When Obeying God Gets Hardest

“… if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.”
Father Maple in Moby Dick

What are You Compromising to Get What You Want?

"Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means."

English Novelist Charles Dickens ( 1812 - 1870 )

Find 100 Ways to Truly Love Your Beloved

"Love does wrong to no one. In truly loving we become everything our Creator intends for us." Could there be 100 ways to truly love the one more beloved to us than anyone other than God?

Education and the Ensuing Information are Overrated

"The craziest notion that has hit this country in a long while … is that shortages of gas and other things are bad for the American people. What America really needs is more shortages. It is not our shortages but our surpluses that are hurting us. Too much gas, too much booze, too much money, talk, noise, and – fire me tomorrow! – too much newsprint are our problems." James Reston, Journalist, 1979

"In 2006, the world produced 161 exabytes (an exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes) of digital data, according to Columbia Journalism Review. Put in perspective, that's 3 million times the information contained in all the books ever written. By next year, the number is expected to reach 988 exabytes." Kathleen Parker, syndicated columnist Washington Post Writers Group.

Are we better for it?
Jim Denison, Personal Trainer for Christ-followers

Power Ridiculed

“As an alternative to the kingdoms of this world He (Jesus) proclaims a kingdom not of this world, where pride gives place to humility, and the quest for power becomes a quest for love --- all this, not just in words, but embodied in the great drama of the Incarnation.

Following this line of thought, the Journalist comes to grasp that the climax of Jesus’s earthly ministry, His Crucifixion, amounted to a reductio ad absurdum of what the Devil has on offer --- which is power. Likewise, Pilate’s ironical billing of Jesus on the Cross as ‘King of the Jews’ misfires in the light of Jesus’s true destiny as ‘God’s Almighty Word leaping down from Heaven out of His royal Throne.’ Again, the mockery of the Roman soldiers misfires when they dress Jesus up in a scarlet robe, put a crown of thorns on His head, give Him a reed to hold in His hand as a scepter, and then kneel down before Him in obeisance, chanting: ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’

The soldiers are not, as they suppose, just ridiculing a poor, distraught and deluded man about to be crucified, but holding up to ridicule all who exercise power, thereby making power itself derisory, so that thenceforth thorns will be woven into every crown, and under every scarlet robe there will be stricken flesh.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, Confessions of a Twentieth Century Pilgrim as quoted by Marva Dawn

in Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God.

You - Christ Follower - Are a Very Important Person

“We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. This means we must have no doubt that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s full world.”

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, Pg. 337

Your Life is a Good Thing

In order for us to “love the Lord … with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength,” we must be confident that our “life is certainly a good thing.” “We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that is good for us to be, and to be who we are … that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s full world. … It is confidence in the invariably overriding intention of God for our good, with respect to all the evil and suffering that may befall us on life’s journey, that secures us in peace and joy. We must be sure of that intention if we are to be free and able … to simply do what we know to be right.” We “must find the goodness of God and the fellowship of Jesus in who (we) are, or (our) love for the Father and His unique Son cannot become the foundation for a life of abundance/obedience.” Our Lord and Father “desire to dwell with (us) in (our) life and make glorious every aspect of it in the light of the whole that God has planned.” Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, Pgs. 337 -341

When a Searching World Meets Jesus

Quite early in Jesus’ public life a Roman military Officer came to Him asking that he would heal a young servant who’d become paralyzed. Jesus offered to go right over to his home and heal the young man. The Officer refused. The reason he gave for refusing to have Jesus in his home was that he wasn’t worthy to have a man of Jesus stature visit his home. “I am,” he said, “under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it. Because of this I know that if you just say the word from where you are, my servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8: 5 – 12 New Living Translation)

Jesus was ecstatic over what this man said. “Nowhere in Israel,” He exclaimed,” have I seen such faith.”

From a career in a world completely preoccupied with command and control and polytheistic in its worldview this Officer had learned something about the true nature of things that enabled Him to recognize Jesus as a superior authority. And he humbled himself in the Lord’s presence. That humble acknowledgement of His authority, Jesus said, was faith; a kind of faith that would insure this Officer’s place in the “Kingdom of Heaven.”

How many people do we Christ-followers run into, in our day-to-days, who, even though they’ve lived in a world very different from ours, have learned something which prepares them to recognize Jesus should they meet Him? In those encounters it is critical that they are meeting the true Jesus in us and not some fabrication we’ve constructed in a self-serving attempt to make Him “our” Christ.