Jun 07

The School of Jesus

Bible, Christian Life, Spiritual Disciplines, Theological Musings 2 Comments »

Yesterday on my monthly day of prayer and solitude, I spent time reading and meditating upon Ephesians 1:3-23. Take a moment and read it. It’s well worth your time.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

15 For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, 16 do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might 20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

As followers of Jesus, those who have enrolled in The School of Jesus, we see the “cosmic” view of what God is up to through the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is so powerful yet so personal. Jesus’ work is out-of-this-world yet for this world. Here are some lessons I learned yesterday in the school of Jesus.

  • Redemption (v. 7) means that I am forgiven. I no longer have to struggle with guilt and shame. The old has passed away, and the new has come.
  • Adoption (v. 5) means that I am loved. I am a son of God. And sons and daughters are loved extravagantly so.
  • Sanctification(v. 14) means that I am growing. Jesus is changing me. He is healing me. He is fixing the broken places in my life through the grace of His Holy Spirit.
  • Resurrection (vv. 20-23) means that I am empowered. There is a power that is outside of me that works inside of me. This fills me with hope because many a day, I feel so powerless

What is Jesus teaching you as a student in His school?

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Apr 21

THURSDAY: Passion Week Devotional Guide

Passion Week & Good Friday, Passion Week 2011 No Comments »

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” ~ Ephesians 2:4-5

It’s so easy to remove ourselves from the scandalous nature of the crucifixion. It’s so easy to hide behind two thousand years of history between the cross and today. But the Bible doesn’t let us off so easy. We were there on that dark night. We were there in the betrayal, in the rejection, and in the denial.

As U2’s Bono wrote in “When Love Comes to Town” – I was there when they crucified my Lord / I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword / I threw the dice when they pierced his side / But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide.

The great divide was conquered by the love of God, even as we held the scabbard and threw the dice at the feet of the crucified Lord. The rich mercy and great love of God has forgiven our sin and “made us alive with Christ”… the Christ we crucified. What grace! What mercy! What love!

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Feb 07

The Servant Prayer

Bible, Gospel of Mark, Spiritual Disciplines 2 Comments »

In Mark’s Gospel, the first ten chapters cover the three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry. And the final six chapters cover one week, the Passion Week. Up to this point, Jesus has been training the twelve disciples, teaching them His heart and His kingdom values, and showing them what happens when the rule and reign of God shows up in the lives of people. Before we enter into the final week of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has one more lesson for the disciples and for us… a lesson that’s the culmination of His heart and His mission for this world. The heart of Mark 10:32-52 calls us to pray and live out the Servant Prayer:

#1 To know what You have done for me

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus doesn’t give His life simply as the supreme example of servanthood. Something much larger is happening… something much more significant. When Jesus dies on the cross and gives His life for us, He pays a ransom. He’s paying the price to free us from the penalty of our sin and rebellion against God. Jesus giving “His life a ransom for many” is the clearest statement in Mark’s Gospel about the redemptive purpose of God in Jesus’ death.

On the cross, Jesus dies in our place as a substitute. We deserved death because of our sin and treason against God, but Jesus takes it in our stead. We are freed from and forgiven the penalty of our sin. Understanding this is crucial as we press into the remainder of this Servant Prayer. It is the heart change that Jesus accomplishes as He pays the penalty for our sin that enables us to then live out Jesus’ heart of servanthood.

Pastor Tullian Tchividjian wrote in his book Surprised by Grace:

It’s the gospel (what Jesus has done) that alone can give God-honoring animation to our obedience. The power to obey comes from being moved and motivated by the completed work of Jesus for us. The fuel to do good flows from what’s already been done. So, while the law directs us, only the gospel can drive us.

It is only as we grow in our understanding and application of what Jesus has done for us that we begin to grow in our understanding and application of serving the people and world around us.

#2 To seek greatness in serving

Each year USA Today honors overlooked and often unappreciated football players by naming them to what the newspaper calls its All-Joes Team. Now in its 19th year, the All-Joes award celebrates men who sacrifice their egos for the good of their team. USA Today writes:

Our Joes are not average or even sloppy, but rather unheralded, unloved and, sometimes, underpaid since the one prerequisite for being an All-Joe is that you cannot have a Pro Bowl on your résumé. The NFL’s stars wouldn’t succeed without the adjacent All-Joes. They would never make the Pro Bowl minus those who perform the grittier tasks. That’s one reason the All-Joe team doesn’t allow Pro Bowl picks on its roster and it lends bitter truth to its motto: If you work hard, good things will happen — to someone else.

The motto of the All Joes team really is applicable to those who are servant-hearted: “If you work hard, good things will happen… to someone else.” I’d tweak it… if you live in the grace of Jesus Christ, good things will happen… in and through you… to the people in your world as you serve them in the name of Jesus. We serve others because Jesus first served us. And the Servant Prayer calls us to seek greatness in serving others. While the world entices us with the idols of power, position, and prestige, Jesus invites us to pick up the towel and basin and wash feet. D.L. Moody once said, “The measure of a man is not how many servants he has, but how many men he serves.” Seek greatness in Jesus’ His kingdom by serving.

#3 To follow You with spiritual eyes

The Servant Prayer ends by asking Jesus for the spiritual eyes to follow Him… asking Jesus for the gift of seeing people and the world around us the way He sees people and the world around us. It is asking Jesus to give us the spiritual eyes to be people who are servant-hearted and kingdom-minded. It is asking Jesus to give us the spiritual eyes to see through the deception of the world’s values and to give us the spiritual eyes to live with kingdom values. Jesus, please grant me the faith to follow You with spiritual eyes… with eyes that know what You have fully done for me… with eyes and a heart that seek greatness in serving others.  Jesus, please grant me the faith to follow You with spiritual eyes as I deny and surrender myself and daily pick up my servant’s cross and servant’s towel and follow after You.

When we pray the Servant Prayer, we’re transformed by Jesus’ great grace to be people that follow Him and serve the world around us with His eyes. We become people who are servant-hearted and kingdom-minded.

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Sep 01

The Life I Planned vs. The Life I Needed

Book Reviews, Literature, Theological Musings 1 Comment »

One of my favorite summer reads was Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited.  It captures the conversation of two characters: Black and White. Black is a recovered addict and former inmate who found Jesus, and White is an atheist professor who tries to kill himself. The whole book is a conversation in Black’s kitchen after he’s rescued White from a failed suicide attempt. The conversation ultimately is a theological one that centers on the hope or hopelessness with or without God in the equation of life. And it’s written in McCarthy’s terse, sparse language that gets straight to the heart.

Here’s one of my favorite points of dialogue:

Black: If this ain’t the life you had in mind, what was?

White: I don’t know. Not this. Is your life the one you’d planned?

Black: No, it ain’t. I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that’s just about the best kind of luck you can have.

So often we try to define and control what we want life to look like… the life we’d plan for ourselves. But for some reason, it doesn’t turn out that way. And there’s a tension in perspective here. In McCarthy’s story, White didn’t get the life he’d planned so he gave up. Yet Black, shaped by a far different perspective, sees the grace of God in giving him the life he needed. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). And in the abundance of life that Jesus gives, it’s always the life we truly need but not always the life we’d plan for ourselves. Such a marvelous mystery in the adventure of faith.

(P.S. Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones will star in the HBO debut of The Sunset Limited in February 2011)

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Mar 14

The Legalist & The Loser

Hebrews: Supremacy of Christ, Sermons, Theological Musings 1 Comment »

Today’s message from Hebrews 1:4-14 resonated especially with our “religious tendencies” to gravitate and vacillate between The Legalist and The Loser.  Here’s what the Legalist believes: “Because I’ve got my stuff together, I can come to God.”  And here’s what the Loser believes: “I’ve got to get my stuff together before I can come to God.” Both don’t understand the gospel or fully grasp the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Both religious extremes tend to make much of ourselves and little of Christ.  Both the Legalist and the Loser are living in a works-based salvation that doesn’t comprehend the depth of our depravity or the extent of God’s great grace through Jesus Christ.  So the gospel confronts both.

The antidote to gravitating to and vacillating between these two religious extremes is listening to the gospel daily.  Great gospel passages like 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 3:23-26, and Romans 8:31-34 confront our religion and call us back to the cross.  So this week, take one of these great gospel passages, memorize it, meditate upon it, pray through it, listen to it, and rehearse God’s great grace for you.

Finally, here’s a humorous yet sobering picture of our “goodness” apart from Christ:

If you can start the day without caffeine,
If you can get going without pep pills,
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you, when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can say honestly that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color or politics,
Then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog.

Thank goodness that our goodness is found in the great grace of Jesus Christ.

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