Sometimes I just do not understand what God is doing. (sic.) Somewhere in these pages I told the story of my telling a local pastor that God told me something. His response was that my hearing from God was of great concern to him. He then offered to pay for me to visit a Christian psychologist so we could find out why I thought I was hearing from God. What is wrong with that picture? Anyone who follows my teaching knows immediately. Psychologists, Christian or otherwise, practice (and I do mean practice) in the area of the soul. That dear readers is the essential problem with The Church in north America today. Not only do the leaders, (pastors, teachers, authors, etc.) operate all too often in the soulical realm, the rank and file members of The Church do not have the discernment to know it is happening. To be fair, neither do the people doing it realize they are. Oh wait, that is the problem that creates the problem. Or something like that.
(Now I am really baffled. That paragraph looks like it should be the first paragraph of the new post I already have a title for, but I am pretty sure it goes here. Oh well, we will forge ahead anyway and see where this goes.)
Humility is impossible when we are operating according to what we think is right. This is where it gets really dicey. That sounds completely counter-intuitive. We have to do what we think is right. It is just that our concepts of right and wrong have to be right. We have to have a standard against which to measure right and wrong. As Christians the only standard we can use is the Bible. We can quote our favorite people in the faith whether they be G. Campbell Morgan, Watchman Nee, Jack Hayford, Bill Winston or whomever, but if we allow any one of them to be our authority for right and wrong we have slipped into wrong.
(Okay, I get it now. The title of the next post is "Competing Voices" which follows this very nicely. The teaching on the grace of God will have to wait a little longer.)
The prevailing thought within The Church today seems to be that bigger is better. Well, let me tell you, that is the prevailing thought in the world. If that is the best we can do as Christians we are in real trouble. Come to think of it, being in real trouble, and not recognizing it, is the whole purpose for this blog.
We are either about building the Kingdom of God or we are about building our own kingdoms--always. The truly humble man or woman has come to realize that when he or she works at building God's Kingdom, God gets busy building his or her kingdom so that person will have the treasures to bring out of his or her storehouse to meet the needs of others. We all have something someone else needs. Humility dictates we offer it to them without regard to whether they receive it or not.
"...Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." Matthew 13:52
God bless!
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Let Me Build My Kindgom First, Part 4
Sometimes, as people, we tend to leave things unfinished. This happens for any number of reasons. We get busy with something else and never get back to what we were doing. Children and husbands are especially good at this one. Perhaps we simply procrastinate. We think we will get to it, or back to it, but we just do not. Something like that happened to this post. Let us just say, I was not ready to write it when I wrote the first three installments in this series over a year ago. Hopefully I am now and it will make some kind of sense to you readers. God has a tendency to put things on hold until we are ready for the next step. He is always ready to take us to new levels of understanding, insight, and revelation, but He is never going to push us beyond what we are able or open to receive.
We have been going through the fourth chapter of James' epistle on Saturday evenings. Some version of fellowship has been more important lately so it seems to be taking the whole teaching time to get through just a couple verses on any given evening. That is just as well, since the book of James can be pretty intense. He does not mince words in pointing out our shortcomings. Pardon me if I am simply slower than you are, but I recently realized I had always thought James was writing to someone else. I mean, how could "adulterers and adulteresses" in verse 4 apply to me? Then it gets worse.
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble." (vs. 6) There is a lot of teaching going around of late on the subject of grace. In fact, the other post I did not finish over a year ago is on that subject. Some of the teaching on grace going around is good, some very good and some not so good. More on that in the next post--or at least the one I intend to finish soon. For the purposes of this post, we simply want to point out that it is the humble who receive the grace of God. That, of course, begs the question of who the humble are who would be eligible to receive that grace; what is it that qualifies one to receive grace? And I would be remiss were I not to ask, "Is it my lack of humility that is blocking more of God's grace in my life?" (Do not be too quick to answer that question for me.)
I am a very blessed person by most people's standards. I have a wonderful, and growing family and circle of friends, good health, plenty of "things", and all my daily needs are met. Were those standards, God's full measure of grace, I must be a model of humility. Except I am not. I still say and do things I should not. I am too quick to point out the shortcomings of others. I have even been known to mutter foul language under my breath when things are not going as I would like them to. (True and something of an embarrassing confession.)
It is probably best here to just make the point and let you all decide the truth of it for yourselves. Here it is. Ready? Drum-roll please. There is more grace available than we have ever imagined, but we are not seeing it because we have a skewed idea of what humility is.
Well, the Holy Spirit will not let me write any more on this post. I am assuming that is because there is too much more to say. So I am going to hit the publish button--after the "preview" and probably the "check spelling" and "edit" buttons. Then on to part 4.2 and we will see what happens. See you there. God bless!
We have been going through the fourth chapter of James' epistle on Saturday evenings. Some version of fellowship has been more important lately so it seems to be taking the whole teaching time to get through just a couple verses on any given evening. That is just as well, since the book of James can be pretty intense. He does not mince words in pointing out our shortcomings. Pardon me if I am simply slower than you are, but I recently realized I had always thought James was writing to someone else. I mean, how could "adulterers and adulteresses" in verse 4 apply to me? Then it gets worse.
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble." (vs. 6) There is a lot of teaching going around of late on the subject of grace. In fact, the other post I did not finish over a year ago is on that subject. Some of the teaching on grace going around is good, some very good and some not so good. More on that in the next post--or at least the one I intend to finish soon. For the purposes of this post, we simply want to point out that it is the humble who receive the grace of God. That, of course, begs the question of who the humble are who would be eligible to receive that grace; what is it that qualifies one to receive grace? And I would be remiss were I not to ask, "Is it my lack of humility that is blocking more of God's grace in my life?" (Do not be too quick to answer that question for me.)
I am a very blessed person by most people's standards. I have a wonderful, and growing family and circle of friends, good health, plenty of "things", and all my daily needs are met. Were those standards, God's full measure of grace, I must be a model of humility. Except I am not. I still say and do things I should not. I am too quick to point out the shortcomings of others. I have even been known to mutter foul language under my breath when things are not going as I would like them to. (True and something of an embarrassing confession.)
It is probably best here to just make the point and let you all decide the truth of it for yourselves. Here it is. Ready? Drum-roll please. There is more grace available than we have ever imagined, but we are not seeing it because we have a skewed idea of what humility is.
Well, the Holy Spirit will not let me write any more on this post. I am assuming that is because there is too much more to say. So I am going to hit the publish button--after the "preview" and probably the "check spelling" and "edit" buttons. Then on to part 4.2 and we will see what happens. See you there. God bless!
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Same Blog, Different Post
It seemed like a long time since I had written in this space. That was confirmed when I logged in and saw the previous post was written over two months ago. The interesting thing about that is there has not been much complaint from people who have read this blog in the past. I may be over-analyzing things, but that would lead me to believe either, no one is reading it anymore, or the readers are simply not being vocal about my recent lack of writing anything in this space. I believe I will go with the latter concept and feel better about myself.
Lately I have not been feeling so good about myself. I started a new, part-time job, working with people who have run afoul of the law for driving under the influence of one intoxicating substance or another, usually alcohol. That has solved any financial stress, but I am once again into a situation in which people are forced to come see me. I always prefer it when people want to see me. Maybe I am simply hoping for too much.
In any event, it is sometime shortly after 5:00 AM on a Sunday morning, when most, sane people should be asleep and I am watching words appear on my computer screen in hopes that I can later publish them for someone who cares. I know it's a God thing because even I do not do this, at this time, by choice. I do not even do this blog by choice. Not really. If I did, I probably would have taken it down a couple years ago when it became a point of contention between the elders in the church I was attending and me. My only guess there is that it was time for me to leave that church and they figured it out before I did. I still do not understand it, but, if you are reading this, you likely think this blog is more important than what men might say about it. I will only partially, grudgingly agree. There was a time when I thought I might have written the last post. It crossed my mind at the time that the blog might morph into something more of a teaching kind of thing than a lonely voice in the wilderness, as it were. It now begins to look as though that is not the case.
All that is to say, I have been a little distracted with some of the affairs of life that I thought might have been sorted out by now. There are still some that seem to be unresolved, but perhaps this post serves to get things going in the right direction again. I noticed at log in that there have been 5900 odd page views over the whole time this blog has existed. I know most of them are not mine so thank you if you continue to read what is posted here. I now expect to be writing a little more often, whatever that means. Then next post should have more substantive content, but we shall see about that. In the meantime, pray for me if I come to mind. God bless!
Lately I have not been feeling so good about myself. I started a new, part-time job, working with people who have run afoul of the law for driving under the influence of one intoxicating substance or another, usually alcohol. That has solved any financial stress, but I am once again into a situation in which people are forced to come see me. I always prefer it when people want to see me. Maybe I am simply hoping for too much.
In any event, it is sometime shortly after 5:00 AM on a Sunday morning, when most, sane people should be asleep and I am watching words appear on my computer screen in hopes that I can later publish them for someone who cares. I know it's a God thing because even I do not do this, at this time, by choice. I do not even do this blog by choice. Not really. If I did, I probably would have taken it down a couple years ago when it became a point of contention between the elders in the church I was attending and me. My only guess there is that it was time for me to leave that church and they figured it out before I did. I still do not understand it, but, if you are reading this, you likely think this blog is more important than what men might say about it. I will only partially, grudgingly agree. There was a time when I thought I might have written the last post. It crossed my mind at the time that the blog might morph into something more of a teaching kind of thing than a lonely voice in the wilderness, as it were. It now begins to look as though that is not the case.
All that is to say, I have been a little distracted with some of the affairs of life that I thought might have been sorted out by now. There are still some that seem to be unresolved, but perhaps this post serves to get things going in the right direction again. I noticed at log in that there have been 5900 odd page views over the whole time this blog has existed. I know most of them are not mine so thank you if you continue to read what is posted here. I now expect to be writing a little more often, whatever that means. Then next post should have more substantive content, but we shall see about that. In the meantime, pray for me if I come to mind. God bless!
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