The Sin of Being Ordinary

"Are you not behaving as ordinary men?"

~I Corinthians 3:3~

Some time ago my husband and I were having dinner with a group of his colleagues, predominately professors and academics. I am quite used to letting the conversation swirl above me at these events, as they discuss such things as genetic mutations, cell reconstruction or the latest in cancer research advances.

The hosts of the evening were a brilliant couple who had moved to America from China. As we were just beginning the main course, the wife looked up from her plate and, without any warning, said "Does anyone here know anything about Jesus?". All other conversation stopped. Eight pairs of eyes lifted slowly. Throats cleared. Her husband rolled his eyes. My heart quickened.

A couple of guests gave academic or historical answers, to which she replied, "It's just that three friends of mine from China say that they have become Christians and they sent me a Bible. But I don't know anything about Jesus". My time had come. "I know about Jesus" I said. "In fact I am a Christian and I have a relationship with Him".

I don't know if, until that point, the guests knew this, as our friendships are only forged through formal events. But now they were staring at me, a suddenly peculiar and foreign "me", who had declared a relationship with a man they believed was long ago dead and gone. One woman, buoyed by my confession, admitted that she attended church, but clarified this by adding that this was only because it was a peaceful place where her thoughts could rest from their scientific wonderings. It all became awkward and forced. And so, quite quickly, the husband suggested a change of subject and they all moved on.

But I could not move on. I caught the wife looking several times in my direction and so, over coffee in the den, we sat together and I shared with her, in basic ways, why she did need to seek Christ out. "He is alive" I assured her, as she leaned in hungrily to ask me many questions.

That night I lay awake wondering if, before my public confession of faith, I had seemed different to them? Had I stood out in any way? Had He been beautifully attractive within me? Would they have guessed I was a transformed Christ follower?

In the first book of Corinthians Paul urged the believers to become peculiar. He told them firmly that they were behaving as "ordinary men" and that this was going to have to change or they would risk losing their testimony among the masses who watched them for authenticity.

Awhile ago I wrote of the outward signs of a Christ centered lifestyle. But there is another, more important "circumcision", and it is that of the heart . II Peter 1:5-7 draws for us a very clear picture of what is to be expected if we are to make any lasting impact for Christ:

Make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.

2 Peter 1:5-7

In "The Christly Life". W.Y. Fullerton describes this section of scripture as a call for Christians to live out their life as "one great anthem" with all the parts supplied in Christ.

"Just as in some oratorios the score is written for eight parts, so here we get eight parts of one chorus, When we get to the chorus of Christian graces, no praise must go to us, but from heaven it all comes! The Divine power, the Divine nature, and the Divine sequence, beginning with the cleansing, then the calling and finally, the bringer of His glory, the character of Christ. If you supply the chorus here amid the discords of the world, where you go, the music will be"

I want this to be me! I want to be a living, breathing oratorio! Where I walk, I want the music of Christ to be heard all around me! But this will not happen by the conversion experience alone. That is what gives me eyes to see and a new heart to feel the moving of the Spirit. But from the place of conversion I must lay down my all, sacrifice even the humblest parts and allow Christ to build upon my foundation a life that is lived fully and exuberantly , and for His glory. And in so doing I will "draw all men unto" Him. As Sarah Dawn so beautifully wrote in the comment section for the post "Pretty Prayers" , we should yearn for...

The adventurous journey that forever ruins us for the ordinary

Pretty Prayers

There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying.

John G. Lake

Today was a day of conviction. I was compelled to return to my room, time and time again, because the Father required my attention. When He spoke, I shook beneath the revelation of my failure and I began to cry:

Father,

Forgive me.

My prayers have become so pretty and polite

I have said in my heart,

"God and I are friends"

and so,instead of kneeling in Your presence,

I have become too familiar

and lie in bed beneath my comfortable quilt,

without tears

and without reverence

My heart is full of the blessings of life.

The heap of treasures

leave little room for grieving over

lost souls and barren lives

I throw a few words their way

but I am unbroken

and unbent.

I worship

but I do not weep.

I line up my requests

like beads on a string

tied up with a tidy Amen.

Oh God, stir up the Christ-passion!

Let the Spirit groan

and sigh through me

Increase my hunger

to hear you

Quench my tendancy

to pray by rote.

Forgive me God

for pretty prayers.

Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?....Prayer is not simply getting things from God; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray.

--Oswald Chambers

The Two Trees of Eden

We are stardust

We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Joni Mitchell, Lyrics to "Woodstock"

When Joni Mitchell wrote these words she was longing to go back to a time of innocence, the time before that disastrous bite of forbidden fruit in Eden. Although we may daydream of what life would be like before the fall, we can never "get ourselves back to the garden", for it was there our fate was sealed.

What is so interesting to me is the fact that there were two special trees, yet most of us focus only on the one. "At the center of the garden God placed the Tree of Life, and also the Tree of Conscience, giving knowledge of Good and Evil"(Genesis 2:9) "God gave the man this warning "You may eat of any fruit in the garden except the tree of Conscience" (Genesis 2:17).

Adam and Eve could eat freely from a vast orchard with trees weighed low with the choicest of fruit. But they were also permitted to eat from the Tree of Life, a tree that represented the grace of God. By nourishing themselves with its fruit they could enjoy fellowship with their Creator. They could sustain themselves with that which brought life. Why then would they eat of the one tree that could bring an end to this utopia?

The Tree of Good and Evil represents the Law. God did not desire that we live under that burden. It did not please Him to dictate the book of Deuteronomy. It makes Him seem so heavy handed, so impossible to please, His demands onerous and overwhelming. But that wasn't God's doing. He offered grace. Man chose law.

Even now, people will eagerly join a cult that guarantees spiritual results based on obedience to a set of laws. It gives them the power rather than God as they hold their own destiny in their hands. It is clear that human beings are more comfortable earning eternal life than accepting it from God because in accepting it we must admit that we are weak and sin-wracked, dependant on God alone to redeem us.

"We desire to be like God in discerning law so we may attain God-likeness through keeping it. The tree of legal righteousness appears to be good spiritual food, producing righteous people who are a delight to look upon, making us wise scholars (lawyers!) of the word. When one partakes, however, his eyes are opened to his own ignorance, nakedness, and vulnerability. How sad it is that, instead of confessing how bare we are and accepting grace, we try to cover ourselves with insecure works of righteousness--flimsy, scratchy, and inadequate as our fig leaves prove to be"

Cecil Hook ( freedomsring.org)

Joni Mitchell is right when she says "we are stardust, we are golden". God says that too. He calls us precious and desirable and longed for. And when He says this, He is not just talking about those who follow Him. Scripture is filled with His beautiful words to those who have walked away or those who have not yet come. A human soul is so valuable to God, and holds within itself so much potential, that God sent Christ to redeem us and pay the debt and satisfy the covenant with His blood. John Fischer puts it this way:

"The fact that we are sinners does not mean we are nothing. It is actually because of our value that it matters that something is wrong. Sin is a tragedy because we are worth something. It ultimately destroys us. It brings down a good thing. But God is in the redemptive business--the process of saving what was lost, buying back,with the blood of His Son ,a people for His own"

And so the law, which seemed to be a way to become god-like, actually enslaved us, putting an impossible rock between our souls and the heart of God. But Christ, in that One astounding act of love and sacrifice on the cross, led us back to the tree of life and gave us the right to eat of that fruit again. And when we did our eyes were opened in a different way. We saw what God planned for us to see all along. We saw grace.

"For a soul is far too precious to be ransomed by mere earthly wealth.

There is not enough of it in all the world to buy eternal life

for just one soul, to keep it out of hell"

Psalm 49:8,9 (Living Bible)

Godly Lives In This Present Age

Few things are more infectious than a godly lifestyle. The people you rub shoulders with everyday need that kind of challenge. Not prudish. Not preachy. Just cracker jack clean living. Just honest to goodness, bone - deep, non-hypocritical integrity.

~Chuck Swindoll~

Not long ago I was invited to a bride's pre-wedding girls night out. She was not a Christian and in fact I seemed to be the only believer at the table. After they had a few drinks in them it was suggested that we play a game in which someone would ask a question and we all would have to answer truthfully.

The first question was "When was the first time you got drunk?". The answers brought peals of laughter until it was my turn. They were sobered when I answered "I have never been drunk". The next question was "How old were you the first time you "made out" in the back seat of a car?". My answer once again stopped the laughter cold."I have never made out in the back seat of a car". Same went for when I saw my first R rated movie, "I have never seen one".Drugs? Not once" First cigarette?" "Never tried".

In case you are wondering how this could possibly be,the explanation is pretty simple. I grew up as a pastor's kid in the Pentecostal church in Canada in the 60's and 70's. In order to understand the impact that this had, it is necessary to revisit history.

This was a time when Christians could be picked out of a crowd because they seemed so different. Much of this came about because there were rules for living and plenty of them.

We did not shop or work or go to parties on Sundays. It was God's day, from Sunday School at 9:45 until the last of the prayer warriors had risen from their knees following the evening service. We did not go to school dances (not even the prom) and we only dated Christians that our parents knew. Our clothes were in style, but not if the style was immodest. We turned off objectionable television shows. We were given wholesome books to choose from and our language was clean, not even slang was allowed, and certainly nothing that even resembled the Lord's name ( I remember in grade six the popular term was "Cheese Whiz"). There was absolutely no drinking anything alcoholic and no smoking. We did not go to see movies at the theater because even if the movie we were going to see was decent, someone might see us going into the building and assume we were going to a movie that was not. Testimony meant a lot in those days.

And we were taught to ask ourselves "What would Jesus do?" long before there were popular bracelets to remind us to maintain godly standards.

The argument could easily be made that rules do not make character. This is true. But expectations demand something of us and, although there are always exceptions, if those expectations are under girded with scripture and the discipline of a godly lifestyle, they eventually become character. And they often do make us into people of integrity. Not always, but often.

On the Assemblies of God website (the American equivalent of the Pentecostal church in Canada) they give this definition of integrity

"Christian integrity is a reality that sets the standard for the normal Christian life. Thus integrity must be understood in the context of behavior. The Greek word schema is translated "fashion" and signifies that which comprises the manner of life, actions, etc., of humanity in general. It means to fashion one’s behavior code after the image and life of Jesus Christ"

On this same website, Paul L. Walker has an article about integrity in which he write this:

Perhaps the reality of integrity is best illustrated by Eric Liddell whose life inspired the movie, Chariots of Fire. Eric was a man who demonstrated the reality of integrity. Because he would not run in the Olympics on Sunday, he entered a different race and won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics.

Liddell was called to be a missionary to China and became a teacher at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin. After teaching for some time, he went into the interior and traveled from village to village on foot and by bicycle—spreading the gospel over hundreds of thousands of miles.

During World War II the Japanese invaded China. Liddell was branded, along with many others of Western heritage, as an "enemy national," and in 1943 he was confined in a prison camp 150 by 200 yards with a thousand other so-called nationalist enemies. While there he had an impact on the prison camp—organized athletic events, conducted worship services, preached the gospel, counseled people, and comforted the sick and the dying.

His determined influence is reflected in the writings of David Michell ,who was a child in the camp during that time. Michell wrote: "None of us will ever forget this man who was totally committed to putting God first, a man whose humble life combined muscular Christianity with radiant godliness". In 1945 Eric Liddell died of a brain tumor in that prison camp"

Eric was not a man of integrity because he would not race on Sunday. He would not race on Sunday because he was a man of integrity. The modern church movement has interpreted lifestyle rules to be legalism and the result has been a damning melting pot, where Christians are virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd.

Just because we now have freedom to choose a less demanding path, should we? I say, no. And it is not because we are to be bound to legalism but because we are bound to Christ. We are supposed to be different. In fact we are commanded to be different.

"Say No to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self- controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age"

Titus 2:12

My Sin, His Blood

" We have a way of making perfunctory that which should be graphic in our lives. Sin, confession, forgiveness, are all bloody and painful...but we like to keep most of this in the abstract...we keep the reality of Christ's death--and our own sin---distant, liturgical, theological. But seeing the cause and effect between my present tense sin and Christ's past tense death might mean that I will have to do something about sinning beyond casually accepting God's grace...I wonder if it might make a difference in my life if, the next time I had to confess a sin, the pastor would have to wrestle a bull from the closet and start slicing away"

John Fischer, "On a Hill Too Far Away"

Every year as I make my way from Genesis to Revelation, I am forced to grapple with the verses in between the ones I have underlined. I have to think about the scriptures I would rather not think about, like Exodus 33:5 when God gives this message to Moses, "You are an unruly, stubborn people. If I were there among you for even a moment, I would exterminate you".

In fact the Mighty Jehovah of the Old Testament bears so little resemblance to the twentieth century God of compassion, mercy and grace, that , many times, it results in a rejection of what we do not understand. We cannot be blamed for our confusion. After all the new and improved God presented to us these days has eyes that never glare and He long ago gave up that nasty habit of terrifying us by roaring like thunder. No one needs to quake in His presence anymore because His first, middle and last name is "Love".

I often have made excuses for the pre-Calvary books of the Bible and considered the Old Testament a historical account of a barbaric people who sincerely tried to follow God. I decided that they may have thought they heard Him ordain a throat-slitting, neck-breaking, wing-ripping slaughter all day, every day, but my God would never demand that kind of carnage or the shedding of so much innocent blood.

But that that is exactly what God did demand. It is the reason the hand and feet of Jesus were pre-ordained to be pierced and his back torn open. God did demand that the most innocent of blood must flow, fully soaking the cross and the soil beneath it. As John Fischer writes,

" Sin and blood have always been tied together in the mind of God. My sin has to have a payment. Either I pay for it with my own blood, or someone else has to pay it for me--a bull or a lamb or the final perfect Lamb. No one gets to walk without someone bleeding"

The disciples of Jesus had a much clearer understanding of what Christ's death meant because they had had a relationship with the God before the cross. When one of them committed a sin, they were forced to witness the bloody violent killing of an innocent animal who had to suffer on their behalf. The terrified sounds and the sickening smell of the altar of sacrifice was tangible to them. So when Christ said " I am the final sacrifice. Whenever you sin, lay the guilt and horror of that on me", they understood Calvary in a far more profound way than I ever will. For me it has been rather sterile.

Fischer reminded me of this popular saying,"I asked God, 'How much do you love me?' and He said 'This much', and stretched out His arms on the cross and died". On the surface this is beautiful. But if you think about it even a few minutes beyond the initial warm feelings it stirs , it becomes disturbing and more questions eventually come. Deeper ones. Questions we do not like to ask. Paramount among them is this, "Why did anyone have to die for me?"

The answer is a solitary one and we cannot wriggle out from under it. Without Christs blood we are sin-soaked, wretched, filthy and untouchable. There is nothing we can do to altar that reality. God could not come anywhere near us if it were not for the bloody, sacrificial death of Jesus.

When I sin ,and when I confess, I need to feel the weight of what I have done. I need to remind myself of who I am when I am not covered by the blood of Christ. I do not have to remember this because I need to grovel, but precisely because I do not! The fact is , the forgiveness of my sin and the redemption of my soul was a violent, long-drawn out ,bloody business because God said it needed to be.

"The minute I fail to see my own sin, the cross loses its meaning. I may try to have it stir my heart, but it has no real connection to me. My sin, and nothing else, will make me cling to that hard, ugly, beam of wood. As difficult as the cross is to understand, only my sin will give it any meaning at all"

John Fischer

"On a Hill Too Far Away"

Going Forward by Going Back (Part Two)

"Faith wasn't trendy. It was important-necessary-but certainly not trendy. Faith tied you to something old then, more than to anything new. Sometimes I wonder if we went too far, too fast or let go of too much in the process of reaching out to our culture. As the church today gets increasingly more popular, more and more need oriented...I find myself longing for a historical faith. I find myself not wanting to have everything explained to me in simple terms. I'm not even sure I want the paraphrase anymore, not sure I want the mystery solved"

~ John Fischer, "On A Hill to Far Away"

"Putting the Cross Back in the Center of Our Lives"

The decision to walk through the doors of my old church, after six months in the arms of a younger, flashier worship center, felt very weighty. I knew that the moment the four of us filed in to fill our half of the familiar pew, we were saying "I do" , in a better or worse kind of way.

As I walked down the too-narrow old hall toward the sanctuary doors, I gave myself one more chance to turn back. Should I really do this? After all, I had exhausted myself here, trying to change this solidly old fashioned church into a more modern , relevant place and had ended up depleted and resentful. The fact that I had chosen to shoulder the work of the Holy Spirit during my time there was abundantly clear, yet I had to be certain that I had indeed resigned the job! I needed to be able to commit without precondition. No respectable bride inserts an escape clause into her wedding day vows.

The service had just begun and all eyes were on the small choir at the front as they sang their way through a familiar old hymn. I was grateful, as that meant we could slip quietly into a pew toward the back. The only stir we caused was among the ushers who welcomed us with genuine warmth. Then, in a quiet whispered sort of way, the peace that accompanies obedience to God and the tranquility that comes from doing right, descended.

Like a prodigal child I drank in with fresh eyes what I once viewed as outdated. The candles that glowed on the altar beside the silver communion set, always central to the platform. The silk cloth, draped over the table and changed weekly to reflect the spiritual focus of the season. The stained glass windows that kept my focus on Christ by keeping my vision enclosed. Even the choir, singing an ancient song with ancient words to an ancient God. I began to see this tightly knit fabric of tradition and truth as another kind of precious worship. It is not the only kind, and it is only a part of the types of expression that I desire, but there are some places in which, when time stands still, it is not a stagnant, dead thing but an honoring of the solid, unmovable parts of faith. I realized that this was the way these people, in this place, expressed their honor for God and that it was just as valid as the newer ways of reaching up and reaching out.

When the service was over, we snaked our way along the line to stop and greet the pastor at the door. I stood next to those I had walked away from a few months ago, not knowing what to expect. But their hands reached out to touch me, their words were loving and warm and most wanted to know if this meant we were coming back. As I struggled for words to explain myself, one older gentleman put his arm around my shoulder and said "Sometimes you have to go away so you can come back, don't you kid?"

He was more right than he knew.

Going Forward by Going Back (Part One)

"I grew up in a church that smelled old. The floors creaked when you walked on them. It seemed as if God had been living there for a long time. And when they played music in that church, it creaked, too. It was music you wouldn't hear anywhere else but in church. It wasn't popular music: it was church music. It wasn't supposed to be popular--it didn't have to be. No one was pretending to be trendy about faith then"

John Fischer, "On A Hill Too Far Away"

"Putting the Cross Back in the Center of Our Lives"

Yesterday I bucked a trend. While many believers are leaping from the wooden pews of their traditional churches into the folding chairs of informal Christian gatherings, I walked back through the doors of a church I had left six months before because I had considered it to be staid and irrelevant.

The reason I returned was not because the church had changed. It was rather the result of a barrage of God ordained events that began with the discovery of the book "On A Hill Too Far Away" by John Fischer.

Let me tell you first first about the church I decided to leave last January. Half of the congregation is over seventy years of age and have been attending together for forty or fifty years. There are no power point capabilities or the technology to show DVD clips ,not even an overhead projector or pull down screen to introduce a new song or two. They own a few uni-directional microphones that sit on stiff stands and sing old hymns accompanied by a small pipe organ. There is no air conditioning.

Let me now tell you about the church I decided to attend instead. It stood on a beautifully landscaped lot and had a full time pastors for the main congregation, the youth , the children, the worship and a church ministries manager. Saturday night they had a coffee house meeting and Sunday mornings they had two regular services. The music team sounded like they could cut a Cd. The meetings ran flawlessly. The pastor preached relevant sermons and interspersed them with youtube clips to illustrate his points. The ministry teams were genuine and loving. If ever a church was relevant in reaching out, this one was.So why did I go back to the staid and predictable?

It's simple. There was something profound missing from the beautiful modern contemporary church. I think it was a sense of reverence. Awe. Mystery. Tradition. As I stood listening to the worship team trying to get us to sing along to a repetitive chorus all about how majestic God is, people around me were checking their text messages. Not a single Sunday went by without several cell phones punctuating the worship time. People in flip flops sipped coffee from Starbucks mugs while singing the words from Revelations "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come"." I understood suddenly why John Fischer wrote this:

"Why do I find myself wanting to go back to hearing an organ again? No, not a glorious pipe organ in a four thousand seat auditorium, but one of those ugly-sounding electric ones with someones grandmother struggling through all four verses of a two hundred-year-old hymn as we try to sing our way through ancient words that somehow capture, if only for a moment, the mystery of the knowledge of God?"

So I found myself longing for a historical faith, for tradition and for roots. And , yes, for some mystery and awe. Because I had stated my reasons for leaving my old church quite clearly, it took a great deal of conviction on the part of God to humble me enough to make the decision to return. But this past Sunday my family walked through the doors, not certain of how we would be received, but very certain that in order to go forward , we were going to have to go back.

(to be continued)