Spend the Oil

In Second Kings chapter 4, there’s an interesting story about one of my favorite radical prophets:

2 Kings 4: A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves." So Elisha said to her, "What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?" And she said, "Your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil." Then he said, "Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors — empty vessels; do not gather just a few. And when you have come in, you shall shut the door behind you and your sons; then pour it into all those vessels, and set aside the full ones." So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured it out. Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, "Bring me another vessel." And he said to her, "There is not another vessel." So the oil ceased. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons live on the rest."

The oil is of course the anointing of God, and we are enjoined to do whatever we can to make room for a whole lot of it: we’re to get many jars, gathering them from the whole neighborhood, and be filled in private before spilling out into the public.

I was at a gathering of believers recently, and we were praying – in response to the prophetic word – for an outpouring of oil, of anointing; the prophet had used this story as an illustration. I was as eager for the blessing as anyone else, and as I stood there, I had a vision of four glass jars standing empty. When they were filled, they would have held at least a gallon of oil each, but they stood empty. Then I saw them from below, as if they were on a glass table, and I saw the empty bottoms of the jars. Then I saw that they were actually resting on top of a large, a huge glass jar, one that would hold thousands of gallons of oil, and it was this jar that was being filled, and The Lord spoke to me that He’s not opposed to filling individuals, but He’s more excited about filling His Body, about filling the Bride of Christ, the Church gathered. The individual anointings might have to wait.

I hear the Lord speaking this to us today, and I hear a couple of specific assignments.

1. I believe that His preferred place of pouring out in this season is on the community, not on the individual. You’ll notice that it wasn’t until all of us “clay pots” came together that the anointing was poured out. It’s not that He’s unwilling to pour anointings on individuals anymore: no, He still loves that. But He’s more eager to pour Himself out on his people gathered, on the community of believers. If we come to Him together, not just as a flock of individuals gathering together in one building on Sunday mornings, but as a community, then we’ll get more of His stuff, and we’ll get it sooner. He wants to bless community. The day of the big guns is over.

2. The prophet gave three commands for what to do when the anointing was poured out:

2a. “Go.” We may get filled up in the private place, but the next command is to go, and that means get out of the private place; given the context, this had to be the marketplace (where else do you sell oil?). We are commanded to go.

2b. “Sell the oil and pay your debt.” The Western church is pretty deeply in debt: we’ve received boatloads of blessings, both material and spiritual, and we’ve not paid much of that investment forward. We must release the anointing to others to pay off our debt. That may mean healing the sick, feeding the poor, or proclaiming the gospel to the lost. Remember how Jesus announced his ministry: he announced how His anointing was to be spent:

Isaiah 61:1-2: The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD…

2c. “…you and your sons live on the rest.” We were meant to live to live on the Lord’s anointing. We were never built to live in debt, never designed to live on our own meager resources. We were intended to live on and in the anointing of God.

My advice is to find brothers and sisters to gather with. I don’t think that Sunday mornings – as Sunday mornings generally have been, anyway – qualify for this outpouring. But find people whose heart is like your heart, who share your passions, and gather with them.

And then, in that context, ask for His outpouring, ask for the oil, and look for it: what is He anointing? And when His anointing comes, take that anointing to the marketplace: give it to the people in the neighborhood, in the marketplace, and live on the rest. Find out what’s on God’s heart for your neighborhood, and pour the anointing of God into that move.

And have a blast doing it!

Selah.

Clean Refrigerator Prayers

I was visiting a friend the other day, and we were talking. She is rather an active person, and while I was sipping tea at the kitchen counter, she played the exciting and fun game she calls, “What’s that smell” with her refrigerator.

Her refrigerator is new and efficient, but it had developed a weird smell. It was full of good food, but every time she opened the door, this strange odor wafted out. It wasn’t terribly bad, but it was NOT a food smell, and it kind of turned my appetite off.

Here’s how to play “What’s that smell?”

First set aside some time: I’m going to do this; I’m not going to be interrupted.

In our version, you’ll want to prepare yourself. Call a friend. “I’m going in. Cover me!”

Then open the door, and start looking for the smell. Pick a shelf: start at the front, and open every container on the shelf. I usually start on the bottom shelf because that’s where my refrigerator is likely to have the most interesting colors and textures.

For every container: Lift the lid. Look at what’s inside. Then give it the Sniff Test. Is it nutrition, or is it a science project?

Somewhere near the back of the fridge, you’ll probably find something really interesting. My friend – who was cleaning her fridge while I sipped tea and tried to say encouraging things – discovered some candy she bought on a trip to Sweden. Two years ago. She didn’t remember it being that color. Or that slimy.

When you find the source of your smell, you win the prize! Put on heavy rubber gloves, take the prize container out, and throw its contents away. Sometimes it’s better to throw the whole container away still sealed. Then take the trash out immediately.

Now it’s time for a choice. You’re all dressed for the mess, and you’ve already won one prize. Do you stop there, or do you go for an extra bonus prize? Since you’re already prepared, maybe pick another shelf and keep looking: Lift the lid. Unwrap the tinfoil. Look at what’s inside. Then give it the Sniff Test. Is it nutrition, or is it a science project?

Doesn’t that sound like a fun game?

Let’s take a left turn for a moment.

Hebrews 12:1: Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us….

We want to run, but stuff is holding us back. Some of what is holding us back is sin. Some is just weight that hinders us. Some is buried wounds that have never healed. Some of the weight is made up of lies: lies from the enemy, lies that we've told ourselves. And some, we may never know what it used to be; we just know we need to get rid of it because it smells yucky.

How many of us are hungry for revival, and we want to be part of what God is doing, but we know we’re not really ready for it? We know there’s garbage in our soul that’s whispering to us, “Sit back down there. Who do you think you are, wanting to be part of a move of God like that?” Sometimes we’re already aware that there’s stuff in our lives that needs to go. Or some of us are thinking, “I’m already dying! How in the world am I going to keep up with a move of God?”

That’s who I’m talking about: we need to get rid of the stuff that’s weighing us down. Like I said: some is sin, some is woundedness, some is just weight. But there isn’t any part of it we want to keep, is there?  So the source hardly matters, because the real question is how do we deal with it? How do we get from where we are, weighed down, to where we need to be, free from crud and ready to go?

It’s time to play “What’s that Smell?”, but this time, we play with the help of the Holy Spirit, and we play in the confines of our own soul.

Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to live in us, but He doesn’t come as a quiet house-guest, sitting around, bored, waiting for you to entertain Him.

John 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin , and of righteousness, and of judgment.

One of the specific assignments the Holy Spirit has before Him is to convict us of a number of things. That conviction is the smell we’re looking for! That nudge of the Holy Spirit is what we’re going to be looking for. “Holy Spirit, show us, teach me: what can you show me that’s slowing me down? What can I get rid of? Help me find it and jettison it. Convict me of every weight, and of the sin, every lie, every piece of crap which so easily ensnares me please!”

I find that praying in the Spirit for a while as I begin the process is helpful for establishing a fruitful context for these soul-searching prayers.

There are a couple of things we’ll probably find as we allow the Holy Spirit to search our soul, as we sniff through every possible container of our heart:

Nutrition: Quite a lot of what you find will end up being testaments to God’s grace: Memories of His provision, places where you’ve cleaned out former messes and been forgiven, lessons learned. These, we keep. We might even organize the shelf so we can remember them better.

The Leftover Leftovers: Some of the interesting smells we find will be just the residue of life: little offenses we need to forgive, or things we weren’t paying attention to that we need to repent of. If we don’t go looking for them, we’ll never find them. They're not "big deals," but we want to get rid of them anyway: like the "little foxes" of Song of Solomon, they’ll spoil our tenderness if left unchecked.

The Slime: Sometimes, there’s just stuff that gets us: we just get slimed. We didn’t go looking for sin, it came and jumped us when we weren’t looking. And just like that green slimy gunk that grows in the back of the fridge, it needs to get washed away.

False Advertising: the enemy is pretty good at slipping lies in among the food. And if we’re honest, we're not so bad at it ourselves, telling little lies to keep from dealing with the real issues that face us. These gotta go!

The Science Projects: the hidden things in the back shelves of the fridge that stink – these are the weights and the sin that so easily entangles us. It’s in there somewhere, and it might be disguised as food, or it may be surrounded by a cloud of green spores, but it’s something we don’t need to carry with us.

The solution for whatever we find is pretty much the same: repent. Change the way you see that thing.

If you find a place of sin that you haven’t seen in yourself before, then it’s easy to repent; now that you know what it is, you can choose to go another direction. As long as we’re there, we might want to repent for letting our guard down, for not keeping watch over our soul, for not catching this earlier. This is a good place to cheat: to ask, "What more can I repent of here, Holy Spirit?"

If you find a place of unforgiveness there, we can repent for holding on so long to the offense, and we can choose to forgive.

If you find a place of hurt or woundedness there, we can repent for holding on, for believing the thing that holds us there. We can also forgive the one who hurt us, and ask God for healing. We can’t ever change what they did to us, but we can change what it did to us, how we react to it. 

The goal here is to find the smell. Wherever the funny smell is, go looking there. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring His conviction, and show us all of the details that we need to know in order to repent well.

Press especially hard into the places where your soul says, “I don’t want to go there” or “It hurts to look at that.” Those are the really rich places. Look into those places, not away from them. The degree that your flesh resists looking into something indicates the potential for God’s healing and grace that we get to have when we press through the resistance, with His help, of course!

Give everything the sniff test: is this nutrition, or is it a science project?

So. You’ve probably figured out that in the end, this is all about repenting, changing how we think. We don’t just wait for the Holy Spirit to tackle us on the big and ugly issues that need repenting: because we believe that repentance brings forgiveness, cleansing and other good things, we go looking for places where we get to repent. There are two reasons I love repentance:

Cleanliness: The more we find, the more we experience forgiveness. The more forgiveness we walk in, the cleaner our heart is, and the more that God can trust us with His secrets, His treasures. And the more we receive His forgiveness, the more we can walk boldly in Him: no condemnation, no worries, no “if only’s.” We’re free.

Intimacy: The process of partnering with the Holy Spirit to accomplish His heart’s desire is an inherently intimate one. In my experience, Clean Refrigerator Prayers are a great way to develop a powerful intimacy with the Spirit of God.

Growing in Authority

I’ve been thinking recently about some of the various levels of authority revealed for believers in the New Testament. I’ve found three: Servants, Friends and Sons.

· Servants beg favors from their masters. They have confidence that their master has the capacity to answer, but often have serious questions about whether the master has any inclination to answer.

· Friends make requests of their friends. They have confidence that their friend can meet the need, and they know that if properly encouraged (or nagged), the friend will stir themselves to meet the need.

· Sons issue commands from the family’s authority. They have confidence in their authority, and in their ability to back up that authority with power if necessary.

For years, most of the church has approached God from the perspective of servants begging favors from their master. We’ve begged God to answer our prayers, and like Dorcas’s friends, we try to justify our requests. “You need to do this for them [or me or us] because they [or I or we] have earned it.” We very seldom put it in that vocabulary, but that’s been the way we’ve prayed. “It would be so great if Suzie got saved because she could ….”

We know how to approach God as a servant. We’ve practiced servanthood, extolled servanthood, and prayed from a servant’s perspective for centuries. We’ve preached servanthood, and I think it’s been appropriate: we are not born as servants; we’re not born again with a servanthood instinct.

A servant’s life is pretty much without responsibility, doing whatever comes to the master’s mind. The servant is the guy that hides behind the curtain waiting for the master to snap his fingers and command him. Servants often love their masters, and certainly we’ve had a Master who is easy to love.

But servanthood is not where we belong today. It was a good revelation in times past, and it was necessary. But we learned that lesson. We need to move on.

We followers of Christ have talked about the fact that – theologically – we already are sons; we just need to exercise that authority. That’s true, but we don’t live in that revelation yet: I don’t know a single person who walks in the authority that our big brother and example Jesus did. Sonship is still a theory, albeit a good and true theory, and it really is where we’re headed.

But we’re not there yet. We’re on the road there, and we can see it around then next bend, and we’ll be there soon. We are right to look forward to it and to talk about it, provided that we don’t miss the place that we’re passing through now.

Right now, most of the church is just beginning to really walk in the friendship mode with God. A friend (where we are arriving) is not the same as a son (where we’re going ultimately), and it’s also substantially different than a servant (where we’ve been).

Jesus, of course established this friendship relationship: “14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15)

The friend takes a measure of responsibility in the relationship; a servant does not. A friend takes personal initiative as well as responding to his friend’s wishes. Friends don’t always drop everything when their friend says, “jump” like a servant does for his master. A friend may help us do the things on our heart, or they may try to talk us out of it, though they care deeply for their friend’s needs.

As a friend, we might say things that a servant never would. Things like “Hey, let’s do this. David did that. So did Mary. Sometimes, our friend might say, “Nah, let’s do this instead.” He did that to Paul.

A brief rabbit trail: since God is not a single personality, but three, I believe that we’ll find that we’ll have three relationships: our relationship with Father will be different than with the Son and different still than our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Personally, I find that my relationship with Father is (surprise!) a fathering relationship: comforting, affirming. My relationship with my Big Brother Jesus is a challenging one, like relating to my Captain or to a mature apostle who knows and likes me. I rather enjoy my relationship with the Holy Spirit the most: perhaps because I can’t figure Him out I have the fewest limits on what I expect in that relationship. I don’t know. I do know I relate to them differently.

So how shall we respond to the friendship of God? I offer three suggestions:

1) Acknowledge the friendship. Talk with Him as a friend. Talk with each aspect/person of God. Share your hopes and disappointments with Him. Find ways to have fun together. (Yes, that’s allowed!) He loves your time together more than you do, you know!

2) Take initiative. Make suggestions. “Hey, Jesus, somebody ought to do this. Why don’t we do it?” “You know, Father, I’ve always wanted to try this. Do you think we could do it together?”

3) Listen to Him. Ask Him what’s on His heart? What are His hopes and disappointments? What would He like to do today? Does He have a better idea of how to do that thing you’re thinking about? Real listening usually involves asking a question and waiting for your friend to answer. Yeah, I know: it sounds “religious” or “fake”. But just because other folks do it wrong, doesn’t mean you have to be weird about it.

Now one final warning before I wrap this up: we are not leaving the place of servanthood behind as we move into the place of friendship. We take it with us. We are His friends, and we need to live like it, but we are still servants of the Most High King. And when we begin to inhabit the place of sonship, we still won’t give up the place of servanthood, nor the place of friendship.

But it’s time that we stop living as if we were only servants. Let’s build a friendship with Father, with Jesus our Brother, and with the Holy Spirit. And then let’s let our friend reveal to us what it means to be a Son.

Assumptions

Assumptions
When we look at a problem – heck, when we look at anything – we make certain assumptions. But which assumptions I make are determined by who I believe I am, and who I believe God is, and my choice of assumptions will very substantially affect my life and my trust in God. I need to be aware of my assumptions and I need to make careful and intentional choices with them.

For example, if I have lived with poverty all my life, then when I find $20 in a pair of old pants, then I’m likely to find a $20 want and spend it on that. I know other people whose first assumption is “Cool! Who can I give this to?” And there are people, or so I’m told, who immediately deposit the money in the bank. (I don’t know many of those people.)

And when I look at a problem – take my family budget for example – I make assumptions, but I have a choice which assumptions I make God. I have a couple of sets of data, and sometimes they disagree. I need to be thoughtful about which set of data I believe, which data I assume to be true.

We can look at the numbers on the paper (or in the spreadsheet, or in the checkbook….) and we can accept those to be the definition of reality. And certainly, there’s a level of reality there. Sometimes, though, that data, that view of reality, conflicts with another reality that I say I believe. The other data includes statements like “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

And thus the war begins.

Looking at my bills, I can see that I have certain needs, and looking at my paycheck, I can see that I have certain resources to meet some of those needs. But this new set of data, the data from Heaven, say otherwise: God promises to meet all my needs. But my paycheck promises to meet some of my needs. Which one is true?

That’s an easy question to answer in theory. “Of course the Bible is true.” But so often we live as if the Bible’s truth is limited to “spiritual subjects” or “under certain conditions” or “for those people over there,” or some other limitation. Sorry. Not allowed. Either the Book is true, or it’s not.

This is exactly what I mean by “assumptions.”

We often assume that the problems are true, and therefore if the Book doesn’t line up with that “truth,” we make excuses for God. I think that’s a mistake. I am coming to believe that God is true even though the data that I see with my eyes doesn’t line up. In other words, I’m coming to believe – and this is a great and terrible shift for me – that God is more true than my experience. It’s a battle of worldviews, really. Which view of my world is real?

So I look at my financial need, and I look at the promise of God, and one or the other has to give. I must challenge my own assumptions about my financial need. In this example, the first assumption might be about what is a “need” to me. The second might be how I have handled the provision that He’s given me. (The phrase “Don’t eat your seed” is beginning to make sense to me.)

Another illustration: The book says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” So if “all men” can’t tell that I’m a disciple, then we have another battle of worldviews. It has to be one of three things: either a) God’s word doesn’t really mean what it says, or b) I’m not living up to “love one another” properly, or c) I don’t know how to tell whether all men know that I’m His disciples.

I’m going to simplify this: these are those 3 options, stated as principles:

a) God is a liar and His promises are not true (let’s not sugar-coat this one!), or

b) I haven’t fulfilled the conditions: I’m not holding up my end of the bargain, or

c) God really is doing His part, but I am not seeing it right for one reason or another.

But we live in a fallen world, not an ideal one, so there are actually two more options, but they’re hard to deal with:

d) things happen that are not God’s will (they're someone else's will), and

e) “I don’t know.” (That is a valid answer, you know.)

Let’s get option D out of the way quickly, and I need to be direct here, because there’s a spirit of stupid that gets on us sometimes: Not everything that goes on in this world is God’s will. I hear people tell me in times of difficulty, “Well, it must have been meant to be…” It makes me want to scream, “Do you really think that the God who sent His only Son to die for you would give your child cancer? Engage your brain, you yahoo!” Let me say it again: a lot of what you and I experience is NOT God’s plan for us.

So if my experience doesn’t line up with the promises of God, there are five possibilities. Option A above – that God’s promises are not true for us – is the one that so often we think of first. Since that is the explanation that is has been whispered into our ear since Genesis chapter three: “Did God really say….?” We assume that our experience is true, and if that is true, then anything that disagrees with our experience can’t be true. That, of course, is unbelief in full flower, and it seems that it requires a fair bit of pride for to declare that my perception is more valid than God’s promise.

It seems that when I encounter stuff that doesn’t line up with what I believe God has said, that I need to ask two questions that come from the book of Acts: “What does this mean?” and “What must I do?” And if we’re serious about the questions we ask, we need to be willing to hear any kind of answer in reply. It’s hard to lay down my assumptions and approach the challenge with an open mind, but it’s necessary.

An illustration: I was part of a church planting team in Canada years ago, and we were experiencing strange things in the church when spring came, so we went to prayer. “God, what does this mean? What are you up to? What do we need to know?” We heard Him saying, “Get ready for great change this summer.” Unfortunately, we didn’t know to ask “What do we need to do?” so we went with our assumptions: God will finally answer some of the prayers for growth. That assumption fit the facts that we knew but it was not reality. That summer, the church fell apart and died, and we left the country with our tails between our legs.

One of the most difficult aspects was that we had expected such great good, because of our assumptions, and what we encountered was a great trial: seven years of brokenness. Looking back at that season, it was very easy to say, “God, you failed us!” (option a) when the reality in this case was options c, d, and e: We weren’t seeing it right (I can’t tell you the blessing He brought through this), we were the victims of some activity that was NOT God’s, and ultimately, we really didn’t know the whole story, and we still don’t, and that’s OK.

So back to the family budget. When my checkbook challenges the truth of God’s word, I have a choice: I can accept the assumptions that tell me to believe my checkbook, which is leading me to be anxious and worry. Or I can assume that God’s word is true; it tells me that He is my provider, and that I can trust Him. (It never promises, however, that I’ll figure out all of His ways!) I choose Him, even if it means that I must not believe my own experience.

I choose to believe Him, especially when I want to believe me!

So here’s a suggestion: Pray this prayer: “By virtue of my authority as an autonomous human being, made in the image of God with a free will, I choose to never (insofar as I am able) assume that God is a liar or that His promises have somehow failed me when I don’t understand my circumstances. God, please help me to see the truth of each situation I’m in, and to recognize Your hand in every circumstance.”

A Season Of Opening Old Wounds

Some time ago, I was working on a cedar picnic table, and I got a sliver in my hand. It was a busy day, so I didn’t get a chance to pull it out right away, and I forgot about it. Over the next several days, the spot swelled up and became painful until I got a sharp knife and cut the spot open and dug out the piece of wood.

Later, I cut my other hand, and I was “too busy” to stop and slap a bandage on it, so of course it got sawdust and dirt and germs in it before I was through with the picnic table, but the damage had been done. This wound also swelled up and got tender, and I had to open it up, but there was no chunk of cedar to pull out.

A lot of God’s people are like my hands were: we’re wounded, but the wounds are hidden, buried because we didn’t deal with the issues when they were fresh. We have two kinds of wounds: some have slivers in them, foreign stuff that doesn’t belong in our lives, and some are just infected with lies or accusations or bitterness.

The pressing problem with healing old wounds is that they must first be opened. If we’re looking at our wound or our soul, then we encounter the pain first; sometimes we feel all of the pain that put the wound there in the first place and sometimes we have all that topped by the additional pain of having remembered the wound, or feared its opening, for Lo! these many years. However, I believe that God is urging us to not focus our attention on the wound, but on Him, and as we do that, He’ll be our anesthesia: the wound will be opened, cleaned and healed, and we won’t have suffered the same debilitating pain again and again.

Let me prophesy this: we are in a season where God is opening up old wounds in His saints, bringing to the our consciousness things that we haven’t thought about for years or decades. Some, we haven’t ever dealt with, and some we have addressed, but God wants to get the last little specks out of them and clean the wounds.

God wants His warriors healed; He wants us able to fight the enemy without fear that a stray shot will hit our old wounds and knock us out of the battle. His goal is healing those hidden places, and it might hurt for a while, but he’s taking out the foreign stuff, cleaning out the infection.

There are three things that are needed to bring healing in these old wounds:

· First, we must let God take us there, but we look at Him, not at the wound. If He says to repent of stuff, we repent. If He says to forgive folk, we forgive. If He says to make declarations, we make declarations. We need to focus on what He has done, not on what He hasn’t [yet] done. Psalm 37:3 says “Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness.” If we dwell on His faithfulness, it grows good things. If we dwell on our lack, it grows bitterness and offense.

· Second, we immerse ourselves in good input. This is more than just immersing myself in Spiritual or godly activities, it’s intentionally making place for Him to speak into my life. Worship is a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours. If I use worship to run from the work God is doing, it’s less wonderful, it’s hiding from God and the work He’s up to. But if in worship I open my heart to his scalpel, it’s more profitable for both Him and me. Immersion in the Word – sitting under Its teaching, not marking off pages or studying to teach – brings faster healing. Opening my spirit to anointed teaching CD’s or podcasts, or reading the blogs of radical God-chasing Revolutionaries will be helpful.

· Shut up and move on. OK, that was too blunt. Sorry. How about, “Let’s not complain about the process but instead, let’s position ourselves for growth by aggressively pressing forward into the good things of God.”

· Get over the blame game. We really often blame God (“It must be His will…”) or ourselves (“I must need to learn some lesson from this”). God pretty much never answers the “Why did that happen?” question, but He loves to answer the “How shall I respond?” one.

· Look for the profit. In the Bible, the standard is that stuff that is stolen from us must be repaid seven times. Your wounds, your losses can be seeds for a profitable harvest. But the thief never repays what was taken voluntarily; you must take it back, perhaps violently. It’s called plunder, and it’s yours. But that’s another story.

So don’t be surprised if old hurts come back in the weeks and months ahead: God is bringing an invitation to us: will we let Him clean the wound? Will we let Him heal us? Will we be healed so we can heal others?

Are You In The Right Troop?

I grew up with a great dad. When my brother and I were young, he and a friend of his started a Boy Scout troop for their boys, primarily so they could take us camping a lot. For several important years as I was growing up, we went camping eleven months out of every year.

During the first few years, we were pretty enthusiastic, but not at all skilled. But before long, we developed some actual skill at camping. After a few years, our monthly camping trips got to be less of a trial and a whole lot more fun, our meals more interesting, and we no longer worried about coming back wet, cold and defeated, and we looked forward to the week-long 50- or 70-mile trip in the summer. We didn’t earn as many merit badges as some troops did, but we camped more, and probably had more fun.

One of my friends in the troop was an Assistant Patrol Leader named Bill. He was getting pretty good at cooking over a fire and converting a flat spot in the woods into a comfortable campsite for the weekend. But Bill was not content: his goal was to advance to the rank of Eagle Scout. We’d never had anyone in our troop who was real focused on advancement before.

Before long, Bill figured out that he was among a band of brothers who were fun to camp with, but who had different goals and values from his. He needed to either realign his goals to match his circumstances, or realign his circumstances to match his goals. He chose the latter, and Bill left our troop to join another one that didn’t camp as much, but which raised up Eagle Scouts by the dozens.

Before King David became king, he ran for his life from Saul and hid in the Cave of Adullam. But while he was there, a whole bunch of people left someplace else and joined David’s troop.

1 Chronicles 12:1-2,8: Now these were the men who came to David at Ziklag while he was still a fugitive from Saul the son of Kish; and they were among the mighty men, helpers in the war… Some Gadites joined David at the stronghold in the wilderness, mighty men of valor, men trained for battle,

It’s possible to look at this as disloyalty: “I can’t leave my own people and join with another group, because that’s abandoning my people.” We see wars built on “These are my people and they’re better than another people.” Think of Northern Ireland or Somalia or Iraq.

Sure, there will always be flakes – self-centered opportunists – who wander like cows from one pasture to another, always grazing and never leaving more than manure behind. Get over them. Jesus said, “You will always have the poor among you.” Those people are not “ours” in the first place, they’re just spiritually “poor” and unwilling to change. I’m talking about people who know who they are in Christ, and who have a clue about following His leadership.

If I’ve always been part of the chess club, and I begin to develop more of an interest in backpacking than chess, then maybe it makes some sense for me to depart the chess club and join with the backpacking club.

If my church fellowship is great on teaching the Word, but doesn’t care about worship, then maybe it doesn’t qualify as the be-all end-all supply of God’s resources for me. Maybe I can help them develop a value for worship. Maybe I can start a home group that worships passionately, and so fan the flame in my own heart. Maybe I can visit another group on Friday nights who worships passionately, and maybe I can help my church value worship. But if they decide that they’re happy the way they are and don’t want to grow or change, then perhaps I need to join a troop that values worship.

Or should I stay there, ignore the paucity of spirit growing into spiritual apathy and complacency, simply because I have always been part of that group?

If I do leave the chess club and join the backpacking club (like when Bill left our troop to be part of the troop that understood about advancement) I will leave a set of established relationships and I’ll be starting over with new relationships. It’ll take years to develop good relationships. I’ll be leaving a house where I am known and presumably trusted, and I’ll be joining a group that I have common interests with, but no history of relationship. I’ll be starting over. That’s a real cost, and I need to weigh the cost.

But if the president of the chess club, or some of the young nerds in that club, were to prohibit me from leaving the club, that would be a problem. If I tried to keep Bill from leaving our troop to join the other troop, then I’m screwing up on several levels: I’m abusing Bill’s trust in me, I’m putting my interests above his and demeaning him. More than that, I’m condemning his dreams to the abyss. I may tell myself and him “Hey, our troop has more fun,” but his goal is not fun; it’s advancement, and frankly it’s a higher goal.

Obviously, I’m not writing about Boy Scouts or about chess clubs. I’m writing about the church. We can see the abuse clearly when we talk in terms of Boy Scouts or chess clubs, but sometimes we justify the same abusive behavior when it comes to churches. God is the Commander-in-Chief of the Church, and He has the right to re-assign His soldiers as He sees fit, and who in Heaven’s name do we think we are if we try to hinder His servants from obeying Him?

(Obviously, the question arises of whether the departing church member is in fact hearing God, and hearing Him correctly. I would argue that if we have taught her to hear the Master for himself, then we best not stand in the way of her obedience; if we have not taught her to hear God’s voice herself, then we’ve demonstrated our self-centeredness and affirmed the wisdom of her departure. It’s her decision: her opportunity to succeed or fail. That’s the main lesson of Philemon.)

Someone will bring up the question of the tithes of the family leaving, and since church budgets (and therefore pastors’ salaries) come from tithes, that’s a hot-button issue. “We can’t let them leave because I have a car payment and a kid in college.” Wait a minute, who is my provider? Is it this brother or sister who believes they’re obeying God in leaving, or is God my provider? And do I really believe that? What right do I have to put my budget ahead of her obedience to God?

Enough of the rant. This is a season when we’re approaching the front lines of the battlefield, and General Jesus is transferring soldiers – and high ranking officers – from one battalion to another. We’ve lived with separate streams for a while, and He’s cross-training among the streams now. He’s moving leaders from within a stream that’s strong in worship, but weak in mercy and he’s putting them in a stream that has a need to understand worship and the need for intimacy with God. He’s moving teachers to groups that understand intimacy, but lack a Biblical foundation.

When they (or you, or I) hear the call to a new assignment, certainly it’s appropriate to confirm the matter by the testimony of two or three witnesses. And if I just want to leave because this congregation is challenging me in a place that’s uncomfortable, then I’m in danger of becoming one of those cows wandering from pasture to pasture. That would be a mistake.

But when God is leading, let’s be quick to obey. And let’s encourage our brothers and sisters to obey. If we’re going to err, let’s err on the side of extravagant obedience, not on the side of timidity and security and fear. Let’s look at the bigger picture.

So are you in the right troop? Are they obeying their Master’s call? Can you help them follow their call? Can you become who God has made you to become while you’re there? Or has it just become comfortable? Are you being lulled to sleep?

Wake up! It’s time to be about His business! Plug in with people who are passionate about the stuff God is calling you to! If the people you're with aren't going where you're going, then don't go with them. Find a people going where you want to go, and go with them.

The Curse of the Bell Curve

I have come to resent the bell curve. No, that’s not strong enough. I’ve come to loathe the bell curve.

The bell curve itself is unworthy of my wrath. It’s merely a chart, a tool to handle information and present it in a way that makes some sense out of a subject as complex as the human being. Psychologists love bell curves; come to think of it, that may have something to do with my opinion of the thing.

Almost any way you examine the human species, most of us fall in the middle, and less of us are exceptional either in the positive or the negative. The vast majority of us are of average intelligence. There are a few exceptionally brilliant ones and a few that are were paying attention to something else when God passed out reasoning ability. That’s what the bell curve measures: how many of us are average and how few of us are exceptional, whether ahead of the curve or behind it. The vast bulk of our species is somehow in the realm called “average” and then there are the leftovers that don’t fit into that group.

The Bell Curve Theory says that all points on the chart – both the masses in the middle, and the tiny quantities at the fringes – are legitimate: it’s not “wrong” to be on the cutting edge, or the trailing edge, any more than it’s wrong to be in the vast middle ground.

I don’t know that I’ve ever met a truly “average” person, and so I question whether the bell curve is all that accurate at describing our species, but that’s not my primary problem with the thing. Nor is my antipathy based on its reduction of a complex and beautiful species down to a handful of simple statistics. Rather, my frustration with it is much deeper. Let me illustrate.

I am the proud father of three spectacular teenaged examples of what’s good and right with the human species. My children are all wonderful, but they are as different from each other as I can imagine. I used to think this was merely the wonder of my own offspring, but my sister has five children, and they are equally diverse; I’m coming to the conclusion that kids are human beings – not an opinion I’ve held my whole life, I’m afraid – and they are as unique as the human species is.

Of necessity, I am also the father of three examples of the product of my community’s educational system. And this leads me to the heart of why I despise the bell curve. In our community, the school system is designed for the “average” student, their programs and teaching styles designed to fit the bulk of kids that fit in that vast middle ground o the bell curve. Since my kids are not “average”, they’ve had to adapt themselves to the school’s methods in order to benefit from its lessons. One daughter learns best, for example, when she can talk through the process one-on-one, and when she can work with her hands; another daughter took the toughest classes the school had and still wasn’t sufficiently challenged. The school makes room for neither.

As a teacher, I understand the benefit of kids adapting to the methods of the teachers. As a father, I resent the requirement that they must change or else be excluded. But the school system has become an education factory, and of necessity must adopt factory methods, and these require addressing the bulk of the bell curve.

The same problem has infiltrated the Church, and this is where the bell curve really irks me. The overwhelming majority of churches – local congregations, large and small – are built for the bell curve: the majority of churches cater to the majority of Christians, those who are “average.” And just like the school system, if I hope to gain something from my association with the church, I need to learn to adapt myself and my needs to the “average” ministry that is being provided by my church. That is never stated, but it’s true nevertheless: I must learn to conform to the way they offer church if I want to receive from their offerings. I must meet when they meet, I must learn from the lessons they teach in the way that they teach them, I must benefit from the spiritual gifts they manifest, and I must find someone to trust among their limited circle of people. It’s almost as if the church were becoming a factory, too.

This strikes me as a question of integrity. I can conform, and fit into the “average” mold, but that sacrifices the man God made me to be for the sake of conformity, or I can maintain my integrity, but sacrifice my ability to relate to my church and the resources God has there for me.

It seems to me that part of the reason is that churches have fallen into something of a pragmatic mindset: “How can we reach the largest number of people with limited resources?” (If, however, the church contains the presence of the infinite God, then perhaps there’s room to question the “limited resources” issue, but that’s another conversation, isn’t it?) It is awfully appealing to look at an established budget of time and money, and look at that bell curve, and realize, “I can start this program which will be meaningful to 5% of the population, or that program, which will be meaningful to 60% of the population, but I can’t do both. Where do I want to spend my budget?”

Jesus has been quoted as saying “A bruised reed [I] will not break, And smoking flax [I] will not quench.” He promises to take each of us as we are and rescue us, equip us, and unleash us into an unsuspecting world. The key phrase here is “as we are.” Even if we don’t fit “average” we belong in the Church.

I could go on about how much of the Church is embracing the values of the business world in making spiritual decisions, but that won’t solve anything. More to the point, how shall I respond myself? What can I do to fight the curse of the bell curve? How do I maintain my own integrity and still be part of a congregation that doesn’t mean to, but nevertheless does require conformity to function? Beyond that, what can I do to address the needs of the people at the fringes of the bell curve, the ones who are functionally overlooked by the local church? What can I do? Oh, wait. The Infinite God lives in me too.

Snuggling with the King

There’s a strange verse in the strangest book of the Old Testament. Song of Songs 1:4 says “Draw me away and I will run after you. The king has drawn me into His chambers.”

I’m struck by the three main statements here: 1) I need God to draw me to Himself, 2) I will pursue God in response to His drawing me, and the key part: 3) where we’re going is into His place. He is taking me into His chamber, His private place, His bedroom. Hmmm. What happens in such a place: intimacy happens.

God is calling me, helping me, to come to a private place, an intimate place with Him, a place for His and me to be alone together.

That’s not really new news; God has been saying this for quite some time, and I’m convinced that it’s getting to the point that He won’t really let his kids help with the work of His kingdom unless we – unless I – spend time alone with Him.

A similar verse in the New Testament, in Ephesians, Paul says that God “made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In other words, God has brought me to a private place with Him, where He and I can be together. He and I sit together. (“Would you like some tea?” “Yes thank you. So tell me about what’s on your mind today.”) When I sit down, I’m generally not working. I’m relaxing. It’s hard to sweat while I’m sitting together with someone.

(Now this is a little odd: it’s an intimate setting, but there are millions of us there. “God… made us to sit together…”)

The odd part is where we’re sitting, and how we’re sitting. We’re sitting together in heavenly places. We’re sitting with God, sipping tea, in the throne room of Heaven.

What do you call a place to sit in a throne room? (Answer: “a throne.”) We’re sitting with Jesus in His chair. What kind of chair is that? (Same answer.) What do you do when you’re sitting on a throne? (“You rule.”) How does a king on His throne implement his rule? (“He issues commands and decrees.”) So what do we do when we’re seated with Jesus on the throne of heaven? (“Uh.. Um... I don’t know!” Wrong answer.)

Our job, as we’re seated in Heaven, is to snuggle up to Jesus, and to issue decrees and commands (yes, in His name) to accomplish the thing He taught us to pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Change of scenes. Back to the Old Testament for a moment.

I watch the Old Testament prophets exercise authority in their words. Certainly, the church is growing in her understanding of the prophetic, but we still don’t have anyone that walks in the authority that Elijah or Elisha walk in. Between them, the Bible records more than 20 serious miracles. Time and time again, they’re saying, “The Lord declares this” or “As the Lord lives, that will happen.” They seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the decree thing.

Here’s my problem: very seldom does the Word record that God told them declare thus, or proclaim that. It’s apparent that God backed them up, because the thing that they declared came to pass with the result that people came to respect God.

Wait, they declared something, but there’s no record that God told them to? And God backed up their word with power? God put His reputation on the line to back up their words?

Sure looks like it.

I have got to look into that! I see a couple of possible reasons for why the Word doesn’t record God instructing them to say “thus says the Lord.” I work with the foundation that scripture is profitable and for our example, there’s profit in the example of the prophets. Some possibilities:

1) It isn’t important to God: God did not consider the example of His leading the prophet to be as necessary for our teaching as the prophet’s declaration. Maybe He did give them the instruction, but He didn’t instruct the authors of the scriptures to show that part to us because we didn’t need to see it, because there was no lesson in it for us. My initial reaction to this thought is frustration. As a man who is still growing in hearing and following God, I would have loved to have their examples to learn from.

But there’s another possibility:

2) God didn’t speak to them. Perhaps God didn’t record the story of how he told them what to say because He did not tell them what to say. In other words, God speaking to the prophet isn’t a significant part of the prophet’s declaration. This is a frightening thought my evangelical roots. I need to look more closely at this.

We, as God’s people and co-regents with Christ, have responsibility to declare the will of God on earth. We have at least two channels, two sources for determining what to declare:

The first is clear: We can do what God is doing, say what He is saying. We listen, we hear what He is saying and we say that. We observe, we see what He is doing, and we do that. Clearly, this is a biblical model.

The second is just as clear in the Book, but sometimes harder to wrap my mind around. Jesus has handed us a checkbook full of blank checks, already signed. He says, “Spend them any way you like.” The New Testament is full of places where Jesus is hammering on the issue: “What do you want? Ask! It’s yours!”

It’s apparent, from experience if not from the Book, that this freedom comes from intertwining ourselves with Him, from conforming ourselves to Him, so that our personality is free and unfettered, but our desires – our will – become intertwined with His. That’s the place where He can trust us with the blank checks. Come on, our models are Elijah and Elisha: the guys who really hung out with God, not some Joe Schmotz whose only knowledge of God comes from what reaches his back pew on Easter and Christmas Eve.

But at the same time, this is not some high and lofty place that only ascetics can attain to. This freedom to cash the checks of heaven, the “ask what you want, it’s yours!” is not limited to people with camel-hair robes who live in caves. This is for people who love Jesus. This is for you and me, but this is for you and me as we let Him draw us to the King’s chamber, as we’re intimate with Him.

I think that Elijah & Elisha caught on to this: they didn’t wait for God to tell them; they hung around with God well enough to know His heart, and so they spoke with His authority. Their heart beat with His heart’s rhythm. God hadn’t particularly spoken those particular instructions to them. They knew His heart, and they spoke what was on their heart because their heart was like His heart.

So I come back to where I started this whole thing: this all starts in the King’s chambers. If I let Him draw me, if I follow after Him as He leads me into His private chamber, if I lie down with Him and let Him impregnate me with His kind of life and power, then I’ll catch His heart like Moses did, like Elijah and Elisha did. And when I catch His heart, I can proclaim the will of God, because my will is the same as His will. And if I proclaim something that's in line with His will, it's going to happen.

Cool!