The Hardest Lesson to Learn.

Christian author John Eldredge writes in his immensely beautiful book Desire, that “It can’t be done. No matter how hard we try, no matter how clever our plan, we cannot arrange for the life we desire. ...This is the... lesson we must learn, and in many ways the hardest to accept. We must have life; we cannot arrange for it. People will avoid this lesson all their days, changing their plans, their jobs, even their mates, rather than facing the truth.

...‘In this world you will have trouble.’ No kidding. Jesus, the master of understatement, captures in one sentence the story of our lives. He adds, ‘But take heart! I have overcome the world’ {Jn. 16:33}. Why aren’t we more encouraged? (Sometimes we’ll try to feel encouraged when we hear a ‘religious‘ passage like this, but it never really lasts.) The reason is that we are still committed to arranging for life now. Be honest. Isn’t there a disappointment when you realized that I’m not going to offer you the seven secrets of a really great life today? If I wanted to make millions, that’s the book I would write. The only thing is, I would have to lie. It can’t be done. Not yet. And that yet makes all the difference in the world because desire cannot live without hope. But hope in what? For what?

‘Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed’ {1 Pet. 1:13}. I read a passage like this, and I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Fully? We don’t even set our hope partially on the Life to come. Not really, not in the desires of our hearts. Heaven may be coming. Great. But it’s a long way off and who really knows, so I’m getting what I can now. ...For most Christians, Heaven is a backup plan. Our primary work is finding a life we can at least get a little pleasure from here. Heaven is an investment we’ve made, like Treasury bonds or a retirement account, which we’re hoping will take care of us in the future sometime, but which we do not give much thought to at present. It’s tucked away in a drawer at the back of our minds, while we throw our immediate energies into playing the stock market. God comes in like a corporate raider, ruining our plans as we watch our ‘stocks’ go into a tailspin.

‘Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart....’ {Deut. 8:2-3}. When the Israelites left Egypt, they headed across the Red Sea to Mt. Sinai. From there it was only about a two week journey into the Promised Land. Fourteen days turned into forty years. A blind camel would have found its way sooner than that. God designed a supernaturally long trail in order to deal with what was in their hearts.

...God must take away the heaven we create, or it will become our hell. You may not think your efforts to arrange for a little of what you desire are anything like heaven on Earth. I certainly didn’t; not, at least, in the more conscious regions of my heart. But some deep and tender part of us gets trapped there in those times and places where we have had a taste of the life we long for. ...I realized that the real issue is this: I haven’t wanted to be an eternal person. I’ve wanted to find life here somehow. I think at any time during those years of thwarting, had you asked me if I truly longed for Eternity, I would have said yes. My answer would not have been dishonest, but it would not have been entirely true, either. George MacDonald explained the thwarting,

"Thy hand unloved its pleasure must restrain,
Nor spoil both gift and child by lavishing too soon.”

{Italics and Emboldens Mine}

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

Eternally Identified With the King and His Kingdom.

According to the King’s Commission {Matt. 28:16-20}, those who watch our words and listen to our lives are to be evangelized, “baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” then enlisted as Disciples and disciple-makers. This public ‘declaration of allegiance’ associates them with Jesus, as baptize always did in the ancient world, it ‘identifies’ them with the person of Jesus Christ and the Triune God.

The Greek verb baptize which, when you add up all the aggregate ideas underlying it, means at its base- ‘to identify,’ that is, ‘to identify with a purpose.’ It was used by poets, dramatists, and historians in ancient Greece to connote the identification of one object with another to such an extent the very nature of the first object is altered dramatically from that point forward. Baptizo was used in Classical Greek of blacksmiths immersing hot iron in water to temper it, and of Greek soldiers placing the points of their swords, and barbarians the points of their spears, in a vat of pig’s blood. By identifying the spears with blood, they transformed the nature of the spear from a tool for hunting to a weapon of war.

Baptizo was also used of a dye-maker, someone who dyed wool or cloth for another by dipping the garment into the dye, bringing it up, then drying it. What do you think: has this material been radically altered, vastly changed from its former condition {from snow white to royal blue or bloody crimson}? The kingdom of culture, ever vying for our attention and affection with the Kingdom of God, seems to be preoccupied with the issue of ‘color’ ...with the mingling of the races in America and how to accomplish its vision of equality. While I’m neither a political scientist nor a sociologist, from the vantage point of liberty and common sense I can give you a couple of hints here.

Treat everyone equally, to begin with: as citizens under the same Constitution. Not one set of rules and laws for the rich, and another for the poor, one for those who can afford quality legal counsel and one for those who can’t, one for certain races or classes and one for the rest.

America now has what can only be classified as a Prison-Industrial Complex, a for-profit penal system where states which have embraced this form of privatization are required to keep occupancy at or above 90%. And guess what? No surprise: we have more criminals, more convictions, and longer sentences than ever before. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. From 1980 to 2008 our prison population quadrupled— from 500,000 to 2.3 million— the vast majority of this incarceration increase due to two things: an horrific failure popularly known as the ‘War on Drugs’ and federally mandated ‘minimum sentencing guidelines.’ This means for many non-violent drug-related offenses a judge cannot hand down a sentence less than this {whatever ‘this’ is mandated to be}. There’s something wrong with this picture, this mass Prison-Industrial Complex… whatever your race!

Give us a tax code which is fair and flat: where people making $30,000 a year are not paying more in taxes than Exxon-Mobil does while raking in record-profits.

Make the only qualifications for employment, public or private, one’s personal qualifications for employment: not what you look like or where you come from, i.e., race, color, class, etc.

Let the government at every level stop playing class warfare, race warfare, party warfare: and watch how people band together and rise up, regardless of color.

And on a personal level, a relational level, it’s a simple as “treat others the same way you want to be treated... do for everyone what you would want done for you” {Matt. 7:12; Lk. 6:31}. This is genuine respect between human beings; it’s also a proactive holiness in action! And wouldn’t that make for a refreshing change in human relations?

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

When We Go Wherever We Go.

The command to “make disciples of all nations” means the Glorious News of Jesus’ finished Work, of the availability of His Kingdom here and now to ordinary men and women just like you and I, the proclamation that entrance into it and relationship with the One who rules it is open to any and all, is to “go” forth into “all” the world.

When we “go” we’re fulfilling the first participle of Matthew 28:19-20, the initial ‘means’ of executing the King’s Commission. “Go” is a fairly simple concept. It means ‘Don’t get too content here... in this place, in this time, in this culture of corruption.’ Don’t sink your roots too deep, cause everything you see around you which is not rooted in the Kingdom of Eternity is going to be “shaken” and sifted one Day, never to return {Heb. 12:26-28}. You, my friend, are to be active and engaged, a man ‘on the move,’ a woman ‘in motion.’ That’s “going.” Waiting, without laboring, is not what the promise of Jesus’ Return is designed to produce!

You hear people sometimes say, “I’m waiting on God.” In some cases the only legitimate response to this is, “To do what exactly?” Make His Commission any clearer? The other side of this is also true, and that is God is waiting on you. I can tell you what Jesus is waiting on. He’s waiting on us to choose a deliberate action to our days; He’s waiting on us to choose an intentionality to our lives in His Kingdom. There is no substitute for this if we intend to “make disciples” and bear the fruit for which we were saved— Ephesians 2:10. And bearing fruit through apprentice-making, by teaching flesh-and-blood human beings with passion, training them in genuine experience, initiating them into the Life of the Spirit, is precisely what God has “prepared for us to do.”

The idea is not complicated. Let me flesh it out for you. “As we’re going, when we’re going, wherever we’re going,” we fulfill the King’s Commission = we “make disciples” and ‘disciple-makers.’ Jesus is not looking for more ‘church-members,’ Jesus is not looking for more ‘small-group attendees,’ for more faithful ‘tithers’ or ‘devotional readers.’ He is looking for men and women who will lay down their lives for the sake of His Kingdom. Their lives from beginning to end, not just their life when it comes to an end! Cause martyrdom, without having lived a life of love, is little more than suicidal vanity.

So, we come back to the question. What are you willing to give, or give up, for the sake of the Son of God? “Aaannnhhhh, not much, to be honest. I kind of like what I have: the way I’ve arranged it, the control I exercise over it. I’m rather fond of it, actually. I consider it mine, and myself its exclusive owner.” Yeahhh... you might want to be careful with that. What you think you ‘own’ when all is a gift of grace; and whether what you think you ‘own’ doesn’t end up owning you!

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

What In the World Do We Do Now?

According to Matthew 28:19 the earliest Disciples were to make more disciples. How? By relentlessly proclaiming the Truth concerning Jesus. Jesus. Not God as some ‘cultural concept’ which may or may not be relevant to any aspect of our experience, but Jesus the Anointed One— His Son, our Savior. The Apostles were to proclaim the reality which they themselves had seen and heard, the Reality which John said “was from the Beginning, which we have heard” with our own ears, “seen with our own eyes,” inspected with our hearts and touched with our hands: “this we proclaim!” {1 Jn. 1:1}.

The problem with our proclamation is: We know what Jesus is, we just don’t know who Jesus is! You can believe all the right things, but when you have almost no practical, tangible knowledge of Him as Lover of your life, Healer of your heart, Restorer of your soul, no intimate experience of His power, His presence, His passion which you could pass on to another in a given moment of Time, you have no real Message to proclaim. Either by Life or by lips. Cause that’s how you apprentice people to Jesus.

The situation the Church finds itself in today is that we’re equipped with authority, we’re just not interested in exercising it! “Don’t bother us with your Plan, Commissioner, or your Book of guidelines and guardrails. We’ve got plans of our own. We’ve got ladders to climb, businesses to build, money to make, families to tend to, buildings to maintain, programs to engage and people to persuade. We’re doing what You asked. We’re just doing it the way we want to do it.” I’d like to suggest just maybe, consider this remote possibility, we’re not doing what He laid down when He left us here. At all.

There’s a reason this is called the Great Commission and not the Great Suggestion. What I’d like to call it is ‘The King’s Commission’ because it’s backed, as He promised, by every ounce of His awesome authority! The King’s Commission involves one command, one, “make Disciples.” This command is accompanied by three participles in the Greek: “going, baptizing,” and “teaching.” Anytime you have an imperative surrounded by participles, the participles give us the means to executing the command. ‘Going, baptizing, and teaching’ is the ‘how-to’ for ‘making disciples.’ You with me?

When Jesus speaks of “apprenticing all nations” He’s saying the presence of a Follower of His ought to have national and international implications. Nobody should have to wonder what Side you’re on. It ought to be clear by the color of your jersey: Offense, not defense; the Victors, not the vanquished! Do you find the people around you in the social spheres you inhabit, not really sure of where your allegiance lies, whether your allegiance belongs to the Kingdom of Christ or the kingdom of culture? This would imply you’re doing it wrong. So, whatever it is you’re doing, don’t. Is there enough evidence from the gracious Life you live, from the generous love you give, to convict you of being a Disciple— a vocal, visible, visceral Reflection of the King of Kings? Or are you just another pompous, pretentious adherent of denominational religiosity ...a post-modern Pharisee of whatever persuasion strikes your fancy this year?

You can be a believer in the Gospel Message, you can be a Follower of the Mighty King, or you can be a Maker of Apprentices. Which one is it going to be? The challenge stands… and you and I are accountable to it. As Dallas Willard once wrote, “You are becoming right now who you will be— forever.”

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

Authority From Above.

Spring Game at the U of A took place this past Saturday. Football has been in the air for the past several weeks. And anytime a football game is played, in the NFL or in the SEC, you have three teams on the field: the home team, the opposing team, and the officiating team. It’s the job of the third team, the referees, to exercise the authority given them by the Commissioner. Their job is to enforce the rules found in the Book which governs the field of play. They are to bring the standards of another ‘kingdom,’ the authority found up there {in the case of the NFL: 280 Park Ave., NYC}, to the chaos on the field down here! You following me?

Matthew tells us when “Jesus came to” His Disciples, the first thing He “said” to them is, “All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to Me” {28:18}. Over and out. Why given to Him? Because He alone has conquered sin, death, and darkness! And because it honors the Father, as Jesus told us in John 5, to give all judgment and authority into the hands of the Son.

He’s not mincing words here, is He? Jesus of Nazareth, the Risen Messiah— whose historical Resurrection was so verifiable Jewish leaders had to bribe soldiers to spread the Lie that His Followers had stolen His body— is claiming, listen to it, “all authority in Heaven and on Earth!,” meaning ‘up there’ and ‘down here.’ Or to put it more plainly: “I’m in charge now. In Eternity and in History, My rule is the Rule!”

Now, two of the most common words for ‘power’ in the Greek are dunamis, from which we get the word ‘dynamite.’ It is dynamic spiritual power, explosive power. The other is exousia, and exousia is the kind of power a ruler would exercise; it means- official power, authoritative power {Eph. 6:12; Col. 2:10; 1 Pet. 3:22}. In our passage it’s used “of Jesus’ absolute authority” ...as the Sovereign over all sovereigns, all “rule... authority, power and dominion” {Eph. 1:21}.1 In a game, whether professional or collegiate, the players on the field are younger, stronger, and faster than the officials on the field, the coaches on the sidelines, or the fans in the stands. They have dunamis {explosive power}; the officials have exousia {authoritative power}. The players can take you down, the refs can take you out! They have the ruling authority of the Commissioner up there put into action on the field of conflict down here!

This is the basis of what we do, and why we go {offering Hope to the hopeless, baptizing them into eternal Community, and training them to follow the Spirit in faith}. It’s Jesus’ authority, not our own. “Go out in My authority. Wield it wisely, exercise it commandingly, display it in the way you live, the way you love, before a watching and wounded world!” This is the King’s Commission for each and every one of us who long to ‘follow’ in His footsteps. Are you a believer in the Message, or a maker of more Messengers? Believer in or Apprentice of-- that’s the choice.

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

What’s It Going to Be?

The Cross is the beginning of the glorious work of God in Christ. It is the “power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” {Rom. 1:16b} and the demonstration of His eternal Triumph over every enemy named and unnamed. Notice I said it’s the beginning, not the end. {And a glorious beginning it is.} But does it surprise you that everything we need is not finalized and finished in this one place? The finished Work of Jesus includes the Resurrection and Ascension; and these are key pieces to the puzzle if you hope to ever have victory over Satan’s System, your own sin-nature, and the realm of the demonic. And that’s just the thing. You can …if you will fight for it! But you must take a stand— in faith— on all that Jesus did for you and within you, and never relent, never back down, never relinquish the hard-fought ground of Grace.

From the Resurrection flows all the power we need to live lives that are whole and healed, in humility and with honor. In the Resurrection power of Jesus there is Life and life abundant. His Ascension and acceptance at the right hand of God is where authorityresides. The right hand of God as a place of power, glory, prominence, prestige, honor and authority comes down to us from the practice of ancient kings. Jesus ascended to the Throne of His Father as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” {Rev. 17:14; 19:16}, that is, having accomplished every last thing Abba had set before Him He is now the rightful Ruler of the Universe— King over all kings and Lord over all lords.

It is this authority, this might, this rulership we exercise every time we end a prayer ‘in Jesus’ name,’ for the ‘name’ in both Hebrew and Greek signifies the essential characteristics of a person: his status, his power, his might, his majesty, the intrinsic nature of the individual. There is no greater authority to appeal to in the midst of spiritual warfare, in battling the forces of darkness, than the One who completed their conquest and now sits enthroned at “the right hand of the Majesty on high” {Heb. 1:3}.

It requires the full work of Jesus for our full sanctification from the enemies around us. We must bring by faith His full work— the Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension— over our lives, our marriages, our friendships, our families, our ministries, and against the powers of darkness seeking to deceive, distract, and destroy us. The key to spiritual warfare is the simplest thing in the world: the willingness to recognize it, and to take a stand against it! It’s that simple. The willingness to fight, faithfully and fiercely, is the most powerful step you can take. “I will not give way to this. I will not stand by while those I love or lead are brought to ruin. Including me!” Your stand in the power and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ can change the course of Time for all Eternity.

Conversely, your unwillingness to acknowledge it means you get to be a walking target, with a soft soul ever-ready to soak up the enemy’s arrows like a spiritual sponge. Not a place I highly recommend. So, what’s it going to be? A fierce Warrior in the Cause of Christ, battling in the might and power of his holy Master, or a complacent pin cushion for “all the flaming arrows of the evil one” {Eph. 6:16c}, a living, breathing bull’s-eye? It’s your choice.

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

Resurrection Means a New Life in Time.

Make no mistake, the Resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of our Faith. If you look down the corridors of Time through the Long Hall of History, the Cross is the centre-point but the Resurrection is the turning point. Nothing will ever again be as it was before. There is Hope for a Life with God far beyond the walls of this world for one reason and one reason only, the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

But there’s a point we often miss in our Easter Celebrations, our glorying in the bodies that will be ours, and it’s this. The Resurrection is about so much more than a new body in Eternity; it means a new Life in Time, a new power at work within us, a supernatural courage and conviction, boldness and bravery to our witness in the world, a divine endurance to our labor and love in the Kingdom of Christ! Paul in Romans 6:4— inspired by the Spirit of the Living God— said “we were buried with” Jesus “through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new Life.”

You think he meant that or was he just being dramatic, just waxing poetic? “Ohhhhh, it’s not a ‘new life,’ it’s just a new destiny… a little ‘fire insurance’ right? Sure, He redeemed me from my slavery to sin, ransomed me from darkness and death, His righteousness dwells within me, His own Eternal Life is alive within my soul, His Spirit occupies the now holy place of my heart so I’ll never walk alone— unaided, unadvised, unaccompanied, unempowered. But, why should things change? Why should I have to submit to His will, to His leading and His prompting? Your will be done, but my will is fun!” For the moment. We all know this Story.

Why? “In order that we may live a new Life.” That’s why. “In order that we may live a new Life.” See, that’s the purpose, that’s the point …that’s the point of the Resurrection of Jesus, that’s why the Holy Spirit has now come to live inside of us. To do through us and within us what Jesus in the flesh, on the outside, could only do for us. This is exactly what He told His disciples, is it not? In John 14:16, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor [‘Another’ just like Me] to be with you [How long?] forever— the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you,” v. 17.

Because of the Holy Spirit “within” us, not just indwelling but filling, dominating, overwhelming, controlling, we’ve been ushered into a Life, welcomed into a Kingdom, not a little different or a little better than the life we once lived, or kinda like the world at work around me, Satanic Central with its schedules, its deadlines, its P & L statements, its hectic and hurried pace draining away my joy and fruitfulness, but a “new Life,” a life centred in the Son of God and lived from the Spirit of God, a radical restructuring of all we once knew, all we once considered indispensable to our happiness and well-being! This is the glory, the power and the majesty of the Resurrection. It is Life in Jesus... and Jesus in action in Life.

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