It happens to the best of us. At some point, we recognize the need for self-improvement. We make a plan, buy the clothes or equipment needed, and gin up as much passion and enthusiasm as we can muster.
At first, everything is fine. And the results, though small, are churning out baby endorphins for our brain’s enjoyment. But then one day when the alarm goes off, we take a deep breath, stretch, and sigh heavily.
“How much longer do I have to do this,” we wonder. Continue reading
Below is a prayer that follows Psalm 95 verse by verse.
God, when you invite me to “Come” you order an injunction against my passivity and procrastination. You call me out of my excuses and you call me into the raucous, stadium-rocking joy that celebrates you as the solid foundation of our salvation. Forgive me, Lord. For I have not celebrated you as I ought. I have not treasured the intransigent nature of your character nor the insoluble gift of salvation that flows out of your person as I ought. I have pursued small pleasures instead, trading permanence for things that can rust or wither or die.
Give me a heart, O God, to come into your presence with a thanksgiving and a song of praise that equals the glorious nature of yourself. For you are not only a great God. You are a great King above all gods. You hold the depths of the earth in your hand so that in the pressured darkness where the monsters swim we may rest within the surrounding walls of your strength. The heights of the mountains are also yours, giving us new challenges to climb, peaks to stand upon, and a pure vision of the roads that lay before us. You have made the sea, O God so that we can satisfy the desire to explore, and you have formed the dry land to teach us the value of work and the mystery of life.
Oh come, let us all worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For none of these gifts are given to help us understand ourselves better. Rather, they point back to the nature and character of His being. God is deep, and sometimes He stands in thick darkness calling us to come forward and meet with Him (Ex. 20:21). God places our feet on high places (Ps. 18:33) but He also calls us to cast away from the shore of security and explore the whole expanse of Himself (Dt. 4:29; Mt. 4:19). To move towards a kingdom not built with human hands. To become citizens in a better country than the one we have abandoned where God is not ashamed to be called our God and has prepared it for us (Heb 11:16). He has shown us that work is necessary both in the doing and the persisting, so that in our successes we may celebrate that He does not passively wait for time to tick down. He, too, is a perennial worker, shaping all mysteries after His will and giving life where a desert once lived.
He is our God. But we are stubborn, stupid, wandering sheep. We need a shepherd to guide us with his hand.
Therefore, help us to hear Your voice today, and to not harden our hearts. People have done this many times in the past and have put You to the test. They have demanded miracles and proof of Your love, despite having seen You work in their lives. We know that such behavior angers You, Lord, not because of our limitations to understand Your greatness. But rather because we have evaluated the landscape of our lives and have chosen something small to replace the God of infinite worth. Keep us from being that person who goes astray in their heart. May we know God’s ways. And enter into His rest. In Christ’s name, Amen.
Mark 14:3-5 (NIV)
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
Have you ever noticed that extravagant expressions of love seemed to follow Jesus? A woman anoints Him with a years’ worth of perfume. A tax collector gives half of his possessions to the poor. Crowds lay palm branches at His feet and rejoice at His entering Jerusalem. And an untold number of people give their lives to promoting only His name throughout the world.
To many, these expressions of love would appear wasteful. And they would be if they were done for anyone other than God. No human beings’ life can match the worth of such excessively gracious gifts. But when compared with the insurmountable richness of God, the tribute of one’s possessions, monies, or life can never match the worth of His person or the gift of His grace.
In his book What Jesus Demands of the World, John Piper says, “…the Son of Man came to save people from their suicidal love affair with possessions (and every other idol) and to lead then into a kind of impossible obedience that displays the infinite worth of Jesus.” (p. 23) This is not only the goal for Jesus’ relationship with Zaccheus, it is also His goal for the relationship you and I have with Him as well. The question that we must ask is: when or how did I most recently deny temporary, worthless things for the express purpose of displaying the infinite worth of Jesus? I know that if I am honest, I cannot remember a time that I put the public display of Jesus’ worth above my own. I have sought and dreamed of making myself great, but not Jesus. I have considered how to set my children on the path of success, or how to proclaim the beauty of my wife. I have lived a life full of potential selflessness and have squandered it on selfish pursuits. My goal has been to make much of myself, not of Jesus.
Perhaps this is why the question, “How do I extravagantly love Jesus?” struck me so hard. Despite being a Christian for over 35 years I realized I have relegated the expressions of extravagant love for God to “super Christians,” such as King David, the 12 apostles, Mother Teresa, or Billy Graham. I figured I could “try” to do my best, but extravagant love was such a low priority, it was completely off my radar.In reality, “trying” was just something I told myself I would do in order to muffle the twisting screams of conviction in my heart.
But God will only allow His chosen children to sit in the belly of their acidic choices for so long before He vomits them onto the beach and reminds them of their call to follow Him. Thus, I found myself staring at the heart of the question “How do you extravagantly love Jesus?” and trying to manage the stench of my sin.
“Extravagance,” I learned, comes from the Latin extravagari. It is a compound word that combines extra (meaning “outside”) and vagari (meaning “wander”). In other words, when you are being extravagant you are literally “wandering outside” the norms. You are so FAR outside the norms, in fact, that society or convention sees you as being “unusual, unreasonable, inappropriate, abnormal, or absurd.” This begs the question, then, have I restrained myself from loving God extravagantly because I do not want to be viewed as “weird?”
Perhaps. But I think it is more than that. I think extravagant love frightens most of us because we intuit that it demands more than a piece of living, such as behavior, or money, or relationships. Extravagant love demands all of life. Like sunlight through a magnifying glass, extravagant love is focused. It is white hot. And it burns away all idolatry within the heart. It refuses to give any ground to immorality, impurity, covetousness, filthiness, crude joking, deception, disobedience, or anything else that partners in the unfruitful works of darkness. Extravagant love is not holding up placards within a crowd of thousands. It is standing alone in opposition to evil when everyone else bows down. It is exposing the deeds of darkness not only in our speech but also with our lives. It is being filled with the Spirit and making the best use of the time we have, being careful that we walk not as unwise but as wise followers of a God whose person is so compelling and alluring that others are drawn to Him because they have interacted with us. (Eph 5:1-21)
Half-hearted love cannot accomplish this goal. A heart divided between God and anything else is a heart that belongs to sentimentality, fads, or hollow imitation and will not be able to stand firm when the flaming arrows of the evil one begin to strike. A half-hearted loved cannot imitate Christ, who walked in love and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. A half-hearted love cannot say, “Not my will but thine be done” because it is always protecting other interests. Only those who love God extravagantly can live this way. Only they understand the truth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous statement, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Bonhoeffer is not trying to be melodramatic here. He is trying to be biblical. “Freely you have received, ” Jesus said. “Freely give.” (Mt. 10:18) In other words, if you put limits on extravagant love you will find that your self-imposed boundaries prevent you from moving beyond your human capabilities so that you may see the work and the wonder of God. It is a basic truth of relationships that the degree of selfishness always diminishes the degree of love being expressed. If you do not freely give Christ your love, you cannot expect a deep intimacy with Him. Not because He is petulant or passive-aggressive, but because you have imposed limits on a relationship where there should be none.
In these moments it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we just need to focus more so that we do not damage the relationship we have with God. But this would be a poor approach to preventing a relapse into half-hearted love. Why? Because the idea of “I need to focus more” is founded on the emotion of fear and anxiety. 1st John 4:18 tells us that “perfect love casts out all fear.” Therefore, you do not need to work from a position of fear or anxiety. You need to work out of the emotion of love. Your goal should not be “don’t mess up.” Your goal should be “how do I show God love today?” How do you do this? Go back to 1st Cor. 13:4-7 and write down the characteristics you find listed there. Next, define each characteristic in terms of an “I will” or an “I will not” statement. This will help put a practical, hands-on approach to it. For an example, see this handout: love-is
Finally, it must be pointed out that extravagant love always risks extravagant suffering. Maybe we don’t love in this way because we don’t want to be hurt. But vulnerability is always necessary for intimacy. And conflict is necessary for connection. Without conflict, we cannot explore, understand, learn, stretch, or discover. Conflict provides a challenge. It forces us to examine ourselves and our presuppositions against alternative ideas, beliefs, or realities that demand an answer. Even the most liberal of us tend to gravitate towards stasis, as evidenced by our desire to avoid change or conflict as much as possible. But the reality is that we cannot grow without it. We NEED conflict. Even the entertainment of such an idea as this forces us to wrestle with things we once thought resolved and it is this struggle that will eventually make us stronger, regardless of whether we reinforce our beliefs or adopt new philosophies. For this reason, we are warned in scripture that we Christians will be persecuted. We will not be immune from it. Christ suffered and we will too. And if you intend on extravagantly loving Christ, you must be prepared to extravagantly suffer for Him too. Sometimes this suffering will be an internal conflict and sometimes it will be an external one. And sometimes it will be both at the same time, making you feel like you are about to be ripped apart.
But when you go through these trials of your love for God, remember the words of Paul:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith,with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. 19 Pray also for me,that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. (Eph. 6:10-20)
Look at that final sentence again. “Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.” If Paul needed prayer for his extravagant love, so do we.
I will pray for you. Will you pray for me?
Ok. So here we are. The tree is bare. The used wrapping paper has been thrown away. And the holiday sugar crash has come and gone. Now, we are just trying to figure out how soon we want to step back on the treadmill. Some of us had a day off from work since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, but we are already beginning to look at our compressed schedules for the week and wondering, “Can I get everything done?” And the kids, who were so excited at 7 a.m. yesterday morning, are beginning to say, “I’m bored.” (Except for the one who got a Samsung Gear VR. He’s happily spinning in a chair, detached from his family, entertaining himself in another world)
Some of us had a day off from work since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, but we are already beginning to look at our compressed schedules for the week and wondering, “Can I get everything done?” And the kids, who were so excited at 7 a.m. yesterday morning, are beginning to say, “I’m bored.” (Except for the one who got a Samsung Gear VR. He’s happily spinning in a chair, detached from his family, entertaining himself in another world)
We’ve looked at the decorations once, but we don’t want to deal with that now. And the leftovers. Who’s going to eat all of that food? Our mind’s eye pictures the treadmill again. Maybe if I set it at just a slightly higher incline…
But it’s no use. We feel exhausted just thinking about summoning the energy needed for everything that lies ahead.
Is this what God intended for Christmas to be like?
Sometimes I wonder.
Our tradition of gift giving comes from the “three” (there could have been more) wise men. But they did not arrive to give their gifts until Jesus was around 2 years old. On the night of His birth, however, there was only one gift given to the Christ child.
No. Not “the gift of life.” That’s too obvious. And for a God who was preexistent, unnecessary.
No, what Christ received the night of His birth was both simple and profound. Summoned by a great company of angels, a throng of smelly shepherds searched every place in Jerusalem that had a manger until they discovered the sight of the nativity. There, surrounded by a small contingent of animals, a man and a woman bent over the small wooden trough and marveled at their newborn son. It must have been awkward for the parents to have this band of men peek their heads in and ask to view the baby. But they allowed it. And when the shepherds saw the angels’ message was true, it was then and only then that they gave their gift to the Christ.
What was the shepherds’ gift?
They gave the gift of praise.
Appropriate. Don’t you think?
In the true spirit of Christmas, “It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.” Yes, the one Christmas gift that Christ received on his birthday is the same gift we seem to fail to give him every year.
We are so focused on giving to each other (and, let’s be honest, on receiving as well) that we forget to give the one gift that persists and remains relevant even 2000 years later.
Praise.
So, let’s take a moment. If this day after Christmas is leaving you feeling blah-hungover, maybe it’s time to put the focus back on the person it is intended to celebrate. Maybe today can be the beginning of exhilarated rejoicing of a promise fulfilled to all humanity. Maybe today we can begin to see Christmas for what it really is. God. In the flesh. As a baby. Given to mankind to take away the sins of the world.
If that’s not something to celebrate, you may have your priorities wrong.
(Quote from Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”)
This is my dog, Hobbes. And he barks.
A lot.
A car goes by. My dog barks. A neighbor walks past our house. My dog barks. The mailman drives past. My dog (cliché that he is) barks. And heaven help the little Girl Scout who rings the doorbell. The only threat she poses is to my wallet, and I am convinced that if dogs could understand the joy of chocolate, Hobbes would stand on his hind legs, put on a pair of reading glasses, and write her a check himself for a truckload of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties.
We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. (Gal 2:5)
Houses are always going up for sale in my neighborhood, so when I first saw it, I assumed it was just another advertisement. But as I focused, I realized the color was wrong. White background. Big red letters that were empty and stretched at the ends of the s’s.
I stopped, stretched my neck forward and squinted.
Did that say, “Star Wars”? Continue reading
living in the tent 