On the job training....... 082114

On the job training………it’s part of how he grows us!

God in His use of Elijah for the teaching of Israel also found time to train the heart of the prophet himself.             Warfield, B. B. (2013-11-13). Faith & Life (Kindle Locations 47-48). GLH Publishing. Kindle Edition.

We all too often think in terms of process.  We look at a goal and the steps we believe we must take to meet it and proceed accordingly.  Such is especially the case in Christian service (or ministry if you prefer).

Now there is a real need to be trained and prepared for service and I would never endorse some, “God called me, I’m going, Yeeeehawww!” approach to ministry/service.  But neither do I believe it is good for young believers to sit and wait until they are “ready,” to serve before serving.  All too often I encounter believers who although they have a good fundamental grasp of “the Way,” (the Gospel life) sit quietly waiting until they are “ready,” lamenting their sense of uselessness in the Kingdom.

I am a firm believer in the old saying, “run what you brung.”  By that I mean that we all have to use what we have.  We can and should be serving within the boundaries of our knowledge and understanding.  That is how the gospel is spread and that is how we grow.

You can take a course, attend a seminar of even charge off to seminary but if you are “waiting” for some magic moment when some strange light of voice will inform you that you are ready you’ll spend a lot of time waiting.  This is such a waste of time, talent, knowledge and love.  It also contributed to the stagnation that often overtakes us because we just sit and do not to whatever little or much we can.

I have been blessed with people in my life who have challenged me to use what I have to serve however insignificant that might seem to me.  They have encouraged me to stretch myself within the limitations of my knowledge and experience to share what little or much I have to share.

We don’t have to wait until we have all the answers we just have to be careful and confident that the answers we have are correct and fall within the bounds of biblical orthodoxy.

Your lack of knowledge and experience will not be alleviated by sitting and waiting until you know it all ( or even most of it).  It will be alleviated as you use what you have and are challenged by what you don’t have.

I just want to encourage each of you, and challenge you as well, to use what you have to serve Him and to communicate the great and glorious good news of the gospel.  There are no “perts” when it comes to spiritual maturity so there are no “ex-perts.”  Though I encourage you to seek out tested and proven guides in both the flesh and in print DO NOT wait for some magic moment when somehow you feel you are ready.  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” is as good a response to a gnarly question as some deep theological answer. 

By using you what you do have you will discover what you don’t have and need to gain or acquire.  It is through the revelation of my ignorance that I have come to seek the knowledge I need for this day.  It is in confronting what I don’t know or understand that I am inspired to gain the knowledge and seek the understanding.

I short folks – don’t think that your lack of some deep theological/spiritual knowledge and insight is a reason to not serve – in Word of deed.  It does impose limitations but as you serve you will find those limitations ever shrinking.

You have the Words of Life – you may only have a few but God can do great things with those few  both in the lives you touch and your life as well.

Tetelesthai

Michael

Heart Keepers 06 031014

Heart Keepers 06

6.  The realizing of God's presence with us and setting the Lord always before us.

God is always with us.  The Holy Spirit indwells us.  All this is true but do we intentionally set that in the forefront of our minds and the center of our hearts?

Are we desirous of being obnoxiously aware of and desperately desirous of His being always and all ways before us?

Without the practice of the disciplines of the faith, without partaking of His means of grace and His mercies this will never never be the case.  We are but babes in holiness (in many ways but especially in terms of separation from the world).  As babes we need goood food and good exercize.  Without both we will not grow or we will grow poorly.

But we have too much to do.  Too much to worry about.  Too much of too much.  So we nibble a breakfast bar of faith thinking it will provide the nutrition we need for our daily walk.  We crave spiritual fast food and just the occassional healthy meal and think we will be OK.

We set God before us when we are in need; not accepting that we are always in need.  Prosperity and comfort keep us fat, sassy and lost.

Keeping the heart takes work - focused and diligent work - but who has the time?  Who makes the time?  So we stubble along bringing ridicule to the name of God by our shallow, ignorant and intermitant faith.  We violate the first line of the model prayer since we do not "hallow" His name as it should be hallowed.

We do not keep our hearts and so our lives are warped and twisted all the time we claim to be serving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Jesus made it very very clear that it is our hearts that are the source of evil and it is our hearts we must keep.  It's not a feeling, its facts.  It's not a disposition, it's discipline.  It's not neat, it's necessary.

Quarrle and Fight #1 James 4

James 4:1a
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

This is an universally appropriate question.  However what we need to have in mind is that this question is being asked of believers, of the church.

We are all aware of the "big" quarrels and fights that divide and destroy churched and we are all appropriately distressed by them.  Whether the issue is critical or seemingly trivial it will destroy the church when it is allowed to.  Sometimes a local group must pass through such a time of pruning and distress but that should be the exception not the rule.  Just as there are blessed additions to the Body so too there are sanctified subtractions.

However we will not be addressing this passage (James 4:1-10) from some corporate viewpoint.  If the "you in verse 1a is plural than we can extrapolate it's application to each and everyone of the "you(s)." it touches.  The seed of quarrels and fights is the sin abiding in each one of us.  We are the cause.

But just knowing the cause and not addressing it is a distressing sign of the ambivalence that may lurk in our hearts.  I meet with many believers who harbour ambivalence and apathy in their hearts concerning the holiness God calls us to and works toward in us.  It is as though they have found some comfortable and manageable place of compromise where their hearts are more at peace than not and they are willing to bear the incongruity of their position and the difficulty it brings.

God's call on our lives is not to "radical living," or even "radical faith>"  His call is to holiness - plain and simple.  Certainly our lives and beliefs will seem radical as we strive with His Spirit toward holiness but the point isn't to Wow the world but to grow in holiness after the image of Christ.

We've sadly forgotten and in some ways forsaken the quest for holiness and godliness and exchanged it for a display of radical distinction on the outside - in public and come to think that what we do will change what we believe.  It won't.  Only a deep and humble commitment to godliness/holiness and an utter humiliation before God in seeking it will produce in us His desired objective.

Again, though this applies to the big quarrels and public fights we see in the church, they are simply symptomatic of the little quarrles and fights we have against the will and providence of God.  I hope and pray you are open to and seeing your guilt in this and how insidious our sinful hearts are even as we are being conformed into the likeness of Christ.

I close with this quote from John Flavel from his work, Keeping the Heart:

To repress the outward acts of sin and compose the external part of thy life in a laudable manner, is no great matter; even carnal persons, by the force of common principles, can do this:  but to kill the root of corruption within, to set and keep up an holy  government over thy thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.  John Flavel

093013 Motes

John Owen wrote, "Most would rather hear of the doctrines of grace, the pardon of sin, and the free love of God than break the fallow ground of their hearts and see to the weeds and briars that grow thee, though this is the only way to come to a true knowledge of grace."  (Indwelling Sin in Believers)

Self-examination is not something that comes naturally to either reprobate or redeemed.  Certainly we avoid what we might call the "big" sins but we do that to avoid the unpleasant and public consequences more than we might do it for the glory of God.  But as there are NO distinctions made between sins the fact that we are so prone to make distinctions tell us a great deal about the condition of our souls.

It would seem, at least in my experience, that it is so very hard to take the time and make the effort to find the mote in my eye, much less the log.  Logs I can for the most part avoid.  But this makes me wonder if in this teaching Jesus was not trying to tell us that our personal motes are in actuality logs.  We will nit-pick another's sins while finding a comfortable means of avoiding doing the same for ourselves.

I would challenge us to take an accounting of our motes.  One Puritan writer, his name fails me, tells us the the "small" sins we commit and dismiss are more heinous than the (supposed) great sins.  The reason for this is that we commit the "lesser" sins with greater impunity thereby bringing greater insult to the glory of God and greater injury to our souls condition.

I would suggest that the apathy that is so prevalent in our age is now a part of our faith.  We carve out a comfortable harmatology (theology of sin) and do all we can to abide there regardless of the effort needed to maintain the self-deception.

I was talking with a friend who had just taken a very expensive vacation and was struck by the phrase, "I earned it, I deserved to take a break."  What distressed me was what appeared to be his utter disregard for the fact that he had earned nothing.  Though he labors diligently in his profession he seems to have no understaaning that everything he has is a gift, a blessing, a mercy from the heart of God.  Nor did he seem to realize that his attitude expressed a certain selfishness concerning this merciful provision.

These are the motes we need to seek to root out.  Where do we fail to keep God's providence and His intent for that providence?  How do we get to a point where we even think there is a possessive "mine" to any of God's merciful providence?  Yet, I - we do that so very often.  How do we experientially repent of such subtle sins as this?
Self-examination - diligent and disciplined - is demanded.  Certainly as His child I am secure in my salvation but am I faithful in it?  Is He indeed the sovereign Lord to whom all things belong and for whom all things should be done?  Or is He a co-sovereign Lord who at some point abdicates to me and allows me to reign over what He alone has provided.

Yes, we may have to work terribly hard in and for what He provides.  Long ours and hard work may be our daily lot but regardless of any effort or sacrifice on our part it is all from His providence and it is all, always His.  It never - ever- becomes ours.  This is a "mote" that is truly a log.  This is that one drop of poison that poisons the whole cup.