The Heart of the Matter

John 21:15-17—Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Tend My lambs." He said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Shepherd My sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Tend My sheep.”

Do you love Me? That is the question. It is not, “Are you skilled? Are you dynamic, magnetic, energetic, influential, successful?” Praise God the question is not, “Are you sure that you won’t fail Me again?” Hallelujah the question is not: “Do you have any leads on climbing out of recession? Are you quick at making decisions and thinking on your feet? Do others trust you? Are your kids well-behaved? Do you have 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year goals? Can you invent a better mousetrap?”

In a nutshell, qualification for service in the stead of Christ and success in serving in the name of Christ is a matter of love not performance. We seem hardwired to operate out of performance. But love is the litmus paper for Christ. But love is sloppy, vague, elusive and vulnerable. Maybe we are better off if we leave our hearts out of it.

Lord, I will give you my sweat, my tears, my calluses, even my money (or lack thereof)—but don’t ask for my heart. I have no competency in the inner world—my heart is such a mixed bag. After all, love for God doesn’t pay the bills. Love for God doesn’t impress the neighbors. Love for God is often misunderstood, pressed down, despised and in some cases … murdered.

Nevertheless, as You wish, Lord. My heart is Yours—whether or not I linger between mere friendliness for You and genuine love for You. You know my heart entirely already—even when I don’t have a clue. You ask for my love not my results. Though I may be confused, a little scared, or downright terrified, “Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it … seal it for Thy courts above.”

Trust vs. Entrust

A couple of weeks ago … at “the cabin” at oh-dark-hundred hour on Thursday mornings … one of the men in our rotation of leading discussions asked a simple question, “Is there a difference between trusting and entrusting?” It was a great question; one that I thought I could answer right away. However, sixty minutes later, after a vibrant discussion among the men while we sat around the glowing woodstove sipping on hot coffee I was not so sure that I knew the answer anymore. “Is there a difference between trusting and entrusting?” The launching point was John 2:24-25: “But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.”

Here is Jesus—the embodiment of trust/fidelity—in a moment of great popularity mixed with the seeds of great opposition in the religious leaders in Jerusalem making a decision NOT to entrust Himself to “them.” Who comprises the group called, “them”? From the paragraph, “them” is a varied assortment of those who saw Jesus overturn the moneychangers’ tables (vs. 15), those who heard the religious leaders ask for a “sign…as [a token of the] authority for doing these things” (vs. 18), those who heard Jesus reply, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (vs. 19), those who heard the religious leaders balk at the audacity of Jesus to challenge them in public (vs. 20), and those who “believed in His name” (vs. 23). But Jesus decides not to entrust His full identity as the Messiah to “them” at this time. He trusts the Father in all things and in all ways, but He does not “entrust Himself to them” (vs. 24). So the question remains—is there a difference between trusting and entrusting?

I thought that it would be a matter of vocabulary—perhaps Jesus is just using a different word. Nope. Upon further study I noticed that there is nothing unique about the word—pisteuo: “to believe, to trust, to have faith.” If it was a separate word altogether then the difference between trusting and entrusting would have been easier to differentiate, I suppose. Rats! So, I dug a little deeper … but digging took me unavoidably to grammar. Rrrrats!

Deep in the recesses of my [repressed] memories of grammar lessons I remember that there are such things as transitive verbs and intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs convey an action upon someone or something else (a.k.a. direct object … answers “who/what”?). For instance, “He threw the ball,” or “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” (Monty Python). Intransitive verbs convey an action (often, but not always, internal to the subject’s thought or feelings or intentions) but cannot rightly take a direct object. For instance, “The butter melted,” or “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight” (The Tokens ©1952). And, just for the sake of confusion, there are some verbs that can be transitive OR intransitive depending on the way they are used in the sentence. Yes, you guessed it—trust is one of those pesky words that can go either way! For instance, “He trusts” works well alone; but the verb trust also works with a direct object, “He trusts them.”

Need a break? Can you withstand one more grammatical twist? Sometimes there is a second object of the action in the same sentence (a.k.a. the indirect object … answers the question “to whom/to what?”). Consider the verse at hand. “He was not entrusting (transitive verb) Himself (direct object) to them (functioning as indirect object in this sentence … technically it is a prepositional phrase, but let’s not go down another rabbit trail!).”

So, where are we in our “simple” question? Is there a difference between trusting and entrusting? Yes. Internally, Jesus is—and we should be—trusting. It is a characteristic of the Savior. Externally, Jesus is—and we should be—wise. It is a life-skill of the Savior to have a practical wisdom. There are times when He entrusts precious things or ideas to others based on the knowledge He has of His audience … but there are times when He decides not to entrust precious things or ideas because he “knew what was in man” (vs. 25) (compare “do not throw your pearls before swine” (Matthew 7:6). This has led some commentators to speculate that Jesus was unsure about His Messianic identity—but what is really going on is that He is careful in telling His identity to others. He seems to prefer to let them work it out without His direct revelation—“blessed are you Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal [My identity] to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:18). Finally then, can we draw an application from dry grammar? You bet! We trust God and, when wise, we trust others. But there are times to keep precious things away from unsafe recipients. And further still, we “entrust our very souls to our faithful Creator in doing what is right” (1 Peter 4:19). With God we can and should trust and entrust everything.

Our Inescapable Need

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). We have—“delivered to [us] as of first importance”—the gospel. We possess the glorious good news of the one and only Christ who died for our sins…who was buried…who was raised…who appeared to many. We possess this grand treasure—unique to all religions that God assumed the burden of reconciliation Himself at great price yet offers it freely to all who will believe it exclusively—but does it possess us? We share it with those who still need to hear it; those who still need to hear it, yet again. We rally around it, sloganize it, write songs about it, preach sermons about it, protect its orthodoxy in a current of heterodoxy. We march to its cadence, throw money to its furthering, dissect its nuances and debate its veracity. We have the gospel but have we forgotten that we still need the gospel we have?

I am unavoidably aware of the inescapable need I have for the very gospel I teach and preach. I admit that there are pockets when I wrongly think the gospel is more for those who haven’t yet received its healing. But the fact of the matter is that I never stop needing the gospel of grace. And neither do you.

O LORD,

I am a shell full of dust, but animated with an invisible rational soul and made new by an unseen power of grace. Yet I am no rare object of valuable price, but one that has nothing and is nothing, although chosen of thee from eternity, given to Christ, and born again; I am deeply convinced of evil and misery of a sinful state, of vanity of creatures, but also of the sufficiency of Christ.

When thou wouldst guide me I control myself. When thou wouldst be sovereign I rule myself. When thou wouldst take care of me I suffice myself. When I should submit to thy providence I follow my will. When I should study, love, honour, trust thee, I serve myself. I fault and correct thy laws to suit myself. Instead of thee I look to a man’s approbation, and am by nature an idolater.

Lord, it is my chief design to bring my heart back to thee. Convince me that I cannot be my own God, or make myself happy, nor my own Christ to restore my joy, nor my own Spirit to teach, guide, rule me. Help me to see that grace does this by providential affliction, for when my credit it good thou dost cast me lower, when riches are my idol thou dost wing them away, when pleasure is my all thou dost turn it into bitterness.

Take away my roving eye, curious ear, greedy appetite, lustful heart; show me that none of these things can heal a wounded conscience, or support a tottering frame or uphold a departing spirit. Then take me to the cross and leave me there.

“Man A Nothing” pp. 166-67, The Valley of Vision

Twentieth Anniversary

There is an ancient Roman god whose namesake carries the first month of our year. He is called Janus. Perhaps you have seen his depiction before? Janus was the double-faced (sometimes quadruple-faced) “deity” locked in a gaze perpetually and simultaneously looking backward and forward. He was the gatekeeper, the guardian of beginnings and endings, seer of the past and the future. His image was set in doors, portals and archways all over the Roman world, none of which was more prominent than the doors of his temple in the Roman Forum ritually opened in times of war and closed in (rare) times of peace. Janus was thought to govern during times of transition such as at marriage, birth, and death. But there was a nasty side to Janus as well; to be called Janus-faced was to be accused of duplicity and double-dealing as Shakespeare alluded, “Now, by two-headed Janus / Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time” (Merchant of Venice, Act i, Sc.1.)

I always felt “pity” for Janus, in a historical sense—if pity is the right word. He was a slave to his own dominion—locked in a double-existence—unable to relax his stare enough to focus upon or enjoy the present. He was in a prison of discontent looking out though the door’s peep-hole, yet never “being” in the room in which he found himself.

By glorious contrast to the invented deities of man’s religions stands the Lord Jesus Christ—the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is Lord over time, not subject to time, but amazingly He stepped into time in order to make Himself known to us in a way that we could understand. He is sovereign over happenings, not subject to them or merely gazing at them from a marbly, mute and catatonic state. Jesus is not a gatekeeper merely; He is the Gate, the Door. He is not bound merely to the past and future; He brings the past and the future into the knowable present—full of color and sensation and relationship.

The reason this mute demon called Janus comes to mind this January is fully connected to our beginnings and endings as a church family this January 2010 marked by our 20th anniversary as a local church. Unhesitatingly, it is not the “two-headed Janus” who “frames” our space or time governing over our beginnings and endings here in the 2010th year of our Lord or presiding over our 20th anniversary as Fellowship Bible Church of Siloam Springs. Nor is it some cold doctrine of Fate that steers the flow of time or space. Nor it is we ourselves who guard the threshold of this new year or guide our own transitions. It is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who frames, governs, presides, steers, guards, and guides us—not in marble, but in glory—the true and living Head of the church. “Thus far the Lord has helped us” (1 Sam 7:12). Hallelujah!

Christ Before the Manger

The story of Christmas does not begin in Bethlehem. I have seen it even in our recent journey through the key relationships in the book of Genesis. Perhaps retracing our steps through the “Book of Generations” will add a depth to the wonder of the Christmas story this December.

Jesus is the promised deliverer, “the Seed of the woman,” who will crush the head of the tempter (3:15).

Jesus is the descendent of Seth, the Chosen One (5:3).

Jesus is likened to the Ark of salvation into which Noah and his family entered for rescue from judgment (6:18-19).

Jesus is the Blessing of Shem into whose tents we can go (9:26).

Jesus is the Son of Abraham through whom “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (12:3).

Jesus is One to whom Abraham paid homage, named “Melchizedek, the King of Salem, priest of the Most High God” (14:18).

Jesus is the Angel of the LORD who saw, heard and delivered Hagar in the wilderness; twice (16:9; 21:17).

Jesus is the God-Man who rained judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah (18:32).

Jesus is the truly the “Son, the only Son, whom [the Father] loves” actually offered in place of Isaac as the “Sacrifice on Mount Moriah”; the provision that “God Himself will see to” and execute completely (22:2,8).

Jesus is the Blessed-Wrestler who limps Jacob and renames him Israel (32:24-25).

Jesus is the innocent One likened unto Joseph who is betrayed by his brothers, thrown into the pit and into jail and left for dead, falsely accused by strangers, forgotten by friends; who arises to supremacy and forgives his enemies (chs. 37-45). Jesus, like Joseph, is the deliverance of Israel who comes up out of Egypt—“out of Egypt I have called My Son” (cf Matthew 2:15).

Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah; “the scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from beneath his feet until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (49:9-10).

This casts a different light on the Babe, born in a manger—majesty wrapped in fragility. He is great, but only recognized by the margin of society. He is the only Savior of the world, but the world esteemed Him as unworthy. He is in plain sight to all, but hidden from all outside of faith. O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

Thanksgiving Providence

Thanksgiving—eucharisteo: 1. to be grateful, feel thankful 2. to give thanks

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting And His faithfulness to all generations” (Psalm 100:4-5).

On Christmas Day, 1620, the first work party left the Mayflower harbored in Plymouth Bay to begin building houses and laying out their settlement in the “New World.” The winter of 1620-21 was dreadful for Governor William Bradford and Plymouth Colony as they watched half of their family and friends die. All through the winter the pilgrims only saw a few indigenous Americans from a distance. But on March 16, 1621 a solitary native named Samoset walked into Plymouthtown and greeted the half-starved colonists in broken English! (Can you imagine?) Samoset returned the next day with another remarkable native-American named Tisquantum (Squanto) who spoke the king’s English fluently. (Well, blimey!) With the particular help of Squanto, the colonists learned how to grow crops, gather fish, hunt game and prepare for the looming winter months ahead of time—allowing for a tremendously bountiful harvest the next autumn.

But it is the story of Squanto that inspires (and comforts) me this November. You see, Squanto’s story before he greeted the English colonists in fluent English is absolutely remarkable. About ten years before the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Bay young Squanto with others from his Wampanoag tribe went out to greet and trade with other English explorers under the leadership of Captain Hunt, with whom they apparently had friendly dealings. But Captain Hunt double-crossed them and kidnapped them to sell in the slave market of Europe. A well-meaning Spanish monk bought Squanto, treated him well, and taught him the Christian faith, as well as a number of European languages. Squanto eventually arrived in England in the care of one, John Slaney, who sympathized and determined to send Squanto back to America. The chance to return to America in 1619 brought Squanto to the devastating news that his entire tribe was wiped out by an epidemic. He was alone in the world.

About a year later Squanto met the pilgrims who had settled the same land his tribe had previously inhabited. He befriended them—knowing full well the risks involved. And the rest is Thanksgiving history. According to the diary of Pilgrim Governor William Bradford, Squanto “became a special instrument sent of God for [our] good…. He showed [us] how to plant [our] corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities…and was also [our] pilot to bring [us] to unknown places for [our] profit, and never left [us] till he died.”

Have you had a year full of unknowns (like the pilgrims) only to find “God-sent” helpers along the way greeting you in your mother-tongue? Have you had a year full of disappointments and unfairness (like Squanto) when all of a sudden you realize that your hardships actually qualify you to help someone else in need? There is no God-forsaken place!

Fright vs. Fear

How easily distracted we are from engaging the things that scare us. Well, that is, normally. This week, however, we will engage, coax, entice, imitate, and set aside time specifically for “fright.” Halloween is a debate all by itself within the Christian sub-culture, but the very fact that it is firmly embedded inside and oddly endearing to our cultural psyche betrays our love/hate relationship with “fright.”

Lucy, in the Peanuts classic, “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” has this wonderfully wry comment as she dresses in her ghastly witch’s costume that the rationale in selecting a Halloween costume is to pick one that is exactly opposite your normal personality. She, the witchiest of all the Peanuts gang, really thinks she is the saintliest!

But all the same, whether we dress up like witches or denounce participating in the pagan revelries of Halloween at all, we like to dabble in fright. It sends surges of adrenaline (which fuels the flight impulse) or noradrenalin (which fuels the fight impulse) through our moderately passive bloodstream all the other 364 other nights of the year. We like to tease the brain—which God made to expertly respond to potentially harmful stimuli with an amazingly complex cooperation of nervous, circulatory, endocrine, respiratory, and muscular systems of confront a dangerous world—without actually having to be in danger. Why else do we rent the suspense thrillers? Why else do we skydive? Why else do we caffeinate every morning? We like the rush of energy without exactly inviting the danger to come too close. Sometimes, ironically, we have even come to depend on the chemicals associated with fighting or fleeing fright in order to feel “alive.”

But fear, on the other hand, exists outside the material world; beneath the layer of "fright." What Lucy does not touch on and what Halloween cannot unfold is that we have deep fear even without the physical stimulus of fright. We automate fear in our minds and souls, quite separately from our brains and hearts. What do we do with this kind of fear—the fear of a spiritual kind? These are the fears that send us into panic, that cause us to lose sleep (or lose the desire to stop sleeping). These are the fears that color our perception of reality, feeding themselves and providing false validation that danger really exists, even when it does not—a filter through which we interpret all our experience. This kind of fear is debilitating; and it is inseparable from the human condition on this, the “dark side” of Eden.

A blog’s thimbleful of discussion on this ocean of fear is hardly worthy of the time to write or read. But may it be at least a post-sign hammered into the earth next to our journey’s pathway. We live in, with, beside fear—what will we do with it?

Gary Smalley in his book, The DNA of Relationships, provides a great starting point for this entire subject—especially when two fearful people interact with their fears and with each other in close and prolonged proximity. Fear is where we live, but will we obey it as our master? We can react to fear, which almost always takes the shape of self-protection or self-exaltation, which leads to lashing out against or withdrawing from those people who have wittingly or unwittingly triggered our hurts, which uncovers a unmet want/need, which aggravates more fear, which triggers the other person’s hurts, unmet wants/needs, fears, etc. It is a “dance”; it is a vicious cycle, and it is a graceless relationship. Sometimes, it seems like we react to our fear in precisely the way that causes the greatest fear in our “dance partner” to shout out.

But there is another way; the vicious cycle of reacting to fear can be broken. We can in faith respond to fear (with God’s power!), taking personal responsibility for our “pieces” of the situation, giving God our wants/needs, choosing to forgive and ask for forgiveness quickly and frequently, redefining what it means to “win” so that both parties can feel honored and cared for, and keep our own “batteries charged” so that fear (which never really goes away) can trigger us to greater faith (instead of flesh) during the next cycle around this "dance floor."

So, take your frights out this Saturday night, but leave your fears at the foot of the cross. “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear” (Psalm 46:1-2).

October 25, 2009 -- A Mighty Fortress (Psalm 46)

October 18, 2009 -- Abraham & Isaac (Genesis 22)