As if the Scriptures weren’t clear enough that Jesus was going to rise from the dead, we have the story of Lazarus.  In this story, Jesus declares himself to be the Resurrection and the Life.  He demonstrates his power over death. 

It seems that this incident is designed by Jesus to hint to his disciples about his own Resurrection.  Death has no power over Jesus.  Perhaps this is what we are to remember as we move toward Holy Week.

In reading this evening from Jeremiah 29:1 - 14, I was struck by God’s compassion for his people.  He knew that they were miserable.  Yet what they could not see, which he could, was that this was a temporary time for discipline, and that he still desired his people to thrive. 

We all face times of significant spiritual discipline in our lives - but God doesn’t want to destroy us in these times.  He must remove us from something so that we do not destroy it; but he does that so that we ourselves will not be destroyed.  The whole point of exile is that we are doing things that will not allow us to thrive long-term, and God wants to correct those things. 

Thus we enter into a second desert where God still provides for us - even among pagans. 

Ok, so I’ve got a question for the floor.  Now that means that you readers who normally comment (and even those who don’t) get to talk about this one.

When Jesus talks about Treasures, he basically acknowledges that we have them and where they should be or where they should end up.  So if you treasure people, how do you do so in a way that makes them “Treasures in Heaven” rather than “Treasures on Earth”?

Often, when we are in a time of self-examination, such as Lent, we discover that we are running up against the same stuff we were dealing with years ago - and much in the same way.  At such times we might consider the futility of our efforts to change.  However, when we invite God to reveal to us the root of the issue we are contending with, the answer might, in fact, be surprising. 

Oftentimes, we have accidentally collaborated with the various powers we are fighting against.  In our approach to dealing with a particular problem, we have inadvertently allowed that problem to rule us. 

Thus we see that the process of self-examination and confession is not merely directed at behavior, attitudes and habits, but at our spiritual outlook as well.  This is part of the deep change of repentance. 

In many cases, this spiritual power is exercised in the threat of someone or something to do something we do not want to have happen.  We know that we are vulnerable, we know we don’t want to be exposed ourselves - but we also know that the kind of power threatened by the things that trigger our sins does not deserve to get us, either.  So we invite God to free us from the power of those threats. 

“And now, Lord, consider their threats… while you stretch out your hand to heal…” (Acts 4:29 - 30)

This was a bit disjunct; does this make any sense?

One of the hardest struggles when leading someone or a group of someones into discipleship is the matter of how we go about encouraging transformation into Christlikeness. 

The more we get to know someone in a discipleship relationship, the more we know of their life and their struggles to become like Jesus.  Whether this discipleship relationship is with a friend or peer or one quite a bit younger than us, as the transformation process progresses, the areas of life that demonstrate need for change become more obvious.

It is tempting in this process to begin to find fault with those we are discipling.  We seek ways of correcting certain behaviors or attitudes that we find problematic, difficult or reprehensible.  On top of that, we see personality flaws that grate against us.  If we are not careful, this fault-finding can lead to an attitude of accusation.  We see something that needs correcting, we bring it up, and then we keep on someone until they change.  We might call it accountability, but it really becomes an exercise, not in self-examination, but in accusation. 

This line between godly accountability and accusation is often hard to recognize, but it is extremely important.  Accusation becomes Satanic and counterproductive; accountability strengthens and encourages.  The difference between the two lies in love. 

In a Lenten season, the process of confession and self-examination may already be underway.  The process of exposing a fault must be undertaken carefully, since it can often be done in accusation or in judgment.  Love, however, orients the relationship such that we ask God to reveal the fault to the person if necessary, and then if it is necessary to use us in dealing with it, to do so.  We realize it is not our responsibility to find fault. 

In the end, we find that accountability is initiated by the disciple, rather than by the discipler.  It comes out of repentance and is based out of a desire to change one’s will and avoid certain behaviors in the process.  If accountability, so called, is initiated by the discipler, it may not be in that context and leads to judgment. 

How have you seen this at work in your own relationships with others?

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt

Do You remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well, I memorized ev’ry word You said

Still I’m so scared I’m holding my breath
While You’re up there just playing hard to get

You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that’s not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then

Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don’t see the blood that’s running in Your sweat

Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You’re up there just playing hard to get?

And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained

And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I’ve figured this somehow
All I really need to know

Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can’t see what’s ahead
And we can not get free of what we’ve left behind
I’m reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret

I can’t see how You’re leading me unless You’ve led me here
Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led
And so You’ve been here all along I guess
It’s just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get

Words and music by Rich Mullins
© 1998 Liturgy Legacy Music / Word Music / ASCAP

Deserts in the Bible are deeply symbolic, with a number of meanings.   More often than not, deserts are connected to the wandering of Israel for forty years in between Egypt and the Promised Land - a journey that, if taken directly, should have only lasted a few days.  Therefore, the time in the desert, or wilderness, is often connected to rebellion and to disobedience to God.  The People of Israel wander because they refuse to follow God’s commands.  Therefore, he causes them to wander until they do.  Moreover, there are connections to the desert and wilderness being an unsafe place to be - full of wild animals, on the one hand, and without food, water or shelter on the other.  On top of that, enemy nations dwelt in the desert, and the desert wilderness was where the devil took up residence - where those possessed with demons were sent (such as the man possessed by Legion), and where the scapegoat ended its days after the Day of Atonement. 

The Desert Wilderness is often drawn in sharp comparison to the Promised Land, a “good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey,” a land that, while filled with the likes of the “Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites,” (Exodus 3:8), is “the land God swore to your ancestors to give to them.”  (Deuteronomy 6:10) 

The Desert Wilderness is the boundary, edge, margin and exterior of the Promised Land.  It is a place of exile, a place of waiting, a place of discipline.  It is not a pleasant place to be.  Nor is it really intended to be so.  The People of Israel enter the Desert Wilderness with fear and trepidation, not really thinking that this is the best idea.  They balk at the lack of obvious provision.  In fact, the Desert Wilderness is symbolic of deprivation - often to the point of hopelessness.  (more…)

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about how when we are most desperate to be around people is often when we have to be the most careful about being around people and should seek solitude to determine what our inner turmoil is all about. 

At the end of the day, when we have run out of activities, and everyone else is in bed; when work to be done is complete, and our usual entertainments have lost their thrill, when we discover that we want something to do - this demonstrates our inner turmoil.

We call it boredom, actually.  Boredom seems to have two sources that work together.  First, we look around us and see little of value - and this in a world created by God and called “good.”  This is a serious problem that deserves its own post.  The second source, though, fits with the topic of solitude.  We crave activity and entertainment because it masks or medicates (often both) our inner turmoil and pain.  We become bored when none of those things “scratch where we itch.”  We become restless.  Actually, more to the point, our restlessness, already working internally, comes to our conscious mind and our physical presence. 

Solitude, then, is all the more necessary in times of boredom and turmoil.  It forces us to contend with our innards, discovering what is really in them, and inviting God to heal those things. 

Let us not be afraid to seek solitude when inner turmoil is at work: for only in it do we hear God speaking.

One of our Lenten prayers is that God would reveal to us what is at the core of our being that he might heal it and transform us.  Revelation comes through many channels - through experiences, through instruction, through prayer, through the Scripture - and often, in God’s unique way, it comes through dreams. 

Our dreams often speak to what is in our hearts even when we are unwilling to face what is in our hearts.  God often speaks directly through dreams in the Bible; we know that some are tormented by the forces of evil in dreams as well.  Whatever the case, our dreams are unplanned, spontaneous, un-asked-for events.  They are part of the “daily stuff of life” that is one of the vertices of the Triangle of Transformation in Willard’s discipleship model.  (See Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God, [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998], 347, ff.)

When our dreams reveal our hearts, they do so symbolically.  Things often mean something else.  In our vivid, and memorable dreams, we see things not merely literally but also in figure, simile, metaphor and allegory.  (Ever had a dream where you couldn’t quite get where you needed to go?  That’s your stress talking!) 

When a disciple is focused upon God’s transformation, our memorable dreams become God’s tools for transformation as well.  We invite God to reveal the meaning of the dreams.  Oftentimes, they reveal something we don’t like; these are the desert revelations.  We see something that needs to change in ourselves through the content of the dreams.  This is a back-door approach to the needed change.  They show us where we are still wandering in the wilderness.  Sometimes they reveal motives we dare not acknowledge when we are conscious. 

Whatever the case, these dreams can be used by God to transform us just like everything else.  What might your Lenten dreams be saying?  How can God use these for your transformation?

We have spoken of Lent as a Desert time.  We see it as a time when we realize how much more we need to grow.  When we recognize that, we are doing well: because we have fixed our eyes (finally) upon God, rather than comparing ourselves to those around us.  In the desert we are dependent on God’s manna, his quail, his water from rocks, his parted seas and his arrested suns.  We have no other recourse but to rest in God’s provision, even though it comes through unusual means. 

As we have seen, God takes us out into the desert to test our hearts to see whether we will follow his commandments.  He humbles us with hunger and then feeds us in his own way.  (Deuteronomy 8:2 - 3)  And he leads us to the promised land.

Ah, but wait!  There is more!  God does not merely leave the desert as the place of trial and temptation to be later cast aside.  We do not have a wasteful, consumerist God!  No, our creative, perhaps even frugal God takes that same desert - that place of natural deprivation and supernatural provision - and transforms it into a part of the Promised Land, filled with streams and vegetation, with animals and the people of God. 

This radical re-invention of the desert is the utter destruction of deprivation.  In this transformation of the desert, the deprivation of the natural is removed while the supernatural provision becomes the norm of life.  And God is present. 

This is why our deserts are wilderness, not wasteland.  They are lands un-transformed by God, not lands that are worth throwing away.  As we hear in Isaiah 43,

Isaiah 43:18-21 (New International Version)

 18 “Forget the former things;
       do not dwell on the past.

 19 See, I am doing a new thing!
       Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
       I am making a way in the desert
       and streams in the wasteland.

 20 The wild animals honor me,
       the jackals and the owls,
       because I provide water in the desert
       and streams in the wasteland,
       to give drink to my people, my chosen,

 21 the people I formed for myself
       that they may proclaim my praise.

Let us proclaim the praise of a God who not only brings us through our deserts but transforms them into abundant lands of promise!

Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man. — Mark 2:27

Sabbath-keeping is hard for anyone who lives a normal American lifestyle.  It is, perhaps, especially difficult for those of us in professional church leadership in traditional settings.  And, while in this particular case the expectations for the amount of work are as much self-imposed as imposed by the congregation, the systems in which we operate tend to push church leaders to superman complexes. 

No greater answer, then, is there for busy, overworked Westerners than the discipline of Sabbath-keeping.  One day in seven, we rest from our labors and do no work.  We allow ourselves time to focus on God and relax in a family setting.  Yet our society, even our churches, mitigates against such things. 

Perhaps in the creation of common life within a congregation, a conscious effort should be put forth to create a gap - one day a week when nothing will go on the calendar.  How might that look?

Sabbath-keeping doesn’t just extend to the once-weekly break: it also covers our daily waking hours.  Are we sleep-deprived?  Do we burn too much midnight oil?  Unless our basic life needs require it, do we work more than full-time?

This discipline of rest is sorely lacking in my life and the lives of so many around me.  How might we work together to create space, margin and health in our work?

In the process of breaking down the habits of sin in which we have lived, we often realize how insane our life has become.  We sin because we hurt, or we just feel like it, or we’ve always done it like that - and this brings about more pain, which leads us right back down the same road again and again. 

Lent is a good time for all of us to consider the words of the First Three Steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over [fill in the blank] that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Our lives are out of balance until we are able to turn our will over to God.  This is the beginning of Christian discipleship. 

Consider these three steps as Lenten disciplines: Submission, Humility, and Conversion.  Submitting: to the fact that we cannot save ourselves (or anyone else).  Humbling: ourselves to realize that only God can save.  Converting: to give our will over to God. 

How might this fit into your Lenten practice?

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised

up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the

spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his

uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands;

through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with

you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  (2 Corinthians 5:16 - 21)

It’s happened to every single one of us, numerous times in our lives.  It might have been a good friend, a spouse, one of our children, a co-worker, a boss, a member of our church congregation - it could have been just about anyone.  You know what I’m talking about.  Things are going along well, by and large, for a time - and then things begin to deteriorate. 

Perhaps this deterioration began with a catastrophic breach of trust - an adulterated marriage, theft, lies, slander, inappropriate demands.  Or perhaps it was just a gradual “growing apart” - the natural result of two lives going in two different directions.  Or perhaps differences of opinion piled up.  Maybe, looking back on it, we could have, would have, should have - fill in the blank - been more loving, caring, compassionate; been less self-interested, self-serving, dependent.  We wish our lives had a rewind button.  Maybe we’d rather just have a complete set of studio editing gear - delete a scene here, add another in there, and then release the version with the alternative ending: the one where the hero doesn’t die in the end.

Whatever the case, we now stand with shattered relationships around us, like so much broken glass slicing and shredding our hands, our feet, our faces.  And through the pain - pain of sadness, anger and fear, all mixed together into volatile concoctions - we want to make things right.  We need reconciliation.

We may not recognize it, though, as reconciliation.  At some points we’re so angry that we want to see the other person destroyed, or at least harmed, or at least get what’s coming to ‘em.  We want them to fess up to what they’ve done.  We want them to accept their portion of the blame.  And while that is a part, in one sense, of the reconciliation process, that’s really not going to get us where we want to go because that still cannot make the past any different.  In the end, broken trust is broken trust - and only character that lives in trustworthiness over time can bring it to restoration. 

But we want it now. 

(more…)

Although John beat me to it, this day of Lent is actually a feast day, commemorating the amazing life of one of our most famous missionaries, Padraig of Ireland.  In light of that, let us contemplate the prayer that is attributed to him.

I bind unto myself today
      the strong Name of the Trinity,
   by invocation of the same,
      the Three in One, and One in Three.
   I bind this day to me forever,
      by power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
   his baptism in the Jordan river;
      his death on cross for my salvation;
   his bursting from the spiced tomb;
      his riding up he heavenly way;
   his coming at the day of doom:
      I bind unto myself today.

   I bind unto myself the power
      of the great love of cherubim;
   the sweet “Well done� in judgement hour;
      the service of the seraphim;
   confessors’ faith, apostles’ word,
      the patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls;
   all good deeds done unto the Lord,
      and purity of virgin souls.

   I bind unto myself today
      the virtues of the starlit heaven,
   the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
      the whiteness of the moon at even,
   the flashing of the  lightning free,
      the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
   the stable earth, the deep salt sea,
      around the old eternal rocks.

   I bind unto myself today
      the power of God to hold and lead,
   his eye to watch, his might to stay,
      his ear to hearken to my need;
   the wisdom of my God to teach,
      his hand to guide, his shield to ward;
   the word of God to give me speech,
      his heavenly host to be my guard.

   Against the demon snares of sin,
      the vice that gives temptation force,
   the natural lusts that war within,
      the hostile men that mar my course;
   of few or many, far or nigh,
      in every place, and in all hours
   against their fierce hostility,
      I bind to me these holy powers.

   Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
      against false words of heresy,
   against the knowledge that defiles
      against the heart’s idolatry,
   against the wizard’s evil craft,
      against the death-wound and the burning
   the choking wave and poisoned shaft,
      protect me, Christ, till thy returning.

      Christ be with me, Christ within me,
         Christ behind me, Christ before me,
      Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
         Christ to comfort and restore me,
      Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
         Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
      Christ in hearts of all that love me,
         Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

   I bind unto myself the Name,
      the strong Name of the Trinity,
   by invocation of the same,
      the Three in One, and One in Three.
   Of whom all nature hath creation,
      eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
   praise to the Lord of my salvation,
      salvation is of Christ the Lord.

(source)