Like Jesus

You are never more like Jesus, than when you are choked with compassion, with the brokenness of others.

- Brennan Manning

Flesh And The Ministry

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. –Romans 8:1

If God is revealing a person’s flesh, should he stop ministering? It is not as odd a question as one might think. I am often asked it by those who do ministry, for it is a question that the enemy loves to plant in the mind of a disciple of Christ. After Peter’s denial, should Peter have just quit? I believe that God is dealing with us continually and bringing us into conformity with what we have always had in Jesus. Ministry remains constant while our growth—the increasing revelation of what as Christians we have always had and been--is in flux. In short, much of our insight during times of ministry comes from having already been where the people are to whom we are talking. I often look across my office and see in a person the very things that have been in me. Our experiences equip us to minister. Peter denied the Lord and yet ministered on the very topic later. He had been there. If being there disqualifies a believer, Peter would have been disqualified. Past experiences (even failures) equip us to minister in the present, and though we have grown through them and can then minister from what we gained from them, that will not rule out the possibility of a life full of like experiences. This may sound odd, but personal growth in private areas of life can be unrelated to the ministry occurring today, even though it is preparation for further ministry in the future. Many make a mistake when they see flesh in their lives and proceed to listen to the enemy as he whispers that they are not fit, they will bring dishonor to Jesus, and they are hypocrites. The enemy’s goal is accomplished to the extent that the believer withdraws from ministry. What does such retreat really accomplish? Time is taken away because of a newly revealed area of the flesh, and an attempt is made to fix the issue. The believer’s eyes are taken off of Jesus, he is no longer giving of himself to others, and he becomes absorbed with the problem, all of which are counterproductive. Also, does he really believe that this will be the FINAL issue in his life? Does he believe that this revelation of his flesh is the last one? When a believer thinks that he has dealt with all the flesh that will ever be revealed, he is deceived and only seeing flesh from his own definition. He must come to see that the continuous process of revelation of flesh and resulting renewed reliance upon Jesus is what keeps his teaching fresh. “There is nothing the nearness of Jesus will not cure.”Even today His nearness may be fixing a problem in any or all of us!  

Why Every Day Is An Adventure

I’ve just begun a two-week trip to South Africa, where I will be meeting with people in Durban, Cape Town, Mulzenburg, and finish up in the Johannesburg area. I have no idea what God has in store for me or the people I’ll be with over that time. I don’t go anywhere anymore with notes and topics I want to speak on. I used to. I’d “discern” what “God wanted” me to “impart” to others and then bring lots of notes to lecture from.

Somehow all of that faded away a a couple of decades ago. I discovered that my plans were mostly, well, my plans. I thought they were God’s because it was stuff on my heart after I had prayed for wisdom, but I came to discover that they were mostly formulated so I wouldn’t have to worry about what I’d say. But more and more I noticed that God was nudging the conversation elsewhere and sticking to my notes became more difficult and less effective.

I discovered that my “preparation” was about my need to have all my ducks in a row and it kept me from helping people by joining them in their world, sharing where needs and interest lie, rather than where I was comfortable or thought I’d be most entertaining. It was a gradual process of learning to encounter people in “their time” rather than my own. I also learned that God was more concerned with how I was living alongside him and loving who is in front of me today than he was giving me a topic to speak on a week from now.  He is the God of the present after all. And while I was praying for future events, I was missing opportunities right in front of me.

So I’m learning to walk with God each day in whatever circumstances I’m in.  I don’t show up with my plans anymore, but simply with a prepared heart ready to see what people are hungry for and how I might help. Oh, I might have an inkling of things God will sprinkle into the conversation, but I use them only if they unfold in the moment. It has been so much more helpful to people who are really on a journey of living in the Father’s love to let them shape the conversation and offer myself as a resource for their journey, rather than try to dazzle them with mine.

And it has helped live more full in the present, whether I’m home, on a plane, or in a far off land.  That’s why I have come to love this quote by Aldous Huxley because it captures the possibilities that every day affords us:

Every moment of our human life is a moment of crisis; for at every moment we are called upon to make an all-important decision – to choose between the way that leads to death and spiritual darkness, and the way that leads towards light and life; between interests exclusively temporal, and the eternal order; between our personal will, and the will of God.

A Quest for Values
I realize this can be read from the darkness of performance, where a demanding God is looking over our shoulder every moment judging everything you do or say. That is how I used to see him and I didn’t enjoy quotes like this because they just made me paranoid. No matter how many good decisions I made, I know I wouldn’t get them all right and I was far more aware every day of where I fell short, than where I had leaned into love and life.

That’s the problem with performance-living. Every day demanded perfection, which of course wasn’t possible so every day ended in frustration and confession and pledges to try harder.  But you now what? No child would learn to play piano, baseball, or ride a bike if they had to be perfect at it on the first day. God intended life to be an adventure, not were we get it all right today, but where we simply make progress in learning to walk alongside him and see the world through his eyes. Then we’ll know how to live and that will spill over in helping others.

I love how he is setting me free on the inside to be more aware of what’s unfolding around me and have a sense about how I might be loving, kind, or helpful to others. It’s not a demand of his; it’s an adventure of mine to learn a bit more each day what an amazing world he created and how I can be in it to bring hope and healing rather than more destruction.

Nope, I’m not perfect, but I am making progress and I honestly think that’s all he desires for me.

- Wayne Jacobsen

Why does God plough so deep?

Truly this explains much of the processing through which God’s elect has been passing, for the Lord purposes to bring forth a crop, full fruitage, even to an hundredfold, therefore there have been these tremendous crushing experiences which have broken up the hard clods of our pre-conceived ideas and opinion, the rocks of our stubborn self-will, and the inbedded roots of our own fleshly desires and ways, and the carnal traditions of religion which resisted the inworking of truth. Deeper and deeper have dug the plowshares of the Spirit, breaking up the fallow ground, grinding, smashing, tearing, loosening, breaking up the self-life until all is subdued before Him, until nothing remains but the fine soil for the seed to grow in. The plowman has not been plowing in us all this time just for the sake of plowing, but the preparation is that there might be the sowing of HIS LIFE, that there might be brought forth a harvest of the same kind. That’s what the Garden of God is all about! The Christ-life is being sown, and this means the growing up of a whole new species, a new creation which shall ultimately come forth in the image and likeness of God, to the praise of His glory. Many of the Lord’s precious apprehended ones have wondered why we were plowed so deeply, why God allows us to be broken up to the deepest recesses of our beings, until every way within us has been tried, but it is that HIS LIFE MIGHT FASTEN ITS ROOTS DEEP WITHIN US, so that from deep within, from our very nature, would spring forth the fruitage of Himself.

Identify the Enemy

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).

We attended a bullfight in Spain, which, though it may not be the pinnacle of enjoyable experiences, is nonetheless an interesting one. Having grown up around a farm, the kill before butchering was never something I looked forward to. Some would argue that the death of the bull in a bullfight is as humane as the death in a slaughterhouse. I do know that in the bullring the beast has his moments of glory, and after watching six bulls defy the matadors, my admiration for bulls has gone way up. As a child I was never allowed to touch a bull. When feeding the cows and petting them, the temptation was always present to likewise pat the bull, but any movement I made toward that end was met with a strong rebuke from my grandfather. He had hauled several bulls over the years and seen men gored; he never trusted any bull. The toros in Spain enter the arena full of attitude, muscle-rippling strength, and catlike quickness in an impressive show. They look for anything that is moving and immediately charge with power that is awing to witness; they send every matador scrambling behind a thick wooden wall, and then they hammer the wall with their horns. I had never witnessed that in a bull, nor had I seen that kind of endurance. Nothing about a bullfight is fair; the only way to make it less fair would be to remove one of the bull’s legs! However, because of the bull’s strength and superiority, the fight would take hours were the bull not slowed down. Carrying a spear, a horseman rides in on a heavily padded and blindfolded horse, and the bull immediately rushes him. The first bull we saw actually knocked the horse over and was able to gore it, even as the rider, falling down, drove the spear deep into the bull’s back. Next, four matadors begin to wear the bull down with a series of charges at pink capes. When the bull is sufficiently tiring, another matador will come holding two colorful skewers. He allows the bull to charge him straight on and then jumps sideways, driving the skewers into the back of the bull. This is repeated three times. Even at this point the stamina of the bull is incredible. The matador, with his large red cape, will now come out to work the bull until it finally has its strength bled out of it, at which time, with an air of satisfaction, the man draws a sword; the great beast bows its head to hurtle one more time toward the rag that has given it so much grief, and the matador drives the sword into its great heart. Some matadors are better at this than others, but ideally, the bull’s demise is quick, and it drops, immediately dead. The whole exhibition takes around fifteen minutes.

As I watched, I could not help but think about our fight against the “rulers, powers, forces of darkness, and spiritual forces of wickedness.”In Christ, the battle is won. On the cross He did not say, “To be continued!” He said, “It is finished.” Like the bull, we in Christ have the superior strength.However, the bull makes one fatal mistake by thinking the cape, a simple piece of lifeless rag, is the enemy, the source of its torment and pain! I kept thinking to myself, If only you would stop fighting the rag, stop looking down, look up at the head, and move eighteen inches to the right! The battle would be yours. Even to its dying breath the bull was eyeing the rag, when it was the matador that was driving the sword deep into his heart. A physically superior creature is defeated because of a wrong focus. How often in our spiritual battles the enemy has our focus on something other than him; we never pay attention to his ugly head. So many times I have talked to couples ready to divorce over absolutely nothing but a rag; the enemy has continually poked at them, making them think that the rag is what is hurting them. It is not the rag! It is the one behind the rag. Move eighteen inches to the right, go for the head, and you will see the truth of it. Many times I will stop in the middle of a situation and just say, “The Lord rebuke you!” I know the issue is not the issue; there is someone behind the issue, and I want to go for the head. The believer has the superior strength, but that will do him no good if his focus is in the wrong place. So many just bow and let the enemy drive the sword deep into the heart. There will nearly always be the need for a twenty percent improvement in any relationship; that provides the rag. Why let the twenty percent steal the eighty percent of joy? On any given day, you should immediately be able to say three things that are right about your situation and about your mate. We need God’s grace to recognize the head.

SOVEREIGNTY VS. FREE WILL

It is always somewhat difficult to strike the balance between the absolute sovereignty of God and the will of man. That God gives men choices is clear – that it is GOD who directs the steps of a man is also plain. So – the fact is that God does give us choices and these choices are contained within the larger circumference of God's will. God predestinates us to reach a certain goal. Along the way He gives us choices. He will then deal with us according to those choices, whether they are good or bad choices. If we make a bad choice, He will bring stripping, judgment, rebuke – whatever is necessary to correct and teach us. If we make a good choice He will also deal accordingly. But the end is secure, all these choices are contained within the larger sphere of His predestinating will, and are given to effect the necessary work within to conform to His image.  

J. PRESTON EBY

How, Exactly, Do I Abide in Christ?

Then He said to them all: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it.”
--Luke 9:23, 24

Abiding in Christ is something that every believer has experienced, and yet it seems most difficult to maintain. I have been asked, “What do you struggle with?” Like all teachers I struggle with the thing I most often teach, abiding! All of my other failures originate from this one. When Christ is my focus, nothing really bothers me, and when He is not, the smallest event can create a spiritual domino effect. So the question, “How, exactly, do I abide?” is a significant one.  

Let me share a few insights.

First, abiding is not something that we do but the awareness that we trust the Lord completely.Psalm 139:7, “Or where can I flee from Thy presence?”

Second, abiding is not dependent on us but on Christ, so it is a faith issue. He is the One keeping us in the abiding relationship, the branches in the Vine.

Third, if we do not know how to set our minds on things above, then we can at least discover what it is to set our minds on the flesh and refuse to do it! Examine Luke 9:23 to understand the flesh, and if we say no to every opportunity to set our minds on it, by default the mind must go to the spirit.

Fourth, abiding is the beginning point of an abundant spiritual life; therefore, all powers meet at this point. When forces would move you from your position in Him, do not succumb to the voice that whispers, “It does not work; it is not for you. You are exactly where you were years ago!” Once I was in a boat that capsized, and I was pulled under the water. I did not immediately begin to think, Well, I guess I will never have air again! Air sure does not last very long; it sure is not worth the effort of breathing! No, no, no! All I thought about was getting back to where there was air. We are not to let failure move us away. Rather, we can get back, start breathing again, and let our focus rest in Christ.