Tuesday
The Miracle Truck
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,
(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
Our job, as we’re seated in Heaven, is to snuggle up to
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
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.
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
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!
Monday
Fixing the Gospel
There’s something wrong with the gospel.
Think about it for a minute: It used to be that when people declared the gospel, it “turned the world upside down.”
I live in North America. I don’t see any part of my homeland turned upside down by the gospel. I see parts of my society being heavily impacted by liberals or by conservatives in politics. I see a self-centeredness infecting a generation, and I see influxes of Islam, Hinduism (in several forms) and Deism, but I don’t see the gospel turning anything upside down.
There’s something wrong with the gospel.
But I hear reports from other continents and they’re amazing. Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation in our little planet, and more persecution of Christians. It also seems to have more natural disasters than any other planet. But Indonesia is also home to a move of God that really is turning their world upside down. And have you heard the stories from Africa? They boggle my mind. I hear wonders from India, from Mongolia, from South America. The gospel is turning other places upside down.
But North America remains unchanged.
There’s something wrong with the gospel. No, there’s something wrong with our gospel.
I wonder if we preach the wrong gospel. We preach the gospel of salvation.
They taught, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” It’s in reach. Then they healed the sick to demonstrate. They cast out demons. Once in a while, they’d raise someone from the dead for variety.
The people they raised from the dead were certainly convinced that the gospel was real. The lives of those-formerly-known-as-lepers were transformed: these former outcasts were suddenly productive members of society and they had a following, a following that was listening to them talk about
We preach the gospel of salvation. We have special Easter services where we bait the hook of the gospel of salvation with pop music and a “culturally relevant” message, and we invite the world to come look at our bait. We preach a “You need
And North America remains unchanged.
When Jesus modeled the gospel, he went to where the people were. He proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom, and he healed their sick.
Then he taught the boys to do what He did. Go to where they are. Proclaim the Kingdom. Heal the sick.
I have to admit: that this model scares me. It’s much easier to wait for the fish to swim into my church, and to give them a low-fat gospel that requires nothing more than to raise their hand when nobody’s looking. It doesn’t require me to look stupid, though, and so I and my brethren by the millions have chosen this pattern.
We’ve been scared to death by the risk that
And North America remains unchanged.
When Jesus commissioned us as He left, he gave us the same model: Go. Preach. Heal.
(OK, He actually said “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons and raise the dead,” but it all fits under the general category of “heal.”)
We don’t usually go to the people. We don’t go to the fish, we advertise for the fish to come to us. We don’t preach the gospel of the kingdom, most of us, and we don’t heal their sick.
And North America remains unchanged.
The reports I’ve heard out of Africa say that it’s the healing that capture people’s attention. A friend reported that he attended a church service there recently. A man got up and started his message by saying, “For these three days last month I was dead.” He had their complete and undivided attention for the rest of the day.
So I am repenting from my shallowness. I am repenting from preaching the gospel of salvation when I preached anything at all. I’ve started to embarrass myself by asking people if they want prayer. I’m not ready yet for the “Such as I have I give unto you” thing that
Maybe I’ll take my time before I raise the dead too. Except for me. I think I need to be raised from the dead first.
And maybe North America can be changed.
(If you’re interested, there’s a PowerPoint presentation of some of these thoughts here.)
How are Your Figs?
Friday
Jesus’ Healing Ministry
What? If He touches you first, you won’t be healed?