Soft and Simple, originally uploaded by wrachele.
Tiny Treasure
The Barnabas Calling
When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. (Acts 11:23)
Barnabas, first introduced to us through his selfless charity in Acts 4:36-37, became a close companion and encourager of the Apostle Paul. We know him from this association and their joint ministries, and it is easy to overlook the fact that he was also an encourager of the Church and his brothers and sisters. It was a calling that he fulfilled to the utmost of his being.
This calling remains among us today. It may be lifetime tenure to be an encourager to those with whom you fellowship or it may be a special, more specific call to encourage. Called by God to preach the gospel, you may discover that the Spirit moves you to serve another pastor, to be a Barnabas to his Paul. For a season, you may be called to this support role in which you pray for, encourage, serve, and bear his shield as your way of serving the Lord above and beyond what the congregation is called to do.
Too many pastors are without this Barnabas, going it alone while being attacked from all sides. Many will fail because you or I did not respond to the Spirit’s movement and call to humility. To serve one another in love is our nature. To serve and support the pastor requires another level of selflessness. It cannot be done with the hope of return or in self-aggrandizement, or even in expectation of thanks. It is a calling that requires abiding love, trust in Christ, an expectation of holiness and a willingness to speak when that is absent. Just as one day in the Lord’s house is better than thousands elsewhere, one day called to service is better than a lifetime spent in worldly or personal pursuits.
Grace and peace to you.
Psalm 79 – Will You Be Angry Forever?
O God, the nations have invade you inheritance;
they have defiled you holy temple,
they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble. (Ps 79:1)
The psalmist writes this opening line from exile. The verses that follow describe the horrors that filled their last visions of the promised land. The dead becoming food for birds, the Temple destroyed, much blood pooled everywhere; there was no end to the desecration of the Lord’s land or people.
And all of Israel knew that they were responsible for bringing it to the land.
How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?
How long will your jealousy burn like fire? (v4)
Was it appropriate to question the length their exile from God’s protection? The covenant shaped the boundaries of their relationship with Yahweh. He had upheld His end of the agreement and Israel had, time after time after time, utterly failed at hers. God had no responsibility to restore them to His fold, no covenant requirement to return them to the land and to prosperity.
Except that He loved them, just as He loves you today. Despite your many faults and failures. Despite your tendency to worship at other altars as the mood suits you. Despite the fact that you believe your sin to hide behind and opaque curtain. Despite the fact that your faithfulness to Him is questionable. He still loves you as a parent loves a wayward child.
The conditional structure of the psalm is disturbing to the Christian who is raised on the image of a merciful God. Calling for the crushing and destruction of one’s enemies does not normally occur to us (though we may privately entertain such thoughts.) It is the structure of the requests that trouble us. “Destroy them, curse them” says Israel and then we will worship you forever. Our modern eyes must read this carefully. The acts of destruction and carnage described are, above all, affronts to God. The call for retribution is a call to restore his Holy Name against those who demean it through their acts.
Psalm 79 speaks to responsibility. If we are lacking blessing, we need to return to the shadow of the cross so that, with sun blocked, we can see our own sin more clearly. Repenting, we can seek His mercy and praise Him once again.
Grace and peace to you.
image jamelah
Approaching the Spiritual Discipline of Study
Dallas Willard categorized the spiritual disciplines in two families, abstinence and engagement. The disciplines of abstinence are those which lead us to voluntarily abstain from normal desires of human existence such as food, sleep, sex, companionship, etc. Engagement is the counterbalance to abstinence. The disciplines that we engage here seek a deeper involvement in our faith and life as new creatures. There are logical counterparts within each list and our current discipline in focus, study, is the counterpart to solitude.
“Mystics without study are only spiritual romantics who want relationship without effort.” Calvin Miller
The Christian studies two things, letters and the world around us. Our primary tome is the Bible, but our library of study material grows every year. Foster suggests 6 rules that we bring to a fully rounded practice of study, 3 intrinsic and 3 extrinsic. To fully embrace a book, whether the Bible, a book of the Bible, or a volume from the shelf requires three readings. The first is to understand what the author is saying and the second to interpret his or her meaning. Only when those steps have been accomplished can we evaluate whether he is right or wrong. Can the Bible be wrong, we ask? No. Our application and interpretation can be wrong and we must engage those concepts, in which we find our own thoughts superior to those of the scriptures, more deeply.
We expand our study by engaging life and bringing it to the desk with us. We bring our experiences, the reading of other books, and talk with trusted companions to our study. Experience bears out the reality of the concepts we study and talking about them with others either compliments or contradicts our own understanding. When challenged, it gives us purpose in returning to the study. Other books operate in much the same fashion. We read both sides of an issue to gain perspective. Like talk, the voices of the other authors can challenge our position and make it stronger or tear it down, as appropriate to the truth.
Remember, study is not an end unto itself. Like the mystic that Calvin mentions, study without experience can give us facts but no wisdom. The truths that we accumulate through study must be tested in the crucible of life. They will either withstand the flames or be burned up like dross, to be replaced by new thinking by any spiritually devoted disciple.
Grace and peace to you.
Psalm 78 – In Spite of His Wonders, They Did Not Believe
It was not unusual for Jewish religious leaders to rehearse their covenant history with God in writing, or verbally in worship. The fickle loyalty of the human heart had loved and loathed with equal vigor again and again throughout the whole of their relationship with God. Typical of this ever changing relationship, the psalmist records this:
Thus he brought them to the border of his holy land,
to the hill country his right hand hand had taken.
He drove out nations before them and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance;
he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.
But they put God to the test and rebelled against the most high;
they did not keep his statutes.
Like their father they were disloyal and faithless, as unreliable as a faulty bow. (Ps 78:54-56)
Christians often wish aloud to be restored to an age of signs and wonders, claiming that their faith would be impenetrable to doubt if they could just see a single miracle. Saving the miracle of changed lives that surround them for a later discussion, we need only read this psalm or the Old Testament to know that this is bunk. The human heart is, above all else, dedicated to self.
The Christian will say aloud that ‘their heart belongs to Jesus’ but in practice, they are fully aware of the parts they hold back for themselves. We put our faith in God who is unseen and the corruption of our heart is such that we continue to harbor doubt about whether or not He might come through for us. We read our bibles and see that time after time, God has been perfectly faithful and yet we wonder if this is the day when He will not. We wander in a desert of our own making.
There is no such thing as a part-time Christian. Christ lives in us but did not displace us. Paul’s words to the Galatian church remind us “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20) The struggle is internal but must ultimately end in our surrender of the parts of our hearts that we insist on keeping to ourselves. The signs and wonders we seek are inside of us and ready to be displayed only at our own humility. Problem with anger that you want to disappear? Bend the knee and turn it over to Christ in you and see it reworked. Unable to control some personality aspect? Give it to Christ in you and see it changed. Allow the Holy Ghost to completely overtake your heart and the signs and wonders will be before you constantly. Belief will grow to the benefit of all.
Grace and peace to you.
image by kmakice
Four Steps in the Discipline of Study
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Tim 2:15)
The Christian wants to live her life according to biblical principles, but in order to do so, these principles must become a part of who she is, rooted deeply in her heart to become second nature. Enabling this transformation of heart is the purpose of the spiritual discipline of study. It trains the soul to default to the desired principles so that, in a moment of crisis, the renewed soul is not without its armor.
Your thoughts and subsequent actions will conform to whatever diet you feed them. If you elect to swamp your mind with cultural influences you cannot be surprised when your outward expressions begin to mirror what is seen on the screen and heard on the radio. To have your thoughts conformed to the mind of Christ and His Church requires a purposeful, directed intake of the scriptures and the ideas that have influenced the Church through the centuries. Follow Paul’s advice and give your soul a steady diet of those things that true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious.
Foster, in Celebration of Discipline, organizes study into four steps.
Repetition
New habits are rarely, if ever, formed by a single encounter with the truth. Just as muscles are not strengthened by the single lifting of a barbell, the mind must be repeatedly exposed to an idea and channeled into acquiring that idea in order to capture it and take ownership of it. Repetition works at the lowest levels of the mind. If you want to change a behavior, in many cases all you will need to do is to repeat the desired behavior or thought over and over for a period of time. The mind will accept this as the new reality and soon, the new behavior or thought will become the habit.
Concentration
Bringing the mind repeatedly to bear on a specific aspect of God’s truth is the initial step but then we must concentrate on that truth. The daily reading plan that you follow discourages this. It leads you quickly from one chapter to the next without the time to camp on the important truths that you are encountering. This is fine for devotional reading but not for study. You must spend time with a truth, fully devoted to searching it from every angle and testing it against other ideas. Remove distractions, slow down and sacrifice volume for quality of experience.
Comprehension
Most Christians can repeat at least a few Bible passages from memory. Few though can demonstrate an understanding of what those passages mean beyond a superficial level. Spiritual growth is not attained by simply knowing something, you must understand what a truth means to both you and the original author of the truth. It is knowledge that sets you free (John 8:32), not the mere accumulation of facts.
Reflection
Only when you truly understand a truth can you reflect upon it. The words of the best known truth in the Bible, John 3:16, are so simple and yet they have a significance that is often underestimated. Focused study and the development of an understanding of a truth open the doors to a realization of the significance of an idea. Grasping significance is the moment where we see and hear and experience a truth in a whole new way.
Grace and peace to you..
The Spiritual Discipline of Study
How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (Ps 119:9-11)
The purpose of the discipline of study is the renewal of our minds. We renew our minds by putting them to work on the things of God: His Word and, His world and how we fit into it. Study extends beyond the mere accumulation of facts as we learn not only the significance of those facts, but how they apply to life in the Kingdom as well. For many Christians, lives of undue anxiety and fear are the result of superficial study discipline. They may have memorized a few passages of Scripture or a creed but they cannot apply them to life. Their minds have not done the hard word of understanding the meaning of the passages and thus, when trouble approaches, their minds are unable to properly guide them away and back onto the path.
What is Study?
Foster gives us a definition of study as “a specific kind of experience in which, through careful attention to reality, the mind is enabled to move in a certain direction.” The truth of the mind is that ingrained habits of thought will conform themselves to what we study. What we study becomes crucial in pointing our minds in the desired direction. Minds filled with rubbish or that are worked out only superficially are subject to be thrown about by the winds of life. As Paul teaches, those who focus on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious will posses minds that act automatically in true, honorable, pure, lovely, and gracious ways. Study forms habits.
Meditation is not study. Some are tempted to point out their devotional readings and call this study. Meditation on the scriptures turns our thinking to the Lord but it does not reveal significance to us. Study is analytical. Study reads that ‘God so loved the world’ and asks why and how. Study turns over in the mind what it means for God to love the world and as the understanding forms, the mind realizes that we too are to love the world. A new habit forms.
Psalm 77 – I Cried Out to God to Hear Me
I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me.
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands
and my soul refused to be comforted. (Ps 77:1-2)
We are all familiar with these dark nights in which we cry out to the Lord but seem to receive not a word in return. Our distress deepens with the silence but moreover, our thoughts return to times of blessing. Why does God bless us here and leave us in distress there? These thoughts drive the psalmist to say:
I remembered you, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint.
You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak.
I thought about the former days, the years of long ago;
I remembered my songs in the night.
My heart mused and my spirit inquired: “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again?” (vv 3-7)
Our greatest difficulty comes in the limited time span of our thoughts. We only see tomorrow and the end of our days but God looks into eternity. Our travails which seem unending and insurmountable to us are but a second in His vision. Our difficulty in facing the struggles of today is our inability to look beyond, to know a time when it will be all blessing and no sorrow. Can we look that far?
Grace and peace to you..
image by pshmell
Psalm 76 – He Is Feared By The Kings Of The Earth
From heaven you pronounced judgment, and the land feared and was quiet–
when you, O God, rose up to judge, to save all the afflicted of the land.
Surely your wrath against men brings you praise, and the survivors of your wrath are restrained. (Ps 76:8-10)
Political correctness would tear psalms such as this one from the pages of the Bible. A cheer for the God who destroys enemies and brings rulers to heel? This sounds so foreign because we want a God who stands off at a distance and rolls His eyes at our interpersonal and international battles. No longer does God favor one nation over another or even condone the exclusivity of one religious path.
In Judah God is known; his name is great in Israel.
His tent is in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion.
There he broke the flashing arrows, the shields and the swords, the weapons of war. (vv 1-3)
Modern Christianity is personal. We call it our faith but do not extol its superiority over all others. Why not? We have here in the scriptures proclamations of God’s choice of Israel as His people and the Temple as His dwelling place. Dare we not say the same thing? God has chosen us in Christ and our soul is His dwelling place? Is this defeat for all competing belief systems?
Grace and peace to you..
image by musumemiyuki
Predestinarians Make Exceptions
Friends of irony: check out the discussion here as the Predestinarian Tribe talks about choosing a church. Hasn’t God already determined all actions that we will take? Why is the choice of a church somehow outside of this predestined course?
Note: notice that all of the requirements have to do with finding a church with the “proper” theological framework. Shouldn’t requirement number one be to find a church where God is present?
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 