The two most accepted and applauded ways to end human life are war and abortion. People attempt to justify such cruelty by using phrases like “collateral damage” and “reproductive rights.” This clearly shows that for many people all lives don’t matter.
When I first encounter people, I want them to know that I’m open to them and that I’m willing to listen to and encourage them from the mysterious warmth in my heart. When I meet strangers, I often feel a compassionate love for them that blows my mind. There’s no rational reason for such caring, but there it is mysteriously rising within me.
Listening to people’s stories makes me realize that sinning (seeking to satisfy yourself) isn’t winning, no matter how good it feels. There’s no victory in following feelings. Ignoring or resisting the voice of conscience will never make people whole. The only hope of glory is letting Christ live in and control you as your absolute, moment-by-moment, King, Lord, and Master and to let Him continually align your heart and lifestyle with His loving will.
To be won over, the world needs to see Christ-followers who are continually full of the presence and joy of Jesus and aren’t looking for entertainment, comfort, self-fulfillment, or strength anywhere else! If you’re not happy it may be because you’ve been searching for happiness in happy-less people, places, and things. Open your heart to the joy of the risen Jesus!
The Spirit-led lifestyle of Christ-consumed people who ever overflow with the fruit and the gifts of God’s Spirit will visibly demonstrate the reality of the risen Jesus and win multitudes of disciples for Him! That’s the first impression that I want to give people.
I want people to know that if they will quit trying to work up self-forgiveness and instead humbly receive Christ’s living presence and full forgiveness, their guilt will go away. I want them to know that:
If you will read God’s Scriptures
As a love letter from Jesus
He will paint awesome pictures
On the canvas of your heart.
For almost a year I’ve been reading a Spanish Bible every day. I’m focusing on the New Testament and I’m almost through it for the second time this year. It’s not been easy because my Spanish was quite limited when I began. However, I’ve noticed that week by week and month by month I’m understanding more and more. Gloria a Dios! It’s fun and encouraging to watch my understanding grow.
I’ve read the Bible almost every day since I was in college, so I know the history and teachings very well. When I read it in Spanish my familiarity with the Bible helps me recognize unfamiliar Spanish words and grammar. It also gives me some biblical insights that I have never noticed before while reading the Bible in English. It’s fun to read Jesus and His first followers speaking in Spanish.
I’m still discovering that the Bible is a miraculous book. No matter what language you read it in, the Spirit of the living God will speak to your heart if you read it with openness and humility.
To abandon either focus on and obedience to the risen Jesus or biblically aligned theology is to abandon Christianity. We need both!
Jesus
Sees us
Even if
We hide.
Let’s decelebritize Christianity! Modern Christianity has celebritized people and minimized Jesus. On church bulletins and signs and on conference brochures and schedules, the names and pictures of preachers and Christian conference speakers crowd out the name of Jesus. Try this: Go to a church, conference, or ministry web page and count the total number of times a preachers’, speakers’, founders’, and staff members’ name is mentioned. Then count the number of times the name of Jesus is mentioned.
When Christians talk about church services or conferences that they’ve attended they frequently refer to preachers’ and speakers’ names, but almost never mention the name of Jesus. Look at Christians’ social media. They tend to promote preachers, speakers, and Christian writers much more than they promote and proclaim the risen Jesus.
If we really believe that the name of Jesus is above every other name, shouldn’t His name be mentioned and celebrated far more than any preacher’s, writer’s, or speaker’s name? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! If Christianity is about Jesus, we need to let His name crowd the name of every celebritized Christian out of our hearts, our churches, and our conferences. In the name of Jesus . . .
Here’s an example of humble Christian Leadership: Paul and Barnabas were Christian leaders who knew their place as humble servants of Jesus and refused to be exalted and celebritized by people’s praise and idolatry. When they encountered a group of people trying to worship and make idols of them, they abandoned their dignity by tearing their clothes and shouting. Then they rushed into the crowd of pagans, called them friends, and asked them, “Why are you doing this?” They identified with the people using the Greek word “homoiopatheis,” which means “of the same nature or passions as you,” and they proclaimed the good news that humans can turn away from worthless things to the living God, the Creator of the heavens and earth.
Paul and Barnabus tried to focus people’s attention on God, not on themselves, by telling them that any food they have and any joy they experience are gifts from God. Even then, the crowd still wanted to worship and idolize Paul and Barnabas who continued to resist the people’s praise, adoration, and exaltation.
I want to live in a place of heart-felt community where people caring deeply about each other is more important than people comparing themselves with each other and competing with one another. Those kinds of places are hard to find, but they do exist and can be created. For me those types of places are far more important than my geographical location.
The first time I found a place like that was at the University of Tennessee Martin. There I encountered a group of Jesus Freaks who were connected heart-to-heart with one another and with Jesus Christ. The time I spent there was amazing and life-transforming. Many decades later Jesus and those Christ-followers still have my heart. A group of us just had a beautiful, Spirit-led reunion a few days ago.
Ever since I left college, I’ve searched for and found (or helped create) places of Spirit-led community. I’ve never been contented with nominal, institutionalized Christianity when God has so much more for us than Sunday songs and a one-man sermon.
I love to tell the stories of the places I’ve connected heart-to-heart with Jesus and with people. I have two books about them: Beyond Church Ekklesia and The Joy Of Early Christianity. They can help guide you to my favorite places in the world.
The strangest thing I’ve ever found (and kept) was my heart strangely warmed. The same thing happened to a guy named John Wesley in 1738. This is what he wrote in his journal:
“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.”
One evening in 1970 I went very unwillingly to a Spirit-led Christian gathering at the University of Tennessee Martin, where people were describing the change which God had worked in their heart through faith in Christ. I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation. I then testified openly to all there about the presence and reality of the risen Jesus who I was now feeling in my heart. I’ve kept that awareness of the living Jesus and His presence in me ever since that day.
It’s time to abandon half-hearted Christianity! Let’s replace it with hearts that are strangely warmed and kept continually on fire for Jesus, day and night.
Christian minds have been poisoned by “cozy quiet time Christianity.” It’s time to move beyond “the domesticated church of corrupted Christendom” and to boldly proclaim and demonstrate the presence, power, love, and kingdom of the living Jesus in the same way the first century Christ-followers did. (The quotes in this paragraph are from Seedbed Wake-Up Call.)
Poisoned minds persistently prefer their own perspective and resist the antidote of truth and love. To purse God’s righteousness and His kingdom we must abandon all hope in our own righteousness (and/or the righteousness of our nation) and instead humbly embrace His perspective: “There is none righteous, no not one.” That involves a lifetime of deep repentance and radical surrender to Christ’s presence, Christ’s will and Christ’s perspective.
The more joy you have from Jesus the less you the less you follow “the pursuit of happiness” anywhere else. God’s Spirit, when welcomed into a human heart, produces joy. When Christianity abandons the living Jesus it becomes joyless and dutiful religion.
Jesus leads people to joy. If joy’s not increasing in your heart, perhaps you’ve wandered off His path.
Learn to open your heart and let Jesus flow within you as a fountain of joy. When you return your heart to God the Father, He throws a party and angels rejoice.
When life tries to fill you with anxiety remember that Jesus wants to fill you with joy. Details about Jesus will give you information, but conscious awareness of His presence and love will thrill you with joy.
Persecution should lead a Christian, not to verbal or physical retaliation, but (in Jesus’ words) to “leap for joy.”
Every day I work to skip away. I’m a skipper because I try to opt out of life’s distractions. I love to skip the following things in order to make much room for joy in my life. I strive to skip:
Joy won’t be an illusion if you’ll start skipping! Skipping with joy is the walk of hope. Learn to skip the things that are tripping you and making your happiness illusive!
Life’s great illusion
Pleasure seeking is an illusion
Because the pursuit of happiness
Is always elusive.
It leads to confusion
And ends in delusion.
Seeking Jesus
Keeps joy peaking
In my heart
But pleasure-seeking
Is joy leaking.
Jesus is my joy,
My greatest treasure.
He fills me beyond measure
With supernatural pleasure.
Set aside distraction.
Let the living Jesus
Be your constant attraction.
Let God’s Spirit continually urge you to stay focused on the urgency of always aligning your heart and your lifestyle to Jesus and His will.
Continually interact with the grace of God. Let Jesus cleanse and restore your heart every time it drifts from Him.
Keep your heart interactively engaged with the living Jesus. Continually focus on His inner presence and obey His promptings.
A listening heart hears more than words. When hearing sermons replaces personally hearing Jesus in your heart, Christians become spiritually deaf.
When Christians rely and depend on the working of the Holy Spirit instead of on sermon hearing, revival breaks out! I would love to see a church bulletin or a conference flyer where the featured preacher/speaker is Jesus! Instead of gathering around a preacher or a conference speaker, it’s time to gather around the living Jesus!
Words from God’s Spirit
Are heard by the heart.
Let your heart listen
And you’ll be amazed.
A pet has no words but speaks loudly to a listening heart. A pet can train you to hear with your heart!
Material things mean very little to me. I’ve never spent very much money on them. I very seldom see a material thing that I want or need. When I do I tend to buy the cheapest version of it. When my wife asks me what I want for my birthday or for Christmas, I never can think of anything.
I guess the most expensive personal item I’ve ever bought is the $500 computer that I am typing on at this moment. I appreciate it because it gives me access to the internet and is a platform for me to tell people about the love of my life — the living, resurrected Jesus Christ.
Here’s what I’ve just written:
It’s easy to be like the people of ancient Jerusalem who didn’t recognize Jesus even though the Old Testament prophets’ words about Him were read every Saturday in their synagogues. When Christ’s presence isn’t recognized and fully surrendered to, we’re left with a religious form of godliness that denies the power thereof. Although words are read about Jesus and His will, we live our lives as though He is dead because we don’t literally encounter and obey the risen Jesus as “the radiance of God’s glory.
When the Bible is preached and people aren’t trained and empowered to daily apply it and live it, nothing much happens. Christianity needs to focus on heart-to-heart relationship with Christ, daily discipleship, and heavenly citizenship, not just on lectures based on a pastor’s religious scholarship.
Church trains Christians to rely on hearing external religious lectures rather than on Christ’s internal presence. People can’t be lectured into discipleship no matter how many Christian conferences they attend.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 