Being at camp this past week has reminded me how much joy there is in dwelling on Christ. My job allows me to be in a position where I am learning about what it looks like to actively love God and live out that love by serving others. And it has reminded me that focusing on Christ and not ourselves enables us to live in such a state of indomitable joy. As was said about passionate Christ-follower, politician, and social reformer William Wilberforce: "By the tones of his voice and expression of his countenance he showed that joy was the prevailing feature of his own mind, joy springing from entireness of trust in the Savior’s merits and from love to God and man…His joy was quite penetrating.” (Piper, 57) This is how God desires us to live – He knows looking to Him and not ourselves is what is best for us! This is why, I believe, the psalmist says that the one thing He desires is to gaze upon God in His temple, and to inquire after Him. Notice nothing is said about himself, about figuring out his life or inquiring after his salvation…his one desire is just to see God. I think that’s because God knows that this is what will fill us with the most joy. Every once in a while we as humans get that, as the psalmist did, and do what God desires us to do most, that which He knows will make us most joyful: we seek Him. We inquire after Him and not ourselves. As Piper quoted Wilberforce, self-denial is “…a means to the highest pleasures…” but “Pleasure and religion are contradictory terms with the bulk of nominal Christians.” (Wilberforce)
Unfortunately, as Wilberforce noted in the previous quote, our culture – and our human nature – are not very good at equating focus on God with joy. Denying ourselves and looking to Christ are not always seen as bringing us joy – often, they are seen as things we have to do to obtain eternal salvation, but not as things that bring us joy here and now. But as we’ve seen from Wilberforce and as many of us, like the psalmist, have experienced at moments in our own lives, true joy is known the more we look to God and to His glory rather than focusing on ourselves. We were created to love and worship our holy God, and the more we do that and deny our selfish nature, the more joyful we will truly be. Focusing on God and not ourselves enables us to “…see all the good in the world instead of being consumed by one’s own problems…” (Piper 60)
When we make it about ourselves, we tend to make Christianity “…so much a system of prohibitions rather than of privileges and hopes, and thus the injunction to rejoice, so strongly enforced in the New Testament, is practically neglected, and Religion is made to wear a forbidding and gloomy air and not one of peace and hope and joy.” (Wilberforce p.62)
True joy in our salvation comes not when we are absorbed in worrying about ourselves, our future, our salvation, but when we just look to Christ and His beautiful, indescribable glory….and as was noted about Wilberforce, it is this joy that will attract others to Christ – not a gloomy religion, but a joyful peace in constantly looking above this world to our Savior. It is this joy that will also lead us “from love to God and man…” Looking to Christ more and ourselves less will not only bring us true joy, but it will help us better love and serve others as Christ did, and as He desires us to as His people.
Our purpose is not to know Christ simply so that we may gain eternal life – but the more we focus on ourselves, the easier it is for us to think that Christ’s sole purpose and our sole purpose in knowing Him is to figure out what happens after this life. Rather, our purpose is to know Him for His glory, so that He may be known to others through us. He died so that we might become like Him and better love and serve others so that His glory might be seen by them and they might know Him as well. The more we look at Christ and dwell in His throne room, thinking and focusing on Him and not our own will, the more we will grow into Him, into having this mindset. From looking at Him, His glory will begin to reflect off of us to others. The more we look at Him, the more we will become like Him – living like Him and loving like Him.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
It’s days like these I am overwhelmed by how blessed I am. I have the most amazing husband in the world who always takes the time to remind me daily how loved I am by our Creator and by himself, who takes the time to affirm me again that I am so valued and worthwhile. I have a husband who serenades me in our living room, who I can talk with for hours about the Bible and how we’re going to change the world.
We have wonderful jobs and an apartment to come back to and food to eat and the chance to learn and take classes and work and impact the world…..who am I to deserve this? I was reminded again tonight about how it is not me. It is by the grace of God that I am what I am, that I have what I have and that I am able to do what I am doing. What I have is not my own – the blessings I have are not mine to hold to tightly. I have been blessed for the purpose of blessing others, for the purpose of bringing what God has given me to others to spread His love and grace. I fear the moment I ever begin to forget that. Who am I to ever begin to think that what I have, that who I am, is mine by merit? That I deserve it? All I have, all I have been granted, is to give back to God for Him to give to others through me. As William Wilberforce said, riches are “the means of honoring our heavenly Benefactor, and lessening the miseries of mankind.” I pray I never forget this, that my politics, my personal life, every part of who I am, reflects this awareness that I am not my own and what I have is for God to use.
We have wonderful jobs and an apartment to come back to and food to eat and the chance to learn and take classes and work and impact the world…..who am I to deserve this? I was reminded again tonight about how it is not me. It is by the grace of God that I am what I am, that I have what I have and that I am able to do what I am doing. What I have is not my own – the blessings I have are not mine to hold to tightly. I have been blessed for the purpose of blessing others, for the purpose of bringing what God has given me to others to spread His love and grace. I fear the moment I ever begin to forget that. Who am I to ever begin to think that what I have, that who I am, is mine by merit? That I deserve it? All I have, all I have been granted, is to give back to God for Him to give to others through me. As William Wilberforce said, riches are “the means of honoring our heavenly Benefactor, and lessening the miseries of mankind.” I pray I never forget this, that my politics, my personal life, every part of who I am, reflects this awareness that I am not my own and what I have is for God to use.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Living like Christ to reveal His Kingdom
Great reflection by Ravi Zacharias Ministries! Really shows the awesome privelege we have as Christ's followers to reveal more of His Kingdom everyday on this earth as we become more like Christ and live like Him. We can become representations right now of the Kingdom that is to come as we work for what Christ worked for. I pray that "Confessing Christ, we continue to be moved further into this good news even as we become representations of the very kingdom we proclaim."
"Relections of the Kingdom" - by Jill Carattini, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
"You are the light of the world," said Jesus. But what on earth did he mean?
There is a certain quality within the mission of Jesus that he seems to expect his followers to duplicate. In the approach of Christ to the world, the implications of the Trinity are always at play. Where he says of himself, "those who have seen me have seen the Father," he says similarly of his disciples; we are to love one another "so that the world may believe" (John 14:9, 17:21). "As you sent me into the world," Jesus tells the Father, "So I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18). Evidently, conceding to the truth of Christ's identity is never a static decision, a confession that can be made only in private; it is one that immediately moves the conceder into new realms. "Do you love me?" Jesus asked of Peter. "Lord, you know that I love you." "Then feed my lambs" came the reply (cf. John 21:15-18).
Wherever claims are made of Christ, a community inherently follows. For the Christian, we are ushered into a kingdom with a vastly different order, with a vastly new authority. The private confession "Jesus is Lord" is simultaneously made into the communal confession—both in the sense that upon confessing we join in the proclamations of a great cloud of witnesses, but also in the sense that we are ushered into a missional community by design. "When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify" (John 15:26). In other words, the universal invitation to believe the gospel is simultaneously an invitation to enter into the missional community and confession of the Trinity.
In this community, even what Christ calls us to claim about ourselves is far more than most feel comfortable claiming as true or real—or even possible—about themselves: You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. I am the vine and you are the branches. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Yet it is specifically these claims that Christ makes on our very identities which compel us to become these people, to receive his words, and to make real the promises of the God we profess. Confessing Christ, we have entered a kingdom marked by nothing short of the reign of God among us. Confessing Christ, we continue to be moved further into this good news even as we become representations of the very kingdom we proclaim.
This identity, though it is Christ who clothes us, is not always an easy one to wear. As light that shines and branches that extend from the vine of Christ, we are ourselves to be the signs of God's reign on earth, working for peace and justice here and now, showing the world that the God of peace and justice is near and also coming. We are those who confess the reign of God is at hand and then work hands-on as a means of that confession. As one author notes, "By its very existence, then, the church brings what is hidden into view as a sign and into experience as a foretaste."(1) This is how we are able to be the light of the world; we are millions of mirrors reflecting the God of light.
Such reflection means there will be times when we ourselves are the light in the darkness, the hands that must deliver the cup of cold water or invite inside the one who has been deemed an outsider. There will also be times when our reflection of God's reign calls for something more of us: light that refuses to be hidden though it would be easier, hands that work in opposition to injustice, confessions that fall in opposition to the world, lives that challenge the very systems that foster oppression and counter the hope of God. The identity Christ has given us, like the identity of the kingdom he came to announce, precludes us from living as lone confessors, independent and unaffected by the cries of the world around us. Our mission to the world is our hope in action.
In a lecture on the nature of the church, given just a few years before he would stand in formal opposition to the Nazi influence on the church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer proclaimed: "No one can pray for the kingdom...who thinks up a kingdom for himself...who lives for his own worldview and knows a thousand programs and prescriptions by which he would like to cure the world..."(2) On the contrary, the kingdom we foster and for which we pray is one we profess with the whole of our lives because it is God who reigns within it. We are able to reflect the God of light amidst the troubling darkness of the world because the reign of God is real, because we could no sooner have invented this kingdom then we could have invented this God, and because we know of no other kingdom that is worth confessing. We are the light of the world because of this hope we are sure: The kingdom of God is near!
(1) George Hunsberger, "Called and Sent to represent the Reign of God," in Darrell Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 102.
(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Thy Kingdom Come: The Prayer of the Church for the Kingdom of God on Earth," in A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 34.
"Relections of the Kingdom" - by Jill Carattini, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
"You are the light of the world," said Jesus. But what on earth did he mean?
There is a certain quality within the mission of Jesus that he seems to expect his followers to duplicate. In the approach of Christ to the world, the implications of the Trinity are always at play. Where he says of himself, "those who have seen me have seen the Father," he says similarly of his disciples; we are to love one another "so that the world may believe" (John 14:9, 17:21). "As you sent me into the world," Jesus tells the Father, "So I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18). Evidently, conceding to the truth of Christ's identity is never a static decision, a confession that can be made only in private; it is one that immediately moves the conceder into new realms. "Do you love me?" Jesus asked of Peter. "Lord, you know that I love you." "Then feed my lambs" came the reply (cf. John 21:15-18).
Wherever claims are made of Christ, a community inherently follows. For the Christian, we are ushered into a kingdom with a vastly different order, with a vastly new authority. The private confession "Jesus is Lord" is simultaneously made into the communal confession—both in the sense that upon confessing we join in the proclamations of a great cloud of witnesses, but also in the sense that we are ushered into a missional community by design. "When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify" (John 15:26). In other words, the universal invitation to believe the gospel is simultaneously an invitation to enter into the missional community and confession of the Trinity.
In this community, even what Christ calls us to claim about ourselves is far more than most feel comfortable claiming as true or real—or even possible—about themselves: You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. I am the vine and you are the branches. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Yet it is specifically these claims that Christ makes on our very identities which compel us to become these people, to receive his words, and to make real the promises of the God we profess. Confessing Christ, we have entered a kingdom marked by nothing short of the reign of God among us. Confessing Christ, we continue to be moved further into this good news even as we become representations of the very kingdom we proclaim.
This identity, though it is Christ who clothes us, is not always an easy one to wear. As light that shines and branches that extend from the vine of Christ, we are ourselves to be the signs of God's reign on earth, working for peace and justice here and now, showing the world that the God of peace and justice is near and also coming. We are those who confess the reign of God is at hand and then work hands-on as a means of that confession. As one author notes, "By its very existence, then, the church brings what is hidden into view as a sign and into experience as a foretaste."(1) This is how we are able to be the light of the world; we are millions of mirrors reflecting the God of light.
Such reflection means there will be times when we ourselves are the light in the darkness, the hands that must deliver the cup of cold water or invite inside the one who has been deemed an outsider. There will also be times when our reflection of God's reign calls for something more of us: light that refuses to be hidden though it would be easier, hands that work in opposition to injustice, confessions that fall in opposition to the world, lives that challenge the very systems that foster oppression and counter the hope of God. The identity Christ has given us, like the identity of the kingdom he came to announce, precludes us from living as lone confessors, independent and unaffected by the cries of the world around us. Our mission to the world is our hope in action.
In a lecture on the nature of the church, given just a few years before he would stand in formal opposition to the Nazi influence on the church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer proclaimed: "No one can pray for the kingdom...who thinks up a kingdom for himself...who lives for his own worldview and knows a thousand programs and prescriptions by which he would like to cure the world..."(2) On the contrary, the kingdom we foster and for which we pray is one we profess with the whole of our lives because it is God who reigns within it. We are able to reflect the God of light amidst the troubling darkness of the world because the reign of God is real, because we could no sooner have invented this kingdom then we could have invented this God, and because we know of no other kingdom that is worth confessing. We are the light of the world because of this hope we are sure: The kingdom of God is near!
(1) George Hunsberger, "Called and Sent to represent the Reign of God," in Darrell Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 102.
(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Thy Kingdom Come: The Prayer of the Church for the Kingdom of God on Earth," in A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 34.
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