It's Time to Take Off the Veil

Moses spent time with God (Exodus 34) and his his appearance was changed. He had to wear a veil to keep from scaring everyone. Jesus was changed

The Power of the Holy Spirit

Are you struggling with something in your life, and want the power to overcome it?  The ultimate source of power is God himself, and God gives us

Hearing the Voice of the Holy Spirit

Even though The Lovely Joanne and I live in the same house, sometimes we have trouble communicating.  Then she and I have to stop and focus on

How to Get Empty, or Full

This weekend I preached from Mark 16:1-8, about the empty tomb, and the state of mind of the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, women who were so "shocked ...trembling ...bewildered...frightened" that they couldn't tell anyone, at first, what they had seen.  I compared that to how unstoppable all the disciples of Jesus were, after they had seen the risen Lord and were absolutely sure of his resurrection and filled with the Holy Spirit.  The early church was unstoppable because the people were full of their Savior, and empty of anything else.  Then I challenged everyone to ask God to help them surrender whatever was making them feel empty, or not letting them be emptied of their burdens.  But how do you surrender all that?  Here are a few tools.

1.  Confess it to someone else and ask him or her to pray with you.  James 5:16 tells us "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed."  Sin and doubt only have power over you if you keep them secret.  When a loving brother or sister in Christ is praying with you, and encouraging you in times of weakness, the power of the old habit will be broken.  (Simply asking someone to "pray for me" isn't going to get very far, though, because that's still not admitting that you're not perfect, is it?  You'll probably have to get pretty specific.) 

2.  Ask God for clarity on why this doubt, sin, worry, unforgiveness -- or whatever -- has persisted.  (Your prayer partner may be of help here.)  Sometimes we find a false validation of our existence by holding on to anger at someone who has hurt us in the past.  Sometimes we don't want to let go of control because we don't see how much God has provided for us, so we don't trust him to continue to work out the problems in our lives (you know, those problems you can't resolve anyway...).  Clarity helps us let go.   

3.  Forgive other people, and yourself.  Sometimes I "kick myself around the block" because of something I said or did forty years ago -- and God forgave it, in Christ, long ago!  I can't go back and make it right, and I now have a loving relationship with the other person, so what's the point?  And God has forgiven the other person, so as Paul writes, "Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others" (Col. 3:13). Forgiving is a daily, sometimes a moment-by-moment choice, to release the other person to God, who alone can heal and help them; and it frees us to live in God's love. 

4.  Accept God's forgiveness and peace.  This is a form of surrender too.  It includes all the above, plus a deliberate decision to believe that what God has said and done for us is absolutely true, which means all our ideas to the contrary are false.  It can help to keep a list of scriptures that remind you who you truly are in Christ, such as John 1:12, 2 Cor 5:17-19, Eph. 2:10, Eph. 4:24, Col. 1:22, Col. 3:3, 1 Thess. 1:4, 1 Pet. 2:9-10, 1 John 5:18 etc. 

If you're struggling with doubt, fear or any other sin, try using these tools -- with all your might -- for 30 days and see what difference God's power makes.   And let me know how it goes.  I'll be praying for you!

Full, or Empty?

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, many of us celebrated the resurrection of Jesus.  We saw that the empty tomb proved Jesus had told the truth about himself and that he was, truly, alive forever (Rev. 1:18).  The tomb being empty, that was good!  If Jesus' body had been found there, still dead, it would have been the end of the story.  He would have been, as some claim today, "just a great teacher."  But it was empty, and that gives us the positive assurance of eternal life -- and even more, a great life right now.  Why? 

The story of the women visiting the tomb early on Sunday morning to find the tomb empty and Jesus resurrected, according to the testimony of the angel (Mark 16:1-8) showed them "shocked ...trembling ...bewildered...frightened."  They were "full" of fear, anxiety and doubt.  They were also "empty" of faith, assurance and the power of God.

Sometimes we are just like them.  We feel empty, but Jesus tells us that he is the source of true food (John 6:32-35) and living water (John 4:10-14).  So why, then, do we spend so much time trying to fill ourselves up with other things?  We use food, alcohol, drugs, entertainment, books, video games, sports, power and prestige, sex, porn, or just busyness, to try fill the void that is inside us.  We try to numb the feelings of emptiness and uselessness, so we don't have to admit how empty we feel.

Or we are full of anxiety and pain that we don't want to let go of.  We gain some perverse sort of identity from being angry at someone for an offense from years ago, or from the way our parents treated us.  We are so worried about how life is going to turn out, and trying to control everything so that life will look like we think it should, that we can't let go our fears.  But Jesus tells us not to be afraid -- that was one of his most frequent commands -- and simply to believe (Mark 5:36).  He tells us to come and give all our junk to him, to stop carrying it around and find rest  (Mat. 11:28-30) by trusting him to take care of it all.

So, dear reader, what's it going to be?  Empty or full?  Continue the frustration of attempting solutions on your own, or giving up and letting Jesus provide every thing you need?  Holding on to pain, guilt, anger and blame, or forgiving and letting love from Jesus flow through you?  He's already cleared the way for you.  Your sins no longer hang over your head (or the heads of those you refuse to forgive...) but it's still your choice whether to live in peace or in pain.  Give up, surrender to his grace, and you'll be filled with overflowing joy and peace.

Walking with Jesus

I've been spending a lot of time lately studying and discussing with others what it means to be a Christian.  It's a big subject, but at the same time it has a pretty simple answer.  You may not know it, but that's a big issue of discussion within the Christian world right now, and frankly, many churches in the Western world have it wrong. My denomination was certainly wrong about it, in important ways, for a lot of years, but we're a lot closer now and still growing into a better understanding of it.  To be more personal, I had it wrong all those years and I'm just now seeing it more clearly. 

Most of the time when most Christians tell you about salvation, it's all about forgiveness of your sins and going to be with God when you die.  Those two things are true, but if that's all there is, you may as well live like a pagan until two minutes before you die, then be sure to ask for salvation!  This feeds our Western consumer mentality:  God is someone who will give you forgiveness and other stuff, and salvation is a product you acquire by saying a prayer and getting baptized.  Oh, and attending church -- so choose the most attractive church around, that will make you feel good and increase your social status. 

All of that misses the point.  I wrote briefly about that on September 6, that salvation is not about location but about relationship.  Let me begin to expand on that here.


Salvation is not just a legal or accounting transaction that takes place in heaven when you say the right prayer.  It is being saved from yourself and your sins, but more than that, it's being saved into a life spent with Christ, following him.  Jesus told the twelve, "Come, follow me" and they spent the next three years walking around with him, watching the way he treated people and scratching their heads over what he had just taught.  They began to realize that what he taught related directly to the way he treated people (you might say he lived what he taught).  And they figured out eventually that what he taught and how he treated others came directly from his relationship with the Father, whom Jesus came to reveal.  Once the Holy Spirit was given to them, those relationships were clear to them, and they were able to live what Jesus taught, and teach it to others as he had taught them.

Living a Christian life is, simply, learning to walk with Jesus every hour of every day. Learning to trust him.  Surrendering control to him.  Listening to him.  Letting him do the talking instead of your old motivations. You may have been a Christian for six hours or sixty years, but quite possibly you and I both have missed out on a lot of this, and we both need it.  We'll look later at the methods that will help us, but let's begin with a quietness before God, recognizing our complete inability to make life work and surrendering it to him instead.  Will you walk with Jesus along with me?

Prayer: Surrender to a Loving God

"Please pray that I will get a new job...Prayers are requested for immediate healing of...Please pray I can find a new place to live...I've been praying for the same thing for ten years and nothing ever happens."  Have you ever heard those phrases?  I have.  Now, there's nothing wrong with asking others to pray with us, and absolutely nothing wrong with praying!  I wonder, though, when we talk about prayer in this way, if we really understand what prayer is?

As Westerners, we have the mindset (without thinking about it; that's what a mindset is) that everything must improve my life and make me happy in some way, or it's no good.  Let's face it, we've done the same with prayer.  We read in Philippians 4:6 "in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" and presume that prayer is about telling God everything we need, expecting he will provide it. 

If your child were to treat you that way, it would sound like "Daddy and Mommy, thank you for giving me breakfast this morning, and I need a bike and a sweater and a new video game and it's really, really important that we go to McDonald's for dinner tonight."  And you'd be thinking "slow down a little, will ya?"  But God is not a vending machine that dispenses our treats when we plug in the right words. (And Jesus said "your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him" in Matt. 6:8.) 

The prayers of the Bible, especially in the Psalms, are much different -- lots of real complaints and requests, for sure, but when we read carefully, they show a process of deep surrender to the will of God.  Robert Mulholland Jr. diagnoses prayer in Invitation to a Journey when he writes "our prayer tends to be a shopping list of things that need to be accomplished, an attempt to manipulate the symptoms of our lives without entering a deep, transforming relationship with God in the midst of what we think we need..." (105).  Prayer, he reminds us, "is primarily relational, not functional."  Henri Nouwen is quoted as saying "Prayer is the act by which we divest ourselves of all false belongings and become free to belong to God and God alone." 

Prayer, then, is not trying to get God to do something for us, but is a process of surrendering ourselves to God for what he wants to do in us.  That's a long and complex discussion, so we'll have to get back to it another week.  But for now -- try just taking yourself to God without any pretense or any agenda, and spend time with him.  Let me know how it goes, will you?

Being Still and Reflecting Jesus

Part of chronic work-ism (or in Christian circles, works-ism) is that we believe it's our effort and accomplishments that make us valuable and loved.  We want to make sure it all looks good, and that others will agree with us that this is obviously the way life is supposed to look, and we measure our success and our own actual worth by whether life goes according to our master plan.  But there's always something that doesn't line up with our rules for the world, so there goes the game. I confess that I'm one of those worker bees who tries to make it all come out, ignoring the lessons of the last 50-plus years when hard work didn't make it come out at all.

Once again I am brought up short by scripture, and helped by The Amazing Joanne to see wisdom.  The other evening, she was drawn by the voice of the Holy Spirit to look at the lights reflected across a quiet river.  The still waters made the lights shine almost as well from the water's surface as they did from the air above.  Except where there was a drain of some kind, pouring water into the river and roiling the surface -- in that spot, one could hardly tell there were lights above at all.  The turbulence completely ruined the reflection. "See there," the Lord said to her, "how the peaceful water best reflects the light?  That's how you best reflect me!"

Jesus said we are to be the light of the world in Matthew 5:14-16, but that we should be careful to let our light shine, not to hide it.  Our light as Christ-followers, of course, is from him, not from our own innards.  If our lives are turbulent through striving, impatience or any other form of trying to force the issue, the light we reflect won't be true to the Lord's light in us. 


In James 1:19-21, the apostle says that our strivings, anger, impatience and the sin in our lives don't help the cause of God:  "Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires" is his core thought in verse 20.

Psalm 46 starts off talking about the Lord being our refuge, no matter how troubled life is.  Verse 10 is the climax:  “Be still, and know that I am God!  I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world.”  The Hebrew translated "be still" is referring to a peace that is beyond silence; it is a surrender to the will of God.  So for us to reflect Jesus' light, like Joanne saw the river water reflect the lights at night, wouldn't it make sense that we too should be 'still' and surrendered?  Then our lives would more truly reflect the light of Christ, "throughout the world."  

Instead of trying harder, how about trying less?