Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Dilemma

Many mornings I'll open my Bible to where I last left off and determine that I will read until God stops me. Sometimes that turns into reading until somebody in the house wakes up. Sometimes it turns into reading until my coffee is cold. And sometimes it turns into reading until my stomach starts growling. I consider all of those things to fall under the category of "until God stops me".

This morning I sat in my customary Bible-reading chair, coffee cup warm and good intentions in hand. I read exactly 4 verses when God really did stop me. This was the passage:

“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish." (Matthew 18:12-14)

At an earlier reading of this passage I had written in the margin: "How can I make God happy as one of the 99?" And my thoughts went immediately to the story of the prodigal son and his older, somewhat cantankerous brother. Read the finale of that story and see if you notice a connection between the two:

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” (Luke 15:25-32)

I've always related to the older brother in this parable and to the sheep that didn't wander. I don't have a dramatic or scandalous past that evokes gasps and wide eyes as I recount it. (As my mother reads this, she'll be happy to know that.) But as I contemplated how to make God happy as an obedient child who doesn't wander off in wicked escapades, He revealed to me this sobering thought:

I was lost and I still wander.

There was a time when I was outside God's family. When I was, as Colossians and Ephesians describe so clearly, an enemy of God, an object of wrath, alone, without hope or God in the world.

He brought me near through the sacrificial death of Jesus. And that was when God rejoiced over me coming into His family. That's when I came back into the family I was created to be a part of.

Then God reminded me (as He has been trying to teach me this over and over again recently) that I still wander. I still follow the wicked inclinations of my heart by putting myself and my comfort above the needs of others. By leaving the intentional time in God's presence to pursue useless and fruitless activities. By tilling the soil of my soul for seeds of resentment and bitterness and judgment against the people in my life. Oh, I still wander alright. And every time I come back He is happy! Do you know why God is happy when we come back to Him?

Because He wants us near Him!

He created us for profound, intimate, continual, and eternal relationship with Him and it breaks His heart when we stray. So I can make God happy as one of the 99 sheep by staying close to Him. And by investing in the lives of those who are not. That's the beauty of community.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Or as John Piper says, to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. There is satisfaction and joy for us and God when we are close.

So when I wander and the Holy Spirit convicts me of it, all that's necessary is a repentant heart. Then the forgiveness Jesus purchased for me on the cross propels me back into the arms of the Good Shepherd. Once again, one of the ninety-nine. Close to the Father. As I was meant to be.


Monday, May 23, 2011

Invitations (Excerpt)

Don’t you love getting an invitation? Parties, graduations, weddings, retirements. It’s an honor to be invited somewhere. And it feels good to know that our presence is requested. Someone wants to share an event with us, whether it’s a celebration or a remembrance. But sometimes an invitation has implications beneath the surface and sometimes we bring our own bias. We may wonder who else is invited? What will I wear? Will there be food? What if so-and-so is there? Awkward… But overall, an invitation that comes is usually a pleasant surprise.


Hollywood is known for its glamour and spectacular parties. The Vanity Fair Oscar party is arguably the most coveted invitation of the year, costing the host over one million dollars to put on. The reason for all this hoopla is simple: the harder the party is to get into, the more people will clamor to be invited.

Especially at this time of year, we receive all kinds of invitations: graduations, weddings, retirement, birthday parties. Do you think there’s a difference in being invited to the Vanity Fair Oscar party and Lily’s Strawberry Shortcake 3rd Birthday party? Um. Yeah. Whether we want to admit it or not, the importance and/or rarity of the event will have great influence on our response. Neighborhood kid birthday party vs. once-in-a-lifetime red carpet event. Hmmm… tough choice, huh?

There are other kinds of invitations in life, too, aren’t there? Isn’t a marriage proposal a kind of invitation – an invitation from a man to a woman to share his name and a life together? A casual invitation to coffee or lunch can mean a lot to a lonely person. Ultimately an invitation is about relationship. Whether the event is to celebrate relationships – like a wedding – or just including people by being together, marking milestones in life is better when it can be shared in the context of relationship.

What kinds of invitations does God proffer in our lives? Here are three examples:

1. Seek Me. Because God places such importance on relationships, one of His primary invitations to His people throughout the Bible is to seek Him. And His promise is that we will find Him. When the Israelites had been disobedient and God allowed the Chaldeans (Babylonians) to take them as exiles and prisoners into a foreign land, He sent this encouraging invitation through the prophet Jeremiah to the confused, distraught people: This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:10-14) He gave the same invitation through the prophet Amos earlier when He said: 4 This is what the LORD says to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live; 5 do not seek Bethel, 
do not go to Gilgal, do not journey to Beersheba. 
For Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will be reduced to nothing.” 
6 Seek the LORD and live, or he will sweep through the house of Joseph like a fire; it will devour, and Bethel will have no one to quench it. (Amos 5:4-6) In both cases, to two different groups of people, God issues the same invitation that He offers to us: Come and seek me. He wants to be found because He wants to have relationship with us. Jesus also issued this invitation to those who would follow Him when He said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8) It’s a little like a game of hide and seek with a small child who calls out from his hiding place in the closet, “I’m in here!”, making it easy to find Him. That’s our God: He longs to be found and known and He invites us over and over to look for Him so He can have relationship with us.

2. Rest In Me – Jesus offers this invitation in the gospel of Matthew: 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) Doesn’t that sound nice? Rest for your soul. Who doesn’t get soul weary from time to time? Who doesn’t feel the burden of life when the pressure mounts and the deadlines are looming large? When relationships are tense and we feel inadequate for the tasks ahead of us? Jesus gives us the invitation to come to Him with all of that. To exchange the self-propelled efforts to manage our lives for the total surrender of our wills to His ways. The reason that Jesus’ yoke is easy and His burden is light is b/c He’s already done everything necessary for us to walk in obedience and joy. 2 Peter 1:3-4 says this: 3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. In other words, Jesus has done everything necessary for us to live lives as we were created to live them through His obedient, perfect sacrifice on the cross! Our efforts to just improve ourselves instead of allow Him to transform us are what causes so much of our frustrations. Truth be known, many of us are carrying burdens in life that God never asked us to carry and He wants us to give them to Him. Then we can experience “soul rest”.

3. Follow Me – This invitation may be the hardest to swallow – and certainly the hardest to fully accept. 23And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:23-26) This invitation seems to be filled with paradoxes. As if an invite to a birthday party came in the mail and said, “if you’d like to keep your coat, then give it away at the door.” But if I'm going to a party and can't trust that I'll remember where my coat is, the best thing to do is to trust it to the person at the coat check so it'll be safe and waiting for me at the end of the night. And the logic of this cross analogy has to do with the ancient tradition of taking up a cross. When a condemned man was going to be crucified under Roman rule in the time of the disciples, he was required to carry the beam of the cross to the place of execution. Jesus and his disciples would have seen this happen and Jesus Himself was going to carry the beam of HIS cross to Golgotha. It symbolizes the fact that we are to consider ourselves dead to our former way of life and should live as if that’s true. We are no longer slaves to sin, but Christ has bought our freedom through His trip to the cross and resurrection, so we live for Him now. (Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”) This invitation refers to a complete transfer of allegiance. I no longer live for myself; I’m to deny myself. That is the natural, carnal urges that used to have power over me. When I let go of my life I receive the life God has for me. The one I was created to live. That’s what He’s inviting us to. As C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “…mere improvement is not redemption”. Jesus did not die and rise from the grave to make us better versions of our former selves. He died to redeem us from our old life – to buy us back from a life of slavery to sin and death so we could be new creations, becoming more and more like Him in the process of sanctification.

So what kind of invitations have you received from God recently? What are you sensing that He may be inviting you? Is He inviting you to just look for Him to see if He’s real? Is He inviting you to lay down some burdens that have been too much? Or are you receiving a more challenging invitation? My challenge to you is to be still and ask God to reveal the kind of invitation He’s got for you.