Saturday, March 29, 2014

Are Our Hearts Really In This?

I came across this quote a couple of years ago from 19th century Scottish author and pastor George MacDonald who said, “As soon as [any] service is done for the honour and not for the service-sake, the doer is that moment outside the kingdom.” He’s what? Read that again just for clarity’s sake. MacDonald is saying the very moment we begin to serve or to speak or to give or to build, to offer our lofty and unlimited knowledge to the poor befuddled masses, in order to be recognized, seen as superior-- as ‘better than’ those around us-- as soon as we seek to build our own personal empire of acolytes and accolades, we are outside the Kingdom of Christ.

Another way of looking at this is we’re laboring under the mighty weight of human effort with {as Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 3:12} “wood, hay,” and “straw.” Wood, hay, and straw are readily available materials. They’e easy to get ahold of, easy to find, easy to gather, and relatively simple to use. Very similar to what technology is to us today: easy to operate to your own advantage. As soon as our service in the Cause of our King turns to what I can get out of this, or how I’ll be seen because of this, or who will notice me, my ministry, my efforts and ingenuity, we’re outside the bounds in which the Spirit chooses to operate. We are, in effect, on our own. And an industrious man or woman can build much to their glory on their own— occasionally even a masterpiece. The problem is: it will never last. A little Time, a strong wind, a single match ...and boom, it’s all gone.

Remember how I’ve told you that motive is the deepest level of holiness in our lives? It’s true. The one thing that won’t be weighed at the Tribunal of Eternal Reward is quantity. What will be weighed, “revealed with fire” to use the Apostle’s language once again, is the quality, the quality of how we labored on the foundation of Jesus the Messiah to build up, strengthen, and solidify His Body. “The fire,” Paul say’s, “will test the quality of each man’s work” {v. 13b}.

Did we labor in the Spirit or in the strength of self? Did we walk according to the Word or use clever devices to build our micro-managed empires? Did we listen for voice of the Good Shepherd, or just come up with one hare-brained idea after another and shout, “This was God’s idea, not mine!” so loud and so long enough that eventually no one questioned us? The only thing that will matter in the end is Abba’s work done in Abba’s way. It’s quality, my friends, not quantity, meaning how much of our hearts, and the hearts of others, were truly in this.

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Spirit of Humility.

Reading Romans 7:15-8:5 in The Message you see with familar eyes the endless struggle between the sinful desires of ‘self’ and the purposeful passion of the Spirit. Then Light breaks through the darkness and the deliverance of Jesus’ finished Work, available to anyone who humbly accepts the Spirit’s labors within them, comes roaring to the forefront. The key is the humility... being humble enough to embrace and accept whatever the Spirit is offering in the moment.

So, let’s look at the role humility plays in our relationship to the Holy Spirit. Author and pastor A.W. Tozer once said,

We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone…. [We] have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost— A.W. Tozer.

This was written in the mid-20th century. But Tozer’s words could have easily been penned yesterday ...or tomorrow. I wonder what kind of indictment this great man of God might pronounce if he were to ‘peek in’ on post-modern Christianity with its name-seeking, glory-loving leaders, and its ridiculous tendency to point disciples in every direction but to Jesus Himself {cf. Paul on “selfish ambition” in Phil. 2:3-4 and Gal. 5:19-21}.

Listen... every generation has its own brand of Pharisaism, its own theological prejudices, its own denominational biases and its own brand of doctrinal Nazism. Yet the fact remains. Every step of intimacy with Abba, maturity as a man or woman, peace, power and perspective in Christ is taken under the overwhelming influence of the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection Power of Jesus. You can’t work this up and you can’t make this up. “This is the Word of the LORD...: ‘Not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of the Everlasting Armies” {Zech. 4:6 RRExp}.

And when the Spirit of Grace is unleashed in a life, given the freedom to woo and to work when and where He wills, the result is profound.
We find our hearts becoming whole, our lives becoming holy, and our souls attuned to the Shepherd’s voice {Jn. 10}. We rediscover the passion for Jesus which once burned so brightly, still alive and waiting to be ignited {Rev. 2:4-5}. We begin to long for more of God just as He longs for more of us. And we find there a resiliency, a courage, and a compassion which guides us through the darkest days and longest nights.

That is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Freedom and of Life, laboring in love, forging us in the fires of affliction so that we might shine all the more boldly, all the more brilliantly. Abba loves us enough to make His ultimate goal our transformation and not our happiness. Which comes as a major shock to a majority of believers in the self-satisfied West! Make no mistake about it, my friends, you were made by your Master to shimmer and to shine.

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Humility and the Word.

Even a casual reading of Scripture reveals a profound connection between humility and grace {Lk. 18:14; Jms. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5c}. But can we pause for just a moment to look at humility in relation to the Word. What’s our attitude toward the Word of God? It’s one of the critical questions.

Professor Dallas Willard, in his book The Divine Conspiracy, describes how as a college student he found his way into the requisite practices of Life in the Spirit of Christ almost by accident. He describes his discovery like this.

In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of Scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one’s mind and spirit— just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word.

...Hence one cannot tack an effective, life-transforming practice of prayer and study onto ‘life as usual.’ Life as usual must go. It will be replaced by something far better.” {Some Italics Mine}

Scripture is the mind of Jesus Christ {1 Cor. 2:16b}, the voice of His Spirit speaking directly to our hearts. So, what’s your honest attitude toward the Word? Apathy, indifference, take it or leave it? To know our Father intimately we have to know His heart toward us. And His heart toward us is revealed in the Mission and Ministry of the Messiah! You want to know what Abba is like? Look in faith at the Son. Because we’ll never see the full image of the Father, we’ll never see God clearly— without distraction and distortion— unless we look through the lens of the Son. Jesus came to show us what Abba is really like: not the false images which abound, not the vanity of our own imaginings, not the cultic deity of pagan superstition, but the real, the only, the One true God.

You see, your theology is, in essence, your approach to God— your understanding of Abba. And if your theology is not setting you free, bringing you a greater sense of courage in Life, bravery in the Battle, then what good is it... in Time or Eternity? Maybe your theology is not as accurate as you think it is. The other option is that you don’t really believe what you’ve been taught, you don’t trust the teaching you’ve received. Which means, essentially, you haven’t really received it— in the Scriptural sense of the term. You with me here?

There’s a particular term used in the Greek of the NT, a very specifically chosen term from among the multitude of images available which picture what it means to receive in faith what God has given in grace. The word is hupakouo, an intensified form of the root verb akouo = ‘hear and understand.’ Hupakouo carries the ideas of ‘obedience to, of following fully, of embracing something or someone in complete surrender.’ After researching the nuances of this term over and over again in the early years of my ministry, here’s how I chose to define it. Hupakouo means = hear with the ear, comprehend with the mind, and obey with the will {Rom. 6:16 and 10:16; Phil. 2:12; 2 Thes. 1:8; of Jesus as the Source of Salvation in Heb. 5:9 and Abraham’s unyielding obedience in 11:8; and of the elements under Jesus’ authority in Mat. 8:27, Mk. 4:41, and Lk. 8:25}. Is this us?

If you will pull up on the ‘Interwebs’ the YouTube clip of Chinese Christians receiving their first Bibles, smuggled in under Communists’ noses no doubt, you will see the Sons and Daughters of the Great King weeping with joy, kissing the precious Book of Life and holding it to their foreheads in adoration. There’s all the imagery we need to test whether our love for the Living Word is evidenced by our passion for His Message ...or whether we’re ready to sell the Scriptures out the first time totalitarianism comes knocking on our door!

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org

Humility and Empire.

What about the ‘faith’ {for what else could you call it?} we put in the political process? Historian Will Durant, in The Story of Civilization, wrote that “There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the Word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.” {Italics Mine}

Now... contrast the presence of Jesus so prominently on display in the lives of His earliest Disciples with our present day tendency to rely on effort and ingenuity, democratic will and political pressure, to ‘achieve’ our desires in the public sphere. Pretty stark contrast, wouldn’t you say? Instead of concentrating on the invisible, the eternal, and the spiritual, we worry about which politician can represent us best or which political party has our interests in mind. Let me clue you in on something here, just in case you haven’t figured it out: None of them.

What is Abba’s vision for governments and politics in the Messianic Age, these “last days” initiated by the Incarnation and brought to completion with the King’s Return {because in the end, His is the only one that matters}? On one occasion Jesus said to the Pharisees, “the Kingdom of God is within you” {Lk. 17:21b}; on another the apostle Paul said, “the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” {Rom. 14:17}. Jesus paints a picture of a Kingdom far different from any man has imagined. The very essence of its rule, power, and authority is spiritual and divine. The intrigue and power-brokering of our politicians and their parties have no lasting effect whatsoever on its existence.

Now think about elections, at every level, in the US and consider whether Jesus wondered if Octavian or Tiberius, Claudius or Caligula, was ‘God’s man’ for the Empire. Do you think the Apostles and apprentices of the early Church worried about whether there was prayer in Roman schools? When you look to the Scriptures, you never see them saying, “Oh no, oh noooo, Nero is a murderer, an adulterer, and a homosexual, what in the world are we going to do?” They understood that the Kingdom of Grace is, in Jesus’ own words, “not of this world” {Jn. 18:36a}; therefore, all the kingdoms of this world with all their power, persuasion, even persecution, could not stop its advance. It will go on conquering unto Eternity.

And what is our role in the Story? Our role is to give our lives over to it, wholeheartedly, to labor in the Cause of our King and to pray again and again and again without hesitation, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.” How? “On Earth,” exactly “as it is in Heaven.” Yes, Lord... let Your Kingdom come in the hearts of men and women, let Your freedom reign in the lives of Your own, let Your sovereign rule be seen in every word, every thought, every deed of every Disciple. In Your mighty name. Amen.

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org

A Kingdom of Humility.

The worst thing to ever happen to “the Faith,” as the earliest Followers of Jesus called their worship and their walk {Acts 6:7; 13:8; 14:22; 16:5}, was when it became the ‘official religion’ of the Roman Empire… sanctioned by the sword and all that this implies. As one writer put it: when “Constantine claimed to convert to Christianity in the early 4th century the Christian faith had gone from being an unknown religion to a misunderstood religion, to a persecuted religion, to a tolerated religion, to a favored religion, to the official religion of the Roman Empire.”

So, you see what’s happening here? It’s a stroke of genius by the enemy, a masterful countermove. Can’t conquer it by persecution, can’t destroy it from within by falsehood and Gnostic fables? Give it green-light status in the Empire’s arena and seduce it with wealth and luxury, prestige and power. Ingenious, if you think about it. We moved from faith in the power of the Cross to faith in the power of the sword. And we’re still trusting in the sword {in military might} ...while the Word sits waiting. I mean, why concern yourself with the Resurrection when you’ve already ascended the imperial throne?

It’s a heady thing to finally have real, raw power in your hands, as any teenage boy with a Trans-Am will tell you. The lust for power and prestige in the eyes of the world, like the lust for money, is a dangerous deception— one deadly to the Kingdom Christ told Pilate was “not of this world” and which He instructed His Disciples did not operate like the kingdoms of this world.

In this Kingdom the only authority which counts is that exercised by the King, which supersedes all others. In this Kingdom, the only power that matters is the power of love: love for Abba with everything we are, love for others because of how He loves us, and love for our enemies because our Father is more merciful than we can ever imagine {Lk. 6:27-36}. And in a world overflowing with petty conflicts, quarrels, hatreds and grievances, He is infinitely forgiving. In this Kingdom, the only example to follow is the Master’s Way of Humility. In His Kingdom, illustrated by a Life revelatory of Abba’s love, the last are first, the servants are the leaders, those who sacrifice in the Cause— time, money, attention, affection, respect, compassion, mercy, tenderness— may lose some things in Time but will gain all things in Eternity.

“‘I tell you the Truth,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this Age and, in the Age to Come, Eternal Life’” {Lk. 18:29-30}. “Then He called the crowd to Him along with His Disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after Me [This is what a disciple, an apprentice to a master, does. He ‘comes after’ the master he’s chosen; he follows in his footsteps.], he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me and for the Gospel will save it’” {Mk. 8:34-35}.

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org