Desire Is Destiny.

There’s a particular phenomenon in the grammar of the New Testament which you might find interesting.  It lies at the heart of what it means to follow in the Master’s footsteps.  It’s called the subjunctive mood, or quite legitimately the ‘mood of volition,’ of human will, free agency.  We might even call it the ‘mood of potential.’  Verbs in the subjunctive mood are used over and over again in the writings of the Apostles and Prophets, often frequently in a single context.

What do they mean for you and I?  Well, there’s a little equation at work in the Kingdom of God.  Potential + Capacity = Reality.  There’s a potential out there which Abba desires for us, and we’re meant to desire for ourselves.  It’s something we can have or something we can not have; it’s something we can receive or something we can reject.  Our primary priority is salvation, redemption through the Son of God.  The potential of eternal deliverance, when you add the capacity of faith, equals the reality of grace.

Let’s look at this in light of three things.

 I.  Deliverance {from sin, darkness, and death}.  It’s a potential for every last member of the human race, especially for the least and the last.  How do you receive it?  By faith.  When the capacity of faith in the finished Work of Jesus is exercised, the potential is no longer potential.  Now it becomes reality.

II. Growing As a Child of God.  Babies, Adolescents, full grown Sons and Daughters, Heroes of Faith, and onward and upward into Friends of God.  It’s a potential for every Lover of Jesus alive on planet Earth right now!  There is, just like in redemption, a capacity.  Once again, the capacity is faith— faith on a step by step, moment by moment, day by day basis.  The reality comes one Spirit-enabled step at a time.

III. As Abba’s Children look beyond the Cross and beyond our own growth spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually, we begin to look to the Crown.  And we know that the ‘Crowns,’ the rewards, the decorations for valor in conflict and competition, have a price.  There’s only one qualification for these honors— faith.  If you qualify for salvation, you get it.  What’s the qualification?  Faith.  If you qualify for growing into Abba’s likeness, you get it.  What’s the qualification?  Faith.  You have to embrace it, be willing to believe, reach out in trust and turn loose of control, to grow one more step ...and when you do, there it is.  If you want spiritual blessing, temporal power, and historical impact, how do you qualify?  Very simple— by faith!  When you qualify, you have it.

A person qualifies for martyrdom by having a faith which is above and beyond most ‘believers,’ a passion to know Jesus personally and powerfully.  That’s what the Apostles had, a relentless passion for the Person of Jesus.  This kind of love, relentless and undaunted by the weight of the World, will change a destiny: a single human life, a marriage, a family, a Community of Faith, a city, a state, even an empire.  Desire is destiny.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Love Offers Absolution.

To experience the Life we long for, the very Life of Jesus flowing from within us {Jn. 7:38-39}, we must come to grips with this simple fact: true freedom can be found only in forgiveness.  As long as the weight of your wounds stands squarely on your shoulders, and the shame of your sins lies hidden in your heart, you will never be free the way Abba intended you to be.  And you will live in chains, love in fear, and worship half-heartedly, as one of the ‘walking wounded,’ one who’s never found Jesus’ healing and restoration for themselves.  To be honest, who hasn’t felt like one of the Walking Wounded ...condemned to wandering the shame-filled wasteland of our own bruised and broken past?

Yet, hope arrives— as it frequently does— in the form of Love.  1 Corinthians 13:5 says, that “love” {the passionate and powerful agape of God} “is not rude,” it never disgraces others or dishonors itself; it keeps a sense of grace and tact in all circumstances.  And “it is not self-seeking.”  Love does not insist upon its rights, but rather remembers its responsibilities.  How many problems in life would be solved, just simply avoided, if this one single thought were always on our hearts?  Life is not about me ‘demanding my rights,’ though there is a time and place to stand up for them; but the time and place is not to ‘prove my rightness’!  It’s not about what I believe life owes me, it’s about the phenomenal debt I owe to the Lord Jesus Christ, the ‘duty of desire’ which demands my allegiance to the King of all Kings.  Paul goes on to say, “love [as it flows from the heart of Abba and through our hearts by His Spirit {Rom. 5:5}] is not easily angered,” which means love does not view life from the angle of anger and exasperation.  Exasperation, as anyone who’s ever been married or had a child understands, is a sign of defeat.  It means the Battle is not going well.

Finally, the Apostle says, love “keeps no record of wrongs” {NIV}.  This final phrase is from logizomai, an ancient accounting term, which spoke of ‘recording something in your ledger in order to hold it against somebody and punish them for it.’  It means you keep a long list of grievances locked away in your soul which, when the time is right, you take out and tally up.  It refers to relationships where we’re constantly asking, “Are the positives outweighing the negatives or are there scores I need to settle?”  Understand this: God’s Love never holds a grudge; it keeps no record of wrong, sin, or evil.  It is not resentful, ever-longing for revenge, and as TLB puts it, “will hardly even notice when others do it wrong.”  Wow.  Where is this love today?  We hear about it, we teach about it, theologians and story-tellers alike love to write about it, songwriters galore sing verses about it… but where is it?

If we’re going to keep our souls from being burdened with a lengthy list of unforgiven grievances, if we’re going to guard our hearts from the enemies of bitterness and resentment, we’re going to have to learn how to forgive.  Plain and simple.  As the Father in His Son has forgiven us— Romans 4:6-8; 1 John 2:12; cf. with Mark 11:25; Colossians 3:13; and 1 John 1:9.  Abba offers us— in the words of author Brennan Manning— “gratuitous forgiveness,” complete absolution for any wrong we may have done.  Should we not do the same for those we claim to love?

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Nullifying the Effect of Grace.

In Galatians 5:4 the issue is no longer ‘works plus faith’ for salvation {as earlier in Paul’s Letter}, now it’s ‘works— circumcision, obedience to the Law, social justice, tea-totaling, militarism, nationalism, the right kind of political opinions, etc.— plus faith’ for intimacy with the God of all grace.  The Apostle is waging war not just against legalism but against anyone, be it Judaizers, Gnostics, or any other group or organization which distorts the Gospel of Grace and impedes the unbeliever’s access to relationship with Abba.  “You who are trying to be justified [‘declared righteous in the eyes of Abba, eternally acquitted of all your misdeeds and sinful sidesteps’] by Law have been alienated from Christ: you have fallen away from grace,” 5:4.

Katargeo means- ‘nullify the effect of, render inoperative; deprive of force, influence, or power.’  The Saints in Galatia were, by their own actions, ‘nullifying the effect of grace, rendering it inoperative in their lives and relationships— primarily with Abba, then as always happens, with each other— ‘depriving grace of its force, influence, and power’ in their experience.

In this section {5:1-6:10} Paul’s teaching centres around an outworking of grace designed to correct the havoc this false teaching was causing in the Galatians’ lives.  This is why in vv. 1-3 he said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.  Mark my words!  I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.  Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised, that he is obligated to obey the whole Law.”  When you look at the context of vv. 1-4, there are at least three things which stand out immediately, three things worth noting.

 I.  In Christ there is grace.  Jesus is the Author of grace and the Source of grace.  Since we are “in Him” from the moment we trusted Him, we have all the blessings, resources, and provisions of the Kingdom of Grace at our disposal, something no other People before Pentecost had been able to say.

II.  In grace there is freedom.  Not the freedom to do just as we please, to follow the “sinful nature” down a path of self-gratification, but the Freedom to live and love by the Spirit.  We’re not functioning as automata in Christ— jack-booted brownshirts who look the same, speak the same, act the same, just going through the motions, oblivious to everything around us— but as individuals in Christ.  In this ‘freedom of grace’ the ultimate Role-Model is not some man or woman out here in the world, but the King of all Kings.

III. In freedom there is power.  We have the ‘spiritual power’ to operate according to His will and His Word, not out of fear, coercion or manipulation, but out of love, passion and desire for who and what Abba is!  This unconquerable power is the omnipotence of the One who indwells us.

The Galatian Saints had left the realm of grace, those gorgeous, shimmering Fields of Grace, and were operating in the realm of law.  They had taken their stand on legalism, on them earning and God owing, as opposed to the lavish generosity of Jesus.  And Law and grace, legalism and grace— pre or post-salvation— are mutually exclusive.  They cannot coexist!

The solution, as almost always in Scripture, follows right on the heels of the problem.  Paul writes in v. 5, “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope [‘for which we wait with conviction and assurance’].  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love,” v. 6.  You seeing this?  “The only thing that counts....”

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously