Meekness and Turning it Over to God in Prayer

I am daily, well at least today, earning the surprising power of turning a problem over to God in prayer. For example, today I had a problem at work that I turned over to God in prayer and said, ‘God, I cannot fix this. Please fix it. I give this to you”. To my amazement, God again has done for me what I cannot do for myself. God honors when we let Him do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This is meekness. Meekness is giving the management of what we cannot control over to the One who is the manager of the uncontrollable in our lives.

I cannot control whether a door is open in the gospel. God controls this. I cannot control other people’s attitudes and when I ask the Lord for help inthese things that I cannot control. He goes to work. This is meekness.

This is a discipline of turning over to God our anxieties and asking Him to control things that I cannot control anyway. My children’s attitudes. My friends brokenness. My wife’s happiness. I cannot control these things and this powerlessness with respect to circumstances outside my control lead me to either try to force my will on others which is evil or to give it over to God and rest or to just stress out about the problem. Only one option is righteous and there is only one path to peace in such situations. This is the path of meekness.

In business this is a big source of stress. We need to learn to spot these anxieties and what we cannot control and respond with joyful hopeful faith filled prayers to our God who loves to act for the sake of the meek.

God Bless,
brad

Religion or Spirituality – “Do Not Be Called Leaders” – How Organized Religion Undermines the Spirituality of Its Leaders

Some commandments of our Lord we obey and others we, Christians, completely ignore. In Matthew 23, Jesus made a statement that the church, myself included, has decided to completely ignore.

Jesus Christ made a very clear statement in Matthew 23 verse 10, He said, "Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ.”

The previous verse, verse 9, we protestants obey. It says “Do not call anyone on earth your father”. That one, we obey. But verse 10, which is a parallel verse, we completely ignore. We have small group leaders. We call men “our pastor”. We say “Joe is called to leadership”. We may not technically say, “Joe is my leader”, but, in all practicality, the structure of the organized church is one of a few men preaching and teaching and a whole group of men and women listening to them. It is this dichotomous structure of teachers and listeners that Jesus Christ, our Lord, commanded that we DO NOT develop!! It is OK to listen to teachers, but do not try to be like them. Do not make it your ambition to obtain a position of teacher or a title of teacher or leader or father within the community of faith.

Now just a little aside. I can hear the purist saying, “but what about Paul’s statements about elders in Timothy?” Paul is talking about elders and deacons. Let’s just say, I believe in limited government. In other words, we need over sight and government in the church, but the role of government is very limited. The elders exercise discipline in very rare circumstances, and the role of the deacons is to make sure the bills get paid and that the wealth is distributed to the poor. But, for the real work of the community, there is no leadership. Actual discipleship work is totally worked out in peer to peer relationships. In all spiritual relationship and discipleship relationships, there must be no leaders or teachers for we have one leader Christ. So, for all the spiritual gifts of teaching and prophecy and mercy and hospitality and the work of building the kingdom, call no one on earth leader and do not let anyone call you a leader.

Second aside: I am fully aware that Paul also said, "Some are called to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers". My position does not contradict the reality of giftedness. I realize the answer is a "both/and" of no hierarchy in terms of status in the community and also of a place given for people graced by God to exercise and develop spiritual gifts.

The reason Jesus prohibits titles and hierarchical structure in His church is because ambition within the social structure of religion will undermine our spirituality and deceive us. This subtle ambition to be something in the structure of religion will prevent us from entering the Kingdom life of poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, and purity. Lately, I have found this principle to be true not just in theory but in practice.
Let’s read the whole passage in context.

Matt. 23:6-15, Jesus, speaking regarding the religious leaders of His day, says:
6"They love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called Rabbi by men.
8"But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers.
9"Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.
10"Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ. 11"But the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12"Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
13"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
14"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation.
15"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves."

How I found this to be true in practice
When I first became a Christian, I was immediately offered positions of teaching in the body. Within a month or two of accepting the truth of the gospel, I began teaching 2-3 bible studies every week. Fifteen months after my conversion, I entered seminary and, less than a year after entering seminary, I was on staff at a mega-church and leading a Christian discipleship home. The point is I have never known Christianity without the promise of a “calling to leadership”. Throughout my entire Christian life, I have been in a place where I teach and others listen. Here is the way it works. We are baptized into a culture that has a structure that calls men with speaking gifts, or who are educated, leaders. Someone with a talent for speaking is placed in a role that is intended to turn him into “the man”. This structure is completely contrary to what Jesus commands, and I am only now realizing that this structure does not allow men to enter the kingdom. As Jesus says in the context of the passage, a structure that calls men leaders, "prevents them from entering the kingdom". Oh God, help us!!!

Let me say this, the men who found me and made me "twice the son of hell as themsleves" are tender-hearted, prayerful, humble men. I love them for believing in me or at least believing in me to a point. These men were fathers to me and were great examples of integrity and simplicity. But, the system simply doesn’t make kingdom followers of Jesus Christ.

For me, I have for the first time completely stepped out of the system. I, now, have no ambition in the system because there is no system. I cannot hope to be a full time teacher and preacher because there are no full time teachers and preachers. I cannot hope to be a leader of a faith community because, we have no leaders but Christ. I am left with no ambition to be the man because there is no “man” position in the simple church. Without hierarchy, I can't seek promotion among men.

The Initial De-tox
What I initially found was that my first response to this freedom from religion was to cease being spiritual. Now that there was no religion to drive me to be spiritual, I found I was not motivated at all. In other words, my motivation to please people was what was driving my daily spiritual disciplines. Certainly while in the religious system, God honored my prayers and I had many wonderful experiences and learnings from all these years of study and preparation for teachings, but I could not help but have mixed motives. This process is very humbling but, obviously, very spiritually necessary.

Here is my definition of religion or organized religion.
Religion is the social structure that motivates certain religious practices.

This structure will motivate even the most pure man or woman. If the structure exists then religion will be part of our cultural identity and therefore part of our character. There is no avoiding the influence of religion on us if we are “baptized’ into a religion structure with leaders and teachers and hierarchy.

Spirituality is a life driven by Holy Spirit fueled affections of the heart and which results in morally beautiful spiritual practices.

Maybe we could say, spirituality is an affection driven relationship with God that motivates spiritual practices of love for God and man. I am finding that without losing my religion, I was never able to separate my religion from my spirituality and, therefore, was never able to work solely on becoming a spirit led follower of Jesus Christ. I was working too hard on being a pastor to follow Jesus with all my heart.


I am contending that all pastors are placed in this quagmire.

Now everyone has a mixture of both religious and spiritual motivations this side of the final consummation of the kingdom. But, until a teacher-type steps outside the structure of religion, I have found it is impossible to discern and be cleansed of our religious and pharisaical motivations. The culture of religion makes us hypocrites.

So where do we go from here?
The answer is to pursue the kingdom and the teachings of Jesus and refuse to be a leader in any structural way (at least for a good long season). What we will find is a change of motives. Today, I find that I need the power of the Holy Spirit not in order to stay inspired so that I can preach a good sermon but in order to have any real relationship with Jesus at all. If I do not pray and seek the kingdom, I end up without God in my life. So now the primary motive for spiritual disciplines is actual love for God. Do not fear the loss of false motives, if we are His, then our hearts naturally long for God. This grace-given affection is now necessary to have any Christianity at all. Christendom is gone and now all we have is the kingdom. We are placed at the crossroads. Will we enter the kingdom or simply fade away and spiritually die?

My second motivation is moral survival. Now that I have no social fears to protect me from my sinfulness, I find that, without God, I am just like every other sinful pig. All our sin comes to the surface. Our external shell of religion can no longer protect us from the world. Now and only now do I feel I am desperate for authentic power from God without which I am morally doomed to mediocrity and nominal Christianity.

Thirdly, I am motivated to live in the world but not be of it. It is a total paradigm from religious obligation to actual compassion and otherliness. When the obligation to religious practice is gone, all that is left is the creativity to find ways to love people in practical ways. There is no religions service left to justify that we are building the kingdom. If we are to build the kingdom, we are forced to do it through organic and authentic relationships. There is no show to assist us in doing the kingdom work. There is no show to maintain. There are no more events to plan or meetings to attend. All we have at our disposal is our ability to make relationships with people and love them.

If we lack real kingdom affections and real love of God and people, we will be like the whole in the donut. We are left with no spiritual life at all. The process of stripping ourselves of all religion is pretty revealing. It has revealed in me that so much spiritual discipline was motivated by social ambition and not love for God at all. But the great benefit is that now, I am forced to only develop true spirituality. There is no more cloak of religion to hide beneath.

The conclusion is that Jesus’ sayings are again the true path to life. So my fellow travelers, “let no one on earth call you leader or teacher”. As we obey this liberating command of our Lord, in no time, if we continue to seek the kingdom and His righteousness, we will find God will do for us immeasurably beyond anything we could ask or even imagine. Glory to God!!

God Bless,
brad

Meekness – If I Stop Being “the Man”, I will be Like the Hole in the Donut

For my entire Christian life, I have been the man. Within a week or so of coming to know Christ, I began teaching a small group. Within a year, I was teaching bible studies 2-5 times a week and I never stopped until recently. Being the man, the teacher, has been my whole gig. There is some good to this constant ministry. By being constantly in ministry and in leadership, we are always aware that we might quench the Spirit in our lives. This “fear of the Lord” keeps one holy and always confessing to our discipleship partners. My whole life as a Christian has been one inspired idea after another. Pastors learn the word but for what motive. We seek the power of the Holy Spirit and most often this is for good reasons. We desire to see the kingdom expand. But, if we dig deeper we may find a less altruistic motive.

As I step aside from ministry for the first time in my life, I find myself less motivated and less spiritual and less intimate with God. If this is true what was my motive in the first place? This question can only really be answered from experience. For a pastor to know his real motives, an involuntary season out of ministry can be an eye opening experience. For me, I feel completely like a fish out of water. Ministry is my whole gig. Without ministry, I am like the hole in the donut. Being the man, leading others in knowing and understanding God, is my whole life. But ministry isn’t life and service cannot be our motive. When we are left without a religious motive to be spiritual, do we have enough fear of God and love for God to walk in holiness. Is the real reason we live in the fear of the Lord, because we want to be seen as spiritual or to actually be spiritual so as to be successful. Jesus said, “the Pharisees love praying long prayers and to be seen by other men”. Without leadership and the hope of status in the religious community, there is no real love for God.

We all have a role we play in life and we play it before others. There is the alpha male who is looked up to and followed. There is the pretty girl, the smart guy, the nice person, the tough guy. Some play the simpleton and as a simple person they feel comfortable. Some are victims. Some play weak. Some play strong. Being a pastor can be very insidious because the role seems to be focused on living before God but in reality it is a role played on the stage before men. When that stage is pulled away and the drama is over, do we feel like the whole in the donut, a fish out of water? Does the season of inactivity lead to adoration or addiction?

A Challenge to Pastors and Church Leaders
Meekness is to cease managing the perceptions and behaviors of others in order to maintain one’s status in one’s social community. Meekness is to cease all controlling and manipulative behavior and to abandon oneself to the permissive will of God. Pastors are perceived as being controlling. I have heard many stories of pastors being “hard to work with”. The meek are not hard to work with. Many pastors are very “my way or the highway”. Many churches have very authoritarian management cultures. It must not be like this. If it is, it is because the leaders are managing their status and are not abandoned to the will of God. What is the real motive? We are holy because we do not want to offend the Lord. We do not want to offend the Lord because we desire His blessing. We desire His blessing because we want to extend the kingdom. We desire to extend the kingdom because ministry success is our whole life. Ministry success is our life because we are self-centered and narcissistic. If we are controlling or fearful, is it not because the real root of our motives is not the love of God but the love of honor from men. This is a hard confession to make but God is good and trials come for our good.

If without ministry, we feel like the hole in the donut, then we must realize the our inner person is not truly motivated by the love of God but the love of religious promotion before and by others. If we appear controlling to others, it is probably because we are. If we are tired and nervous it is fear of men not fear of the Lord. If this heart is our heart, the deep death of meekness must come to us by any means necessary. We need to ask God to purge us of our carnal motives if we are to be truly effective in doing spiritual work.

For me a time off is bringing all my brokenness to the surface. It is a deep work and a good work for God will not share His glory with another. My the Lord heal His church and cleanse us of our sin.

God Bless
brad

The Meek Politician - The Christian in Politics Pt 1

The church in America, I believe, is in crisis. The last twenty years of seeker sensitive tactics for evangelism and similar church service methods has only exasperated the already apparent shallowness and superficial spiritual life of the American Christian. One area where the lack of spiritual wisdom and shallow discipleship has expressed itself much to the detriment of the church’s witness is the realm of politics. I have made the decision to be a contributor to RedBlueChristian in an attempt to surface the relationship between a lack of discipleship under the teachings of Jesus and how this has expressed itself in the political theatre.

A key or possibly the key text regarding the effectiveness of the witness of the church to the reality that Jesus is the promised Messiah is Matt 5:13-16:
13"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. 14"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16"Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."

Jesus administers His Lordship over our lives through His teachings, and it is our incarnational application of these teachings in every area of our life that defines our “saltiness”. The Moral Attributes of God are revealed to those around us as we follow Jesus’ teachings in the power of the Holy Spirit. As we love and forgive in every area of our life, we are, in that moment, distinct from the world. We live by kingdom principles and not the principles of the world. If, through our ignorance, we play by the world’s rules and our character is not distinct, our interaction with the world will actually harm the cause of Christ.

Of all the virtues of Christ, none is so distinct and beautiful as His meekness. Jesus taught us that the wise and blessed man is the one who is meek and that it is the meek that shall, through faith and suffering, inherit the earth. The Christian is a person who is both filled with the life of Christ and under the Lordship of the mind of Christ. Such a person has the unique wisdom of both knowing and understanding the ways of Christ. Meekness is central to this morally distinct way. The Christian, to bear witness to the power of the Gospel in all his affairs, must make it his or her ambition to be meek.

The Question We Must Ask Ourselves
Is meekness a virtue that is seen in the Christian community’s political life? If we as a community are not generally meek in this arena of life, then, can we confess that Jesus is the Lord of all our life? If this is not our confession, we must change our approach to how we bear witness to the Gospel in the arena of politics. It is precisely our meek approach to life and our loving approach to all our adversaries that we, as Christians, are mandated to bring to the political process of our nation. To answer the question, “Are we meek in this area of life?”, we first must define meekness.

Meekness is the acceptance that in all our labors for righteousness God is in control of the results and that we need not be disturbed by the outcomes which God chooses to ordain. The meek boldly proclaim the truth and their positions, but they proclaim it without being disturbed by their adversaries. The foundation of our meekness is our knowledge that we are seen by our God and that He is able to act to vindicate His justice whenever He pleases. The meek never resort to any compromise of their integrity nor do they waver in their love for their adversaries. In short, the meek labor for righteousness, but they do not stoop to “fighting”. As followers of Jesus on the road of meekness, we maintain, like Steven, the face of an angel because, in our hearts, we behold the Lord seated at the right hand of God. Jesus was the meekest man ever to live, for, while He spoke the truth with boldness, He simultaneously did not defend Himself. Before His adversaries, He was like a lamb led to the slaughter. We are to be like our Lord in the arena of politics.

For the sake of brevity, I will limit my use of examples to but one.

The meek do not take matters into their own hands. The meek do not devise ways to obtain or maintain power which are less than honorable. In other words, the meek do not participate in gerrymandering. But, the Christian politician of our day responds, “that is politics, and, well, gerrymandering is allowed under the law”. “Gerrymandering is the prerogative of the ruling party, and, anyway, if we don’t do it ‘they’ will.”

It is precisely here that our Christian principles enter into the Christian’s politics. Meekness and love for that matter are only tested when we and our dreams and agendas have something to lose. Gerrymandering is a subtle and maybe sometimes not so subtle abuse of power. The Christian’s political behavior must be antithetical to abuse of power. Gerrymandering is but one example which surfaces one’s approach to politics. A Christian’s approach to politics, win or lose, is to follow our Lord in the way of meekness.

So, as citizens of another Kingdom and servants of another King, how do we live by these principles, the first being meekness? My prayer is that this discussion begins to answer these questions as another political season approaches.

May our witness be filled with grace and meekness to the Glory of God.
God Bless, brad
Cross posted at: RedBlueChristian.com

The Most Important Part of Prayer

The Most Important part of Prayer
When our Lord taught us to pray, He outlined a specific prayer, a quite simple prayer, to keep our priorities and attitude properly aligned in our prayer life. What can we learn about prayer from our Lord’s teaching on prayer.

1. The foundation of prayer is the orientation of our life toward God’s rule and reign.

Jesus taught us to pray by saying, "Our father in heaven hallowed by Your name. Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This prayer is entirely about aligning ourselves with the Sovereign Lordship of God and submitting our lives to His agenda. Here is the key to our spiritual lives and in fact our peace and happiness. The purpose of prayer is first and foremost our own repentance. The key to daily living is to turn from self-centeredness to God-centeredness.

How to achieve this alignment of our wills!
It is important to know that such alignment of our wills does not come with the words of our prayer but with the actual act of alignment. Jesus Himself says that it is not the words that matter. The Father already knows what we need. Prayer is a spiritual discipline to condition our person in meekness and worship. A key to this exercise is to realize that the opposite of self-centeredness is not 'non-self-centeredness" but God centeredness. To rest in the place of God-centeredness requires spiritual vision. What we are seeking in this exercise is a right view of God. Such a view of God is dependent on the Holy Spirit.

So the second point I would make is that such an orientation is not about words but about a view of God that brings what the bible calls “the fear of the Lord”. This fear of the Lord is a joyful place of acknowledging and seeing in our person the greatness of God and accepting His perfections.

The possible content of such a meditation is almost infinite. We might think of His wisdom in sending Jesus that He might be both the “just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus. Or His love in sending Jesus to make a way for our abiding forgiveness. We might thank Him for our lives and our experience of life. We might be thankful for His faithfulness in our lives. We might read a healing story from the life of Jesus and simply meditate on God’s compassion. We might praise for being a God of justice and mercy. BUT most importantly, we must be aware that the Holy Spirit is working with us to help us to worship God and to see His excellencies.

The Acceptance of God’s Will
I prefer the term acceptance to the term surrender when it comes to the orientation of the will. So often we stumble over the term surrender as in “total surrender”. We always will ask ourselves “Am I totally surrendered?” if we believe that surrender is a doorway to the blessed life, but acceptance is a more precise description of what is really happening.

“Lord, what ever happens in my life, whether good or bad, health or sickness, favor or persecution, all of this I accept as coming from Your hand and an opportunity for Your kingdom to come”.

We accept two essential realities in life. We accept all our circumstances which come to us. We accept that significant people around us are spiritually sick. We desire their spiritual healing and desire their spiritual maturity but first we accept them just as they are. We are absolutely tolerant of all people. Here is our peace.

Secondly, we accept God’s declared will, His word. We accept the word revealed in Jesus to love unconditionally. In this acceptance, we have come in alignment with God’s providence and His commands. We see trials as opportunities and difficult people as the most in need of our acceptance and love. We see difficulties as the moment when we can Glorify God and show His love.

This alignment of our wills is something we do more than daily but it is helpful to formally do as a spiritual discipline at least morning and night if we expect to abide in Christ and His word and thereby bear fruit to the Glory of the Father. The goal is to learn to walk during our day in these attitudes with prayer being a focused and directed time of orientation.

God Bless,
brad

Philippians 4:13 – The Most Misinterpreted Verse in America

Picture this scene. A man is being honored at work for making the most sales. He has set his mind at making a good living and he has succeeded. He cleared $20,000 this month and he wants to give the glory to God. So the zealous young man takes out his favorite verse and says, “I just want to give glory to God, for I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. The message of this man’s testimony is “You too can make 20,000 a month because Christ can give you the strength to do whatever you set your mind to.” Here, you have it, the not-so-great American gospel.

Again, picture the beauty queen all decked out in high heels and a bikini. The final choice for the winner is announced and the nice Texan girl wins. As she is interviewed she tries to give glory to God and says, “I just want to give glory to God, for I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. What is wrong with this picture other than the high heels and the bikini?

First, let’s look at what the verse actually means. Philippians 4:13 is better translated as follows:
In every type of thing, I am strong through Him who strengthens me” or amplified only slightly “In every type of circumstance, I am strong and stable through him who strengthens me.”
This verse is not speaking of how Christ strengthens me to have successful circumstances, but that Christ gives me His peace in adverse circumstances. Christ said, “My peace I give to you not as the world gives I give to you.”

What the American gospel says is that Christ, for His glory, will make you have nice circumstances and succeed. Set your mind to success. Never quit. Persevere and Christ will bless you. What a load of heresy and worldliness!!!

Is it no wonder that we have churches filled with successful people, giving testimonies of success, to lead others into this uniquely American form of Christianity?

But this is not the Gospel!!!! Christ did not call us to empower us to fight the good fight of perseverance in the American dream so that we could live a pain free life to the glory of God. This is just sanctified self will. Christ called us to learn to be strong and at peace in difficult circumstances so that we can forsake the world and follow Him into all the world for His name sake. “For we are called not only to believe in Him but to suffer for His name sake”. That is what this verse is about. Did we forget that Paul is writing this verse from a prison cell with shackles on his feet?

In this one most mis-quoted of all American verses, I think we have in a nutshell a definition of the disease that ails us. God help us.

God Bless,
brad

The Sovereignty of God and Walking in Peace

I have a saying, “The joy of the Lord is your MORAL strength”

I contend that if you are delighting in God, then you will have power to walk in purity, and you will have a testimony of “righteousness, peace and joy” to share. Does not all gossip and sins of the tongue come from a lack of peace and joy? Therefore, in discipling people, the number one topic is how to remain undisturbed. For many, this skill is called anger management for some it is just living stress-free in order to be a powerful witness. In learning the skill of living stress free, I think one must be a biblically high view of the sovereignty of God.

Traditionally a lower view of God's sovereignty has been called Arminianism. As a pastor, I see the spiritual ramifications of such beliefs quite often, and, in discipleship, a high view of God's sovereignty is essential. Such a lower view of sovereignty might go as follows.
We are called to participate in the Kingdom by fighting against sin and satan. God has delegated the war to us, and we are to fight. If we are losing the fight, it is because we are not fighting or believing hard enough or consistent enough. Basically, the onus is on our commitment to or zeal in fighting. This worldview produces a certain response to adverse circumstances.

A believer with a deep sense of God's sovereignty will approach such a problem quite differently. We would agree that we participate in the kingdom and in the work of Christ on earth. We agree that there is a fight, but we fight by giving the outcomes of al our labors to God. We ceasing all fighting and peacefully and joyfully accept the results as from the hand of God through faith. The difference in the two worldviews is how we respond to adversity and unpleasant outcomes. The arminian fights; the Biblical faith accepts and continues to do the work leaving the outcomes to God.

An Example
The foundation of this peaceful labor is a high view of the sovereignty of God. For example, let’s say I am working hard at my job and I am not given that promotion. The more Arminian believer says this is warfare; I need to have faith. The outcome God wants is my good, and I need to fight for this good. The believer with a lower understanding of God's sovereignty fights against the daily outcomes of life.

In the same scenario, the biblical faith says, "God is good. I accept this set back with patience. All your works are wonderful. This circumstance too is perfect." Upon reflection, the biblical faith is far more prone to say, "In fact, Lord, You are teaching me that I have [such and such] character defect. Thank you for your pruning, and Your jealousy for my sanctification. I love you Lord".

Here is a great key to living the blessed life. We are all equally called to be zealous for the kingdom. We are all equally called to exercise means to build up the church and do the work of Christ on the earth but do you accept as from God’s hand those outcomes that you cannot control.

Next...accepting people and living in peace.

God Bless,

brad

Meekness and Jesus

When I bring up the question "so, what is meekness?", I tend to get a lot of blank stares.
Most respond, "I don’t know, I never really thought about it". Or "Meekness, hmm?? A lot like weakness isn’t it?". Basically, we are not too sure we understand meekness.

Jesus and Meekness
Jesus said, "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29"Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle/meek and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30"For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
Jesus describes Himself as meek and humble of heart. Meekness is a defining characteristic of Christ. The cross is a clear and glorious display of Christ’s character and certainly displays this attribute called “meekness”. To love God and to know Christ is to contemplate and meditate and know and glory in the attributes of God displayed in the face of Christ, namely in the cross event. So certainly, meekness is a central attribute that we as lovers of God and those who glory in Christ Jesus should be well acquainted with.
But such is not the case, and I contend, here in lies the problem. In fact it is precisely in taking meekness and lowliness upon ourselves and learning meekness that we “find rest for our souls”. It is the learning of meekness that we get excited about. Meekness is the double back flip of Christianity. Meekness is the part of every solid daily discipleship routine.

So what is meekness?
Death to Self
Meekness is death to self and surrender to God. Luke 9:23 says it this way, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”. This process of learning how to die to our self and the impulses of self, learning to never defend self or stand up for self or protect the interests of self or fear the humiliation of self or the dishonor of self is daily central to our walking with Jesus, our Lord.

Taking Up our Cross
The flip side of death to self is not passivity but taking up our cross. Taking up our cross is taking up our daily task or obedience. Daily we serve not self but God in love. “Lord, what is my task today?” is the meditation and contemplation of the meek. The answer to this question I have found is always the same, “Love everyone everywhere unconditionally”.

This meekness is an abiding orientation of the heart. It is in the heart orientation of meekness that we say today I follow Jesus and learn to “share in His sufferings”. His cross of death to self and obedience to God is all I long to know and imitate. It is this cross life of Christ that dwells in me by the Holy Spirit. In business meetings, in discussions with friends, in the midst of injustice and personal offense and injury, in all things meekness. We learn to no longer defend self or be offended by any assault on ourselves but we learn self sacrifice and unconditional love. In raising our children, in discussions with our loved ones, in peace and in conflict, meekness and humility.

Here is the Problem
Such talk is not in vogue in the church. Such sweet savoring of the knowledge of Christ and His cross by learning and discussing meekness is not the DNA of the church. Yet, every disciple of Jesus should know and love this attribute of Christ. We should know this experience like we know French fries and a diet coke. Meekness and the contemplation of meekness is our daily bread, the staple of our spiritual diet. Here is the solution to all that ails us as a people. Here is our shalom our peace and our rest.

God Bless,
brad

Principle 3 - Meekness

I intend to post a few entries on meekness. This first post is an introduction of this doorway into the experience of the kingdom. Of all the principles I love, meekness is at the top of the list. I encourage you to consider this principle deeply and to seek how to enter meekness. Truly, meekness is the doorway into the experience of a truly heavenly quality of life.


The purpose of this blog series is to put together about 20-30 questions that form the basis of a simple practical walk through the Sermon on the Mount. Theology behind these short posts is my personal experience and strong faith that coming under the Lordship of Jesus by putting into practice His words leads to a very blessed life.

In every post, I like to review the most core principle of all. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. This teaching reminds us that we are spiritually bankrupt and that everything we desire spiritually comes from the Grace and Power of the Gospel. This grace and power delivers us from our core problem of sin and self..So onward


So far we spoke of:
1. Powerlessness
2. Faith

Now let’s look at the next beatitude, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”

Nothing is more contrary to our natural tendencies than meekness, yet meekness is the doorway into a new life, the kingdom. Where an awareness of our powerlessness is a foundation principle, meekness is the actual doorway into a new experience and a new way of life.

So what is meekness?

Meekness is the absolute ceasing to fight for our agenda and believing that God will fight on our behalf for His agenda. Meekness is the abiding practice of death to self.

Most of us travel through life disappointed that things have not turned out as we planned. In life’s circumstances, we have attempted to manage situations to get certain ends to have people behave certain ways and for the outcomes of life to produce a certain level of blessing in our lives. We are all like actors with each of us trying to direct the play and have the scene come out the way we want it. We want people to like us. We want a promotion. We want recognition or respect so we begin to manage perceptions. We buy things and adorn ourselves. All of this directing and managing sets us up to be disappointed and hurt. All of this concern is self-centered. The answer is Go-centeredness. Meekness is the absolute acceptance of God’s care and managing of our lives. Our task in life changes. We are responsible for doing His will of love in every situation, and He is responsible for the outcomes. We are no longer in management. We are meek.

Every human relationship has power dynamics and politics. The meek do not manage power or play the games of politics and by so doing it is the meek that will inherit the earth for only the meek are truly free, trusting in God for outcomes, to live a moral life based not on power and results but on principles and love.

Discipleship 101 - Simple Path - Assignment 1

I published this essay on Discipleship 101. This essay explains the discipleship principles of the Sermon on the Mount in simple terms that I hope give some insight into the meaning of our Lord’s teachings.

At the end of Jesus’ teachings, He says that the wise man hears these words and puts them into practice. On the other hand, the fool is the one who merely hears these words.

So I would like to give some very practical assignments we can take to “put these commandments into practice”.

What follows by the Grace of God will be a regular kind of assignment of the day or of the week. As we do these assignments, with a coach, we will be learning how to put these sayings into practice.

Some Definitions:
“The kingdom of heaven”:
The kingdom of heaven is true happiness and a heavenly quality of life. The kingdom is within reach to all who put faith in Jesus Christ because the messiah has come. The cross is the great liberating event that has made available true liberation from all our enemies, namely sin and death (actually, the fear of death because without fear death has no sting).

Another definition of the Kingdom might be the life of Christ. Christ said “My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives you my peace I give you”. In other words, the kingdom is the process by which we enter into the “shalom” which Christ lived in this life by through the power of His life in us, by grace through faith, we live His life in our shoes.

The first principle:
Matt 5:3"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.

Assignment
1. Memorize Matt 5:3-4
2. Answer the following questions. These questions are simply a contemplation of the word “blessed” as used in these sayings of our Lord.
Q1: How happy are you? Rate your happiness and explain. In what ways does your life lack the peace and joy of Jesus Christ?



Q2: What do you believe constitutes true happiness?

God Bless,
brad

Discipleship 101 – A Practical Guide to Entering a Truly Heavenly Quality of Life

NOTE: This is the first big post I have written in awhile. This post I think is the first good post I have written in awhile as well. It is very long, but I encourage people to read the whole thing and even print it out. I will possibly not post again for a while as this post says everything I have been trying to say for the last few months. To hear the sermons that preceded this post and that make up this post please see our church's sermon page.
God Bless, brad

Discipleship 101 – A Practical Guide to Entering a Truly Heavenly Quality of Life
How it Works
The Sermon on the Mount maps out Jesus’ spiritual principles for entering a truly heavenly quality of life. Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection makes access to spiritual power possible for all who believe. Discipleship is the path to abide in that power. This power comes in the form of a relationship with God and an awareness of His care for us. This relationship with the God of perfect love drives out all fear and all the evil that comes as a result of our fear-based living.

Without conscious relationship with God, we are constantly anxious relatively speaking. This natural alienation from God leads to such a spiritual poverty that we can’t live morally beautiful lives. Therefore, the entire end of Jesus’ spiritual program is to learn how to remain in conscious contact with God. The discipleship program gets us back into experiencing the Fatherhood of God. The fruit of this relationship is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, etc.

For example, Jesus asks us to turn the other cheek. Maybe we can do this for awhile, but we just can’t take the pressure of life and, eventually, we gossip or slander somebody. The source of the slander or gossip is a lack of peace. Intimacy with God brings the peace that really makes the turning the other cheek process rather simple and not at all impossible. Apart from God though, it is totally impossible, and anyone who has actually tried to be holy and miserable at the same time knows it is completely futile. This tendency to lose our emotional sobriety is what we are really powerless over.

Before you begin find a person who can be for you a faithful set of eyes. It is best to find a person who has himself implemented this spiritual program. If this process is somewhat new to you and your faith community, have no fear. Find a friend anyway and may the Lord bless you.

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit and Blessed are those who Mourn – Powerlessness and Faith
Jesus begins His introduction to the “how to enter the kingdom sermon” by saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. The doorway into the kingdom, or a heavenly quality of life, is to come face to face with your spiritual poverty. The one whose life has become really unmanageable and who is miserable to the point of mourning has a huge advantage. The poor miserable mourner, who realizes that he or she will never change and feels totally hopeless, has a great advantage when it comes to spirituality. For those of us who are “stuck in a moment and we can’t get out of it” have two options: 1) die miserable or 2) seek the kingdom for a solution to our powerlessness. This is what poor in spirit means. Someone who realizes that spiritually or morally they are totally bankrupt and that there is no way out is called “poor in spirit” or one who “mourns”.

But what about us who aren’t quite that messed up? What do we do? The answer is raise your standard and your expectation. Paul says "not that I have reached my goal but I press onto the goal (perfection) to which I was called". Paul was a pretty together guy and very spiritually mature when he wrote those words, but his goal was so high he still said "therefore, I put no confidence in the flesh but seek a righteousness that comes through faith". In other words, he sought a righteousness that was so high it could only be attained through the power of an abiding awareness of God and His power. So he says he seeks "to know God and to have fellowship with His sufferings and to know the power of His resurrection". Through our spiritual program of discipleship, we passionately pursue a perfection that only intimacy with God and fellowship with the cross of Christ can give us.

Jesus says it this way, "Your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees", and, if that doesn’t get us, He says "be perfect (in unconditional love) as your heavenly Father is perfect". This passionate pursuit of perfection what it means to "hunger and thirst for righteousness". All this is intended to drive us into a need for a quality of life that only God can give us. So no matter where we are, we all are poor in spirit if we set our standard high enough.

The Big Principle – Meekness
If we are seeking a new quality of life, we must totally change our approach to life. If we are truly spiritually poor, it should not be hard to realize that our approach to life wasn’t working. It is time to change our mind about how life works and how happiness works. Here is the big principle that Jesus’ program rests on "it is the meek that inherit the earth”. Meekness, meekness, meekness, meekness, meekness. That is what Jesus discipleship program is all about. Total death to self is the path upon which He leads us. The meekness step is a killer!!! The meekness step is a step we will take every day if we are to remain in conscious contact with God. Meekness as the key to Godliness is Jesus’ ethic of death and the cross.

Here is a huge key. You are not meek. Meekness is to cease fighting for self and to completely cease all manipulation and control. Cease trying to change the world around you to conform to your plan. Human nature, as it is lived out in the real world, is driven by two principles: pride and fear. Pride is the foolish belief that your way is right. "I know what is best and every body else ought to listen to me". Another more humble type of pride is called self-pity. Self pity says "the world has wronged me and it just isn’t fair. Please treat me better or I will get depressed". This is just a passive way to tell the world to change. Whatever your form of pride is it isn’t meekness. The human condition is simply such that sooner or later, we come to realize that we are self-centered. Meekness is the opposite of being self-centered. Meekness is allowing the world to be the way it is and not playing all the games we play to try and change people. We must learn to be absolutely tolerant before we can learn to love. Just an aside. Love isn’t passive like meekness, but any true love most first learn to be meek. Meekness is death to self; love is the positive life of God. If we mere mortals are to be filled with God’s love, we must first die to all the selfish and self-protecting impulses of our ego. This total death and this ceasing to fight all people and all things is meekness.

So we take this step. Having come to realize that we need spiritual power, we change our mind with respect to how we are going to approach life. We place before us a vision to be meek. But meekness is not just death to self. True Kingdom meekness is to exchange our self-centeredness for God-centeredness. So instead of having no will at all, we do two things, we lay aside all self-will and we turn our lives and wills over to the care of God. True, we will no longer constantly fight for ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we will live our lives uncared for. Someone has to care for me, and that someone is God the Father. The meek person isn’t needy and clingy. The meek person is the person who can say, "even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Hmm how do you do that?? "For thou art with me!!!". God has my back. That is the power that enables us to be meek.

Now here is the problem…I am not meek. This step is not becoming meek. This step is accepting meekness as the new principle that will guide our lives. We do not make a decision and all of a sudden become meek. We are completely powerless to become meek, for we are not naturally meek. What we are doing is changing our mind about meekness. I make a decision to change my whole approach to life. I will cease fighting, and I will trust in God to fight all my battles. Now the entire rest of the life of the disciple and our spiritual program is to become, through the grace of God, more consciously aware that “thou art with me” so I can fear no evil and live in peace and meekness.

So how does Jesus teach us to become filled with this peace that surpasses understanding? How does Jesus empowers us to face the lions and to take up our cross and live a life no longer seeking our will but God’s will? How can we become God-centered and servants of the Love of God? Well, the first answer is "mercy".

Blessed are the Merciful for they shall receive mercy. – Moral Inventory
The real meat of the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is about being merciful. Do not injure other people!! Do not say “you fool”. Do not say return evil for evil. Do not resist an evil person. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Forgive, forgive, forgive. “How often?”, we all ask. Well, how about this option. Set a 490 person cushion. Begin your day by giving 490 people the permission to sin against you, and you will show then mercy. Then, when they sin against you, you just say, “Oh yeah, I gave him permission to do that”. But, to actually be able to do this, we first must have God must work on us.

To become merciful, we must let God remove all the anger in our whole being that is stored up in our heads from our whole life.

If we are to live in God’s love, we have to get rid of all anger that is in us. This residual anger is called resentments. To do this step, I suggest taking action. We must be very intentional about getting rid of our anger. Jesus is pretty clear on this matter of forgiveness. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus gives an example of a man who after having been forgiven remembers that other people owe him. So, he goes out and demands justice. In this case, it is some money. The point is that back in this man’s past there were people who had debts to him. To this fact which is part of human life, Jesus says, “Forgive all your debtors”. PERIOD. This step is discipleship 101. In other words, go through every resentment in your life and forgive them. Forgive them and in fact bless them. Bless them that hurt you and then you will be called sons and daughters of God.

The only way to be filled with the love of God is to rid our lives of all anger, resentments and unforgiveness of any kind. It is best to be very thorough about this step. In fact, as you go through this process practice de-escalating the conflict by finding where in this relationship you might have had some wrong. For example, I have a resentment because that guy broke my lawn mower and never paid me back. I forgive him and I bless him. In fact, I realize the only reason I have a resentment is because of greed. If I had no greed at all, then I would never have been upset about the lawn mower.

HUGE KEY HERE!!! This process is not about figuring out why you are a depressed or angry person or why you have fears or why you are greedy and feel the compulsion to worry about finances. Saying to yourself,

“What a great insight. I am fearful because I was raised poor and my parents never had any money, and, so, I fear poverty. For this reason, I am more prone than most to worrying about money. Therefore, I have a hard time forgiving people who don’t pay me back. I panic because such a threat triggers me”.

This type of thinking may be entirely true, but it is worthless to help you become more merciful. Avoid like the plague being too intellectual and trying to figure out why you are the way you are. The fact of the matter is we are self-centered, and each of us has a story of how our self-centeredness came to fruition. The story is interesting and is an important part of sharing our story, but knowing why we are the way we are is not the solution. Forgiving and blessing and confessing our faults is the actual solution. It is not what went into us that makes us unclean and in need of house-cleaning. It is what came out of us and out of our hearts that made us unclean. Our spiritual problem is never caused by what happened to us but is caused by our response to it. We responded bad because we lacked the tools to respond in a way that can keep us in a loving and peaceful state of mind. If we were kids and we were horribly hurt, this injustice created in us a warped view of life and a broken response to life. Forgiveness, blessing and confession will heal us. It seems like it shouldn’t work, but sow mercy and you will receive mercy. That is the key to this step.

Blessed are the Pure in Heart for they shall see God
Of all the sayings of Jesus, this one is one of the most precious. This saying of Jesus Christ’s has with it the greatest of all promises. This saying says that if I am cleansed by God of all my impurities, if through confession, my heart is pure before God, then I will come to know God. I will begin to see God in all areas of life. I will become daily and regularly conscious of the presence of God. It is this awareness that God is good all the time and that all the time God is good and that this GOOD GOD is with me that is the power to bear fruit to God’s glory. Jesus said “if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will bear fruit”. Jesus is saying that if we obey His teachings (take certain steps of discipleship) and we, through these steps abide in relationship with Him, then we will have the fruit of the spirit or be salt and light that is morally distinct.

So far we have dealt with resentments and anger. Now we must deal with the impure lusts of our heart. Again all these lusts and impurities are the result of a self-centered and self-protecting way of life. We may think we are not this way, but relative to Jesus Christ, who lived the example of true authentic humanity, we lacked the God-centered life that can be truly called the kingdom of heaven. So, press onto purity and continue this fearless moral inventory that we began when we looked at our resentments.

Sex
After the paragraph in the Sermon on the Mount that deals directly with anger, Jesus brings up sexual lust. Sex is a great gift from God, but if we allow our sexuality to become a means of satisfying our self or our ego or if we use sex to gain some form of security, then our sexuality is just another form of self-centeredness. Sex is a powerful instinct, and, under the reign of Jesus, it is a doorway into lifelong relationship with a member of the opposite sex. But, under the influence of the self it is just lust.

In the same way that we made a list of all the people we had anger toward, it is important that we come clean in the area of our sexual relations. I suggest making a list of any person in which you used sex to meet a selfish desire. The sanctification of our sexuality is vital to any spiritual program in which we are going to become, in every area of life, an instrument of the Love of God. For men, how have you ever been inconsiderate? Think of this inventory in terms of each sexual act not just each person. Do we treat sex as an appetite to be met? Do we require our spouses to comply to meet our need? Sex is to be the celebration of our covenant love and our lifelong relationship. Is sex all too often divorced from real relationship? Journal and admit how sex has become impure in your life. Again, like all other steps this step is a changing of our minds or a changing of our perspective. Our understanding of sex must change. This sexual inventory step for some will be difficult, but we must be willing to allow God to be the center and the master of every area of our lives.

Money
Of all the topics of the bible that gets the most ink, money ranks number one!!! How we relate to money and how we use money is a spiritual matter. The money issue is central to our spirituality because money is the primary means by which we attempt to find peace and happiness apart from God. Jesus’ teachings are extremely clear with respect to money. All of us compromise these teachings, and, again, we must realize that we seek spiritual progress and not spiritual perfection. We all sin and act selfishly at times. These acts of self-centeredness are not excusable nor should we rationalize our compromises away, but, at the same time, we cannot let our momentary lapses into our old ways overwhelm us with guilt.

Here is Jesus’ spiritual admonition with respect to money. He says, “Do not store up treasures on earth”. He also says “do not seek what you may eat and drink and how you clothe yourself for these things the pagans seek for”. What this means is simple. These sayings mean what they say. Do not store up treasures on earth nor seek after stuff. A simple definition of a treasure is a luxury item. The pursuit of luxury will completely undermine any spiritual program. We are seeking love and meekness. We are seeking to live a life totally dedicated to being helpful to God. What is more helpful to God another pair of spiffy shoes or providing funds for missions work and charity work around the world? If we paused for a minute, then we need to take a moral inventory and journal and ask ourselves a simple question: Is all our money dedicated to the kingdom of God? Do I possess anything that could be considered a luxury item?

Again, this step is a step of both a step of changing our mind and our perspective and a step of action. The aim of this step is to learn to live entirely without worry and fear and to live one day at a time in the service of God.

Jesus tells a parable about how a worldly and unsanctified use of money can undermine the disciple’s saltiness or moral distinction. He says the Kingdom is like a sower that went out to sow seed. He sowed seed on four types of soil. The seed is the message of the kingdom and the availability of a heavenly quality of life that brings glory to the Father. The soil is the heart of those who here the message. Sometimes the seed is sown and the person’s heart is so hard they don’t hear the message at all. Other times the seed is sown in soil that is a mixture of rock hardness under the surface and a thin layer of acceptance. In such cases, the hearer rejoices for a while, but then the call to discipleship becomes too difficult and they fall away. Other times the soil is sown amongst thorns and weeds that choke out the seed, and, though the hearer sticks to the program, the plant that grows never bears any fruit. This is the person who is dedicated to love God BUT this person is deceived by the deceitfulness of money and the worries of this world. This is the person who can surrender to every spiritual principle except he or she cannot let go of their money. Because money is so central to the life of the unbeliever this person’s life has NO MORAL DISTINCTIVENESS and they bear NO FRUIT TO THE GLORY OF GOD.

I suggest that we journal and take moral inventory on this issue of money. If you doubt the power of this step and the role of money in our spiritual walk, I suggest trying something. Jesus gives a direct example of something to do to learn how to get delivered from the deceptiveness of money. He tells us to practice giving charity in secret. Try this! Regularly do the following. Take a significant portion of your financial savings and give it to the poor without letting anyone know about it (except maybe your spouse). Do this on a regular basis, and see if this helps you learn a new perspective on the role of money in your walk with God. I guarantee you that as you begin this practice that you will begin to worry less about money, and you will come to know less fear in your life. Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not nor do they worry, yet God cares for them. How much more valuable than lilies are you. So, you, seek first the kingdom and God will care for you.

Confession
Now that you have completed your moral inventory, it is time to experience one of the great blessings of life. The greatest blessing in life is relationship. God is a trinity, and His very nature is that of loving relationship. We, having been made in the image of God, are likewise made for loving relationship. This next step is the sowing of honesty, and it reaps the reward of being able to have intimate relationships. This step is simple. Share all your moral inventory with yourself, God, and another human being.

This step can be said to be a sacramental step. In this step, we have another human being, in total confidence, listen to our confession of all our defects of character. Then, this person accepts us and forgives us and rejoices with us in our spiritual progress. This step is sacramental because this person is giving flesh and blood to how God is responding to our spiritual progress in following Jesus Christ. The kingdom has truly come for us, and we are entering a quality of life that we never thought possible. The world to the natural person seems harsh and violent, and prior to our spiritual awakening we too felt alienated and alone in the world. The world is threatening, and life is difficult. But, now, we enter into a new city whose architect and builder is God, and the glory of the Lord seems to shine all around us. We no longer feel threatened by people nor does life seem to present baffling problems. Instead, we have found shalom or peace. It is in this confession that many of us feel the presence of God for the first time.

So, set a date and a time to get together with your discipler, your spiritual helper, and confess all the darkness that has been in your soul.

Making Amends
At this point, we may find that we have harmed people in our self-centeredness and our discipler or program helper should council us as to whether we need to make amends. Making amends is again an act of kingdom work that can relieve us of the burdens of our past. In time, we will find it easy to live without worries and fears and to, in fact, live in conscious contact with God. In quite a short time we will find that we can truly say we have a heavenly quality of life. Making amends, if needed, is intended to empower us to be completely free from our past and to be empowered to “not worry about tomorrow”. Such freedom is the inheritance of the Christian and we hope you find it. Jesus teaches us to live one day at a time, and making amends can be an important part of that especially if we left behind us a lot of wreckage before we came into the kingdom.

Daily Maintenance
Now, we are to the daily maintenance steps of our discipleship process or program. What we have essentially done is learned, in a thorough manner, the principles of powerlessness, faith, meekness, mercy, and purity of heart. In this process, we have found a quality of life that can only be described as an abiding relationship with the Father. This relationship with God, through the Gospel and the forgiveness and power of Jesus, bears fruit that reveals to those around us that something has changed for the better in our lives. We are seeing that God has begun to grant us power over all the things that used to control us. We have not addressed the problems of our life directly. We have not learned how to say no to specific sins, and yet, we find the overwhelming power of sin is greatly dissipated in our lives. We have not learned how to earn more money or how to be successful in life, and yet, we have an abiding sense of security. Now that we have had an extreme makeover of our live, we must learn how to live in this new realm day by day.

The Lord’s Prayer – The Greatest Tool We Have

Right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches how we ought to pray. This prayer is for me the greatest tool to daily maintain our new approach to life. In my own life, I have had seasons where I completely compromised my principles and let either resentments, the deceitfulness of riches, or other forms of selfishness block the power of God in my life. I say this to help us remember that we must learn a daily maintenance program, or, in time, the ground we have gained can be lost. Praise God there is grace to come back, and we can go through the whole eye-opening, liberating process again. In fact, we may need to do a thorough inventory and confession and make amends every year, BUT it is best to do this on a daily basis.

The purpose of prayer is twofold. First, we learn or practice how to orient ourselves properly toward God and life, and secondly, we consciously ask and receive power so that we can live the vision God has placed before us.

Our fundamental problem in life is that we lack power to live as God created us to live. God has created us to be His body and His instruments of love and peace on earth. We are to expand the rule and reign of Jesus Christ by making disciples of people from every nation. We are to bring God’s power in the gospel to everyone and we are to teach the discipleship program Jesus gave us to other powerless people. To even begin to do this mission, we have to know His saving power and His discipleship program ourselves. To be actually able to live the life, we have to orient ourselves properly before God and life and we need to learn to receive power form God to live out the life of Christ which we are attempting to imitate.

Jesus gave us one of the greatest gifts to our daily happiness in the Lord’s Prayer. Before we start, I would like to say a word about how long I think this prayer should take. Actually, I think it takes less time than I used to think.

My early years as a Christian were developed in a rather hyper-spiritual environment. A parade of “prayer warriors” and “prophets" were presented to the church, and I came to believe that prayer was this heroic feat to be performed by the few that were truly dedicated to God. I embarked on this journey, and, as a single man, I enjoyed a life of total surrender and intimacy with God. I was very fortunate in that I was graced with a love for the teachings of Jesus, and, so I learned great spiritual principles to base my life on. This life was indeed very fulfilling and contains for me some of the greatest memories of my life BUT then I got married.

For the next few years, I longed to get back to that kind of life of prayer. I thought I wasn’t spiritual because I couldn’t pray like I used to. Then I learned a simpler and actually far more effective life of prayer. Now, I would suggest that prayer is not intended to be a big heroic effort. Leave the heroics for the rest of the day. Prayer is actually rather simple. Certainly, at times a day of prayer or extended times of prayer and fasting are quite helpful, but, for our daily life, I think a private and intentional time of focused prayer based on the Lord’s prayer at the beginning and the end of the day of any length is great.

Father Hallowed Be Thy Name
The Lord ’s Prayer opens up with the death blow to self-centeredness. Father, let my life be centered on promoting Your and Your name and not my name. The Lord ’s Prayer then opens with a reminder of the principle of meekness and marries the idea of meekness with its faithful brother in virtue – worship. “Father, you alone are worthy of praise. May your name be hallowed and respected and honored” The flip side to this confession of our God-centered life is that we do not seek respect or honor for ourselves. I suggest not getting into specifics at this place in the prayer but, instead, simply centering our person Godward. Our supreme purpose in life is one - to bring Glory to God.

Your Kingdom Come Your Will Be Done On Earth as it is in Heaven

Here is where I would articulate God’s specific vision for our life. God’s vision for our life is to live the spiritual principles we have learned. So, I suggest praying four basic categories under Your kingdom come: meekness, mercy, purity, and peacemaking. Our purpose is to bring Glory to the name of the Father. Our vision or our tactic is to do this by living according to the principles of the kingdom. These principles represent a way of life entirely contrary to the way of the world and our natural tendencies. If we manifest the fruit of this orientation toward life and God, we will be salt and light that brings Him Glory.

Under the heading of purity, we might add sex, money, and motives. Next, we get to the most important part of the prayer. I say this because this portion addresses our real problem. Our problem is a lack of power.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
The vision we have just stated before God is not a vision of us. We are not naturally meek or merciful or pure. But, there is someone who is. This vision of life describes Jesus Christ. Father, give me Jesus in my heart. The life I long to live can only be found through the power of the Spirit of Jesus. Galations 2:20 is a great verse to pray at this time. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me and the life I live I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and delivered Himself us for me.”. “God provide for me the true bread that comes down from heaven - Jesus Christ - that He may do for me what I cannot do for myself”.

Under the peacemaking heading, I place any intercession and any relationships in which I am responsible to bring peace. I personally am the father in a large family, and my job is to create “shalom in the home”. “Lord make me a peace-maker in the home and at work and in the church…”.

Forgive us Our Sins as We forgive Those Who have Sinned Against Us
Here we have an opportunity to take a daily moral inventory. This portion is especially good for the evening prayer. Review the day. Ask yourself if you have caused any harm or injury to anyone. Do we need to make amends? If yes, write it down and tell a friend if necessary. Do I have any resentments? Do I need to forgive and bless anyone?

And Lead Us Not into Temptation But deliver Us from Evil
As we turn to face the day or the night as the case may be, we will approach life with confidence and without fear. God is with us. We are the most authentically human people on the planet. We are to be the most free and the most fearless, for God, our Father who is all good all the time, is with us. Nothing can over take us. Even if we wlk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for He is our good Shepherd. So we pray asking humbly that we might be aware of His presence throughout the day. We pray that we might live through faith in His care and that we do not respond to life in fear as we used to.

So, we pray a simple but thorough God-centered prayer. Our prayers teach us to abide in Jesus' teaching. We are constantly reminded of His teachings to love our enemies and turn the other cheek. We are seeking to daily improve our spiritual life and our spiritual fruit. We know that it is relationship with our loving Father that keeps us from anger and fear and keeps us in perfect peace so that we can live a life of meekness and service to others.

As We Face the Day – Sharing With Others
The bible teaches us that we need to be ready at all times to share with others along the path of life why we are so hopeful and peaceful. Now that we have found a new life and we are seeing God do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, we have a method that we can share with others. The teachings of Jesus come with many promises. The Kingdom of Heaven, a heavenly quality of life, is within reach. If we have laid hold of it, what a great gift to give this peace to other harassed and helpless folk. We were lost once and now we have found a way to live life with God and to abide in Him and His ways. The way is indeed narrow, but it is understandable and doable. It doesn’t take a great theological mind to figure it out. In fact, how Jesus communicates His power to our person is quite a mystery to us, but we do know, from experience, that a power greater than ourselves has come to us in the name of Jesus. God has removed our sins and short-coming and removed our defects of character. How He has done it may be a mystery but that He has done it is plain for all to see.

If we work these steps, they will work for us, and we can share with anyone from any walk of life that, if they believe Jesus and take Him at His word, they too can live a life that is both happy and heavenly. God is no respecter of persons. We do not have to have a certain lineage nor do we need education to find this way of life. All we must be is rigorously honest.

So if we are to be of ultimate use to God and to others, we take these simple spiritual principles in hand and in our heart. We practice them in our daily lives and we share them with anyone who desires to listen.

May God Bless You and May His Kingdom Come and His Will be Done in you and through you and to all your loved ones,

God Bless,
brad