Unrefined Chrisitanity

I think it would be safe to say that a majority of Christians agree with the principle that becoming a Christian does not free you from the prospect of any trials or tribulations in life. In fact, many Christians might even agree that these trials and tribulation are part of our growing process. In fact, this is even a Biblical truth. 'The trying of your faith works patience". My family and I seem to be undergoing our fair share of trials of late, and on some days it works toward building our patience, and on some days we lose the battle. I was watching a road crew the other day and I saw this machine that goes through and skims off the layer of asphalt and grinds it up as it peels away all that is wrong with the road. Potholes, cracks, bumps where the earth has shifted or roots have grown. I am finding that the cracks and bumps of my life are being subjected to this same process. All of the roughness and sin are being scooped up and ground down to a fine material and then fed through the filter of the Holy Spirit. Granted, this is not a process that is perfect by any means. Some days there are far more cracks and potholes than others, but there is a joy in knowing that as every piece of dirt and decay is filtered away, then I am that much closer to the glory that God has for me. I fear that our modern, culturally relative attempts at Christianity have allowed to many big chunks of sin and debris into our machinery, where it overflows and bypasses the filter of the Holy Spirit. I was reading about an author and prominent spiritual leader who was proposing that God would not send people to hell. I agree with him 100% God only sends people to Heaven, he does not choose to or delight in people choosing any path but the path that leads to him. We have sinned, we have fallen short, we are headed to eternal torment, separate from God. One lifeline is offered in the person of Jesus Christ.Be wary of a gospel that does not include this. Beware of a gospel that tells you that you have a right to be saved. Beware of a gospel that makes no demands on you once you are saved. We are to love each other...that is a fact..but we are also to speak the truth with that love. The gospel must lead to a daily examination of our lives and as the refining process moves forward, we can pray that the filter of the Holy Spirit becomes our first nature. Lord, help me to understand the purpose of any trials that may come my way. Help me to press on toward you in the refining process.

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Why Me? A Letter of Friendship

WHY ME?

Dear Reader,

In writing this letter, I must let you know of two assumptions that I make regarding the reader. The first assumption is that at some point in your life you have asked yourself the question, “Why Me”. Sickness, accidents, spilled coffee, empty bank accounts, crying children, or any number of daily circumstances can inspire that exclamation. You and I, in accord with all humanity have felt singled out in our misfortune. We have all experienced days where that isolated rain cloud dampens our every step. I hope that the reader and I can agree on this point. The second, and certainly most important assumption is that the reader will most likely not understand all that I am writing about. This may be in some part due to my inabilities as a writer, but may be even more so due to the amazing nature of what I am writing to you about. It is like trying to paint that most picturesque sunset with paintbrushes and paints purchased at the Dollar Store. Please forgive me in advance for the weakness inherent in my pen. My words must be viewed through a lens, as decoder ring of sorts, that you may or may not already possess. Be assured, dear reader, that prayer that these words would find their mark is being uttered continually by the author, and certainly by the one who placed these words in your possession.

Before defining the purpose and nature of this writing, I must initially remind the reader what this writing is not. This product is not intended as a religious writing. It is not Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, or any other religion under our sun. You should not, actually cannot look to any man, woman, child, leader, or follower as an argument for or against what I am writing to you about. These are all human beings, and are likely to let you down, and all of these religions have done their fair share of that throughout history. These facts, however interesting are of little importance to us. What is important is answering the question that introduced you to this writing.

Why Me?

I have yet to hear one of those fortunate individuals who have won a large sum of money utter the question “Why Me”. It seems that these words are typically used when something undesirable has occurred. I propose to part with that trend and share with you something that is far more valuable than any set of lucky numbers. We have seen time and again how those who have found the great fortune of winning money, immediately succumb to the devastating destruction of their lives. What I share with you does not destroy what is good it only builds on it. It destroys the thing that is already hard at work tearing at the fabric of your being. What I share with you will build you up and bless you far beyond any worldly wealth.

Why Me?

I see the reader question the very reason for this writing. I apologize if my lack of skills have contributed to this in any way. I will try my best to explain the answer.

We live our lives much like the lottery winner who spends as if there were no tomorrow. The Bible even suggests that those who do not choose the way that Jesus provided them should “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die”. To me this sounds like “Live it up, you don’t have forever.” Many of us have chased this lifestyle and have actually died hundreds of little deaths as a result. Broken promises, misused friends, dishonest transactions, and a myriad of other ailments slowly drain the life from our bodies. Our conscience grows weary and we eventually learn to ignore it. We daily creep closer to death. Our soul and spirit are lost in the daily pursuit of duty and fulfillment. In my life, each day, each moment, became all that I knew. Nothing was larger than my little world. I died a little each day, and this became sufficient for me. After years of these “little deaths’, I finally cried out for help. My prayers and cries were not answered until I actually admitted that I needed to surrender. I was in the wrong lane, driving the wrong direction but still insisting that I was doing just fine. The day I opened my eyes and saw my predicament was the day that I stopped dying and was revived by a new life. You may be doing “just fine”, I truly have no way of knowing, but I do caution you to look around you, look farther down the road, see where your trajectory is taking you. Are you dying more each day, or are you headed in a direction that will bring you new life?

Why Me?

“All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory”. None of us like to hear about the things we have done wrong, but dear reader, I can only assume that you are in the same boat as me. On the Good Ship Imperfect we are both passengers. We have all fallen short of God’s glory. Our conscience tells us this on a daily basis. I am not going to dive into the individual nature of our sins. Few would claim perfection in this world, and I doubt that this writing has fallen into the hands of one of that select few.

Why should I care?

“the wages of sin is death, but…..” Death exists all around us. It is a fact of nature. Things are born, they grow, they deteriorate and they die. This is true physically and spiritually. Often the passion and zeal of youth grow weaker with age as do our bodies. We all will face death one day. This is a result of our sin and the sin of those who came before us. I hope dear reader that you can agree with me on this point. We all will die. Morbid, depressing news to be sure, but thankfully this is not the end of the verse. There is a but.

“but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus”. This is where my written words are taking what I will call a “Dollar Store” moment. I have no skills or abilities to describe what forever looks like. In fact, there are times when the thought of forever actually frightens me. I don’t have enough songs on my Ipod, what am I going to do with all that time? I too am confounded by the idea of forever, but I believe that the God who promises it to us will hold this promise true. I am also confused by the concept of gravity, but I am pretty certain it exists. According to the Bible, death in the eternal sense means complete separation from God, for all time. In essence, if we reject God, we spend our lives dying a little each day, and then when our earthly bodies finally give out, we have no chance to drink from the “Water of Life”. No doing it over, no more “eat, drink be merry- death has closed the final deal. Dear reader, I hate to be blunt, but to answer the question ‘Why should I care? I must reply. “because you too must someday die.”

What then?

Although the reader may not necessarily be so convinced by my writing that they immediately ask “What’s next”, I must provide answers for those who would have questions. The what then is to “call on the name of the Lord”. This is by no means a stiff, formal prayer. It in all actuality can be as simple as waving a prayerful flag of surrender. I can think of a time when I was a young man and I was swimming in the surf and was smashed by a sleeper wave. At first, I thought that under my own power I would be able to break free of the undertow and find my way to safety. I struggled and fought, but could not gain my footing. Realizing that the situation had gone far past being one of embarrassment and more a battle of survival I cried out for help. I may not have looked cool while doing it, but as the arms of my father wrapped around me and pulled me from the foamy sea, how I appeared to the world was far from my mind. I had surrendered. I knew I could not do it on my own and I cried out for help. This same scene was repeated some years later with my Heavenly Father. I had floundered in raging seas and had swam against the undertow, but in the end cried out to Jesus that he deliver me from the mess that only I had gotten myself into. “Call on the name of the Lord and thou shall be saved”. My earthly father did not ridicule me of even scold me for foolishly entering turbulent waters, nor will the Heavenly Father. Cry out for Him to save you, and wash you clean of all of your sins. Give Him the weaknesses, the insecurities, the self-pity, the hatred, all of the things that cause you daily death and reach toward the saving grace of His light. Feel His arms reach down and enclose you in a protective embrace. Feel the life breathed into you as you cease dying daily and start living eternally. Surely there will be times when you still flounder in the surf of a difficult life. There may even be times when you feel all is lost. Just know that the arms of the One who created the seas and can calm the storms is only an arms length or a softly uttered prayer away. Lean on Him. Trust in Him. Give it all to Him. Pray to God and ask forgiveness of all that is wrong in your life and surrender to the love of Jesus and the freedom that was purchased by His blood.

Blood?

I understand your concern dear reader, and follow me through as I explain the importance of the blood of Jesus. In early history, God required a sacrifice to help bring mankind back in alignment with Him. Typically this was livestock such as a cow or sheep. This was not a mystical undertaking, it did not exhibit any power, but its purpose was to reconcile God and man, which was the natural state of being when God created the world. When God sent His son Jesus to die a cruel death on the cross, this was the last and final sacrifice that was necessary for the realignment of man with God. No more blood sacrifices were asked for or needed. (kind of a relief, isn’t it) What offers us even greater relief is that the simple act of accepting the sacrifice of Jesus as the means to rejoin us with God is all that is required of us. Mankind walked with God before sin came into the picture and Jesus dying on the cross allows us to walk with Him again.

For what reason?

You ask an important question dear reader. I will hopefully provide you with some answers, but I remind you that not all that I say can be fully understood until you have viewed it through the lens of Jesus and His saving grace. Still, I will try to put it in as plain of words as possible. You are sick, dear friend. I do not diagnose any medical illness, nor do I desire to offend you. If you knew that someone around you was suffering from an illness, you would do all in your power to offer them what they needed to recover their health. Jesus offers the same thing to you. Your soul and spirit suffer from a degenerative disease known as sin. At times it seems to go into remission, but do not think that it ever truly goes away. There is only one cure for this illness, and this remedy I have described already. You need a blood transfusion of a unique kind. Be assured that the daily process of dying that you are undergoing can only be halted by crying out to the Great Healer. He will carve out the areas of your life where sin and the decay of death reside, and will replace them with new life. This process may be hard as you are forced to part with patterns and pursuits that you have built your life around, but rest assured this healing process ends well. You will experience a joy and fulfillment that is not experienced frequently in this world. You will walk in step with God, much as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. It is very important at this time that you do not look to mankind’s feeble and often hypocritical versions of Christianity as an excuse for not tending to your own healing. Man is expert at misinterpreting and screwing up what God has said. Do not let your disbelief spring from these weaknesses in mankind. We ALL have sinned. We ALL will continue to sin. We must ALL tend to our own illness. The question that I must ask you then, dear reader, in response to our original question of “Why Me” by necessity must be “Why not you”. What is holding you back? What keeps you from escaping the daily death that is a part of your life? What keeps you from seeking a new and fulfilled life? “call on the name of the Lord and you shall be saved”. Reach out from your sick bed and grab the hand of the Great Healer. Know that you are now in His arms and are now filled with vibrant new life. I pray that this is so.

An Uncomfortable Christianity

All of us have had this experience. We are walking down a busy street and we see some person who may look a little odd, a little too eager, and all around a little off handing out pamphlets. We may try to avoid them by passing to the other side of the street, or may tuck our hands into our pockets to appear less likely to grab one of the pieces of paper out of the unwanted, outstretched hands. As much as we try to avoid it, the piece of paper ends up in our hands, and we give it a glance and dismiss is from our mind as "just another religious nut handing out tracts." Maybe we feel a flush of shame that we are not doing more to serve the kingdom, but this feeling may quickly be replaced by the feeling that even if we did serve God more fully, it would be in a far more efficient way. The crisis of faith has been averted, and we pursue our plodding, comfortable course, pressing on toward the prize, just not pressing too very hard. As I spent the last week reading about the early church and the persecutions that assailed it, and as I listened to the message this morning asking what allows Christianity to spread, I reached an interesting conclusion. The level of comfortability that we feel in our relationship with God is directly opposed to the amount of fruit we produce for His kingdom. I do not imply that we do not receive comfort from Him, I just imply that if we feel complacent and comfortable, then we most likely are not pursuing Him the right way. In the early church, comfortablility was not an option. The persecutions of the early church are well documented, as is the resulting growth and spread of the gospel in the early years of Christianity. As much as persecution caused Christians to spread, I do not believe that this was the prime reason why Christianity also spread. Early Christians were subjected to myriad tortures and a variety of cruel deaths. These deaths could have often been avoided by merely worshiping a Roman idol, or renouncing belief in Christ. As I read account after account of these persecuted Christians singing praises to God as they burned, or uttering words of thanks and praise to Jesus that they were able to follow Him into martyrdom, I was startled by my lack of faith. When James was accused of being a Christian, he handled his impending execution with such grace and rejoicing in the Lord, that the one who brought the accusation against him was converted, and upon making this conversion public, was executed alongside James. I do not suggest that we must be made martyrs to be made more effective as Christians, but we could certainly die a little more to the world than we currently do. We have fallen into a pattern of "Comfortable Christianity" where we give our lives to God, but do so while maintaining the lives we lived before he redeemed us. I do not speak of sin, but instead speak of patterns of life. We still pursue the "finer things", we still seek the comforts this world has to offer, we plan vacations and parties and seek promotions and push and jostle for a place in this world, not realizing that one has already been provided for us. What can surpass being a child of the King? There is no sin in accruing the things that we would have in our physical, temporal world, but beware of the comfort that comes with these things. What would you part with, up to and including your life, in order to further the gospel? When I ask this question of myself, I realize how far short I fall. May you ask this question of yourself as well, and give honest answer to it. It may be uncomfortable, but that is right where God want's you to be. Lord, help me to seek a place where I am not comfortable so I can better see you accommodate for my weaknesses through your ever present strength.