Meditation: Where there are no answers

My children have eaten their fill every day of their lives. They’ve never missed a meal, never gone to bed hungry. So last week, when I quoted Psalm 37:25 on Twitter and Facebook, (“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”) it was an act of praise and thanksgiving.

Then I received a private note from a friend in Africa. “I have seen righteous men and their children begging. What do I do with that?” I know his voice. There was no argument in his observation. He was not trying to one-up me or pick a fight. There was nothing public in his response. His question was genuine.

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Meditation: His Presence, His Voice

One day I left my cell phone in a friend’s office. When my daughter sent a text message soon after, my friend thought it would be fun to respond to the text and pretend to be me. After an exchange of just two messages my daughter texted back, “Who is this really?”

She knew my voice. Even though she was apart from me and limited to the shorthand of text messaging, she was not fooled by an impostor.

One sure sign that we are becoming followers of Jesus is our ability to distinguish his voice from others. Jesus said simply, “My sheep know my voice.” Yet one hallmark among Christians in our day is anxiety regarding God’s direction and guidance. How can there be so many believers who struggle to hear his voice?

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Baby Jesus Super-Power

Never mind what the website says, the worship team at my church starts up at 10:38, A.M. each Sunday morning. It’s true that we’ve always been a chronically late group of believers, but 10:38 is intentional: it comes from Acts 10:38. 

“. . . how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.” 

Call it our secret code. We want to underscore how Jesus did ministry and try to follow his example.

It’s one of my favorite questions: “How did Jesus do the stuff he did?” If Jesus really is a worthy role model, shouldn’t we imitate him? Jesus healed the sick, multiplied food, cleansed lepers, expelled evil spirits, and raised the dead. He spoke with confidence and authority about the Father’s heart. He modeled a life of grace and peace, lived in concert with the Father’s will. But how did he do these things? Our answer sets the boundaries of our potential under the Master. Popular theologianRicky-Bobby suggests that “Baby Jesus Super-Power” was at work. Unfortunately, Ricky Bobby speaks for far too many of us.

I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking I threw in the Talladega Nights reference just to be funny. I wish that were true. Just today I read these words from a recent Bible commentary:

As a “superhero,” Jesus has a vast array of superpowers--powers to heal disease, calm storms, defeat the demonic, love the unlovable. But one stands out in this passage: his sheer brilliance.

I wish I was making this up, but no, I read these words in a book from a reputable publisher. Perhaps the chatty, conversational commentator was just trying to accessible, but he places the works, the character and the intellect of Jesus beyond our reach. If Jesus did the things he did because he was the Boss’ son, then his example is no example at all. We can stand amazed without any responsibility to imitate the Master.

The Apostle Peter provided a powerful one-sentence summary of Jesus’ ministry--including the hope that we, too, can be like him. I’d like to suggest at least four paradigm-shifting revelations from this one powerful verse.

1). God the Father anointed Jesus of Nazareth. The concept of God’s anointing is nearly lost in many quarters of the church. Yet Jesus began his ministry with the simple explanation that “the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me” for the tasks before him (Luke 4: 18). Peter simply used the same explanation his Master had used. If Jesus needed the anointing, how much more do we? We need to recover a first-century understanding of anointing. Perhaps then we will recover first-century effectiveness in ministry.

2). Even good works require the Father’s empowerment. Who could be against “doing good?” No one--and that’s the problem. Too often followers of Jesus are reduced to the role of religious social workers because we want do good, even if it’s apart from the Spirit’s guidance or assistance. It is a powerful temptation precisely because we can sally forth in our own understanding and strength, yet still do so in the name of God. Jesus modeled something else: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5: 19) Do we see the difference?

3). Jesus saw ministry in the light of spiritual conflict: Peter included the phrase, “all who were under the power of the devil.” All ministry is spiritual warfare. John, the beloved disciple said, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8). Jesus saw the world as enemy-occupied territory, and no human was ever his enemy. We need Paul’s reminder that in ministry “we do not struggle against flesh and blood.” Yet we do struggle. It pays to know where the fight is.

4). The presence of God makes all the difference. Like the anointing, the concept of doing ministry along with God’s manifest presence is nearly lost in the church today. We have settled too quickly for the omnipresence of God. We mistake orthodoxy for presence. The result is dry and lifeless ministry, yet we assert that because God is everywhere he must be in our works. We presume too much.

Peter followed Jesus day-by-day for three and a half years. He saw effective ministry modeled. He learned first-hand the possibilities of a Man yielded to the Father. He summarized his experience into a single sentence, a sentence so powerful it could transform ministry today.

Tasting the Family Heritage

God’s presence is the family heritage. I turn page after page in the family album of scripture and discover my God is highly relational. He wants us to know him. Let’s pull out the album and remind ourselves of the past. Can you hear the pages crackle with the testimony of lives impacted by his touch?

There’s our father, Abraham. He was visited personally by the creator of the universe no fewer than four times. God spoke to Abraham, and Abraham spoke to God. They discussed where Abraham should live, what he should do and how he should raise his family. Abraham served God a meal, heard God laugh, and bargained with him for the lives of the righteous.

Abraham’s son, Isaac, shared his life with God as well. God helped him through difficult economic times with specific advice. Isaac waited a long time for the God of his father to become his God, but it was worth the wait. Isaac’s wife asked of God and discovered why her pregnancy was so difficult; in the process she learned the secret destiny of her twin sons.

Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, did his best to avoid the presence of God. Yet even while running away he stumbled into God’s house. He didn’t know where he was, but he awoke at the base of Heaven’s gate. Later in his life he found himself in hand-to-hand combat with the Almighty, and the experience changed his identity forever: “I’m the one who wrestled with God” (and I have the limp to prove it).

This is our family album as well. Our ancestors conversed with God, questioned God, wrestled with God, and heard his secrets. They bargained and pleaded with him, and--most amazingly--they experienced his presence even while they were in conflict with him.

Those of us with a high view of scripture should allow it to whet our appetite, to provoke our thirst for his tangible presence.  We have a choice: if our experience does not match the revealed word of God, we should change our way of life and pursue the experience we see. Instead we have settled for knowing the record of the past, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Monday’s post collected stories from everyday people who have felt his touch in our time. Their stories should encourage us that Abraham’s blessing can be ours as well. God’s relationship with others is a promise to us. We were made to be with him. Do we experience his presence? Are we aware when God is in the room? Jesus intended that, like our family, we should know his presence. We should settle for nothing less. One taste is enough to bring hunger for life. We should feel him for real or wrestle with the lack until he comes and touches us himself.

Many Christians have no story to tell because they have been taught avoid subjective experience. They’ve been taught the facts of God’s presence, but what good is it to have a theology that asserts God’s presence is everywhere if there is no evidence of it? It may be the central failing of the North American church: His presence is rarely manifest. We do not even feel the lack. He is indeed with everyone, but everyone is not always with him. God is present with everyone; more important, He longs for everyone to be present with him.

We have settled. The presence of God has been canned, preserved and placed in the pantry. Our taste for the freshness of his presence has been dulled. We have subsisted on the remains of his presence when just one taste of the real thing is enough to cause us to hunger for the rest of our lives. It’s the kind of hunger that will keep us filled for life.

Monday's Meditation: Experiencing His Presence

One night God came to dinner with me and five of my friends. We’ve never been the same.

We were a team of six college students who found ourselves unexpectedly joined together because our backyard Bible study had blossomed into a small church. Our ragtag group of believers were like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan--not a true adult among us. We sang silly songs and engaged in Bible teaching, even though we ourselves knew nothing. We had seen our fellowship grow into 120 people, but the only thing we knew for sure is that the six of us were called by God into mutual commitment to him and one another.

Alone in a church basement, around the scent of roast lamb rising from our plates we celebrated what God had done between us. We ate a covenant meal and expressed our commitment to one another.

What happened next changed my life: God became present in a tangible way. He was in the room with us. We stopped praying and sat in silence. The room was heavy: the air lay upon my shoulders like a weight. None of us dared speak. The silence was so thick it seemed like a substance. Each of us knew that God had joined us. We felt small and insignificant even while we also felt eternity welling inside of our very bodies.

After he left, we sat together stunned, and shared our experiences. My tiny mind knew that, technically, God was everywhere all the time, but in that moment I experienced his presence for the first time. In the decades since I have encountered God again and again, now aware that there is a difference between the knowledge of his omni-presence and the experience of his presence. 

I’ve listened to other people speak of their experiences as well: 

“God met me in a hotel room one night;” 

“God visited me in my childhood as I looked out my bedroom window;” 

“The presence of God filled the room like a cloud as we worshipped.” 

I know their accounts are true simply because I have eaten at the same table and sipped the same wine. I’ve read the accounts of people like Jacob the slickster, who awoke one night and gasped, “‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’” (Genesis 28: 16-17)

This week’s Meditation is a two-fold invitation to this community of readers: 

• If you’re never experienced the presence of God in a tangible way, ask him to come and open yourself to the possibility.
• If you have experienced his presence, click on the comments below and share your story. Let deep call to deep so we might all hunger again for that banqueting table.

Monday's Meditation: Our Greatest Need

Here’s a disturbing trend in the Christian blogosphere: we would much rather talk about other people than ourselves. When I post something about the church at large, the number of visitors to this site soars and comments pour in. Everyone rushes to the table where the state of the church is sliced, diced, and analyzed in detail. With the mere mention of a Christian celebrity I can purchase hundreds more visitors to my site.

If, however, I post something about our individual need to wait for God in silence, or our personal destiny to become conformed to his image, I get the internet equivalence of chirping crickets. Nothing. Like a busker singing at the  Metro, everyone hurries by. And why not? Christianity is way more fun when we’re talking about other people. Following Jesus isn’t such a joyride if he wants to talk to me.

I am one of us as well. I would much rather pontificate on the issues facing Christendom across the continent than listen to the still small voice addressing the secrets of my heart. I would rather do significant things. I want to be a part of important conversations.

Recently I found the private notes of a world leader who longed to hear the whisper spoken to him alone. This man held a position of national significance, no, wait--historical importance. Yet he was a man who positioned himself in the quiet place and waited for his best friend to come and sit with him.

My heart is not proud, O LORD, 

       my eyes are not haughty; 

       I do not concern myself with great matters 

       or things too wonderful for me.

But I have stilled and quieted my soul; 

       like a weaned child with its mother, 

       like a weaned child is my soul within me.

 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD 

       both now and forevermore. (~ Psalm 131, a psalm of David)

God took a boy out of the shepherd’s field and put him in the palace, but not before embedding the hillside, the breeze, the night sky and the quiet times into his heart. The Biblical histories of Samuel and Chronicles will tell you the palace was a place filled with intrigue, politics, war and power--and it was. The Psalms and Proverbs will tell you that David took time to climb the stairs, shut the door, and pick up the harp.

Our greatest need--my greatest need--is the daily presence of the Holy Spirit. When David knew he had stepped over the line, claiming power and privilege as some sort of birth right, he repented before the Lord and begged that the presence would remain:

Create in me a pure heart, O God, 

       and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence 

       or take your Holy Spirit from me. (Psalm 51: 10-11)

At the end of each day my Father won’t be impressed with my intellect or insight. He’ll be concerned with the beat of my heart. In the quiet (if there is quiet) he will want to know if I lived a whole-hearted life that day. Did my actions spring from the well of the Spirit or the treadmill of importance? He will be concerned with these questions because he knows that spiritual formation happens each day. The only question is: what have we formed?

God of the Present Moment

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split. ~ Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” ~ Matthew 6:34

In last Thursday’s post I imagined the financial advisor reading the words of Jesus, pushing his chair back from his desk, thinking, “Surely, he can’t be serious.” Yet there, in the Sermon on the Mount, we find Jesus recommending living one day at a time in the manner of birds and flowers.

The Father--in his divine wisdom--decreed that we should live one day at a time. His decree did not come with words, but by his actions: he created the world in such a way that it is impossible to do anything other than live one day at a time. Each person drawing breath on the planet is allotted only the present moment. Riches cannot buy anything else, nor can intelligence or imagination. We are time-bound creatures because that’s the way he wanted it to be.

The Spirit invites us to reflect on his work called “time.” What lessons can we learn from his actions? I’d like to suggest at least five life-giving benefits of grasping God’s wisdom for the march of days:

He invented life’s rhythm. “And there was evening, and there was morning.” The stanzas of the creation poem contain a rhythm which translates into any language, and a universal experience accessible to any person. Genesis is more than a report from the past. It is the pattern for the present. We were made for the straight-time of everydayness. For example, our family life flows more smoothly when school is in session, when each day is a metronome of time and task. If we move away from the rhythm of a daily schedule we are a people playing our own music, out of sync with one another.

He is aware that the days add up. There were 25 years between God’s promise to Abraham and fulfillment. That’s just over 9,000 days. 9,000 evenings Abraham rested his head on a pillow and asked, “When, Oh Lord?” 9,000 mornings he woke with anticipation, looking for the fulfillment of divine promise. Between promise and fulfillemnt lies the present: ongoing and daily. The Father knew Abraham would have to experience each day one at a time--9,000 of them--and still God chose to speak 25 years before the fact. We, too, can experience the forces which shaped Abraham into the father of faith. Every mother waiting to conceive a child understands Abraham; each single person waiting for a spouse feels the emotions Abraham must have felt; even the oppressed people of the earth awaiting justice drink from the well of Time, supplied by springs of hope in God’s goodness. In our waiting we learn to trust that he is good, even if we are empty-handed in the moment.

Each day is the Father’s antidote to worry.  Prudent and responsible people plan their future, but far more of us try to secure our future through the power of our own efforts. But no amount of planning can anticipate the days ahead. It’s true: there are plenty of Bible verses about the wisdom of planning, but rare is the person who can draw up plans and then leave them on the altar of the God who holds the future. The scripture is filled with treasures extolling each moment lived in relationship with the Creator: “his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” How many of these passages find a place in our thoughts each day? Those who embrace the dew-fresh experience of God’s daily mercy are free from taskmaster of worry. Those who depend on their own plans more than they depend on the Creator of Time need to discover the treasure of time wasted with God.

Each day is God’s balm for the past. The mass of days and months gone by are a heavy burden to carry. We were not to meant to live in the past. Two small words in our thoughts can combine to form brain cancer: “if only.” If only I had chosen differently. If only they had not cheated me. If only I was not the one left behind. God does not expect us to deny or forget our past, but he knows that the weight of by-gone days is too heavy for anyone to bear. The balm for “if only” is a simple question we are free to ask every day: “what now?” To ask the Father “what now” acknowledges that we are not alone, that the promise of his presence is real to each of us each day. But we must be sure ask! The loss of loved ones, the shame of poor choices, the scars of abuse can all become part of our testimony today if we will walk with the One who is the Eternal Now. To ask what now is to recognize that we are in relationship with the One who has power and grace to redeem the past and set us on the path of life each day.

And yet, the days are gods: Annie Dillard was on to something. Our senses can be overwhelmed by the clamour of the present, demanding our full attention and even our worship. Each day I awake to a rush of light and sound that competes for my attention. The alarm calls my name. My calendar demands attention, the television tells me what is important today. The still small voice of God is always present, but it is not the only voice. The gods of Everydayness demand tribute. How should we live?

The present is only valuable when it sends us to the Father. It is an enemy if we find ourselves sucked into the urgency of now apart from the grace of the Eternal Now. Inside the husk of time is the God who exists outside of time. Each day is only valuable to us as we learn to grab the grain, break the husk, and discover the Ancient of Days inside. 

The Single-File Parade

Last night I dreamed of a parade, and a strange affair it was. Interminably long, an odd single-file line of marchers walked past, each person a virtual twin of the one before them, yet with only the slightest differences. After a thousand or so had passed by the small changes had added up to someone who looked very different from the marchers so far ahead. On and on went the line: 25,000 long, perhaps 30,000 or more before I woke. Above each one arched the sun and the moon in their turn, casting golden--then silver, light upon each person. Some marchers danced, others wept, still others trudged in dreary sameness. 

Through the night I dreamt and the parade continued by, each member ever-so slightly older than the one before. As I began the transition between sleep and wakefulness I realized I had witnessed the march of a single lifetime: 70 years, or eighty if our strength endures. I was awake, and the revelation was complete: we experience life in a single-file parade of 25,000 days or more, each one so much like the day before, yet unique as if a new creation.

Which of us has ever lived life backwards? Even Benjamin Button, who grew from old to young, lived his life in a succession of days, one after the other, never two together. The days march in line, each one connected to the previous, linked to the next, but never overlapping.

It is a quiet revelation, but no less true: God created the march of days and has ordained that each one of us will experience them in the same manner. Which of us has ever lived two days simultaneously? Or jumped from day 4,000 to day 7,000? It is beyond us to do so, though in our hearts and thoughts we may try. It may seem like a no-brainer, but we all are given the gift of life one day at a time, and our attempts to live them out of order come at great expense.

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself,” said Jesus. Then he added one of the strangest promises found in scripture: “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6: 34)

Yet some people are obsessed with future days. The financial advisor pushes his chair away from his desk after reading these words and thinks, surely he can’t be serious. The student facing final exams in the coming weeks wonders if Jesus has lost his mind. The family trying to find the money for the next mortgage payment are convinced he never had a bill to pay. For each of them, sleep is a fair-weather friend. Meanwhile Jesus rambles on about birds and flowers. He instructs us to seek first God’s Kingdom and everything else will be magically “added to us.” Clearly, he doesn’t get the same emails we do.

The Creator, who exists outside of time and space, has ordained that should live in a world mediated by the passage of time. God set the whole thing up: we live our lives in the succession of days one after another because he wanted it to be so. Have we ever considered the fact that God chose this manner of living for us? He designed our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our souls to live in this moment and not any other. He demonstrates his wisdom and care for us in the passage of time: we do not have to drag the past along with us nor bear the burden of future days on our shoulders all at once.

The past can store the treasures of lessons and memories, the future can be the repository of hopes or fears, but both of them are inhospitable homes for our hearts--or his Spirit.

He is the Eternal Now. God’s presence is available to us only in the now. We cannot experience his presence in the future because we do not live there. We cannot experience his presence in the past because we have moved on. His presence is here for us today. We do not need to worry about the future because he is not bound by time. He sits in the future and awaits our arrival. He’ll be there when we get there, but wouldn’t it be a shame to miss him in the now?

A Confrontation of Grace

What is the distance between you and God? Monday’s Meditation suggested it’s not nearly as far as we might think. Paul, speaking to a group of people in Athens who were completely alienated from God, told them God was not far from any of them. Where did he get such an idea? I’d like to suggest that Paul got this idea from his personal experience and the history of his people.

If there was ever a candidate for the wrath of God, Paul’s your man: a Jew who had missed the Messiah; a religious cop bent on dragging apostate Hebrews back to Jerusalem to face the music. Jesus took Paul’s persecution of the people of the church personally: asking, “Why have you persecuted me?” Yet when Jesus confronted Paul on the road to Damascus it was a confrontation of grace, not judgment. The good shepherd has left the ninety-nine and gone after the one who had wandered away.

Imagine Paul, struck blind, sitting alone in a strange city, forced to re-think his religious convictions. He had given his life to study the Hebrew scriptures. He was considered a rising star in Judaism. He had been taught by the best and put his faith into action as an orthodox bounty-hunter. Then, after encountering Jesus personally, he sat in darkness and wrestled with one thought: everything know is wrong. Years later, as Paul stood at the marketplace of ideas in Athens, he suggested that God is close at hand to each of us: the sensual, the cerebral, the religious, the skeptic, the clueless and the pagan. I suspect Paul could make such a statement because he had experienced the reality.

All it takes is one real encounter with Jesus to make us re-think our ideas about God. Not religious argument or philosophical persuasion, but encounter. I suspect that in the Damascus darkness Paul also began to re-interpret the history of his people as revealed in the Old Testament:

• After Adam and Eve choose to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil they discovered their nakedness and tried to hide from God.  Far from rejecting them, God himself went searching for them. 
• When Cain was angry with his brother, it was Yahweh who tried to talk him down from the ledge. Even after the murder of Abel, Yahweh not only heard the voice of the victim, he placed a mark of protection on the oppressor.
• When Jacob cheated his brother and lied to his father, God did not reject him--though it would have been understandable. Instead, God revealed Himself at Bethel and said, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:15)

The story of Israel goes on and on: each chapter reveals that God himself is the seeker, and his people are the sought. King David, who abused the privilege and grace of God as much as any modern politician, discovered a Faithfulness beyond human reasoning, a Presence not far from any one of us: 

You have searched me, LORD, 

   and you know me. 

You know when I sit and when I rise; 

   you perceive my thoughts from afar.

His amazing song asked:

Where can I go from your Spirit? 

   Where can I flee from your presence?

David came to the conclusion:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me 

   and the light become night around me,” 

even the darkness will not be dark to you; 

   the night will shine like the day, 

   for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139)

By the time Paul had re-calibrated his understanding of God, he was able to celebrate God’s goodness and affections: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39) Paul, the legalist, had become the Apostle--not only of God’s grace--but of his presence and goodness as well.

Paul had discovered that the Father has always wanted to be among us, and he will not allow anything to get in the way. If sin separated us from the Father, then the Father provided a remedy. It’s more than a legal transaction: the record shows that God will go to any length to be with us. If, as Isaiah says, “your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you,” (Isaiah 59: 2) it is because we are the ones in hiding. He has not gone anywhere. He is still “not far from any one of us.” 

I wonder now how many of us need time and space to re-calibrate our view of the Father. How many of the events in our personal history would point to God’s desire to be with us, if only the scales would fall from our eyes? I’m determined to find out, and you’re invited on the journey, too.

Monday's Meditation: Daring His Presence

One great need among followers of Jesus is the experience of God’s tangible presence.  What good is it to have a theology that asserts God’s presence is everywhere if we have no evidence of it?  Has God gone on vacation?  Has he left the building? 

From beginning to end the Biblical narrative is filled with God’s tangible presence.  The first two chapters of Genesis are marked by his personal presence: God personally forms man from the dust of the ground, he kisses the breath of life into the first man, he instructs and guides his children as he walks in the garden with them.  At the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation depicts the intimate nature of God’s personal interaction with creation. “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21: 3)

From start to finish the scripture reveals the God who is present. He visits Abraham.  He wrestles with Jacob.  He talks with Moses face to face.  He reveals his presence in the cloud and fire around the people of Israel.  As Solomon dedicates the temple, God manifests in a cloud so thick with his presence that no one can remain standing or perform the duties of worship.  Ezekiel saw God’s traveling throne and Isaiah saw the temple filled with God’s presence and glory.

In the New Testament the presence of God becomes something even greater: the Incarnation.  “God arrived and pitched his tent among us.”  (John 1:14)  This marks even greater intimacy and presence: God not only interacted with the world he created, he became part of that world.  And he came to stay: the final words of Matthew’s gospel are: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 20)  Like I said: from start to finish, God is present.  Really present, actually present, tangibly present.

It’s Monday: may I suggest a meditation?

• Can I expect the same experience of God’s presence as people did in the Bible?
• Have I settled for something other than his presence?
• If I believe he is present, can I ask him to reveal his presence?
• Do I dare?

Relationship, or Knowledge?

It’s so much easier to study about about Jesus than to be a student of Jesus. We face the constant temptation to fill our heads with the details of his life and ministry. Pastors and college professors emphasize the need to memorize Bible verses or learn Greek and Hebrew. Publishers produce massive volumes of systematic theology. Popular Christian books suggest Biblical “keys to success” for our finances, healing, and any other human need. But Jesus is not a system, he is a person.

Perhaps we should give ourselves first to filling our hearts and lives with his presence. An omniscient God is not impressed with the size of our intellect, but he is impressed with the size of our heart. How can a finite human mind grasp an infinite God? St. Augustine, one of the greatest intellectuals in history, lamented that the “mansion of his heart” was too small and asked God to graciously enlarge his heart, not his mind. The Holy Spirit, who breathed out every word of the scripture, is not impressed with how many verses we have committed to memory, but he is impressed with how many verses have found their way into our everyday lives. Jesus didn't care much for religious knowledge, but he was astonished by the faith of simple people like widows and gentile soldiers.

Even though the Scripture encourages us, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” we are constantly tempted to pursue human understanding regarding the words of Jesus when we should pursue his living presence. Trust is all about relationship, understanding is all about intellect. In Jesus, God chose to become a man. The infinite stooped down and clothed himself in humanity. In Jesus, God did not pretend to become a man, God became a man. In his earthly ministry Jesus did not reveal all the secrets of knowledge and learning in human history. He chose instead to reveal how it was possible to enter into relationship with the creator. Jesus chose to reveal the Kingdom of God. By his actions, Jesus teaches us that relationship is more important than understanding. We know this intuitively. We tend to forget it when it comes to our faith.

Faith does not require us to throw our brains into the trash. It does, however, require us to order our lives around what is most important, and relationship comes first. Jesus opened the way back to relationship with the creator. The good news of the gospel is that the Father has gone after the very children who have rejected him. He refuses to leave us alone. He will pay any price--even the life of son--in order to win us back again. That's a committed relationship in action. By contrast, in so much of our Christian fellowship with one another we require intellectual agreement with our favorite doctrines.

Some of us have busied ourselves with developing human descriptions of God’s action. We discuss words like justification or sanctification. We try to present the legal reasons Christians can expect to go to heaven when they die. When Jesus paid the price for reconciliation, I do not believe he was thinking in terms of “going to heaven when we die.” I believe his focus was on demonstrating God’s irrepressible love. Jesus described eternal life in terms of relationship with God: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17: 3) Of course it’s true that we have the hope of going to heaven. It’s only natural. Since God is eternal, he will naturally bring his friends with him into eternity. It's where he lives. “In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14: 2 - 3) I suspect that when Augustine prayed the mansions of his heart would be enlarged, he was asking for the work of heaven to begin in in his heart then and there.

God is the creator and sustainer of everything. He is certainly not against the use of our intellect. In fact, in Jesus are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 2:3) We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, mind, and strength, so we can confidently apply our intellect in the love of God. As we give ourselves to study, we should also remember that the countless of number of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation who will worship him in heaven will certainly include the unlearned and the illiterate--and they may have a thing or two to teach us about a loving relationship with Jesus.

The challenge for us as Students of Jesus, then, is to know him, and not settle for knowing about him.

Monday's Meditation: The Handshake of His Presence

The right hand is the place of honor. It’s the place of confidence. In our day, when two people shake hands it’s a gesture of trust and respect. Psalm 16 is King David’s song of trust in God. It begins with, “Keep me safe, Oh God, for in you I take refuge.” It ends with the handshake of God’s presence.

As David describes the wisdom of placing his trust in God, he makes a curious statement in verse 8, “Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” David says, in effect, that he has placed God close at hand, on his right side. David has given God the place of honor in his life, and (here’s the presence) has placed God closer than anyone else in his life.

The very last verse in the psalm declares, “you fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Because David gave God the place of honor in his life, God returned the favor and sets David at His right hand.

Now, I know this is a Messianic Psalm. David is a type of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Both Peter and Paul quote this Psalm with reference to Jesus. But the psalm can serve as instruction for us, so please allow these two Monday Memo observations:

First: those who honor God will receive honor from God. Where do I place God each day in my life? At the right hand? The left? Or far away from my hands? In the scripture, our “hands” are shorthand for our actions, for what we do. In the Bible, what we do reflects who we are. We demonstrate our respect for the Father by what we do.

Second: notice the handshake of his presence. God is at David’s right hand, and David discovers the security of his presence. In return, God places David at His right hand, and David discovers joy and eternal pleasure. When we shake hands with God, demonstrating our trust and respect, we receive security, joy, and the pleasure of his presence. That’s the hand I want to shake today.

Pathways to His Presence

We’ve talked about the presence of God for the last two weeks, not as some theological idea, but as a living reality. (You can read those two posts here and here.) Let’s go after it! I’d like to suggest at least five ways to encounter God’s presence.

The first step in experiencing the presence of God is to take the Biblical witness seriously. For example, consider this list:

• Then Moses said to him, "If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" (Exodus 33: 15-16)
• Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. (Psalm 139: 7 – 8)
• For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. (Matthew 18: 20)

These passages are well known, and that’s dangerous: it becomes easy for us to dismiss them as inspirational thoughts rather than receive them as a description of reality. If we choose to acknowledge the reality of his presence we must honestly evaluate whether our experience matches God’s statement of the way things really are. Will we allow these passages (and many others) to become normative for us? The plain message of scripture is that God is highly relational and desires us to experience an awareness of him daily. Do we really believe this?

Second, we should order our lives in ways that allow us to experience his presence. The spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude stand in the forefront here. In our day, more than any other time in history, there are distractions from the moment we wake until we fall asleep. Elijah found the presence of God in a “still small voice,” or as another translation pus it, “a gentle whisper.” (I Kings 19: 12) Or take the example of Jacob, while fleeing for his life, who learned a similar lesson only after God spoke to him in a dream: "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." Jacob’s experience is instructive: he was unaware that God’s presence was all around him. Like Jacob, we must tune our senses to perceive the presence of God. Why not seriously try silence and solitude for an hour—or a day! This is not mysticism, it is discipleship.

Third, we should consider the joyful example of others. Throughout history the witness is consistent, namely, that those who have been most aware of God’s presence have experienced the joy and peace that flow from that relationship. Brother Lawrence, a 17th century Carmelite, discovered that daily activities did not have to block an awareness of God’s presence. He experienced “little reminders” from God that “set him on fire to the point that he felt a great impulse to shout praises, to sing, and to dance before the Lord with joy . . . the worst trial he could imagine was losing his sense of God’s presence, which had been with him for so long a time.” John Wesley, a buttoned-down English cleric, had experiences of God’s presence that changed his life and ministry: his journal describes not only the feeling of his heart being “strangely warmed” but later describes that God sent him “transports of joy” again and again. Wesley’s case is particularly instructive today because in North America many church leaders emphasize scholarship over feelings as the foundation for discipleship, but Wesley had received the finest religious education his country could offer but did not personally experience God’s presence. Those who would dismiss joyful behavior as mere emotionalism somehow fail to brand depression and despair as equally emotional expressions as the lack of God’s presence. The testimony of scripture is “you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psalm 16: 11) Perhaps this is why Richard Foster lists “celebration” as a spiritual discipline: we must teach ourselves how to respond with thankfulness and joy to his presence.

Fourth, we need to consider more than our individual response to the presence of God. His presence has implications for our life together as the church. Together we are the bride of Christ, and he longs to bestow his presence on the assembled church as well. It is popular in our day to embrace Jesus and shun the church. Popular, but incorrect. For example, suppose I were to enter into a relationship with you, but also shun any relationship with your spouse. Would you accept friendship on these terms? “I like you, and I want to be with you, but please keep your spouse far away from me!” Such a friendship would be in peril from the beginning, and we put our relationship with Jesus in peril if we openly reject his bride.

Simply put, if we want to experience the presence of God in every way possible, we must look to encounter his presence within the church. This is a tall order because in our highly individualistic society, church-bashing is fun and easy. We have considered church attendance and membership to be matters of consumer tastes, as accessories to our lives. We assess everything about a church service—the music, the preaching, the seating, the people—everything except whether we met Jesus there.

Finally, there is one more expression of God’s presence available for disciples today—the power of God. John Wimber, founder or the Vineyard movement, said that power of God is in the presence of God. For those Christians who embrace the possibilities of miraculous signs and wonders in ministry, the secret is not to seek some special spiritual empowerment, but rather the tangible presence of God.

The earliest followers of Jesus understood that their beliefs had no authority in the world unless the presence of God was demonstrated after they proclaimed the coming of God’s Kingdom. In addition to forgiveness and reconciliation, the miracles of healing and liberation from demonic oppression regularly authenticated the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Those who heard the message of the gospel of the Kingdom of God could also witness the presence of God in their midst.

This list is not complete, but here are five ways to start pursuing his presence: take the witness of the Bible seriously; order our lives in a way to let him in; embrace joyful thanksgiving as a path to his presence; look for him in the church; and understand the connection between his presence and his power. Here ends the “lecture,” let the “lab” begin!

Substitutes for His Presence

A week ago we considered whether we will settle for merely learning about the presence of God or we will seek to experience his presence. He is available to all who seek him: "The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." (Psalm 145: 18) We need to call on him; God has designed our hearts to seek after him. Something is released in us as we pursue him. Sadly, there are substitutes for his presence as well. Sometimes we settle for something less, even those of us who want to be his followers. Let me suggest two of these substitutes among Christians. We find them hiding in our everyday lives.

The first is religious activity. Activity is something we control. We can choose when to begin, how much to do, and when to stop. We can look back upon our own efforts and pronounce the pleasure of God. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most “church work” has the character of human activity as opposed to the presence of God. How many of us return home from a church gathering and say, “I encountered the presence of the Living God.” Indeed, how many of us even attend such activities with the expectation that we will encounter him? Our use of business models for marketing and meetings are especially dangerous in this regard. We feel affirmed because we have drawn big crowds for God, even if he declined to attend.

Jesus ministered to crowds of people as well, but he also attended feasts with his friends, who sometimes happened to be tax collectors and sinners. They hung out together with no other objective than simply being with each other. They were people who valued his presence and truly longed to hear his voice. Yet we sometimes confuse work with friendship. Friends may in fact work together, but the difference between professional colleagues and friends is that friends share mutual affection and desire to spend time together apart from any “useful” task. When our religious activity is over, do we leave Jesus at the office?

The second great competitor to God’s presence is our theology. We often confuse knowing the truth intellectually with encountering the truth experientially. In our day understanding is overrated and personal experience is underrated. Our attempts to honor the Lord with our minds have sometimes caused us to become suspicious of any experience with him in our hearts. Make no mistake: Biblical revelation is important. It should be used to interpret and mediate our personal experience, but in the last two centuries Christian scholars have focused on rational exposition of the scriptures almost to the exclusion of personal experience with God. In the academy, and many pulpits as well, personal experience has been downgraded to anecdotal evidence and treated with suspicion if not outright hostility. Even a useful tool such a Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws suggests that our faith requires only facts and faith, but not feelings. From the very beginning of their new life in Christ, converts are warned about the dangers of emotions. No one shares with babes in Christ that the first and greatest commandment includes loving God with our hearts as well as our minds. This has resulted in Christian congregations who have no real expectation that God himself desires an intimate relationship with them. Just as Thomas a' Kempis said, "I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it," we must not mistake intellectual argument for relationship with God. The man who has experienced the goodness of God is never at the mercy of someone who has an intellectual argument against it. The Apostle Paul warned, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (I Corinthians 8:1 ESV)

Finally, consider these famous verses: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28: 18 - 20) Jesus never intended for us to be disciples or to make disciples apart from the personal experience of his presence. To make disciples apart from the active presence of Jesus is to make disciples who look like us, not Jesus.

Amazingly, opening ourselves up to the presence of Jesus is not any different from developing a friendship with anyone else. He goes where is welcomed. He stays and develops friendships with those who order their lives around him. What, then, can we do to teach ourselves to recognize and enjoy the presence of God? Check back next Thursday!

His Presence, Tangible.

One of the shortcomings in the church today is the lack of God’s tangible presence. What good is it to have a theology that asserts God’s presence is everywhere if there is no evidence of it? Has God gone on vacation? Has he left the building? These are important questions for us individually as disciples, corporately as the church, and these questions also go to the heart of whether we can put the wisdom and power of God on display for the world to see.

The Biblical narrative opens and closes with God’s tangible presence in the midst of his creation and his people. The first two chapters of Genesis are marked not only by his creative activity, but his personal presence in those activities: God personally forms humanity from the dust of the ground, kisses the breath of life into the first man, instructs and guides his children as he walks in the garden with them. The final chapters of the book of Revelation depict the restoration of all things and again highlight the intimate nature of God’s personal interaction with his creation. “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21: 3)

Nor is he absent from the world in the stretch between Genesis and Revelation. God visits Abraham, makes covenant and even eats a meal with him. Jacob finds himself in hand-to-hand combat with none other than the creator of the universe! God talks with Moses face to face the way friends speak to one another. He reveals his presence in the cloud and the fire around the people of Israel. As Solomon dedicates the temple, God manifests in a cloud so thick with his presence that no one can remain standing or perform the duties of worship. Ezekiel saw God’s traveling throne. Isaiah saw the temple filled with God’s presence and glory.

In the New Testament the presence of God becomes something even greater: the Incarnation. From the beginning of John’s gospel we are told, “God arrived and pitched his tent among us.” This marks even greater intimacy and presence: God not only interacted with the world he created, he became part of that world. The reality of his presence also encases Matthew’s gospel like bookends. In the opening verses we learn, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’--which means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1: 23) The final words of the gospel are: “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 20) Along with instructions to his followers, Jesus gives the promise of his presence. In fact, his instructions require the experience of his presence.

The activity of the Holy Spirit also constitutes God’s living, tangible presence in the world as well. Jesus spent most of the final Passover evening instructing his followers to tune their eyes and ears to his presence mediated through the Spirit. When he tells his disciples, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me,” (John 14: 18 – 19) he is indicating that the presence of the Holy Spirit is equivalent to his personal presence. Even when he was still physically available to be with his disciples in the 40 days after his resurrection, began to give them instructions “through the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1: 2) After Jesus ascended into heaven he appeared to the Apostle Paul personally, years later. Paul tells us his gospel came by direct revelation from Jesus himself. (Galatians 1: 12)

Unfortunately, scripture also reveals that it has been the habit of God’s people to be afraid of, or unaware of, the presence of God. As the people of Israel followed Moses in the wilderness, the smoke and lightning that accompanied God’s presence caused them to plead with Moses to act as an intermediary (Exodus 20: 18 – 21). The miraculous works of Jesus brought people face-to-face with the reality that something greater than Moses was in their midst, and the reality that God was breaking into their well-ordered world brought alarm instead of acclaim. Religious observance always runs smoothly when divorced from God’s presence. God’s presence, on the other hand, usually upsets the tables, shrines, and instruments we have set in place. As C.S. Lewis remarked about his Christ-figure, Aslan, in the Chronicles of Narnia, “He’s not a tame Lion!”

So the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent, but forget that: do you experience his presence?

If there is any hope for transformation as a follower of Jesus, we must be able to recognize and experience his presence. We must not settle for anything less than the experience of his presence. We must, in the language of advertising, accept no substitutes. Can you think of any substitutes for the presence of God? I can think of at least two big ones, but that's for another day!

Monday's Meditation: No more correct answers!

I was thinking this morning about part of the Christmas story in Matthew’s gospel— (should we reserve passages about his birth for December?)  the part where the Magi make their way first to Jerusalem and ask King Herod about the birth of the new king.  Herod calls the scholars together and tries to determine the location of the Messiah’s birthplace.  Of course the scholars get the answer right, and Herod sends the Magi on their way.

Why didn’t Herod or any of the learned men go with the Magi?  They got the answer “right,” but it did not lead them to Jesus.  What is the purpose of correct doctrine if it does not lead us into an experience with God?  Like the scholars in Herod’s court, am I content to know the truth without experiencing it?  

Who got to experience a relationship with Jesus?  It was those who were willing to act on what was revealed. My point is not only about meeting Jesus the first time—what if all the revelation contained in the scripture is placed there for us to experience him personally?  Lord, deliver me from “correct information” and give the grace to hunger for your presence.

School of Ministry, Part Two

Jesus summed up the entire curriculum for training his disciples with a simple command, “Come, follow me.”

The Problem:

For many of us “Come follow me” is too simple. Jesus is no longer here, how can we follow? Jesus lived in another place and time, how does his life serve as an example for ours today? Or perhaps the greatest challenge: Jesus is the sinless Son of God, isn’t it impossible to follow him?

Perhaps the very fact that we stumble at the invitation demonstrates why individual Christians (and the church as a whole) have difficulty impacting our society. We are good at study. We are big at planning and organizing. We are very good at structure and control. But we are not very good at following. Those who cannot grasp “Come follow me” underscore the problems we face.

I suspect that we are limited in our effectiveness because we have placed understanding above obedience. We have prized our intellectual capacities above the kind of love that causes us to become imitators of the Beloved. In a natural family children learn first by imitating their parents. Only later do they understand. But in the family of God we are at risk of being the kind of people who James, the brother of Jesus, cautioned: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” His warning reminds us that if we separate actions from what we learned we are setting ourselves up for deception.

“I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus said. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus did not say, “I know the answer,” he said “I am the way.” He did not say, “I know the truth,” he said “I am the truth.” And he did not say “I will teach you about the life,” and said, “I am the Life.” Jesus did not come to produce “agree-ers,” he came to produce followers.

Some may object that since Jesus is no longer involved in earthly ministry that the model had to change. But He Himself said, “I only do the things I see the Father doing.” (John 5:19) He demonstrated how to follow an “invisible” God. He showed us how it is done. His actions present a clear pattern for us to follow.


The Beginning of the Solution:

The beginning of the solution is to look for his presence. It is that simple. He has promised it to us. Even as Jesus prepared to return to the Father, he made a startling assertion: “I am with you always.” (Matthew 28: 20)

Through the agency of his Holy Spirit Jesus remains alive and present among us. We must train our faculties to recognize his presence. He did not lie to us; he is here for us today. The first step toward becoming a follower of Jesus is to refuse to settle for anything less than his presence. This is a challenge to a society (the church!) which has prized education over relationship. We have substituted learning about him for being with him.

If this first step sounds too mystical, too subjective, it may underscore the extent of our need. The plain promise of Jesus is that, through the agency of His Spirit, Jesus remains available for us today: to lead, to guide, in short--for us to follow.

There is ample encouragement from believers in other cultures and times that he is available to us today. For example, Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite from the 17th century, lacked the necessary education to become a cleric. Instead he entered a monastery as a servant, working in the kitchen. From this place of humility he discovered the presence of Jesus in that kitchen and wrote letters to his friends, sharing that discovery. These letters and conversations were collected into a simple book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Its central message is that to those who are willing, the very presence of God can be cultivated in our lives. Or in Biblical language, “You will seek me find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13--but also Deut. 4:29; Prov. 8: 17; Matthew 7: 7; and Acts 17:27.) It is the testimony of scripture that God’s presence is available to all who desire it.

The beginning of the solution is to accept the invitation given to us--he is available! We can only follow those we see and hear, and Jesus still speaking, still pointing the way. Our “studies” in his School of Ministry begin with the refusal to accept anything less than his presence.