COMPOSED

We get excited when we see a glimmer of faith in a wandering soul – even if just a trace of openness to a message of hope. In eagerness to nurture that spark with a little bit of knowledge, and a bit too much spiritual enthusiasm, we unintentionally hinder God’s work. Presumptuously, we step into a place we were never meant to be. Impatiently rushing ahead, trusting our own insight, we forget to listen for His whispered direction of how to foster another’s open heart. Striving to force movement that only He can draw out, we push, urge, coax, and prod to get people closer to God. We want something to be accomplished in them, that isn’t yet fully accomplished in ourselves. God, in His gentle wisdom and patience, waits for us to kindly move out of His way.

Of course, we don’t really want to take His place, but unaware of our blindspots, we settle right in determining how we can help, how He will work in their life, where they are going wrong, how we can set them right. Serving our own need to be appreciated, admired and valued, we stay alert to signs that they are receptive, and apply our new instruction. We concoct a revival recipe, and click on a spiritual drop-down menu to match deficiency with supply – sure of precisely just what they need. We start sharing, distributing, advising – a Bible verse here, retreat opportunity there, tips for worship songs or favorite faith leaders, a great camp or suggested book. We share the milk of spiritual entertainment, comfort and pastimes, in an Americanized version of Christianity, instead of the nourishment of faith’s solid food. 

Nutrients from a hearty meal of Biblical truths, unrehearsed prayer and refreshment from His Spirit does more to develop His life in us, than commercialized, caffeinated feel-good moments. It’s not that comfort, coffee or feeling good are innately bad, but a diet mainly of these ingredients is likely to keep us on the surface of our faith. Undeniably, marketing underpinnings conceal the undiluted practices that should inherently – and more accurately – represent the Church. One of the very few times we read of Jesus’ anger was when he disrupted marketing – buying and selling – within the House of God. Yet today, we don’t blink an eye.

We’re awfully good at propagating this field of seeds planted in shallow soil: peacefully singing worship songs but becoming impatient with a loved one before the day’s end; reading voraciously and then struggling to take one measurable action step; craving solitude so we can avoid the energy-draining needs around us; imagining numerous thoughtful things to do for others, and one by one, leaving them all undone; gathering in study groups, but never implementing our learning in real places with real people. Glaringly, we don’t want to be contaminated by any not inside our circle, and are overly concerned with what others may think of our relationships with those outside the Church. Our practices misrepresent the Lord we follow. 

Sadly, our worship settings can look as familiar as a high school hallway filled with nervous cliques of in-groups and out-groups, everyone wanting to be loved just exactly as they are, but portraying themselves as something they are not. In contrast, it’s revealing and encouraging to learn about the richly genuine, fruit-filled lives of persecuted believers throughout the world, as they compare to our western notions of Christianity. Here, some confuse the strength of our national pride with the strength of our faith, as if they were the same thing. Intertwining the two is a profound mistake: Jesus’ life is not marked with political power, aggression, freedom from responsibility, or a lack of care for the marginalized and hurting in our midst. Hopes for redeeming the world surely extend far beyond the borders of our country. Our hyper-independence is a betrayal to Him.

Unknowingly true to form, even related to our spiritual beliefs, we place our republic at a center point, around which the rest of the continents revolve. We stay just far enough away from desperate need to avoid the commitment of sacrificial love. Safe and holy right where we are, we are unaware of our ruthless veneer. It’s tough to see over the high edges of our pedestal. 

AMPLIFIED

A need exists to scrutinize our faith practices thoroughly, objectively – to imagine what it looks like to someone on the outside of the insiders. Superficial, unexamined motives require mature attention. The theme of redemption needs to begin within our own hearts and houses of worship. It is our spiritual essence living in our unconscious assumptions and judgments, that we need to recognize, confess and turn away from. Our evaluating eye ought to focus less on others’ shortcomings, so that we remain open to the revelation we ourselves need. The redemptive, corrective, life-altering imperative we see so clearly in others, fundamentally obscures the view of the very same need within us. It’s impossible to see around the plank in our eye, but it doesn’t stop us from trying. 

If we lean in with humility, willing and ready for renovation, God will tenderly reveal the details and depth of our sin and lack, so that the shallowness of hypocrisy does not blind us to Jesus’ teachings. Once liberated in this way, we stop trying to fix others and speculating about their faith lives. We no longer shut ourselves off in private spaces, to avoid anyone we don’t vet carefully to determine their spiritual ranking. We won’t label people as outsiders or insiders. And no longer will we pretend to know how God will enter into the lives of our neighbors. Staying unaware of our hypocrisy makes us a distinct deterrent, repelling those who might be interested in a life redeemed by the blood of Christ. 

New life in Christ brings transformation and healing. Our part is to be exquisitely trustworthy to let that process continue in our own lives, without prescribing to others where their failings begin. If this new life doesn’t make us more authentic, more real, but looks instead more self-indulgent, uncaring and selfish, it’s no wonder people will walk decidedly away from our invitation. It’s no wonder that many walk away from the American Church. Equally sad is the undernourishment of those who stay. As Christians, our difference in the world is to be as people who impart and bear out His life and redemptive message to all, without pretension or scorn. Just as Jesus does not recoil from us, we draw near, with His fragrance, to a burdened, broken people. This includes those broken by pride or arrogance. 

The Son of God is vibrantly attentive, generous, and tenderhearted, embracing those who are both the least and the worst in the kingdom of the world, of whom we are included. He is flawlessly unpredictable, subtle and real, infinitely filled with a consummate blend of truth and grace. We reflect Him best when we offer the same steady, gutsy kindness, and deep devotion to all who suffer from the effects of sin in its numerous, ugly forms.  

Let our excitement be for the glimmer of true faith in our own wandering soul, which leads to a more intimate, earnest walk with Him. Let us recognize the deep frailty which inhabits us all, and invites us to yield and surrender to His saving redemption, allowing others similar latitude to respond. As we trust in His breathtaking artistry, He works mightily, writing orchestrations of intricate design, assuring us that we are all the beautiful targets of God's love. And if we watch and listen patiently, staying gracefully off of centerstage, we will delight to discover that the music He has written for each one of us, is a continual symphony of redemption. 

POSTLUDE

“Jesus Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical, never suspicious, because He trusted absolutely in what He could do for human nature.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, June 24

“We resent what Jesus Christ reveals. Either Jesus Christ is the supreme Authority on the human heart, or He is not worth paying any attention to.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, July 26

“I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty.”  P. Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, p. 203

“I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God is not after perfecting me to be a specimen in His show-room; He is getting me to the place where He can use me. Let Him do what He likes.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, December 2 

“God will give us touches of inspiration when He sees we are not in danger of being led away by them.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 1

“It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God’s order for others…The mature stage is the life of a child which is never conscious; we become so abandoned to God that the consciousness of being used never enters in…A saint is never consciously a saint; a saint is consciously dependent on God.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, November 15

“Oddly, as I look back on Jesus’ time from the present perspective, it is the very ordinariness of the disciples that gives me hope. Jesus does not seem to choose his followers on the basis of native talent or perfectibility or potential for greatness. When he lived on earth he surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren.” P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 99-100

“Don’t testify how much you love Me, don’t profess about the marvelous revelation you have had, but -- ‘Feed My sheep.’ And Jesus has some extraordinarily funny sheep, some bedraggled, dirty sheep, some awkward, butting sheep, some sheep that have gone astray! It is impossible to weary God’s love and it is impossible to weary that love in me if it springs from the one centre. The love of God pays no attention to the distinctions made by natural individuality. If I love my Lord I have no business to be guided by natural temperament; I have to feed His sheep…” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 3 

“If by your preaching you convince me that I am unholy, I resent your preaching. The preaching of the gospel awakens an intense resentment because it must reveal that I am unholy; but it also awakens an intense craving…” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, September 1

“The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Ghost, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message...Before God’s message can liberate other souls, the liberation must be real in you.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 10

“God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, November 23

“God continually introduces us to people for whom we have no affinity, and unless we are worshiping God, the most natural thing to do is to treat them heartlessly, to give them a text like the jab of a spear, or leave them with a rapped-out counsel of God and go. A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to Our Lord.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, April 1

“Goodness and purity ought never to attract attention to themselves, they ought simply to be magnets to draw to Jesus Christ. If my holiness is not drawing towards Him, it is not holiness of the right order, but an influence that will awaken inordinate affection and lead souls away into side-eddies. A beautiful saint may be a hindrance if he does not present Jesus Christ but only what Christ has done for him.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 25 

“The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 30

“The marvel of the Redemptive Reality of God is that the worst and the vilest can never get to the bottom of His love. Paul did not say that God separated him to show what a wonderful man He could make of him, but ‘to reveal His Son in me.’” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, February 3

“Never sympathize with a soul who finds it difficult to get to God, God is not to blame. It is not for us to find out the reason why it is difficult, but so to present the truth of God that the Spirit of God will show what is wrong….The Spirit of God locates each one to himself.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 5

“If we are not heedful of the way the Spirit of God works in us, we will become spiritual hypocrites. We see where other folks are failing, and we turn our discernment into the gibe of criticism instead of into intercession on their behalf...Take care lest you play the hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right before you worship God yourself. ” O Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 31 

“Our Lord never dictated to His Father, and we are not here to dictate to God; we are here to submit to His will so that He may work through us what He wants. When we realize this, He will make us broken bread and poured-out wine to feed and nourish others.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 15

“The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould us. If you want to be of use to God, get rightly related to Jesus Christ and He will make you of use unconsciously every minute you live.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 18

“Our insistence in proving that we are right is nearly always an indication that there has been some point of disobedience.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, June 30

“The purity which God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within, and that is what Jesus has undertaken to do by His Redemption. No man can make himself pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations; His teachers are truths that can only be interpreted by the disposition He puts in.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, July 24

“Never quench the Spirit, and do not despise Him when He says to you – ‘Don’t be blind on this point any more; you are not where you thought you were. Up to the present I have not been able to reveal it to you, but I reveal it now.’ When the Lord chastens you like that, let Him have His way. Let Him relate you rightly to God.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 14

“Conscious influence is priggish and un-Christian…We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 21

“I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.” P. Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, p. 16

“We have the commercial view – so many souls saved and sanctified, thank God, now it is all right….we are not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace; our work as His disciples is to disciple lives until they are wholly yielded to God.…Unless the worker lives a life hidden with Christ in God, he is apt to become an irritating dictator instead of an indwelling disciple…Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever Our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced it with an “IF,” never with an emphatic assertion – “You must.” Discipleship carries an option with it.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, April 24

“The great enemy to the Lord Jesus Christ in the present day is the conception of practical work that has not come from the New Testament, but from the systems of the world in which endless energy and activities are insisted upon, but no private life with God. The emphasis is put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo the kingdom of God is within you,’ a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives in the shop window. It is the innermost of the innermost that reveals the power of the life.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, October 19

“He teaches where He instructs us not to: Are we playing the spiritual amateur providence in other lives? Are we so noisy in our instruction of others that God cannot get anywhere near them? We have to keep our mouths shut and our spirits alert. God wants to instruct us in regard to His Son, He wants to turn our times of prayer into mounts of transfiguration, and we will not let Him. When we are certain of the way God is going to work, He will never work in that way any more…” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 1 

“God designed human nature for Himself; individuality debases human nature for itself. The characteristics of individuality are independence and self-assertiveness. It is the continual assertion of individuality that hinders our spiritual life more than anything else…God wants to bring you into union with Himself, but unless you are willing to give up your right to yourself He cannot.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, December 11

“What a wonderful personality! What a fascinating man! Such marvellous insight! What chance has the Gospel of God through all that? It cannot get through, because the line of attraction is always the line of appeal. If a man attracts by his personality, his appeal is along that line; if he is identified with his Lord’s personality, then the appeal is along the line of what Jesus Christ can do. The danger is to glory in men; Jesus says we are to lift Him up.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, November 9

“...we dare not invest so much in the kingdom of this world that we neglect our main task of introducing people to a different kind of kingdom, one based solely on God’s grace and forgiveness.” P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 247

What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Copyright 1997 by Philip Yancey, used by permission.

The Jesus I Never Knew, Copyright 1995 by Philip Yancey, used by permission.

ENCOURAGING WORD

John 12:32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.

Jeremiah 29:12-13  ‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity.’

Hebrews 5:13-6:1 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity…

2 Peter 3:9  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Hebrews 10:39  But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. 

Psalm 106:43-46  Many times He delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin. Yet He took note of their distress when He heard their cry; for their sake He remembered His covenant and out of His great love He relented. He caused all who held them captive to show them mercy. 

Titus 3:5  ...He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy.

Psalm 25:6-7  Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good.

Psalm 32:8  I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

Hebrews 3:13  But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “today” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

1 Corinthians 3:2-3  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 

1 Corinthians 15:9-10  For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. 

Matthew 21:12-13  Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers.’ “

2 Corinthians 13:5  Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. 

Ephesians 4:1-3  As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 

James 1:26  If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.

1 Peter 2:1-3  Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. 

2 Peter 3:16  He [Paul] writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

2 John 6  And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.  

Jude 10;16  Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals – these are the very things that destroy them…These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage. 

Jude 20-23  But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.  Keep yourselves in  God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear – hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.