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Category: Jesus (Page 44 of 60)

Ordering Jesus Around

May 9, 2011 / / 2 Comments

The royal official in John 4 orders Jesus to do what he wants. He commands Jesus. This ruler has a sick son, a son who is dying in Capernaum, and he tells Jesus, “Come down before my child dies.” He’s ordering Jesus. He’s telling Jesus what to do.

And Jesus complies.

Ah, see, you didn’t think it was going this way, did you?

This royal official is a man of means and a man of power. This man is well connected. He’s got pull. This man spends most of every day ordering people around. And when he finds out there’s a healer out there who can take care of his boy, he rushes to command Jesus to do just that.

And Jesus agrees. He does it. Boom! Right there on the spot. The boy is healed immediately.

The royal official had no idea who Jesus really was. He didn’t know. He had completely misunderstood Jesus’ mission, his purpose for living on earth. Jesus was a man who could meet the ruler’s immediate and personal needs. This person was only thinking of himself and his family.

And it seems that Jesus was OK with that.

Please know that people are going to come to you, also, to command you and order you around to meet their own felt needs. People are going to misunderstand you and your mission. They’re not going to care a whole lot about your call to ministry or your obligations to our Lord and the big picture concerns of his Kingdom. Your Kingdom priorities and your Kingdom goals won’t matter to some of the people who will direct you to do what they want you to do no matter what. Sometimes people will approach you in order to use you; they will come to you intent on exploiting you so they can continue living their comfortable lives.

Our job, as I understand it, is to show them the love of Christ and share with them his compassion. We’re called by our Savior to give these people his blessings and his mercy and grace. We offer to them out of the abundance of what we’ve been given by God. Jesus loves people. And his greatest desire is to help them, to take care of them, even when they come to him to misuse him.

This is not a call to promote unhealthiness or immaturity in God’s Church. Sometimes the people who have been disciples of Jesus the longest are the very ones who will exploit you and your ministry in their own selfish interests and for their own self-serving purposes. Catering to them is not what I’m talking about.

The story at the end of John 4 is about compassion and the love of Jesus for those who don’t know any better. Jesus took orders from a guy who didn’t even know who he was. I suppose I can, too.

Peace,

Allan

Take Heart!

May 4, 2011 / / 1 Comment

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” ~John 16:33

Jesus tells us plainly — from the mountain, around the table, along the way — that this world is openly hostile to the things of God. For disciples to live in the world means we have to experience struggle and conflict and even battles. The world’s values and vision and morals and ethics are opposed to ours in Christ. And living here isn’t easy.

Not for Christians.

Living right here right now is hard.

I spent an hour with Quincy this morning in our prayer room, lifting up dozens of requests to our Father in Jesus’ name. The things my brothers and sisters have written on those requests tell me that we have struggles and battles. I’ve spent more than a few cumulative hours over the past four or five days in my study counseling with people, praying with people, crying and agonizing with people. There’s nothing easy about this.

Jesus never pretended that it would be. He knows it’s tough. He lived it, remember? And he reminds us that while we’re having this trouble, we can also be filled with courage and strength and hope because he has overcome all of it.

Jesus tells us, “I have faced your enemy and I have conquered him. I have fought your battles on the same fields of human experience where you fight, and I’ve won. I’ve already done it for you. And I’m doing it right now in you and for you.”

If we abide in him, if we stay connected to him, his eternal victory belongs to us.

Wow. That’s really good news.

Peace,

Allan

Much Will Be Demanded

May 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.” ~Luke 12:48

Jesus fed the five thousand with some rolls and a couple of fish. Scripture tells us he gave the food to his disciples and they, in turn, passed it on to the crowds. But what if the disciples had just held on to the food?

“Hey, thanks for the lunch, Jesus.”

Then Jesus hands them more. “Oh! OK. Thanks for the dinner, too, Jesus.”

Then Jesus gives them more. “Wow! Allright! Thank you, Jesus.” What if the disciples started looking around for some to-go boxes? What if they began trying to figure out how to get all this food home? What if Jesus’ followers had just held onto the food for themselves when their Lord was giving them more than enough to share with everyone in the crowds who had need?

Along with God’s great gifts comes great responsibility.

I never could shake those words of Jesus at the end of Luke 12. They didn’t really give me a guilt trip; they didn’t knock me down every time I read them or thought about them. It was more like a heavy burden that followed me everywhere I went. Because I’ve been given much. Materially, financially, physically, I am blessed. I’m rich. More than that, God has completely forgiven me of every one of the horrible sins I’ve ever committed in my life. He’s totally restored me to a perfectly righteous relationship with him. By the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, I am eternally wealthy. I’m Bill Gates and Donald Trump combined. With a great haircut and 50 lawyers! And because of his great gifts and his matchless grace, it is demanded of me that I use the abilities and talents and opportunities he gives me, not to talk about the Cowboys and Rangers and Mavs, but to boldly proclaim salvation from God in Christ! It’s required of me to declare his love and mercy that are available to all mankind and his will and his plan to redeem and restore all of creation forever.

After many years of dealing with Luke 12:48 — alternately ignoring it, wrestling with it, praying about it, trying to shake it — I finally got up the faith or the guts (or both) to act on what God was demanding of me. And I will never look back.

The truth is that when my crucified and risen Lord returns, I couldn’t bear the thought of explaining to him the way I used his gifts and grace for all of my adult life: camped out in press boxes and locked up in studios talking about and obsessing about things that don’t matter.

He is coming back. Right? Yes, you know that.

Peace,

Allan

Following Jesus to the Cross

April 15, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We don’t ever come to the cross of Christ to worship his death or to remember the grisly details of that day. We come to the cross — we’re actually drawn to the cross — to see what it looks like for me to die. What is the meaning of my daily dying to myself and dying for Christ? And dying with Christ? What does it look like? How do I do it? And what does it really mean?

People say Jesus died so I don’t have to. No, that’s not right. Jesus died to show us how to.

As holy children of God and disciples of his Christ, we die every day. We participate every day in the eternal dimensions of Jesus’ death.

“I have been crucified with Christ…” ~Galatians 2:20

“I die every day — I mean that, brothers! ~1 Corinthians 15:31

“You died, and your life is now hidden with Christ.” ~Colossians 3:3

Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” We are called to participate in the death of Jesus. We don’t just stand around and ask questions about the death of Christ. We don’t just talk about it and marvel about it. We live it. The death of Jesus shapes everything about the way we live, how we believe and love, why we do what we do.

If we’re going to follow Jesus as his subjects — and we are! — then we’re going to follow him into the pain and darkness of Calvary where he faithfully and fully submitted to our Father’s will and gave his very life for the sake of the world.

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Tomorrow is Warrior Dash. And I’m not quite ready.

Warrior Dash is a 5K obstacle course highlighted by runs through waist-deep muddy water, climbs over cargo nets and 20-foot hay bales, crawls under barbed wire and through dirty ditches, and jumps over junk cars and pits of fire.

There are runs like this all over the place. Some of them are called Mud Runs. Some are called Jail Breaks. This Warrior Dash is held every year in Roanoke, just down the street from the Texas Motor Speedway. I’d never heard of this, or any other organized obstacle event, until last year when Greg Hardman and his daughter, Emily, ran it together with some of her college friends. His stories and his pictures were truly inspiring. I even used their experience to illustrate a sermon here last spring.

And several of us caught the fever.

Valerie and I made plans to start training in October. I was going to start eating right. I was going to start running more. (By more, I mean just start running. Period.) I was going to lose 15-pounds. I was going to lift weights and really be ready for this thing in April.

I’m not ready.

None of those things happened. Valerie and I have run together at the Northridge Middle School track a total of five times since the middle of February. We did two-and-a-half miles last night. We’re going to do three miles this evening.

We’re not ready. But we’re very much looking forward to it. Valerie has always been my little adventurer. She’s excited to be doing something so outrageous with her dad. And this will be something I’ll treasure with her forever.

There are at least a dozen of us from Legacy running the Warrior Dash in the morning: John & Suzanne, Bruce & Cathy, Mike & Lisa, Keith & Beth, Josh (who promises to stay right with me), Jason, Margaret, David and, from what I understand, a whole slew of our younger marrieds.

My goal is to finish in one hour or less. And to not have to be carried out in a stretcher.

Peace,

Allan

Watch and Pray

April 13, 2011 / / 2 Comments

What does Christ want us to see in the Garden of Gethsemane? Why did he tell his disciples to watch and pray? Why did he take them with him that night? Why was it so important that they stay awake?

Jesus makes it very clear that night in the garden: he does not want to die. Jesus is sorrowful and troubled. He’s distressed. He’s in agony. He’s facing the most severe test of his life. God is handing him the cup of suffering and death and asking him to drink it. And Jesus doesn’t want to. He shudders in horror at the mission before him. He dreads all of it. His Father is in the process of making him who had no sin to be sin for us. Jesus is walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And he wants another way. And he asks for it.

What an amazing scene. Jesus is in great agony. He cries out to his God, “Deliver me!” He prays out loud to his Father, “Rescue me!” He begs, “Save me from this horrible assignment. Let’s do this another way.”

No dove descends. No thunderous voice from heaven assures, “This is my Son.” Only silence. Silence. God has already spoken. Now it’s up to the Son to obey.

And he does. “Not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus overcomes the silence, he fights off the temptation to do what he wants and, through open and honest prayer, he obeys his Father.

“Watch and pray.” “Stay here and keep watch with me.”

Jesus tells his disciples, “Do this with me. Experience this with me. Watch me. If you’re really going to follow me, you’re going to need to know how to do this.”

Jesus wants us to be awake and present and obedient to the way of the Son and the will of the Father. He wants us to accept trial. He wants us to undergo testing. He wants us to say “no” to the temptations to abandon the cross aspects of our calling. Afterall, it’s so much easier to turn our backs on the crown of thorns and just go to church. It’s so much easier to just settle into our pews and into the comforts of our status quo and potlucks and baby blessings.

If we’re going to follow Jesus as his loyal subjects — and we are! — then we’re going to follow him into the garden. It’s in the garden with Jesus, praying these agonizing prayers, where we really express our trust in God. We trust God in the darkness of our sufferings because God walked through the darkness himself.

God wants us to be in fellowship with the sufferings of his Son and the sufferings of his world. Fervent and faithful prayer is where God equips us and empowers us to do it. A stiff upper lip isn’t going to do it. A fierce resolve won’t cut it. New Year’s resolutions won’t work. It happens through open and honest prayer; raw, from the heart, transparent communication with the Father.

After a night of agonizing prayer, Jesus is ready. “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

Watch and pray.

Peace,

Allan

Not Of This World

April 5, 2011 / / 1 Comment

My King is not like the rulers of this world. His Kingdom is not of this world. He tells us that. And he shows us that his ways and his methods and his forms are nothing like those of this world.

So why do we keep wanting to use the world’s ways and methods and forms?

Why do we think politics is the way to get things done for God’s Kingdom? Why do we think power and force and voting and petitions and boycotts and campaigns and rallies and protests are the way to accomplish our God’s plans for his creation?

All Christians have to vote Republican because Jesus is against the gay marriage position of the Democrats. No, all Christians have to vote Democrat because Jesus is against the war policies of the Republicans. No, the Church has to support the Republican party because of Jesus’ teachings against abortion. No, the Church has to support the Democratic party because of Jesus’ teachings against the gap between the rich and the poor.

If we’re going to think and talk and act this way, we might as well start waving palm branches like the crowds in Jerusalem who wanted Jesus to overthrow the Roman oppressors and establish an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem. Those people wanted to use Jesus for a political revolt. They wanted national and social and economic revolution in the name of the Messiah. They wanted Roman blood to flow in the streets. Gird your loins and grab your swords! God bless Israel!

If we think and talk and act this way, we’re forcing the children of God to choose and then pledge allegiance to the lesser of worldly evils. Jesus did not come so we could be a part of a refurbished and renewed version of the kingdom of the world. Jesus came so we could be a part of the all-new eternal Kingdom of God!

Jesus will never be President of the U.S.A.

One, because he’s not running. Two, because you wouldn’t vote for him if he were running.

Think about Jesus’ platform. Sell everything you have and give it to the poor! Love your enemies! If Jesus had bumper stickers on the back of the donkey he rode into Jerusalem they would say “Be Last!”

“Vote for Jesus! We’re Going to Die!”

Of course, our King doesn’t come with T-shirts and stickers and buttons and hundred million dollar campaigns. He doesn’t save the world with armies and markets and policies. He saves the world through sacrificial love and suffering and service and grace.

Yes, Jesus came to be King. But instead of being crowned with a gold-plated headdress of jewels, he was crowned with painful and penetrating thorns. He did not bear a warrior’s sword or a royal scepter; he was beaten with a whip and a rod. Instead of sitting on a cusioned throne and ruling, Jesus hung on a tree and died. Jesus willingly, deliberately, goes to his own suffering and death for the sake of the world.

If we follow this King as his subjects — and we do! — then we, too, will follow him into Jerusalem to the place of suffering and sacrifice and death. We will say ‘no’ to status and position and glory and wealth and say ‘yes’ to the giving of our own lives. We will reject power and violence and force and accept God’s will and God’s way even in the midst of terrible personal agony. We will refuse to consider our own needs and, instead, be much more concerned with the needs of those around us.

That’s what it means to follow Jesus. To watch him and imitate him. To determine to be right behind him no matter where he goes.

Peace,

Allan

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