Mechanics... Or Merely Mechanical?

There’s an area of unceasing talk in Christendom, an endless stream of gibbering present in every age, concerning what we might call ‘spiritual mechanics.’  Somebody, somewhere wants to know the ‘mechanics’ to this point or this principle or this passage.  “Give me some mechanics, show me how to do this!,” whatever ‘this’ happens to be.  Which is perfectly fine, in one sense, because there are some things we need to know in precisely this manner.  “How does this unfold?  What’s this going to look like?  How do I respond to this experientially?”  But my personal belief as a pastor is much of the laser-like focus on mechanics in the Body of Christ, just like much of our talk on the ‘how-tos,’ is not so much about walking with God and staying in step with His Spirit {i.e., living the Adventure of Faith from a place of intimacy}, as it is about a mechanical maneuvering to get what I want from God, or what I want out of His Word, with the least amount of disturbance to my self-protective life.

We want a formula for faith and there is no such thing.  “I want you to show me exactly three steps to this particular outcome, four steps to a favorable finish, a single prayer which guarantees health, wealth and wisdom.”  Are you getting the picture?  You following me?  Good.  Because if Life in the Kingdom of Christ ever becomes mechanical {defined by Webster’s as ‘machinelike; lacking spontaneity, expression, warmth, etc.’}, if it’s merely a matter of rote and ritual, then we have become post-modern Pharisees and our hearts are in big trouble.  As are the hearts of those we love.

The Way of Jesus— the Way of the Master and Messiah— is a Path of Prayer and Healing, a Path of purpose and power, and ultimately a Path of wholeness and holiness.  These two are flip sides of the same coin, by the way.  Jesus’ Path is one which for many of us, at different ages in Life, different stages of the Journey, varying levels of honesty and openness with God and with ourselves, takes every moment Abba has given us and encompasses them all.  The point of this Path is we keep coming back to Jesus, we keep walking in the Spirit’s Way, we let our heavenly Abba take another pass, another shot, another swipe at the hardness of our hearts, the brokenness of our lives, and the pain buried beneath the surface of our souls.  Like the unfolding of an onion, we let our Lord peel away the layers of suffering and selfishness which have held us captive.

The Journey begins with the simplest of prayers:

Abba, take me into my wound, into my brokenness— deeper than I have ever been.  I give You as my Father, Jesus as my Lord, the Spirit as my Guardian and Guide, permission… access to the deepest part of my soul and the deepest hurts of my heart.  Come and lead me into the darkness by the Light of Your Love.  Come and shepherd this lost little girl within me, this orphaned little boy within, tenderly and lovingly.  Let me be present in this place— fully awake to my wounded heart and fully aware of its phenomenal need.  Uncover my wounded soul, Father, and meet me there.  In Jesus’ holy and healing name ...Amen. 

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

Embracing the Possibility of Change.

“I do not recall another period when ‘faith’ was as popular as it is today.  ‘If only we believe hard enough, we’ll make it somehow.’  So goes the popular chant.  What you believe is not important.  Only believe....  What is overlooked in all this is that faith is good only when it engages Truth; when it is made to rest upon falsehood, it can and often does lead to eternal tragedy.  For it is not enough that we believe; we must believe the right thing about the right One.”— A.W. Tozer.

I absolutely love this quote from Tozer, a profoundly spiritual man, as passionate a seeker of the heart of God as any man in the 20^th century.  Most of us are acutely aware of just how dangerous post-modern life can be— at certain times and definitely in certain places: in Syria, St. Louis, the crosshairs of the NSA— thus most of us have no problem accepting the realism: Who you trust matters!  Along this same line, we should have no problem understanding, from an eternal perspective: What you believe matters!  Because what you believe is what you will live out of, plain and simple.  Be careful what you allow into your heart ...cause what you put into your heart {the centre of your soul} will come out in your life.  What we believe, have faith in, rest our trust upon, matters— immensely.  Especially concerning the possibility of change, the reshaping of our souls and remolding of our minds into the Master’s image.  And the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection Power to accomplish this end, the Spirit of the Risen Christ alive and well within us.

When we talk about embracing the possibility of change, and the radical reality of it, we’re not talking about the power of positive thinking.  We’re talking about looking to the living, breathing, abiding Word of God {Heb. 4:12}, letting it fill our hearts and minds with its wisdom, and choosing in the strength and authority of the Spirit of God, to act on it.  To live, to love, to forgive, to feel {yes feel} all those things we’ve been running from, hiding our heads under our pillows and hoping will go away, masking over with too much food and too much drink, with anger and arrogance and drugs and shopping and sex, with idol after idol.

The Love of God is a consuming fire, and a consuming fire is the only thing strong enough to destroy our idolatries and to heal our addictions.  The Love of God consumed our sin on the Cross; it can consume our shame if we will let it; it will consume the lies which have been eating away like a cancer in our souls, sabotaging us every step of the Way.  Finally, His Love consumes our hatred and our bitterness by the glory of His forgiveness.  The Cross is the soul-solution to the bitterness springing up from inside of us.

I love how Peterson puts Hebrews 12:28-29 in The Message.  “Do you see what we’ve got?  An unshakable Kingdom!  And do you see how thankful we must be?  Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God.  For God is not an indifferent bystander.  He’s actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and He won’t quit until it’s all cleansed.  God Himself is Fire!” {Heb. 12:28-29}.  Amen and amen.  Come, Lord Jesus ...and purify us by the fire of Your 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

One More Thought For the Rocky Road Ahead.

Through faith in the finished Work of Jesus we have a relationship with His heavenly Father.  And we live in a world full of other creatures made in His image, which means we each have a relationship with the world around us.  So, we have a relationship to the God who saved us, and we have a relationship to the people around us.  Which brings us to the third thing we need to note for the year ahead.  This is something I picked up from a blog by Christian author Donald Miller, and it is utterly and absolutely revelatory.

You have a relationship with yourself— make it a healthy one.  People who respect themselves feel better, in general, and feel better specifically about their own lives.

Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.  You become like the people you surround yourself with.  You doubt the validity of this?  See what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:33.  I want to ask.  What influence do you have on them and what effect do they have on you?  Are you maturing into the man or woman Christ created you to be, flowering into the fullness of His image, or shrinking into the shadows of your acquaintances?

If you want to respect yourself, start making decisions worthy of self-respect: start behaving in respectable ways, not engaging in disrespectful conversations about others.

If you want to feel better about your body— and I have never met a woman who didn’t— make wiser decisions with regard to your diet.  Choose, with the brain, the will, and the faithful heart God gave you, to eat healthier foods.  And not eat half a sheet cake ...or a chocolate pie, or those God-forsaken donuts sitting out front in churches every Son-day.

If you want to feel better physically, and have more energy and endurance, you’ve got to get out and walk.  You’ve got to exercise in some form or fashion: bicycle, mountain-climb, jump rope.  You’ve got to put a body not in motion into motion!

The point is: Make your relationship with yourself a good one.  Change the way you view you; and change it into the way Jesus views you.  “I am a Child of God in whom Jesus dwells.  And I live in my Father’s Kingdom.  This is who I am and where I am regardless of what may be raging around me.”  This is my Eternal Identity: the Beloved of Abba.

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

Two Thoughts For The New Year.

 I.  Change is inevitable.  The world is in a constant state of flux.  There are only two things which never change in a fallen world: the nature of Abba, and the nature of evil.  Everything else around us— nature, technology, cultures, societies, art, music, film, language— changes.  Everything.  People, relationships, marriages, families, communities of faith, for good or for ill, for better or for worse, they will change.  Change is inevitable.

II. Change is possible.  Spiritual transformation, a renewal of the human heart molded and shaped by the Master’s hands is not only highly possible, it is highly probable.  It is the inevitable goal of God’s Spirit at work within us: the end result of walking in Light of Jesus’ Love and drawing deeply on divine strength to combat what we know we cannot!

Why is this point so important?  Because most people don’t believe change is even possible.  They resign themselves, with an almost fatalistic sense of resignation, to the fact that whatever this is will always be this way.  And if you don’t believe something is even possible, what are the chances you’re ever going to see it materialize?  Your world-view is going to be reinforced, probably by people who refuse to change because, like you, they don’t believe it’s possible.  Or they just don’t want to.  To believe that personal change is impossible, or that ‘people don’t really change,’ is to ignore the power of God working its wonders in life after life after life.  It ignores the fact that your God is greater than all your hurts, heartaches, and hang-ups!

So here it is.  This is going to be my mantra for 2015.  If you want a different outcome, embrace a different path!  Which is simply my way of saying, “Stop doing the same things over and over and over expecting a different result.”  Change is possible, it’s probable, even inevitable... but not by thinking the same thoughts, speaking the same lies, and doing the same deeds that got us in this mess to begin with.

Don’t like the people around you?  Stop hanging out with them.  It’s not a ‘shotgun friendship,’ is it?  This may not be something you want to grasp, or are even ready to, but it’s not a complicated concept.

Burdened with responsibilities which aren’t yours to bear?  Start saying, “No” ...graciously.  To maintain your focus on Jesus’ Commission and Commands, you’re going to have to learn how to say, “No.”  And mean it.

Hate your job?  Many post-moderns in America do.  Ask Abba for another one, a different one.  Then start looking for openings, start dropping resumes, and start dreaming of what it is you really want to do.  Most people of working age in the US have come to value security over happiness with regard to their vocation {“comes from the same root as ‘voice,’ denoting the hearing of a divine call,” a way to put your ‘gifts’ into practice for God’s glory!}.  The Bible, however, is a sixty-six book narrative of faith-filled risk takers— Hebrews 11:32-40.  In light of the Letter of Hebrews, specifically, the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11, show me where it tells the Sons and Daughters of the One True God to value security over liberty, security over joy in Jesus Christ, security over walking in step with the Spirit and sharing His Love with the broken.

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 – where the Word and the Spirit are one.

A Love Unlike Any Other.

At the very end of Hebrews 12 the author tells us in a quote from Deuteronomy 4:24, that “‘Our God is a consuming fire’” {12:29}.  The immediate context says, “Therefore,” or since God will soon remove “what can be shaken”— that is, the realm of visible and temporal Creation— “so that what cannot be shaken”— meaning the spiritual, the invisible and Eternal— “may remain,” in light of this, “since we are receiving a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us be thankful....”  Echo means- ‘have and hold,’ lit. ‘in one’s hands, keep fast, preserve secure, possess as one’s property.’  “Let us have and hold on to charis, to grace,” is what it says, “let us keep it constantly in our hands, securely in our hearts, let us possess it as our birthright... every moment!”  You see how grace and gratitude are so interwoven Biblically that they’re used almost interchangeably by the Holy Spirit?  To be in possession of grace, to have and to hold it securely, is to maintain an attitude of constant gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness, a spirit of generosity and genuineness.

“And so worship God [Or lit., ‘by means of grace we may worship Abba’] acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire,’” v. 29.  Note how indispensable a ‘spirit of grace’ is to our acceptable worship of Abba.  Grace protects us, and those around us, from arrogance {‘I deserve....’}, from elitism {‘At least we’re not like....’}, and from a self-centred, self-directed spirituality {The ‘me, my and mine’ mentality!}.

So, Hebrews says, “Our God is a consuming fire.”  The apostle John wrote, then repeated, so there would be no mistaking this by you and I, that “God is love” {1 Jn. 4:8b and 16b}.  I think it’s entirely reasonable to conclude: The love of God, the love which God is, the love emanating from the centre of His being, is a consuming fire.  And to be ravished by it is to be radically and irreversibly altered.  No one, having been submersed in and surrounded by His flame, can ever be the same!  Follow me here.

Is is possible the love of our Lord is so unlike the trite phrases we use to describe what we ‘like’ and what we don’t, “I lovvvve _____ ,” this, that, whatever; is it possible His love is so utterly beyond us, so unlike anything we have ever experienced that the deepest, most profound connection between two human beings is merely the palest of comparisons?  Is it possible His Love is so powerful in motion, so pure in motive, so holy in Spirit and so healing to our souls, that the reality of its radical nature and the rhetoric we use to try and define it are universes apart?  And that there is no way, until we stand in Love’s Presence, we will fully understand what we so long to convey?  God’s love is a consuming fire.  While it welcomes the world into its flames, it will brook no bystanders content to warm their hands by its heat!  You are in the Flame or you are out, by our own choice, but no one will be left standing on the sides.  No one.

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 – where the Word and the Spirit are one.

By the Fire of His Love.

A few weeks back, on one of these rather cool wintry nights, I was sitting on my back porch, looking out at the night sky and thinking about what craziness, what chaos, what madness had engulfed so many lives in the past year— from Ukraine to Iraq, Kurdistan to Kansas, and Nigeria to NYC, in churches, countries, communities, in families, marriages, right down to the core of our most selfish selves.  Without a conscious decision to move in this direction, I simply lifted my hands to the stars and from my lips came these words, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.  Come with vengeance, come with fire, bring Your Kingdom down upon the nations of this Earth, upon the wickedness of evil men infected with greed and the lust for more.  Come, purify us by the fire of Your love!”  And this was the phrase which rang out like a shot in the night.  By the fire of Your Love.

Much will be destroyed in this holy fire; and much will be cleansed, for how could it not?  But those who belong to His Kingdom, a “Kingdom which cannot be shaken” {Heb. 12:28a}, will be purified... by the fire of His love.  I say this, not with the least amount of arrogance {‘Us vs. Them’}, but in the most earnest zeal and deepest desperation my heart can muster.

For I see, apart from the Return of the King to claim us as His Own, to strike down the nations with a rod of iron {including Israel}, to tread the winepress of Abba’s wrath and set right all the enemy has set wrong, no Hope on the horizon.  Things may improve in fits and starts, here and there, but there will be no peace for the souls of men, no Triumphant March toward human progress, no joy which cannot be shaken nor Life which cannot be taken, until Jesus takes up rulership of this Earth as King of all Kings and Lord of all Lords!  Then and only then will His-Story reach its climax; then and only then will we become what we were destined to be from the Beginning— true Sons and Daughters of the Living God.

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 – where the Word and the Spirit are one.

Taking Hold of What Is Truly Life.

In 1 Timothy 6:18, Paul answers for the Ephesian Brotherhood the question, following on the heels of renouncing their arrogance, their foolish faith in wealth, and putting their hope in Abba, ‘What’s left for us to do?’  Now that he’s told them, and us— ordered us, in fact— what not to do, he says, “Command them to do good.”  Use your “wealth” to “do good” for others.  This is the first and foremost thing.  You seeing this?  Use the resources of God, the riches of Jesus’ grace, to do good for other people, especially of the Family of Faith.

Next, “to be rich in good deeds.”  Let your life shine forth the very Light of the World, let the Master’s mercy reign in the “good deeds” you do.  Remember the Mission of the Messiah in Isaiah 61:1?  “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach Good News to the poor, the afflicted,” those unable to remove themselves from the place they’re currently in.  Jesus spent an enormous amount of time with social outcasts, with the purposely marginalized, with prostitutes and porn-stars, lepers and the AIDS-infected, with women no one would speak to and children no one cared to.  So, here’s the question.  How can we announce, in word and deed, the Glorious News of Grace to these this New Year?  Scripture tells us, “Whoever is kind to the needy honors God” {Prov. 14:31}.

Isaiah also wrote of the Messiah saying, “He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted,” to have a hand in their healing, “to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,” for those too blind to see just how bad off they really are.  It’s true some people in our technologically advanced society are still blind physically.  But many, many more are still blind emotionally and spiritually.  What are you going to do about it?  Help keep them in their “darkness” or lead them to the Light?

“And” the practical outworking of this ‘good deed doing’ is being “generous and willing to share.”  To “be generous” means to give freely of anything we may have.  “Willing to share” is beyond “generous,” it speaks to our willingness to sit down at a meal with, to suffer alongside of, the poor, and bring them into friendship with us, with our families, and with our Community.

V. 19, “In this way”— through ‘doing good, being generous, and sharing our hearts and lives’— “they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the Coming Age, so that [This is the purpose, the point he’s driving at:] they may take hold of the Life that is truly Life.”  He’s not talking about the Life of Eternity we receive when we trust Jesus with all we are, he’s talking about the Life of inner abundance Jesus spoke of in John 10:10, a Life of joy built on generosity.  Think about it.  Paul’s saying we experience the Life of God flowing through us not by what we keep but by what we give away, not by what we hoard up for some mystical rainy day but by using the riches God’s given us for His glory— that His name may go forth to the ends of the Earth, that His Word may be praised, His glory seen and His honor lifted high!

Every time we could give in the Cause of our King, and we don’t, it lessens the wealth laid up for us in the Age to Come; and every time we give, letting the Holy Spirit have His way with us, it increases exponentially the riches laid up for us when this ‘present world’ fades into dust.  At one point in their Journey together Peter say’s to Jesus, “We have left all we had to follow you!”  Jesus just sort of stops him in mid-sentence and says, “I tell you the truth….  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. 18:28-30}.

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 – where the Word and the Spirit are one.