The Greatest and Most Important Command.

The common viewpoint of many scholars to the latter half of “the greatest” and “most important” command of any that exists {loving God with a whole and undivided heart, and loving those around us as ourselves} has been, “Oh, the caveat here is that if you…” then fill in the blank with how one feels about herself— despise yourself, condemn yourself, care less about yourself— under Law one can get away with it because, well, that’s what the Law says.  And Law is Law, right?  It’s immovable, unchangeable, inflexible.

Here’s an historical note which might shed some light in a different direction.  The belief of the ancient Hebrew, intrinsic in Judaism and setting it apart from Hinduism and Buddhism {which actively seek out the dissolution of self}, is that the individual is uniquely valued because he or she was uniquely created by God, their soul endowed with the ‘breath of life’ by His very own hand.  Thus, the individual is of great importance to God {which means you are of great importance to God}, enough so that we can boldly say He gave His Life and His Son to save every last one of us— 2 Peter 3:9.

What I’m getting at is this: the basic and bedrock belief of Judaism was that no man in his right mind would mistreat himself, starve himself to death, beat himself, steal from himself, abuse himself verbally, mentally, or emotionally.  The point is not that we’re not capable of these things, the point is that there is value in a single human life created by God.  And love respects that, seeks to nourish that, encourage that and doesn’t abuse that.

In The Weight of Glory C.S. Lewis reminds us that we have never seen an “ordinary person.”  He said, “There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations— these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.  This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously— no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

If you were to see this individual as they were meant to be by God, or in the case of a believer, as they will be in God, you would be tempted to fall down in either fear or worship.  G.K. Chesterton says that the hardest thing to believe in Christianity is the infinite value it places upon the worth of the individual person.  But the magnitude of our eternal destiny depends on that worth, and demonstrates that worth for the Universe— at the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Ric Webb

Shepherd

Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org

Choosing to Believe.

For most of this New Year, a significant portion of the first quarter anyway, our little Community of well-worn Saints has been embracing what it means to live with a Warrior-Heart— both men and women alike.  And using the infamous Ephesians 6 section {vv. 10-20} and its itemized Armor as a springboard to do it.  So, the week prior to Easter and our Celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection, we posed this question.  How do we wield the “shield of faith” against the attacks of our enemy?  How do we “take up the shield of faith” so as to “extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one”?  The initial answer is one of those ‘says easy, does hard’ deals.  By faith in the power of Jesus’ promises.

That simple and trite answer also has the benefit of being true.  But I couldn’t get this idea of the enemy’s attacks necessitating our wielding the “shield of faith” out of my mind.  Because, let’s be honest, he does attack, doesn’t he... through servants both human and demonic?  He comes unlooked for and unexpected with the fury of a heart filled with malice and hate, the onslaught surprising us {though we’re told by Peter not to “be surprised by the fiery ordeal” we’re undergoing}, shocking in its intensity.  This is Satan’s version of the ‘shock and awe’ America unleashed on Baghdad in Gulf War II {also known as the ‘Neo-con Oil War’}.  He loves this type of tactic, this overwhelming attack intended to shatter our souls.

Then I thought about what a horrific slap in the face of a kind and compassionate Creator it is when the enemy is able to use the Children of God to do his dirty work for him— especially against other Children of God, those bought and bound by the blood of the Lamb!  Is there any greater disgrace in the Life of the Body of Christ, any deeper disappointment anywhere in Abba’s Kingdom?  I doubt it.  The “sons of God” at war with one another.  Over what?  An obscure passage of Scripture, a different theological paradigm, balanced political opinions?  How ‘bout just ...their own personality, maybe freer and fuller than yours, more willing to risk, more willing to trust, more willing to give generously and love graciously?  How ‘bout those believers who don’t dance to the tune of your dysfunctional drum, who don’t live by your Pharisaical standards, who won’t allow themselves to be manipulated by your subtle condescension and not so subtle condemnation?  “Well, we’ve got to wage war on them... uhhmm, for their own good, for the sake of the Gospel!  To rescue their souls from perdition; to teach them a lesson; to bring them back into line, bring them into conformity!”  Aaaahhhh yes, now we’re getting somewhere.  Now we’re getting to the heart of the real issue: control.  Arrogance and control, once again.

Isn’t this exactly what the Jesus whose promises we so faithfully claim battled, incessantly, as He sought to fulfill the Mission of His Messiahship?  Human nature, inundated by the ‘sin within,’ doesn’t seem to have changed too much in the ‘evolution’ of the last two millennia.  No surprise there ...since it can’t change apart from intimacy with the Messiah Himself, a relationship which can only be gained and subsequently grown through “faith.”  And so we’re back, once again, to the only “shield” worth wielding, the only protection offered us from a fierce and cunning antagonist, the only thing which can draw us into the Arms of Grace.  Faith, trust, belief.  It’s our willingness to trust that the strength of our God is greater, the heart of our God is wiser, and the love of our God is deeper than any circumstance surrounding me.  I choose to believe.


Ric Webb

Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org

A Hard Look at a Hard Life.

There are a multitude of themes in Scripture: some major, some minor.  It’s one of the sad realities of modern theology {some of which is dissolving, thankfully, in our post-modern era}, that so many of the ‘professionals’ choose to major in the minors.  There are two themes which if we’re honest we can recognize as constants in the course of our lives— those of loss and Life, the place of suffering and of breakthrough.  On one side of this fence are the concepts of crucifixion, suffering, darkness and loss.  These have become the ‘in’ themes for many in Christendom today.  On the other side of the fence is Life, Love, Liberty and Triumph.  In a word, Resurrection …and the profound power which flows from it.  These, for the most part, have been relegated to an other-worldly status, it’s a ‘we’ll have to wait til we get there to experience it’ mindset.

But is that honestly what Christ intended when He bought us with His blood?  For His ransomed and redeemed, the Offspring of the Almighty, to flounder in failure… forever?  I don’t believe for a moment that’s what Abba intended.  Just as sin fulfills the purpose of pointing us to the Savior, the purpose of suffering is not the suffering itself, but what comes out of it.  It’s what we find on the other side by way of Freedom and Life, the wholeness and healing that is our birthright in the Son, as the “Abba of mercies” reaches down to restore one more broken part of the heart, one more shattered piece of the soul.  This is the Journey we were made for; this is the Life we were meant to live.

We have two basic paradigms which we’ve operated out of when it comes to suffering in the theological circles in which I was birthed.  This is either divine discipline, cause I’ve screwed up royally, cause I’ve blown it big time; or God is testing me.  And He’s going to keep on testing me, He’s going to hammer the living Hades out of me until I pass this test.  Discipline or testing, one or the other.  The truth is, if we’re willing to be brutally honest about it, the testing might as well be discipline, because it all feels about the same as far as the receiving end is concerned.  It feels about as caring and kind as a two-by-four to the back of the head.  In a way, our response to suffering and heartache reveals a deep and fundamental distrust toward the heart of God.  At the deepest level of our beliefs, at the deepest core of our convictions, we don’t really trust that the Father’s heart toward us is one of infinite goodness and unbearable grace.  In our minds, a God who could allow this, or for Heaven’s sakes cause it {and happily}, simply could not be as good and perfect and righteous as He say’s He is in the Scriptures.

I would submit to you, and humbly I hope, that many of us have been misdiagnosing the hand of God in our lives and thus misinterpreting the work of God in our hearts for far too long.  There is so much more to be revealed in suffering than the surface symptoms we have diagnosed as discipline or testing.  Those are two valid options, but two out of a multitude.  What Abba is primarily up to in the lives of His Children, especially the masses of uninitiated men and women who live and breathe the ‘spirit of this age,’ is initiation.  A Calling up and into a much higher plane than the one we presently inhabit with its small stories and daily dramas.  The Spirit is calling us up constantly into the pages of a much Larger Story, into the heat of a glorious Battle, into the path of an Epic Adventure.  And for that He must have fellow-travelers who can walk with Him, who can fight beside Him, who can love as He loves and forgive as He forgives.  In other words, intimate allies of the Almighty.

Jesus wants men who are Warrior-Kings, valiant and courageous, and women who are Queens of Light, ladies of love and mercy.  Thus, the Path He sets us on often looks like this: instruction, initiation, and intimacy.  The instruction is easy; the initiation is hard; and the goal of both is always intimacy with Him.  The intimacy, once established however, is beautiful beyond belief.  It’s here we find, ultimately, the purpose behind the pain we so frequently run from.


Ric Webb

Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org

Slow Down... and Soak.

This is your assignment for Life, starting now.  Slow down!  And allow the presence of Jesus pictured so powerfully on His lips and in His Life to soak deeply into your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Slowing down is the way the soul flourishes; it’s the way the heart was made to work.  Robert Baron writes, “The deepest part of the soul likes to go slow.  Since it seeks to savor rather than to accomplish, it wants to rest in and contemplate the good rather than hurry off to another place.”  Your assignment is to, in the words of Dallas Willard, “ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”  It is to slow down, to savor, to rest and contemplate.

Slowing the pace of your light-speed life means, by necessity, eliminating hurry on one hand and intentionally creating ‘margin’ on the other.  Get direct, intentional, confrontational with the demands and activities in your day to day life.  If it’s not an absolute necessity {follow me closely here}, get rid of it.  That’s right, eliminate it!  What you’ll discover is there’s more room now for the Spirit to move, for you to breathe the free air of grace every moment, and for others as well.  There is space for other hearts to dwell at ease in your own.  Make sense?

In the Middle Ages, Christians would engage in some rather extreme ascetic practices like lengthy fasts and self-flagellation to discipline themselves with the purpose, the often unsuccessful intent, of growing toward God.  A post-modern society, especially a post-Christian one, needs something entirely different today.  Paul Evdokimov wisely observed, “Today, the combat is not the same.  We no longer need added pain.  Hair shirts, chains, and flagellation would risk uselessly breaking us.  Today, mortification would be liberation from every kind of addiction: speed, noise, alcohol, and all kinds of stimulants.  Asceticism would be necessary rest.  The discipline of regular periods of calm and silence where one could regain the ability to stop for prayer and contemplation even in the heart of all the noise of the world.”  As author James Bryan Smith notes, “We are driven by speed and stimulants, and thus the most needed discipline is for us to slow down, to calm down, and to make time for rest and contemplation.  We cannot slow down,” however, “until we know how to practice ‘margin.’  ...We have to begin cutting out activities before we can begin to change the pace of our lives.”

This is going to take direct, intentional, confrontational engagement on your part.  Like all things good and beautiful and holy and true, it doesn’t happen by accident.  Nor in a vacuum.  It happens because you’ve sought divine direction on how to slow the pace of a light-speed life, trusted the Truth when Jesus gives it to you, then acted upon it faithfully as one of His Followers.  And it won’t happen any other way.  The enemy of your heart, the “thief” {Jn. 10:10} of all things good and beautiful and holy and true, does not want you living from a place of rest and joy and faith in the Father’s heart.  That I can promise you.  His policy today is simple: ‘Keep ‘em running.  Move, move, move, move, move.  We’ll wear ‘em out... then we’ll take ‘em out.’  And that’s precisely what he does.  A heart that is weary and worn from too much time on the Front Lines, emotionally drained and physically exhausted from one school / dance / sport / church / social activity after another, a marriage dying on the vine for lack of nurture and cultivation, is a primed and perfect target for the arrows of the enemy.  A weary heart famished for love and desperately needing renewal and restoration is an easy target.  And your adversary knows it... well.


Ric Webb

Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org

How God Develops a Warrior-Heart.

Ever seen the movie Friday Night Lights?  One of the best football movies ever made, it tells the true story of the 1988 Permian Panthers and their quest for a Texas State Championship.  I’ll play the spoiler here: they don’t get it.  They get into the playoffs by a coin-toss, grind out victory after victory, only to lose to Dallas-Carter in the Astrodome.  About two feet short of the goal-line, less than a yard from paydirt, from victory, triumph, exultation!

You see, and this may come as a surprise, you don’t always win... and what are you going to do when you don’t?  Sometimes you fail, sometimes you lose the fight, sometimes fear takes over and faith goes out the window.  And this moment slips away, lost forevermore.  Sometimes you get beaten, you get bruised, you get bloody, with no discernible difference made in the lives of those you’re fighting for— including your own.  What will you do then?  What kind of man or woman do you want to be?  Because this, my friends, is the ultimate issue at stake in our Story.

How does God develop the heart of a Warrior and Warrior-maiden in His Sons and Daughters— an unyielding heart, a persevering heart, a heart relentless in its pursuit of Jesus, the mighty Warrior in whose image we are made, a heart faithful and fierce to the very End?  By fierce I don’t mean unkind, I don’t mean ugly or arrogant or violent necessarily, though there is a time and a place to literally ‘go to War’ for what you love.  To protect it and preserve it.  I do not mean the stubbornness of the American jackass; what I do mean is aggressive, tenacious, a pit-bull like tenacity.  You are going to need something like this, exactly like this, to endure... until the Kingdom comes.

I don’t necessarily like this; that is, the answer I’m about to give you.  But it is what it is.  Honestly, there’s a part of me which hates this, and another part which loves it.  How does God develop the Warrior-heart within us?  Hardship.  Suffering.  The author of Hebrews tells us Jesus “learned obedience from the things which He suffered” {5:8b}; as Peterson puts it, “He learned trusting-obedience by what He suffered, just as we do” {The Message}.  Hardship, suffering, trial and battle.  What better way than to put us in situation after situation where we are forced to fight for what is right and beautiful and true, where we are forced to become dangerous for good.  Forced to depend so utterly and completely upon our Abba that His Cause becomes our Cause, His King our King, His heart for the broken and the bruised ours.  Now we’re getting somewhere in the Battle for Freedom and Life.

Once again, this is not a game for little children, or the uninterested and unaware.  This is a Battle for the hearts of humanity... and the stakes are no less than eternal in nature.  And that is reality.


Ric Webb

Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org

Shouting In Our Suffering.

In the narrative of Jesus’ birth {Matt. 1 and Lk. 2}, we see the story of One who was born to suffer, born to suffer on our behalf, in fact, One whose Life would be coloured by ridicule and rejection {Isa. 52:13-53:12}.  “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” {Lk. 19:10}... and lost beyond lost is exactly what we are without Him.

Apart from Jesus we have no comprehension of why suffering even exists, we misinterpret the phenomenal acts of evil taking place in our world, and we doubt  {oh how we doubt, question and dismiss} the goodness of our Father’s heart.  Christian author and Oxford professor C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.  It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  I want to ask you a crucial question; I want you to think about it, then answer.  Did Lewis say, “God is the cause of all pain”… or that “God is the source of all suffering”?  No, he didn’t; he didn’t even hint at it.  Nor does he anywhere else in his vast library of writings infused with his Christian beliefs.  What he said was God uses pain “to rouse a deaf,” dying, and sin-darkened “world.”  I.e., regardless of the source, no matter where the suffering originated itself, God can use it for our good and His glory— to rouse the rebellious, to awaken the willful, to shake the angry and apathetic to the core of their souls.

Suffering is a tremendous tool, when wielded by the hand of the Master.  And it does unbelievable damage when we embrace it as something to make us bitter and not better.  The key to understanding a painful path, and to reaping the full harvest in situations of suffering, is the willingness to trust in two hopes, two absolute assurances.  That [1] there is an enormous lesson to learn right here in the midst of it {one that more often has to do with the internals of our souls than the externals of our situation}; and [2] there is a beautiful life to be lived beyond it.

Suffering is not meant to last forever.  Suffering, pain, and sorrow, by their very nature— as results of the Fall and related to futility… the “futility” of Creation in its present state {Rom. 8:19-22}— cannot go on endlessly.  And that is a declaration of hope.  You, my friend, are meant to live with confident expectation of the perfect world to come {and the freedom you will find there}, in courageous anticipation of the beauty, the intimacy, and the Adventure of that glorious Life with God on the Other Side.


Ric Webb

Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org

Our Faith Rests Upon.... {Easter '13}.

The core of our Faith rests on something which happened after the Cross... the Resurrection of the Son of God.  Jesus said, “I lay down My Life-- only to take it up again.  No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.  I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.  This command I received from my Father” {Jn. 10:17b-18}.  Jesus has authority, meaning the right, the power, the dominion {just as His Father does} over Life and Death.

The Cross is a stunningly beautiful truth, a gift of unimaginable grace: our sins are entirely forgiven, the power of the ‘sin within’ broken, a ransom offered, a redemption accomplished, the fatal fracture between holy Creator and His fallen Creation healed forevermore, our pasts redeemed, our futures secure and our presents finally making sense.  All because our Lord and Liege chose to offer Himself as our Substitute, in our place, on our behalf, a stand-in paying a price none other could pay and finishing a Mission none other could finish!  These are glorious realities belonging to each of us now-- as birthrights, because by faith we have become the Sons and Daughters of God.

But apart from the Resurrection, as glorious as this is, it is incomplete.  Apart from the Resurrection, there is no Life beyond the walls of this world.  Apart from the Resurrection, we are going to be wonderfully forgiven corpses one day... all of us.  Beyond a Life with God which spans Eternity, there is no Hope for experiencing intimacy with Him now, no hope for healing and wholeness and holiness, no hope for beauty and transcendence in our lives or courage and conviction in our hearts.  The Spirit of the Living God, through whom these things are even possible, is a Gift of the Resurrection.  The Spirit of Jesus is His Resurrection Power alive and well within us.  Jesus died, as Paul wrote in Romans 6, not only for our sins but to our sin natures; but without His Resurrection there is no way to experience this freedom from a lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of it!  There is no way to live ‘beyond ourselves,’ and all the chaos and carnage which self can wreak on an unsuspecting world, apart from Jesus’ Resurrection Power.  It is the centre-piece of our Faith, the primary event around which Eternity revolves: the Triumph of the King of Kings over the darkness of sin and death.

The Cross is a fatal blow to the enemy... but the Resurrection is the note of Triumph, the trumpet announcing the Glorious News of Grace to all the afflicted: that the captives have been freed, the prisoners turned loose, the year of the Lord’s favor is upon us, the mourners have been comforted and the “Oaks of Righteousness” planted “for the display of Abba’s splendor” {Isa. 61:1-3}.  And there is nothing the enemy can do about it ...but look upon it and hate.  This is the Glory of the Resurrection.


Ric Webb

Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org