Quick Update from the Wolf Point Library

Hello all,
Brie and I sit here at the Wolf Point Library in the midst of a day of preparation to finally jump out into the great unknown.  We have now been with my grandparents for nearly a week, and what a blessing it has been.  Yesterday was perhaps the greatest blessing of all, and thus we want to share a bit about what God did for us with you.  My grandparents and aunt and uncle go to a small country church here in Wolf Point and so it was there that we found ourselves yesterday morning at eleven in the morning.  However, what we would have expected from the church was far from what we received.  As we grabbed a bulletin it quickly became clear that there were guest-speakers in charge of the service.  Where they were from was the big surprise: All Nations Church in West Fargo, ND.  All Nations is a church that is actually located about a block from the Faith, where I have been working for the last nearly two years (Anyone who is still in Fargo should venture over there one of these Sundays.  Their congregation is mainly African, but one of their church objectives is to reach the surrounding community.  I am sure, you will be blessed in your visit.)  The church has always caught my attention as I've driven by, but I have never had the opportunity to enter.  However, God had better plans in bringing them to us.  Three large African men found themselves in the midst of a congregation of white Montana farmers, and the power with which their pastor spoke was such a joy.  In typical African fashion Pastor Paul gave an enthusiastic sermon on Matthew 6:25-34.  His main point was to worry less and trust God more, the very thing we are attempting to do, and the very thing we were struggling to do as we found ourselves nearing the precipice of lack of plans.  There was nothing profound, but the simple and true reminder to seek the kingdom and to leave the rest to God was just what our hearts needed.  We were also blessed to have them pray over us (in multiple african languages) before we departed.  Now, tomorrow we will take off towards western Montana with a new confidence in our step, and rejuvenated in the power of the spirit.  Thank you all for your prayers, they continue to be appreciated.
With Love,
Andrew and Brie

Our Effort in God's Work

Brie and I still find ourselves in Billings at my parent’s house.  We just returned yesterday from an overnight backpacking trip with Eric in the Absaroka/Beartooth Mountains.  It was a gorgeous trip, and ever a good reminder of just how small I am, and how great our God is.  I have failed to write on here as of late, because there has been so much percolating in my soul, and I have felt more need to reflect than to report.  Even right now, as I begin writing, I realize that I could leave another ten page blog on here, that only the most die hard would read.  In an attempt to avoid doing that, I will simply report one thing God continues to teach me, that is particularly weighty within me this morning.  This subject is that of our effort in God’s work.

The reason this is so important to me right now is due to the fact that as I continue to share the ways in which God has challenged my heart, and brought conviction to me for myself and the church, I also continually get a similar response.  As I challenge individuals to question whether or not they are giving their all to God, whether they are putting all their energy into bringing the Kingdom of God, whether they are seeking God with all their heart, I hear in return that, “I must not attempt to do things on my own, that God must do it in me, that God must do it in us.” 

It was at this point that I stopped writing four days ago.  My heart did not feel like writing, and doubt had crept into my heart.  It suddenly seemed crazy that I would dare to claim something as Biblical truth, that so many people had critiqued and criticized me for in recent times.  Thus, for the past few days I have been reflecting heavily upon this very topic, and through prayer and the reading of scripture have decided that I must stick to my guns on this one.  I am convinced that God does not fear us working too hard to follow him.  Now the criticism that I have faced comes, I believe, from an absolute fear of work.  The church has held so tightly to “grace alone” that it has crippled itself, and made the body of Christ a couch potato.  Some people know that a man by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenged this very fact many decades ago, but the scary thing is that in many circles Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace” has been so trivialized that it too has no bite.  It is thus that an absolute fear of self-righteousness or self-justification, or perhaps more fundamentally a fear of passionate discipleship leads some to see what God is teaching me to be arrogance, pride, and even selfishness on my part.  I have prayed fervently over these very things.  I know that pride is a demon that I have wrestled with, and I know that it still lingers in the pit of my soul, but I am convinced that my desire to know the Lord, and to serve the Lord, regardless of what that means, is not rooted in pride, selfishness or anything of the sort.  My heart continually assures me that the foundation of my hunger is Jesus Christ Himself, and the understanding he has opened me up to, of the infinite debt that stands between he and I, is from and of him.  Christ alone has made it possible for life to exist where there was only death. For so long that language, those words meant nothing to my heart, but as Christ has made them real in me my only desire, with Paul, is to live a life worthy of the Gospel of Christ. (In Philipians Paul instructs in 1:27, “conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” or in Colossians 1:9-10 Paul says that he prays that the Colossians would have knowledge of God’s will, and he prays that, “in order that you may have a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way.”) 

The question now would be, I suppose, what does a life worthy of Christ look like.  From my experience with Christians I think the popular answer would be that there is no such thing.  We cannot live a life worthy of Jesus, because we are sinful creatures, we are human, and thus we are simply unworthy, end of discussion.  I fail to believe though that Paul would make a goal for the Philippians and the Colossians that was impossible, and thus am led to believe that Paul means it when he says that we are to live a life worthy of Christ.  Paul does not just toss around nice sounding, but useless jargon like we have a habit of doing in the modern church (I am referring directly to anything that sounds at all like the third sentence of this paragraph).  Now, I agree that Christ died for us, he opened the door while we were unworthy, but must we really remain unworthy?  Paul says in Romans 5:6-8, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Paul’s use of the word still in these verses fascinates me.  He writes about being powerless, about being sinners as if it was a thing of the past.  When Christ died we were as such, before we were given new life by Him we were as such, but now God has given us power, and we are no longer sinners.  That seems to be what Paul’s words imply.  The idea that we should no longer be sinners is pretty radical to me too, but then in 1 John 3:4-6 it reads, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.  But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins.  And in him is no sin.  No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.  No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”  These words boggle my mind, and they fly in the face of most everything I’ve ever heard growing up in the church, but they are the words of scripture, and they are pretty clear. 

Now as I talk about sinlessness, as I did in my last blog, I continually get criticized for being self-righteous, and am continually reminded that I cannot rid myself of my own sin.  I agree that I cannot, it says right there in John that Christ appeared to take away our sins.  However, the fact that I cannot do it, does not mean that it should not be done.  Thus, it only seems to make since, that if I look at my life and see sin, there should be nothing but striving to have it eradicated.  I should not be alright with there being sin in my life.  If nothing else, this goal of sinlessness and Paul’s goal of a life worthy of Christ should act like a litmus test for us on our way.  We can weigh our lives against Christ, asking if what we see in ourselves is worthy of Him and His Gospel.  Does my life look like what Christ died for it to be?  Another important question is, Does the church, the Body of Christ, look like what Christ died for it to be?  This is an equally important question I think, because it is very easy to ask the first one, answer it with a no, but than excuse ourselves because that is what all Christians in the church look like.  However, if the body is sick, and we as a member of the body are sick, it is at the very least a good first step to healing the body, if we work to make ourselves well.  It is at this point that so many people raise their defenses, mandating that there is no way we can make ourselves well.  However, this is simply another well-versed excuse to stay sick.  I did not say we must make ourselves well, on our own, without Jesus.  Everything I am saying is obviously, I think, centered around Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the doctor who will make us well, in fact more than that, he is the medicine that will make us well.  When you go to the doctor for a physical illness he/she might prescribe you a medicine, which you will then take and be made well.  You did not cure yourself, really in this case the doctor didn’t either, but the pill did.  However, without your work to go to the doctor, to get the pill, and to take the pill, it would never have had a chance to make you well.  Thus, you worked to make yourself well.  In the same way, Christ commands that we work to be made well by Him. 

As I tell people that I am working as hard as I can to know Christ, working as hard as I can to follow him, working as hard as I can to be made well, working as hard as I can to serve Him and my neighbor the common response has been, as I’ve said already, “What’s with all this I-language, what makes you think you can do all things?  You are not to do these things.  God is to do these things.”  Let me tell you what such criticisms and warnings are like.  Let us imagine that there is a young family, a father, mother and young son.  The father is walking across the front yard on his journey across the street to take something to the neighbors.  Meanwhile, as the father takes his first steps to go, the boy asks his mother if he can run and catch up in order to follow his father across the street to the neighbors.  The mother than responds, “No, your father has to go with you!”  Would the boy not protest, if he was intelligent enough, that by catching his father before he crosses the street this is the very goal he is trying to achieve.  He wants to go with his father, thus how can it be logical for his mother to not let him go because he must go with his father.  Yet this is very much the same critique that I have received over and over again, that I cannot do these things without God, without Christ.  Of course not, but as I work my hardest to follow Jesus how can I be accused of doing so without him.  It is He, I am following, is it not. 

Now it may not be logical to rebuke someone for following Jesus without letting God help you.  However, that would assume that the Jesus I am following is really Jesus, that the God I know to be working in my life is really God.  It would be possible that I am following, or have found an impostor, and perhaps this is the real issue many should be raising, and it is a question I have surely wrestled with in the past weeks.  Over the past year, I have been in a community, in communities really, where I have been nurtured in the growth (or at least what I have assumed to be growth) that has occurred within me.  Thus, the negative, defensive feedback I have received, though not surprising, has forced me to make sure that I have not lost it, to make sure that what I have heard is really what God is saying.  Time of prayer has brought great peace to my soul along with being consistently reaffirmed by scripture.  God wants much of us as we make much of Him. Of this I am convinced.

Even as I think about the simple instruction from Paul to live a life worthy of Christ, I hear Christ telling me what it means to be worthy.  In Matthew 10:37-39 Jesus says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  I truly believe we must listen to Jesus more closely as he says these things.  In a church that is so focused on building strong family bubbles, a church where taking up your cross often means buying a piece of jewelry, where following resists the use of the words obedience and slave, and much of our teaching is about how to live a better life now, we have got to hear the echoing discord between Jesus’ and our messages.  Jesus’ message that some will be found unworthy is not a popular one.  Yet Jesus’ unpopular teachings go even farther as he talks about the narrow way, and says that few will find it.  The assumption seems to have been made by many that if you call yourself a Christian you are on the narrow way.  This cannot be though, it wouldn’t make much sense, that Jesus would say the road is narrow and hard to find, when he meant to say the road is open and you can’t miss it.  Then in Luke, he says these words, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.”  Far from fearing people working doggedly to walk the way, that is exactly what Jesus commands.  He says we must make every effort.  Somehow though, I have been applauded my whole life, and encouraged for being one of the hardest workers when it came to being a good soccer player, or winning math competitions, or getting good grades in school, but now as I work my hardest to forget what is behind and strain towards what is ahead I am encountering resistance (Phil. 3).  Sadly, I also think many in the church would be much more accepting if I told them about how hard I was working for a raise and promotion in some job than they are as I tell them about how hard I am chasing after Christ and his will, and what I am willing to let go in order to get there. 

This is a great tragedy and it breaks my heart, all while motivating me even more.  What we work hardest for, it seems to me, must betray much about what we love most, what we desire most, and I know for much of my life as a Christian, it has not been Christ that has been betrayed as my first love.  At this point, one could try to catch me by arguing that I am not loving Christ more, but just realizing that if I did I would do more for him, and so instead of loving him, I am just replacing it with work.  Though logically this might work, I do not believe it is a possibility with Christ.  We are commanded to love God with everything, but when Jesus comes to teach us what that looks like, he does not begin with great stories of how great God is, he begins with the simple command of “follow me”.  Then he turns his back and walks away.  The disciples did not love Jesus first, they obeyed first.  Obedience nurtures love, and, like I said earlier, following Jesus means your spending a lot of time with Jesus.  The places Jesus wants to take us (like the cross) are pretty terrifying often, and nothing builds love like trusting in your God.  Only by walking through the valley of the shadow of death do I learn that I have a God whom I can trust while in there.  Our actions, the things we do, are important and necessary.  Jesus wants obedience, and he wants action that reflects true loyalty, true discipleship.  He compares the Kingdom of God to a guy who sells all he has to buy a field with a great treasure, and yet there just aren’t many Christians around who have sold out for the Kingdom of God.

Lets turn to Paul for a bit to reaffirm the importance of our effort, even effort that might appear radical.  Radical effort, radical things are not radical for Jesus, they just are the things that Jesus and his followers do.  Looking at Colossians 3 really illustrates the necessity of our effort, of our moving toward Christ, of our making every effort.  I will highlight the language having to do with personal action, the things Paul wants followers of Christ to be doing.

            “Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set Your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.  Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.  Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.  You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.  But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.  Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with weach other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

Now I am not saying that we should do anything without Christ, but neither Paul or Jesus were afraid of us making too much of an effort.  I am not undermining God’s ability to work in the unwilling, but once Christ has claimed us, we should be doing these things.  We should be working towards these things.  We should be making every effort.  Peter gets in on the action too, saying in light of God’s great gifts and love, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.  For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure it will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of Jesus Christ.”  What I am saying does not trade in grace for works.  Look at what Peter says here.  The first half is the grace, the amazing things God has done, the second is what Bonhoeffer calls the costly part of “Costly grace.”  It is costly because it is what you do.  It is not costly because of what Jesus did for you, that is grace.  The cost is yours, what you are doing, how you are selling out for Jesus and the treasure that he is. We have got to stop being afraid of talking about what we are doing for the Kingdom of God.  This is our life’s work, and we must get busy doing it.  Peter is so unafraid of our effort, that he says, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.”  Christ has made it possible to be purified by our obedience of his truth.  He has made it possible to find and walk on the narrow way.  Though it was once closed, he has reopened the way.  He has opened the door.  He has invited us in.  Let us obey and follow him, denying ourselves, picking up our cross, and embracing our role, no matter how costly, in God’s beautiful Kingdom.

I apologize for the length of this, and I have perhaps prematurely ended it, in order to keep it somewhat reasonable.  As I finish this, we are preparing to go to my grandparents in northeastern Montana.  I know not if we will have internet access for the next days or perhaps week or more, so this may be the last update for a while.  Blessings to all,
Andrew

Waking Thoughts

The Lord is teaching me and blessing me in many ways these past few weeks--blessing me with Himself and teaching me how to walk in Him more fully each day.  I guess I don't feel Him more, but rather I am beginning to see him work in and around my life and so crave Him to be my every present thought.  An important verse that has lingered indirectly in my thoughts recently has been Colossians 3:1-3 as they say--

"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

Every waking thought is to be above, where Christ is.  On Christ.  Every thought.  Whoa!  That completely excites me and challenges me at the same time.  Not only is it a mental effort to be consumed with Christ and his Kingdom, but it also affects what I do so that my actions assist in keeping all that I am set on Christ.

I have learned that [one of] the best things to do is the be intentional about my first waking thought.  Just a few days ago, the importance of this simple concept was revealed to me.  During the night I dreamed that I was singing songs of praise and so I woke up physically singing of the Majesty of the Lord and that he would reign in me.  What a blessing that was to me, for at this moment I didn't even realize the gift that was given to me through those songs.  Yet I found myself throughout the day singing these same songs without much effort, yet meaning these words from the depths of my heart.  It was one of the most worshipful days--and it was so ordinary!  Not only did it bring joy, but it turned my every thought, mood, and moment to Christ, my Lord, the Creator. 

What if it had been any other thought that had first entered my head--whether ungrateful, uneager, filled with anger, dissapointment or even simply neutral thoughts?  What a day I would have missed out on!  And what saddens me is that those thoughts have been my waking thoughts and thus consumed my day all too often. 
Being intentional about my first waking thoughts means I must to be intentional about my last waking thoughts as well.  With what/who or how do I fill that time?  May those also be praise and filled with wonder towards the One who makes each day and through Whom I take each breath.

May the words from my mouth and the thoughts that I have--and thus the things that I do--bring only praise to the One who deserves it all--all day, every day.  Those waking thoughts are a big deal; they make all the difference for the whole day through.
gaBRIElle

Update

I got up early this morning, around 4:30 to write something here, but felt more led to ponder and pray than actually compose anything.  Brie and I find ourselves in Billings at the moment, ready to be and serve in my home for a little while.  After leaving Brie's home a few days ago we headed to Okoboji Bible Camp where two of our best friends and strongest brothers and sisters live.  There we were powerfully rejuvenated spiritually as we enjoyed meeting fellow disciples and shared in a long night of prayer and passion for our Lord and his work.  Following this, we participated in Brie's family reunion, a time that was a real blessing for myself in terms of establishing relationship with her family.  Then, on the way to Billings from Minnesota we stopped for the night in Badlands National Park, SD.  We hiked a few miles into the Badland and set up camp for the night.  The area we stayed was called Deerhaven, and what an imaginative creator we serve who made that place.  The immense beauty of the rock, the unique and terrifying way that the stone cuts into the sky, the soaring vultures, creeping tarantulas, and hooting owls were all a testimony to his love and power.  It was yet another holy respite, and a blessed time to Be Still and Know that He is God.
Now today, we head out again, for a two day jaunt to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park with my family.  I anticipate the presence and power of the spirit to be heavily at work, and am eager to share more upon my return.

The Goal of Sinlessness

It has been a week since I last posted, and a blessed struggle of a week it has been.  I feel as if Brie and I have taken the training wheels off of our bikes of faith.  Over the last year the Lord has built around us and through us a beautiful community of hungry, Christ-centered disciples.  We have lived within a community where we were challenged and built up by others, and the expectation was that we too would do so for them.  The Lord has called us out of that place, out of that comfort zone, and now we are experiencing the full extent of our strengths and weaknesses in a place less intentional about its growth in discipleship.  I have been asked by a few why we would choose to, or why the Lord would choose to pull us out of such a great situation.  Why would it be best to be removed from an environment where faith was stimulated almost without effort.  I really do believe the answer to that question is much the same as the answer to why we take training wheels off of children’s bikes.  You can do way more with a bike when those extra wheels aren’t there to get in the way.  There is a freedom in the challenge of adversity.  Though we are experiencing the skinned knees and scraped elbows that come with the initial challenge, the Lord continues to pour himself into us, and continues to refine us for his work.

I have largely given up reading besides the Bible, due to the distraction from Christ that reading about Him had become in my life.  However, I have been sporadically working my way through a compilation of George Macdonald’s sermons called Getting to Know Jesus.  Macdonald is the source of one of my favorite quotes:  “I do not with Paul consider myself to be the slave of Christ, but my only desire and wish is to be so.”  In the early stages of reading this book, I have been provided with yet another gem from this man of God that I would like to share with you.  He writes,

            “Oh, my friends, if you will but cast away the evil! I speak to myself and to all who have believed already, for you are not saved yet.  I do not count myself saved.  Never till God and I mean the same thing, and think the same thing, and do the same thing; never till the very existence of God is my continual gladness shall I count myself saved.  Then I say to all of you, Cast away the thing that you know is not light, is not clarity, and, let it cost what it may, receive the life that Jesus offers you; then you will one day, I know not when, be filled with life, that you will be glad like God himself with an intense consciousness of blessedness.”

The reason I love these words so much is because I am so deeply disgusted, so completely fed up with Christian contentment.  There is often such a push to be able to say with certainty that one is saved.  I remember being given a survey that asked me how sure I was that I was going to heaven.  There was a list of percentages, but the correct answer was 100%.  Now, I do not want to undermine the amazing gift of Jesus Christ.  I do not for a second want to make the illusion that we can save ourselves, but my friends we must yearn for salvation, we must chase salvation, we must strive after it, simply amazed that possibly through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ this wretch might be saved from himself.   Striving to be able to say that we have gained salvation, or striving to help others say that, simply minimizes the reality of salvation.  We should never dare to be so bold as to say that salvation has come our way.  Paul himself would not make such a claim.  In Philippians 3 he writes, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize of which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Before I go on to speak more about pieces of these verses, I simply want to comment on the audacity, the foolishness of standing before Christ and saying that you will for sure spend eternity with Him.  Any man or woman who knows themselves, their utter depravity, and knows even a fraction of the beauty and majesty of the Lord our God, should expect fully that they are going to hell.  It does not seem possible that God could ever make me into something that could dwell in the house of the Lord for eternity.  At this point, some might challenge me, and say that I do not fully understand the love of God, that the equation above where I cannot help but see myself going to hell is only derived when the amazing love of God is not taken into consideration.  At this argument I balk severely, for I am convinced that it is exactly the love of God that would most strongly despise all of my depravity and sin.  The Lord cannot be alright with a sinful me, for that is not the me he created.  God will dwell with human beings, with the creatures he created to live in his will.  In Eden we became something other, something less.  We are not fit for eternity, because we live not in the will of the Father.  And yet, Christ has made it possible for us to once again become human.  In a history of sub-perfect humanity, there was one point over two-thousand years ago when light entered the darkness.  That light brought with it life, and that life in George Macdonald’s words is when, “God and I mean the same thing, and think the same thing, and do the same thing; when the very existence of God is my continual gladness.”  For how many Christians is that the goal?  It is the Bible’s goal, Jesus’ goal, the Father’s goal, and the Holy Spirit’s goal, but there are far too few Christian’s for whom this is the goal.  The majority of the church has settled for much less than life, and thus we journey on in a contented state of death and depravity.

I have always believed goals to be important.  I know from experience the importance of having a target to shoot for.  In the verses above Paul describes the goals that have been set before him.  They are to know Christ, to know the power of his resurrection, to know the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, and to become like him in his death.  I could spend tons of time delving into each of these goals, and trying to clarify exactly what Paul is after, but I would have another overly long blog entry.  1 John provides enough help with some of the understanding of these goals of faith.  It is important to realize that these are not just individual goals, which can be different for Paul, and for me, and for any Joe Blow.  These are God’s goals, this is God’s agenda for bringing us to life that we are talking about.  Paul says he wishes to know Christ and 1 John says, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.  The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.  But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.  This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”  Elsewhere in chapter 3 it reads, “No one who continues to sin has either seen him or know him.”  I don’t know about any of the rest of you, but these are scary words for me.  In my Bible there are many markings from throughout the years that are often a joy for me to read, and a testimony to me of all that Christ has done in growing me to salvation.  However, there is a marking on this text that I know is old, but one that I can still relate with, and it reads simply this, “Big Problem!”  How often have you heard these truths of scripture?  I would be willing to bet not very often.  It’s become borderline heresy in many church settings to read these very words of scripture.  No one wants to hear or to preach that those who know Jesus, no longer know sin.  People want to hear and preach even less that knowing Jesus is paramount to salvation and eternal life (John 17:3), because that means that those who are heaven bound, are no longer bound by the chains of sin.  As I write these words, I realize another sad reality, which is that people would rather hear that they might not actually know Jesus, than they would hear that they might not go to heaven.  What a horrifying situation we find ourselves in when fear of not gaining our constructed image of eternal life and heaven, outweighs the fear of not gaining Jesus Christ himself. 

I got into a bit of a disagreement with my sister-in-law a few days ago, one which has made me think very deeply, and one that we have still yet to resolve.  I was discussing my observations that the church has become far too content with, as I put it earlier, “living in death” or simply put, far too content with sin.  It surprises me as I read the Bible how important holiness, righteousness, sinlessness is to God and in scripture, and how unimportant those things are in much of the church.  We seem for the most part to be alright with being sinful creatures.  We live in America, we live on Earth, and so there is only so much we can do to work towards perfection.  It is that kind of talk that I feel dominates faithful American Christian communities.  And it is that kind of talk that I think is a bunch of crap, and simply an unspoken excuse to not die to gain Christ.  Throughout the Bible, Christians are referred to as aliens and strangers in this world.  Just to remind myself and all of us that when you are a stranger to something it usually means you know nothing about it.  The language of the Bible is not the same as the language of, “in the world, but not of it” that gets thrown around so often.  Actually, I take that back, the denotation may be similar, but the connotation is something completely different.  This small phrase usually means not being a drunk, not sleeping around, it refers to the big ones, but usually includes a sense of passiveness in regards to other sins.  Not so with the Bible.  Again 1 John reads, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father, but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”  Anyway, back to my discussion with my sister-in-law, in drawing from my reflections upon the scriptures, I raised the question to her, myself and the rest of Brie’s family of why it is that we do not have the goal of sinlessness.  Why do we not strive for absolute perfection?  Why do we not make it our every move’s goal to discard our sin, our baggage, the distractions that plague us.  She immediately took objection with these kinds of statements, and insisted that our goal should not be to become sinless, but instead our focus should be on Jesus.  She was adamant that one could not focus on removing their sins, but instead had to focus on Christ, and imitating him.  In part, I agree with what she is saying.  1 John 5:12 reads, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”  Attaining Jesus must be the goal.  It must be the only goal of our entire lives, to know Him, to be one with Him, to live completely within him.  Unity with Christ equals life.  I could not agree more.  However, I must argue that if that is truly the only goal of our lives, we cannot help but get very feisty, very aggressive, downright mean with the removal of sin from our lives.  If Christ is truly my only desire, than anything that is not Christ should absolutely repulse me.  It is a waste of my time at best, a poison perhaps more accurately.  Thus, I think very quickly when Christ is truly our only want, than a subsequent and secondary goal of sinlessness, of holiness, of destroying distractions must develop.  In the verse I spoke of earlier, Paul himself reflects this truth.  He says, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal . . .”  Jesus is his goal, but in his straining toward that goal, he most assuredly must just as fiercely work to forget what is behind Him.  My sister-in-law is correct that we cannot make it our main goal to remove all sin from our lives, and forget the main goal of Jesus Christ.  However, when I do not see violent straining and battle to remove sin, I struggle to believe that there is truly a desire to know Christ in the first place.  In a church full of WWJD, we have become far too comfortable with talking about pursuing Christ, being like Christ, and far too foreign to what that actually means.  Thus we have a church that is alien not to the world, but rather to talk of righteousness and sinlessness. 

This past Sunday, the sermon at church was about the Cost of Discipleship, and the pastor used an apple to represent the areas of deadness in our lives, the places of distraction from Jesus.  He then stood up front and dropped the apple off the stage to show what it is that we must do with those things that hold us back from our Lord.  He talked all about how an apple must die to get its seed in the ground, to bring new life, and how our sins must die in order to bring life.  That was all fine and good, but all I could think about as he dropped that apple nice and gently from the stage, was just how badly I wanted to see applesauce splattered in the center aisle.  If that apple was the things keeping him from Jesus, there was no way I wanted him relying on gravity to take care of the disposal, I wanted that thing hurled to the ground with enough force to make sure it was good and dead.  As I brought up this point to my in-laws they pointed out that we shouldn’t be destroying these things, because that implies that it is within our power to get rid of them.  I just don’t know if I can buy that though, it sounds far too churchy, far too predictable.  I think of Zacchaeus for example.  Jesus spoke to him, and right that instant he flung away most all of his money.  That was his obstacle, and just as quickly as Zacchaeus had seen Jesus, he smashed that distraction to kingdom come.  Zacchaeus was the one who got rid of it, Jesus didn’t do it.  Jesus was the motivation for the smashing, but he was not the smasher.  Zacchaeus simply had God invite himself into his house, and that was enough to motivate him to destroy everything that was preventing that from happening.  Somehow though, we hear God’s plea to enter into lives, and yet think it too rash, too foolish, too arrogant to simply take it on ourselves to destroy anything that might hinder his living within us, or we in Him.  That is not arrogant, it is not any of the above, it simply makes sense.  Just like Zacchaeus we have got to get serious about destroying sin, destroying obstacles.  I find it hard to say that I can watch TV in or for Jesus, that I can follow sports in or for Jesus, that I can spend time worrying about my appearance, about my finances, about anything besides bringing the Kingdom of God.  And because these things are not where Christ dwells, and because he has placed a hunger in my soul to dwell where he does, those things are all getting the axe.  As I meditate on these words and ponder the hunger of my soul, I find an image in my mind’s eye.  I am on a tropical beach somewhere, dying of thirst.  There is a spring across the beach, but between me and it, are about fifteen hungry, terrifying crocodiles.  All I want, all I can think about is that spring, but as long as those crocodiles are alive I can’t drink.  Thus, my initial objective is to make fifteen dead crocodiles.  Fifteen dead crocodiles later and this thirsty man will be quenched.  My soul thirsts, and my body longs for Christ, in a dry and weary land where there is no water (partially stolen from Psalm 63), and I do have crocodiles in my life keeping me from the only source of drink.  I have endured without life-giving water for so long, I have even grown to like some of the crocodiles.  Some of them have names and are like pets to me, but I am ready to kill them anyway, all of them, because the thirst is unbearable, and the spring calls my name.  “Come,” it says, “On my way” I say, and fifteen crocodiles shed their tears, for their life is nearly over.

Much love to you all in Christ,
Andrew