John 19:38-20:31

I will never get another today.

What will I do with it?

Will I choose what is easy,

Or what is good?

Will I numb myself to real life,

Staring at my device for I don’t want to know how long?

Will I try to control my interactions

With my own brand of self-preservation

Designed to keep others at a distance?

Will I choose lust over love,

Using others to meet my needs,

Physical, Emotional, Spiritual?

Or

Will I crucify my ego,

Kill my rights to “self,”

Flog every hint of using others,

Murder every moment in which I believe I’m the main character?

Will I rise with the force of the new life that runs through my veins,

Speak with the animating breath blown into my lungs,

Act with pure generosity knowing eternal abundance is mine,

And leave the graveclothes of all that I thought was me behind?

He has resurrected the Real,

The flesh and bone animated by his voice

Which beautifully reveal the eternal person whom he formed

And made for a Love so expansive and free

That the rags of self and the tomb of this world

Never stood a chance at containing it.

So today,

Will I wrap myself in death,

Or run wild with life?

John 18:33-19:37

It is easy to forget.

It is even easier to ignore.

Who wants to dwell on such morbid thoughts?

After all, we live in new covenant freedom, love, joy!

Certainly, but at what price?

The disfigurement of his face by ceaseless blows.

His holy blood flung carelessly about during his flogging.

The shame, scorn, ridicule shoved into the flesh of his brow.

The space opened between muscle and bone in his hands and feet.

The cold metal forced into his side.

He could not ignore it. We should not ignore it.

The depths of his degradation reveal the heights of his love,

Each drop of blood the currency to buy back his bride,

Each wound wielding the weight of his sheer delight in

You…

Me…

Look into his eyes as red streams of life flow from his body,

And hear him say,

“This is worth it.”

John 18:1-11

Those eyes. They will never leave me…

I still can’t really explain it. It had been ordinary night orders, something reserved for rowdy criminals we wanted to catch by surprise, or ones whose arrest might lead to a public scene. This was the latter.

We had all heard the stories, even a few within our ranks claiming this man had benefitted them with miracles. If he really was doing what people said he was, why bother him? I mean, I get it. Civil unrest, peace between our subjects and our empire, potential militarization of the masses. But keeping me from bed for a craftsman from nowhere?!

Still, armor was donned, torches were lit, weapons made ready, and we marched. No activity in the streets, no sound save our foot falls, no light except ours and those through the distant trees growing larger and larger.

Then they were before us, only ten or so men all looking tired, anxious, frightened. All except for one. The money-loving traitor received a push in the back from our commander, then shuffled forward toward one, who stepped confidently toward him. A kiss was exchanged, our signal, as well as some words. We were ready to act swiftly, but before our orders were given, the man stepped forward again, past the traitor and towards us.

His was a face at rest, as content as though he were in his home, enjoying his family having just shared a delicious meal.

“Who are you looking for?”

His words filled the silent space around us, a presence to them that was claustrophobic and comforting at the same time.

After a significant hesitation, our commander replied, “Jesus of Nazareth.” His voice never seemed so small.

That’s when it happened. This man, Jesus, calmly spoke three words, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, trying to catch my breath. As I squirmed in the dirt, I assessed. No one was behind or above me. His people hadn’t moved either, but seemed as shocked as we were. I rose to my knees, then to my feet, completely unsure of what to do next. I looked in the direction of my commander, but again Jesus spoke first.

“Who are you looking for?”

Every one of our company tensed, ready for the force behind his words, whatever it was, to knock us down again. We braced as our commander again said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” We were ready this time, gripping our weapons tightly and standing as though we were about to be charged by an oncoming army.

“I am He.” Jesus said it again, same as before, but nothing happened this time. I looked to my peers, but they were still on their feet, exchanging glances as their muscles lost some of their tension. Jesus continued, “I already told you that. If I’m who you’re after let these men go.” As he said that last statement, he gestured behind him, indicating that he was speaking of his men.

The image from that night that has stuck with me all of these years was not Jesus’ face, nor my view from the ground when mere words forced me to it. It is that moment when Jesus stood between us and his followers. Jesus walked calmly towards us, allowing himself to be restrained and led away by a Roman army. Our company began to move, but I was still frozen, staring intently into those eyes. They were still wide, having frozen the moment Jesus demanded he be let free, the hand of the leader sweeping across all of those standing behind him, protected by his presence, and not stopping before it came to rest on him, the traitor.

Those eyes, frozen in shock over their unbearable freedom. They’re still with me.

To The Staff of Journey Community Church

I don’t usually spend much time on verses and/or passages on election and predestination. I have done my research and have come to a settled place where I know the arguments and passages favored by the two main sides of the topic, but have found what I believe to be a biblical position to rest (which happens to be somewhere in the middle). I am ok with not knowing the definite answer because it is a discussion believed by scholars to be outside of the “core/essential” beliefs of our faith, and God is totally sovereign and trustworthy so, however he has worked it, I am assured of his goodness towards us. And to be frank, this response is the result of some hurt and disunity I experienced from engaging certain people in discussion on this topic in the past. So, once I found my stance and prepared myself for pastoral leadership in any conversations that might arise, I began spending less time on the passages in my personal devotion.

But this morning I was struck by a passage in Romans, starting at the top of chapter 9. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s a section all about God’s election of his people, particularly discussing Israel’s state with God since they largely missed and denied Jesus as the Messiah. As he discusses Israel’s position before God, Paul makes a parenthetical statement that says, “God’s purpose in election would stand, not by works but by his calling,” Romans 9:11. You know those moments when a sentence or phrase in Scripture just resonates deep within your chest? This was one of those for me.

Avoiding every step of the rabbit trail I took in studying and researching this passage, I ended up at a devotional by the great author and lover of Jesus, Andrew Murray, titled True Vine, where he discusses John 15:16 (also on election/God’s choosing us): “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”

About this verse Murray says:

“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you.” And with what view does Christ say this? That they may know what the object is for which He chose them, and find, in their faith in His election, the certainty of fulfilling their destiny… In our verse Christ reveals His twofold purpose in choosing us to be His branches: that we may bear fruit on earth, and have power in prayer in Heaven. What confidence the thought that He has chosen us for this gives, that He will not fail to fit us for carrying out His purpose! What assurance that we can bear fruit that will abide, and can pray so as to obtain! What a continual call to the deepest humility and praise, to the most entire dependence and expectancy! He would not choose us for what we are not fit for, or what He could not fit us for. He has chosen us; this is the pledge, He will do all in us.

Two avoid getting too longwinded (too late!) and too lost in the weeds, Andrew Murray is observing that:

1. God’s election enables us to know our purpose (God’s purpose for us) and find certainty of fulfilling that purpose (our calling).

2. God’s purpose, as stated in John 15:16, is that we bear fruit that abides and have power in prayer.

This blew me away. Rather than the pettiness and slander I have witnessed in some discussions on the topic of election, Murray reveals that one of the blessings of the doctrine of election is that we know our calling in life (fruit bearing and powerful praying) WILL be accomplished by God because he chose us. God cannot be thwarted, stymied, stopped, diverted, or prevented from accomplishing EXACTLY what he plans for our lives. His choosing of us is not based on anything we’ve done or will do, because “he chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4), meaning before we had any chance to prove ourselves worthy or unworthy. Even more, God’s perfect knowledge enabled him to know everything we would ever do, good bad and ugly, before he said “Let there be light,” and he STILL chose us, and never changed his mind.

I was just thinking about you all. How ridiculously thankful I am for each one of your personalities. How wonderful all of your strengths are. How beautiful your weaknesses are. How amazing it is when all of that comes together as we labor for the kingdom alongside each other, running full speed in our strengths, using them to bolster and round out each others’ weaknesses, and scorning any pride or shame that could come from our interdependence on each others’ gifts and skills. Because if God has chosen us, then we KNOW that we will bear fruit and have power in prayer at and through Journey Community Church.

So, in alignment with God’s words through Ed’s message this last weekend, I challenge us to ask the Holy Spirit to move in our lives and our church, taking us to another level, another dimension, another gear of fruitfulness and prayer. We have been elected, called, chosen for this purpose, and God will not fail to fulfill his purposes. I can’t wait to see what he unleashes in and through us and the Journey family.

Much Love,

Chris

Fighting For Satisfaction

Get stubborn. There is no chance of delighting ourselves in the Lord if we are not aggressive in our fight to do so. 

The whole world pulls with its entire weight in the opposite direction of Christ. Other gospels declare their “good news” relentlessly. Everything around us tells us that the good life is something else, anything else besides Jesus. Weight loss, love, intimacy, attraction, dominance, power, safety, comfort, approval, each with a million and one different ways to get there. Entire companies and billions upon billions of dollars are focused solely on preying upon your insecurities, feeding twisted visions of the good life, and convincing you that their product is the way to get there. Your addiction is their profit. Your anxiety is their gain. Your insecurity is their livelihood.

Our every effort must go into knowing and being close to Christ. What we see, listen to, say, read, watch, engage with in our free time, all of it must be exhaustingly spent on God. This may feel like burying our heads in the sand, foolish Christians ignoring the world around them and seeing only what they want to see, while actually remaining in constant peril and serving no purpose in the “real world.” But what we see is not the real world, and our heads are not being buried in the sand, but kept above the clouds in heaven. We do not ignore the world around us, but we become infatuated with God, who in turn gives us the eyes to see the world as it truly is; greatly valuable and utterly damaged. This is not a rescinding of social responsibility, but living from our rightful place at the right hand of God, where everything sits under our feet because of the victory of Jesus. Only from there can we properly see the world and bless it with the heavenly blessings given to us by Christ Jesus. Everything we do apart from this position is done in our own strength, lacking the power of God, and is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire while believing with all of our hearts that we are putting it out. We pat ourselves on the back for our great service to humankind, while in reality we are burning the world to ashes.

God help us. 

Help us to turn from the exhaustion that comes from the endless frustration of pursuing satisfaction anywhere else, and help us to exhaust ourselves in the only pursuit that matters, the pursuit of You.

Help us in every moment of our life to choose that which points us to you, despising all else.

Help us to keep you on our lips, in our thoughts, filling our hearts.

Help us to choose the company of others who will not let us off the hook when we fail to pursue you, but will lovingly encourage and point us back to you.

Help us to scorn every excuse and reason and distraction and “barrier” that keeps us from zealously following you.

Help us to LOVE your Word, delight in prayer, enjoy discipline, crave God-obsessed community, and cherish every step we take that conforms to your footprint, even as it leads us to self-denial, suffering, and death.

Help us to keep our head above the clouds.

Built On Nothing Less

We build pillars of safety around us that we lean upon to support the weight of our needs; needs for safety, comfort, value, love. They are rickety and piecemealed together with odd bits of life and pleasure, and any one of them on their own could not hold the immense weight of our needs. But we build more than one, and together they can support the weight, sort of. Though we have the illusion of safety, they are unstable, always at risk of crashing to the ground, needing regular maintenance because a piece falls off here, a chunk is removed there, and whole pillars regularly fall apart. Instead of experiencing the full life we’ve been given, our attention and focus ends up fixed on these feeble pillars and their never-ending maintenance.

If we embrace Jesus and follow him, he gives us the strength to live without these pillars, the full weight of our burdens lifted and supported by the Wind of the Spirit. Upon our initial conversion we experience a new hope for our future, new strength for today, and even feel lifted into the air by this Wind of the Spirit, able to trust in the support of God over that of the towers. But the towers remain, and before long we find ourselves sinking, inch by inch, back into a place of rest on top of the towers. To be sure, the heavenly Winds remain and sustain us, so that when a piece of a tower falls away, we might not feel the compulsion to fix it for a few extra days. When a tower falls apart completely, we fall onto the Wind of the Spirit instead of plummeting to the ground. But, slowly and steadily, rebuild the towers we must.

For years, decades even, these two realities can coexist, the dependence on the towers and the ever-presence of the Wind, the hyper-fixation on the maintenance of trash while being utterly convinced there is more to this Wind than we are experiencing. All the while, our God is waiting for the day for our eyes to be opened, so we may see that the towers are not actually supporting us and keeping us from plummeting to certain death, but instead are keeping us tethered to the ground when we were always meant to fly.

The destruction of the towers must come, and He won’t do it all for you. With this new understanding of these tethers, you might feel the need to fight and destroy and overcome them. However, contrary to your initial inclinations, don’t put up any fight. Don’t give those towers any more attention than what they’ve already robbed you of, and simply neglect their constant maintenance. Instead, fly away. The towers were unstable and always falling apart anyway, so all you have to do is stretch your wings, exercise your atrophied trust, and fly where the Wind takes you. It will be terrifying. It will be tempting to go back. But if you fly on the wild and ferocious Wind long enough, you’ll find that it has demolished those towers for you, all while you were navigating your new, breathtaking freedom. 

This is trust, and when you forsake all you’ve known and embrace all Jesus has, then, my friend, you will begin to live in the fullness of life that your Love has promised you.

Unlocking Heaven by Giving Up On Yourself

“Got any storms in your life? Stop fighting the storm and worrying about it; instead, fall on your knees and admit you need Mighty Warrior to save you. He waits every day for you to come to the end of yourself and start depending on Him.” - 50 Days of Knowing Him

I am constantly depending on myself. It’s pervasive, in everything I do, everything I say. And I can call out the ineffectiveness of this in other people, see with great clarity how their efforts have not gotten them what they want, have led them to destruction and despair at worst, or a half-life at best. I do it too, I just depend on myself “in the name of Jesus.”

No wonder I am so hard on myself. No wonder it is so easy for me to have standards I do not meet, and then feel anxiety when I don’t meet them. Because Jesus saved me, but now it’s my turn to work. It’s my turn to get better. I have to complete what Jesus started every day, or at least prove that I was worth His sacrifice. That is in direct opposition to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All of my efforts are dirty rags before Him, including my efforts after I’ve been saved, MY efforts in HIS name. I was utterly dead in my sin, bound for eternal separation from God. I contributed nothing to my salvation. It was a free and lavish gift.

And in exchange for my ugly and shameful sin, God gave me eternal life and every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He gave me full access to Himself and His friendship, as well as full access to His resources. But if I don’t think I need them, I’m not going to ask for them. If I’m not going to ask for them, then I am not going to experience them. And if I am not experiencing them, I’m going to wonder what is wrong with me or with Christianity, because it promises on every page of scripture to be more than a fledgling and weak faith.

So, what does it take to live the good life, the fullness of life that Jesus has promised us? Giving up on yourself and asking for help. Total and utter dependence on God’s power and resources in every situation, every moment of your life. Getting really freaking good at saying, “God help me.” Thinking less of your abilities and efforts and ascribing limitless potential to God’s ability worked through your life.

Every Spiritual Blessing

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love.” Ephesians 1:3-4

Commentary Note on“every spiritual blessing” - “Every possible blessing for time and eternity, which the Spirit has to bestow.” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown) 

---

This is past tense. He HAS blessed us. My first reaction is to ask for every spiritual blessing. I immediately started asking, begging God to receive every spiritual blessing. “God, I want that. Give me every spiritual blessing today!” But He’s already done it. It is finished. Sin was paid for, every possible blessing the Spirit has to give for time and eternity was unleashed, freely given to those who believe.

So then, our job is to believe. To remember it. To remain aware of the eternal blessings we have been given. Then to act like it. To approach every moment, every situation of everyday life like we have the limitless, endless blessings of the Spirit in our hands, in our hearts, in our souls, in our chest by the presence of the Holy Spirit with us.

How would that change the way we pray? How would that change the way we endure hardship? How would that change the way we confronted suffering? How would that change the way we treat the people around us? How would that change the way we approached our work, our ministry?

So instead of “Lord, give me these blessings,” the prayer becomes, “Lord, unleash the blessings you’ve given me into the people around me. Manifest every spiritual blessing through my life.”

Notice not only the shift in confidence and authority, but also the shift in posture from receiving to giving. I don’t need it, I’ve already got it. “But I want to see more of it! I want to experience this ‘every blessing’!” Good! The way to that is not by receiving more for yourself (you’ve already got it all!), but to start giving it away, doing the work of Jesus in the world around you. Settle for nothing less than bringing the full weight of your limitless blessing to bear upon the people and situations you find yourself in and around. Jesus has given you His authority to bind and loose, to exercise power over the enemy and to release the blessings of heaven on God’s children, both lost and found. Do it!

Quit thinking constantly of yourself, you don’t need to. Jesus thinks of you eternally, so think of Him endlessly. As you look at Him, you’ll see the fullness of His blessing already given to you, and you’ll follow His gaze to the sheep around you whom He wants to bless in this same way through you. Get to work.