Mountain Moving Faith

A faith that moves mountains is simpler than you think. Jesus said it best, when He said, "...if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'be removed and cast into the sea'..."

A mountain represents a Present Problem. A mountain is a problem so looming, it chills you with its consuming shadow. A mountain is a problem that fills your field of vision, blocking out everything else. A mountain feels too big, and seems too urgent. It is an obstacle to living a peaceful and ordinary life.

But in Christ, you have been given a measure of mountain moving faith. The mysterious paradox of mountain moving faith is this: you aren't supposed to work it up.

You are supposed to speak to the mountain. In the case of mountain moving faith, actions speak louder than words. Your actions do all the talking, in fact.

First, you acknowledge your mountain. You let it be there - tall and daunting. Let it be every bit as unvanquishable as it is. This isn't mountain climbing faith you have, it is a faith that moves the mountain...it is a faith that allows you to live with the same joy you had before your mountain existed; the same joy as if your mountain did not exist. For all purposes in your life, this mountain is no longer in the way of anything God is able to accomplish.

Secondly, you do the next thing, without regard to the mountain. Let your actions do the talking - and your actions are declaring, "What mountain? Before my God you shall become a plain!"

Plan your weekly meals. Shop for the best ingredients. Kiss your spouse. Redecorate. Wash the car. Take a vacation. Do your job, every day. Obey God in the very next thing He says.

This is the critical thing - live! Keep calm, carry on. Really live, and do it smack-dab in full view of your mountain. The very act of living, of doing the next thing, is the faith-speak it takes to move the mountain!

And if simply living and doing the next thing seems too easy - you have never encountered a real mountain. When facing a real mountain, ordinary days seem impossible.

With God, all things are possible. Let your actions shout "Grace, grace!" to your mountain!

The Lord sent you here today so that I can tell you, when you "speak" to your mountain, there will come a day, not too far away, when suddenly you will feel the warmth of the sun. The chilling shadow will be gone. You will look up, and behold: the mountain is brought so low, it is at sea level! Gone!

And in its place will be a road. Proceed with great joy.


Every valley shall be exalted And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough places smooth...(Is. 40)

The Liberty of Grace!

We've celebrated the 4th in fine style here...the family gathered 'round hamburgers and hotdogs, puppies barking, pocket parrots screeching, family laughing, and fireworks all over the entire neighborhood...

...and my thoughts are on two law-busting, liberty-loving Biblical passages. I refer to "law-busting" in the sense of the uneducated modern day Pharisee-ism we've all seen from time to time...possibly even seen in ourselves.

I call it "uneducated", because the apostle Peter did so, when he said, "our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures."


I want to examine just two passages, two law-busting points. Just two. The first one being this passage in John 15 (and many thanks to Oscar Frias for preaching this at Harvest last week!):

"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned."
The untaught (and the unstable, one lends itself to the other and back again) - the uneducated read that passage as proof text of their "Christian Perfection" doctrines. "There, see? If anyone doesn't abide in Christ, they are cast out, thrown into the fire and burned."


And so, these are perennially grumpy about someone else's salvation - not their own, since they themselves are fruit-bearing, virtue laden believers.


Stop.


Context, context, context. So many misunderstandings of Scripture and of the doctrines of grace can be fixed if you simply read everything before, and after, and put what you read in proper context.

Keep reading.


Just...keep...reading.


"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. "


End of story. Jesus said it, that settles it for me. I am in no danger of being hacked off and cast into the fire, not even on my worst day or worst year. No person who is in Christ Jesus is in that sort of danger.


And funny thing...loving others is fruit bearing. Loving. Not leaving.
(::cough:: I just wanted to make sure we all get the vowel straight...L-OH-V-E. Not L-E-A-V-E. Truly, love is not a place to come and go as we please.)


Next law-busting passage is found in Exodus 18, when Jethro advised Moses as to the quality of man to help him lead the people. These men should be:


~Strong men, of personal assets, and bravery


~God fearing


~Truthful


~men who hated covetousness


Wow. The perfect elders, huh? Wait. Keep reading.

Just...keep...reading. Moses found a few good men of sterling character to help him, and praise God for them!


But I ask you - how many of those men chose to meet personally with God, in the very next two chapters? How many of them inherited the promise?


Not. One.


Hear me: not one of them. Your disciplined character, important as it is, is no guarantee of the presence of God in your life. Your disciplined character is not The Blessing. Your inheritance is found in Christ Alone.


Now, lets put these two law-busting passages together in our theology, and make our theology affect our biography:


Any emphasis on character or self discipline that does not put relationships of a primary importance is not the full gospel, and could in fact possibly be legalism.

(note: thanks to Dr. Stephen Crosby for this truth from Exodus 18-20!)
Go. Mend your fences. Love people. Bear the sort of fruit God is actually looking for. Then show God your wonderful self disciplines.


And always...


...keep reading. Just...keep...reading.

The Day In Pictures

Considering the consequences of their home made Slip N' Slide...



Amber looks on, with great concern...

Sarah...

the sons-in-law

A good rinsing...

Trying to walk back up...

Ending the day with a rousing game of Settlers of Caton, and this...

Happy Independence Day Eve!

The Gospel As A Process

I am in awe of the processes of God. The depth of detail to which He involves Himself in a human life is beyond profound. He is perfectly patient, and even delights in the process, because it all is His artwork anyway. He began the masterpiece, He sustains it, He works on it throughout the course of our collective lifetimes, and He completes it. He knows exactly what He is doing, and where He is going with it.



I, too, am in the school of Christ - learning to become as passionate about the process as Jesus is. Therefore, I can no longer put God in neat theological boxes labeled "judgement" and "mercy". They've kissed each other, you see, they have become intimate together, and now each one defers to the other.



To say that a consequence in a person's life is "too harsh", or "too lenient", proves I am missing the point to begin with. God's discipline is very, very difficult. His grace is very, very, very longsuffering.



First sign of a legalist: most of the actions of others are piously labeled and categorized as "too hard and harsh", or "too soft on sin". All they know are the categories...the letters, words, and phrases of a written code. They are not intimately familiar with the One who nailed those ordinances to His cross, getting rid of them, so that He could begin the process of our being conformed to His image, glory by glory.



Legalists aren't passionate about the process, see. They are passionate about their ordinance-driven perspective.



Well, in the process of dealing with the real souls of real people, not only "can" you have it both ways, you absolutely must have it both ways to be Biblical. You must hold to two seemingly opposite perspectives. When it comes to issues of sin and grace (not law and grace - the Scriptures are very clear that the law was created to make sin exceedingly sinful, and then the law has now become a non issue in the life of the disciple of Christ.)



...a courageous, outspoken hatred of the disfiguring, destroying power of sin and a bold preaching of amazing grace, a righteousness outside ourselves, a gift, not earned by any thing we do. Both fully preached, not as opposite perspectives. But the grace foundation, the Christ-gift is preached first, last, and in between. Then, the cost of discipleship suddenly seems reasonable, and sin is seen as the hideous, relationship destroying thing that it is. No apostle treated one to the exclusion of the other. They dealt with the churches individually, and differently, each one according to its unique season.

These matters of loathing sin and rejoicing in unmerited righteousness were inseparable in the minds of the Church Fathers, and so should hating sin and magnifying grace be inseparable in our mind. Sin is a tragedy. No mere mortal hates sin more than a true pastor and his wife. Thus, no one should preach and teach the reality of the Atoning grace harder than a pastor (and his wife).

The greater the revelation a pastor has into the deceiving power of sin, and the damning power of self righteousness, the harder he will preach the gospel of grace that fully addresses the whole scope of human experience.

For reasons I won't go into in one blog post, mid-life seems to be the time when a person wants to think they have it all figured out, finally, and they set up camp on one side or the other of a seeming contradiction. Then, I guess to finally feel vibrant and obedient, they defend their perspective to the point of absurdity.



As I sit here, facing mid-life myself, bearing many scars from those who have God all figured out, I have refused to fall to either side of the apparent contradiction. I am requiring myself to experience - and teach - the trembling fear of a God who paid a terrible price for sin, who became sin for me, and so God forbid that I should climb in bed with the wretched thing. I am requiring myself to fully bask in the hilarious celebration of the fact that all my sin, and yours, past, present, and future, was paid for, in full, on that cross.

Ah, if only the truth of that could grip more hearts!


As a leader, if I default to evaluating every situation in the light of "too harsh" or "too lenient" that means there is something wrong with my own spiritual foundation, pure and simple.



God's chastening can feel relentlessly harsh. His mercy is ridiculously patient to the point of unfailing. The question, therefore, is not "is this too harsh" or "is this too easy"...that is a false choice. That false dilemma makes it all about sin, and nothing about the grace that much more abounds. The real question is, "What is the heart of God for this person's life? What season are they in, spiritually speaking? Are we in a process of hard discipline, or are we in a process of longsuffering patience? And how, if necessary, can we proceed with patient discipline, encouraging the obedience of faith in the life of this person who, as a brother or sister in Christ, has already been made righteous?"

You ask the relational sorts of questions. You get to the spirit of God's law, utterly disregarding the letter of it, since you don't want to kill the relationship.



And then, you engage the process. Process is all we get to engage in anyhow - increase and salvation and repentance is entirely the Lord's doing.

If you have found church leaders who are passionate about process, and not just pushing for results, you have found a rare treasure. Stick and stay...I promise, that is part of YOUR God-ordained process.

Ordinary Evening At The End of June

Our daughter Hannah, dressed up after going out on a date with her hubby - beads, baby bump and all, mowing her daddy's yard - just cuz she wanted to.


Fresh from our garden, these will become...

This.

And this will become...

That.

Shhhhh...listen. Through the open window, you can hear the cicadas and crickets, singing softly and rhythmically, singing you into deep, meditative relaxation.

Were you a guest in my home, I'd make sure you had an extra blanket, a pitcher of water and a glass in your room, and after we had pie and (decaf) coffee together, Tim, Justin, Hannah and I would bid you a goodnight.

Be sure to crack your window, so you can hear the pond waterfall.

"Goodnight..."

Full Heart, Full House

This is a time in my life when my nest is supposed to be empty - for reasons good and reasons bad. No family is immune to enemy encroachment. No, not one. But here in my home, God prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemy.

One or two family relationships strained for Christ's sake, but never estranged. Bent, never broken. Grace and truth, working in tandem, both oars in the water, as we navigate. Every day, we talk, text, teach....and pray for the wayward ones. Especially the wayward ones.

We love them enough to live the gospel out - never for a moment quiet about the reality of our magnificent obsession, Christ in us, the hope of glory. Backing down from the reality of Who we know Him to be is not something we've ever done, no not for our closest friends or even our children. This gospel of grace is what makes the cost of discipleship so utterly reasonable.

And so, though the nest is supposed to be empty, the nest stays full. By "full", I don't mean one or two extra. Tonight, there are eight here, gathered round the table, playing board games with loud laughter. We didn't plan it...it just always turns out this way.

You see, in a family or in a church, so-called works of righteousness are a moot point without grace. Love is just a concept in an empty room. There is no love without someone there TO love, to be patient with, to believe the best of. I can indeed give my body to be burned, and be missing the whole point. I can talk about Christian perfection all day long, but if I am talking to an empty room...well, I'm not about the business of loving people, am I? I'm about the business of loving the sound of my own voice.

No one is listening.

Without an understanding of the grace of God, all my disciplines and all my efforts become hackneyed, hatchet-faced hard-ball...and no one builds a relationship on that. No one is listening.

And in families (as well as churches) without at least a relationship, there is nothing to work from. There is no point of contact, no position of strength, no conversation to listen to, no place for tough and tender love to be made manifest.

Life in this cottage is so painful, right about now. Life in this cottage is so good, right about now, and I'm not even kidding. "Good" and "painless" are not synonymous. Sort of like how "perfection" and "beauty" are not the same.

He makes everything beautiful in His time. There aren't enough decades available, not in this life, for everything to be made perfect. But I can look around and find evidence of beauty in my life, at all times in all seasons.

Such fullness. Grace truly accomplishes what the law never could.

Summer Breeze...

Tomato still life



We've all seen cherries, but these are mine.



Great, big, South Carolina peach.

recipes, waiting to be tried - fruit, waiting to be enjoyed

The days are long in summer, yet so short when always "up and doing". I love me a good to-do list, good and full of people, places, and pallucid skies. Perfect summer, when I awaken with the sun, work steadily, and end the day with my books. Perfect summer, when the chores seem God-kissed, always more to be accomplished, yet there is time for a nap.

Have a perfect summer weekend!