More of Jesus

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. ~James 4:8a NASB

When the disciples were meeting together, it was already the feast of Pentecost, though the word, as Wikipedia reminds us, did not have its Christian meaning:

Shavuot commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai, although the association between the giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) and Shavuot is not explicit in the Biblical text.

Rather, Pentecost in a New Testament sense commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit. I don’t want to rush through this too quickly, so take a minute to pause and think about it:

• the giving of the Word
• the giving of the Spirit

Do you see the beauty of this? The parallels and the balance in the Christian life between Word and Spirit are not the purpose of today’s thoughts, but the Christ-follower needs both.

In the 21st Century Christian milieu, certain notions about the work of the Holy Spirit in general, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit in particular, are often thought to be more the province of Charismatic and Pentecostal churches. I am sure that today, the expression of Pentecost Sunday was quite different in Episcopalian churches than it was in Assemblies of God churches.

Regardless of the particular emphasis, we would all have to agree that on this day, the disciples received something more. And that’s the launching point for our thoughts. Perhaps you would resonate with someone who says,

• “There must be more to Christianity.”
• “I feel like I’m not all in.”
• “I’m not sensing the Holy Spirit’s presence.”
• “I think there’s things in the Christian life that I’m missing out on.”
• “I want more of God in my life.”

In some ways, I think this gets even more complex than salvation when it comes to discerning next steps.

Some churches teach that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a second work of grace; a particular post-conversion experience that takes place after salvation. Others believe that we receive all of the Holy Spirit at salvation, and that there is no subsequent experience, and yet these also admit there are times they sense that God has something new for them, and wants to lead them into greater a greater experience, what others might call the deeper Christian life.

Either way, we all could agree with the 5th quote above, that we want need more of God in our lives, and some of you, like the 4th quote, feel this more acutely; you’re heart is really crying out to God, not for something you might receive (healing, etc.) but for more of God Himself.

I believe you just need to ask God for this. I base that on today’s verse at the top of the page. As one of my former pastors, Dr. Paul B. Smith would say, “If you take one step toward God, God will take ten steps toward you.”

Take the time as you listen to the song below to ask God to give you more of Himself. Ask for a greater awareness of the Holy Spirit in your life. Ask for the filling; a saturation of the Holy Spirit.

Break my heart and change my mind
Cut me loose from ties that bind
Lead me as I follow you
Give me strength to follow through

More, more, I want to be more like Jesus

More of Jesus less of me
By his power I will be
Like a flower in the spring
Brand new life in everything

Holy spirit fill me up
Gently overflow my cup
Touch my eyes and let me see
Me in you and you in me

More, more, I want to be more like Jesus

More of Jesus less of me
By his power I will be
Like a flower in the spring
Brand new life in everything

More, more, I want to be more, I need to be more like Jesus

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Go Deeper:
Take a close look at the lyrics of A.B. Simpson’s best known poem/hymn, Himself.

Making Righteousness Our Desire

Last night I discovered a listing of what is purported to be the top 100 Christian blogs that people link to on their Facebook pages. One of the titles caught my eyes, The King’s English. The author is Glen Scrivener who describes himself: “I’m not a linguist or historian.  I’m a minister in the Church of England and an evangelist in Eastbourne, UK.  I write as someone gripped by the Jesus of the Bible, but I don’t presume that you share my beliefs.” This is a website I think many readers here would enjoy. He’s currently in a series on the Sermon on the Mount, which is where we jump in for today’s sample. Click the title below to read at source, and then look around the rest of the blog.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled

Genesis 15:1-6; Matthew 5:6

From the Bible we can think of “righteousness” in these terms:

– the goodness of God.

– the blessed life in action.

– setting the world to rights.

When seen in its true light, righteousness is incredibly attractive.  And incredibly elusive.

From its first mention in the Bible, “righteousness” is a consuming passion.  In Genesis 15, Abraham is taken outside for some star-gazing by the Word of the LORD.  Abraham is reassured of the promise of seed and he trusts this appearing LORD:

“he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”  (Genesis 15:6)

Abraham is declared righteous for trusting in the LORD Christ.  This is the foundation of everything the Bible teaches on “righteousness.”  It’s what makes Abraham our father in the faith (Galatians 3:6ff).

And in Matthew 5 Jesus reiterates the teaching using an analogy drawn from eating:  those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” will be “filled.”

It does not speak of “Those who have righteousness…” or “Those who act righteously…”  Christ’s illustration speaks of a lack of righteousness – a lack that’s felt very keenly.  The person poor in spirit, who mourns over their sin, who understands that they are not strong but meek – such a person knows their need for righteousness.  And precisely because of their hunger and thirst, they are filled.

This filling is not an earning, not a payment, not a reward.  The blessed person is a beggar through and through.  This filling does not come because we have something to offer.  It comes because we have nothing.

When does the filling happen?  Well there is a present and a future dimension.  We must take this beatitude in parallel with the others.  For all the beatitudes the blessing is present, but only because of a future state of affairs – a time when we “inherit the earth”, when we “see God”, etc, etc.  And so the “filling” most properly happens when Christ returns.  On that day we will no longer simply hunger and thirst for righteousness.  At that time Christ will establish His righteous reign on the earth and raise us to righteous, resurrection living.  But in the meantime we live with the certain promise of that future.  And we know the present blessing of our Father, brought as we are into Christ’s Kingdom.

Notice how this righteousness comes to us from outside ourselves.  Jesus does not speak of a “seed of righteousness” growing from within us or a “spark of righteousness” that needs fanning into flame.  When it comes to “our righteousness”, the only appropriate analogies are ones of desperate need.  But the famished are filled by Christ.

It’s a wonderful truth.  But all this teaching about righteousness “imputed/filled/credited/counted” to the believer has recently fallen on hard times.  It seems so impersonal.  Is righteousness really like internet banking?  Can it really be “credited” into my spiritual account?  Is it really like food and drink?  Can I just “fill up” on a meal of righteousness?  What sense does that make?

Well Jesus is not teaching us about some spiritual stuff called righteousness here.  He’s speaking about a reality that is incredibly personal. How personal?  Just read on a few verses to the last two beatitudes and notice the reasons why Christ’s people might be persecuted:

“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you… for my sake.”  (Matthew 5:10-11)

Do you see the parallel?  Righteousness is equivalent to Jesus Himself.  Jesus is Righteousness.

“Righteousness” might be likened to a money transfer or to food and drink.  But that’s only because, in those illustrations, our own spiritual bankruptcy or hunger is being highlighted.  Most fundamentally, righteousness is Jesus.  He is the Goodness of God.  He is the Blessed Life in Action.  He is the Setting to Rights of the Whole World.  Righteousness is not fundamentally a state of affairs, He’s a Person.  To enter into righteousness (and for righteousness to enter into us) is not about possessing a moral quality but about possessing (and being possessed by) the LORD our Righteousness.

The Christian is simply the person who comes to the end of themselves.  They say “There is no goodness, blessedness or justice in me.”  Instead we crave Christ.  And we are filled.

When we See the Hand of God at Work

The text for today is I John chapter 4.  Click this link to read the entire chapter.

^{I John 4:13} This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

Our direction to this passage came form Ray Ortlund’s blog where this appeared as How can we tell when God is really at work? (highlights added)

In The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Jonathan Edwards pulled out of 1 John 4 the biblical indicators that God is at work, even if the people involved are complicating it with their own sins and eccentricities.  And we do complicate it.  In this life, the work of the gospel is never pure, always mixed.  But we do not need to be neutralized by analysis-paralysis.  The true gold of grace is discernible, within all the mess, in four ways:

One, when our esteem of Jesus is being raised, so that we prize him more highly than all this world, God is at work.

Two, when we are moving away from Satan’s interests, away from sin and worldly desires, God is at work.

Three, when we are believing, revering and devouring the Bible more and more, God is at work.

Four, and most importantly, when we love Jesus and one another more, delighting in him and in one another, God is at work.

Satan not only wouldn’t produce such things, he couldn’t produce them, so opposite are these from his nature and purposes.  These simple and obvious evidences of grace are sure signs that God is at work, even with the imperfections we inevitably introduce.

If we wait for perfection, we will wait until we are with the Lord.  True discernment keeps our eyes peeled for fraudulence but also unleashes us, and even requires us, to rejoice wherever we see the Lord at work right now.

Don’t turn away because of the non-gold; prize the gold.  Defend it.  Rejoice over it.  God is giving it.

Christianity 201 serves as a type of index to some of the best scripture-focused devotional and Bible study writing online. You are encouraged to not only click the links to read articles at source, but also to browse these other blogs to locate additional resources and/or subscribe to the writers who most resonate with you. C201 contains a wide variety of doctrinal content from the across the spectrum of Evangelical Christianity.

 

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Satisfying The Craving

Today’s item is jointly posted at Thinking Out Loud and Christianity 201

Several years ago, I introduced the modern worship song “Breathe” by the group Passion with something like this:

“Some of you have had to have a medical procedure where you’re told that 24 hours beforehand you’re to stop eating solid food. You may be a light eater generally, but once you’re told that can’t eat something, you find yourself really craving it.

“Then, they might tell you that for the last three hours prior to the procedure, you’re not to drink anything, either. You’ve probably gone longer without quenching your thirst, but once you reach that no drink stage, you suddenly find yourself aching for something in the beverage category.

“But the real kicker is when, five minutes before the procedure, they ask you stop breathing…”

I reminded our church that while the first two situations — being denied food and drink — are achievable in the short term, we all need to breathe. (Actually, Need to Breathe would be a great name for a band.) We simply can’t live without oxygen, and so also we should be hungry and thirsty for God.

This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence
Living in me

This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word
Spoken to me

And I, I’m desperate for You
And I, I’m lost without You

I relate this because this week we were at a Christian camp, and if you’ve ever been on the grounds of a Christian retreat or conference facility, you know there’s an unwritten rule that if you’re a guy, unless you’re swimming, skiing, windsurfing or water skiing, you’re supposed to keep your shirt on.

But Ontario experienced record high temperatures on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, with temperatures hovering close to 30 ° Celsius all three days, which for our metricly challenged American friends is around 78 ° Fahrenheit. Beautiful sunshine. No black flies, mosquitoes or bees. No humidity. Reduced risk of sunburn in October.

I was craving maximum sunlight. So I climbed up a hill to what the kids call “the mountain” and doffed my t-shirt and stretched out on a rock in nothing but shorts and let the sunshine vitamin soak in; in the process becoming a human solar panel, absorbing the rays at just the right angle.

And I started thinking about the warmth of God’s Spirit that we’re supposed to experience as part of what the Bible considers normal Christian living.

the warmth = the comfort of God’s spirit
the sunshine = the spiritual ‘nutritional benefit’ of God’s presence

In a previous century, a songwriter wrote about “Heavenly sunshine, flooding my soul with glory divine.” We express things differently today, but the principle is the same; food, drink, oxygen, the light of the sun; all these analogies in nature exist to remind us of our need for God. A craving that is intended to be natural.

Just like a deer that craves
streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.

^{Common English Bible Psalm 42:1}

But none of this would have struck me, and my Vitamin D fix would not have been fulfilling had I not first climbed the mountain… but we wouldn’t want to add another metaphor, would we?

In our culture, we really don’t know what it is to be physically hungry or thirsty. There’s always a snack bar just around the corner. Do we know what it means to truly be spiritually hungry? Have you ever experienced true spiritual hunger or thirst?

Watch ‘Breathe’ previously posted here with some additional thoughts