true just because they happen to believe it. In other words, believing in something makes it true. You have your truth, that person over there has their truth, and I have my truth. It doesn't really matter what you believe in so long as you believe it. As long as you believe in something, that something is "true" for you and that makes it okay.

I am here to tell you that is incredibly wrong, lose your life wrong, on the bad side of eternity wrong. If me saying that steps on your toes, you really need to read the rest of this blog post. 

Hi to My Friends!

There are so many more posts that I want to write, ones I think you'll like. In the busy-ness of life, I find that it's not as easy to focus and get it all on paper as I'd hoped. Please be patient with me and come back here every so often to see what's been added. Maybe you can even say a prayer for me. 

I also look forward to your comments because there are things I need to learn from you. While you're at it, if you don't mind, let me know how you found this website and maybe even what part of this country or this world you live in.

Thank you for being here. I trust that the Lord has treats in store for us. I trust His heart.

The Lord loves you! In great joy of heart, may all that He wants to establish in you, through you, and around you come true! May your life be full of that which counts for eternity!

In the Love of our Lord,

Brother Mark

Personal Prophecy: I’ve Got a Word for You

This Post has been pulled from a manual I wrote several years ago for training Altar Ministers. It’s a bit abrupt in its phrasing but still gets the point across. The points made here are appropriate for any Believer involved in one-on-one ministry.

This Post should be treated as a companion to the Post “God Speaks, But What Did I Hear?”

And now, without further adieu:

Personal Prophecy: I've Got a Word for You

God Speaks, But What Did I Hear?

It's God's will for the Christian to hear from Him and then put what He says to use so that it may accomplish its purpose. This topic deserves a lot more attention than I’m able to give it here. My goal in this Post is to give some high level pointers and insight.

First, I’m not going to try to prove that God speaks to His people today. Face it, He does. There is a lot about this in the Bible, but the only reference I’ll use today is John 10:16 in which Jesus said, “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.”

It’s also clear from Scripture that some folks hear from God more than others. What does it take to hear from God? In the verse from John, He is referring to His sheep. So it’s safe to assume you have to be one of His sheep. That means that a believing heart, tender and surrendered to God through Jesus Christ, is the only place to start. That makes you one of His sheep, right? I've also learned that He typically won’t say much if He knows His words will be discarded, ignored, mocked or disobeyed. 

Leaving that part of the discussion behind, then, I believe there are several things about hearing from God that must be considered:

1. Was that really Him speaking?

2. Did I clearly hear what He said?

3. What did He really mean?

4. How should I respond to what He said?

5. When and how is this to be shared, if at all?