Culturally Irrelevant

Jesus says that we remain in the Father’s love through obedience (check out John 15). Complete obedience is our anchor to the Father’s love. As we obey the word, we begin to experience God’s love and become like him. Through continued obedience, his plans for us reach maturity and become powerful in our lives. However, we can know everything there is to know about the word and yet still remain under the control of our flesh and Satan’s devices if we are unwilling to obey what we’ve been told to do. Another word for willful disobedience is rebellion. When we know what we should do but willingly rebel against the truth, we are literally turning away from God. It doesn’t matter if we’re in church every Sunday. Ask the members of the Laodicean church what God thought about their church attendance, giving record and knowledge of the word (Revelation 3). Our obedience let’s God circumcise our hearts. It’s how he cuts away the extra flesh that desensitizes us and makes our spiritual understanding dull.

Abraham talked to God a lot. We like to think of talking to God as this really awesome and charismatic thing. And it is. But it’s also a painful thing, mainly because so much in us needs to change to become like him. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham to leave his home and everything familiar to seek a land he’s never seen. In chapter 17, God tells him to circumcise himself and all of the males in his house. Ouch. And then in chapter 22, God tells him to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. Is it just me, or does talking with God seem painful and costly?

Abraham was able to obey completely because he trusted God. Hebrews 11:19 tells us that Abraham didn’t worry about losing Isaac because he reasoned God would just raise him from the dead if necessary! What was God doing through all of this? Yes, he was taking him on a very practical journey to find a land of promise, build a family and gain wealth. But none of that mattered at all without trust, righteousness and love. God had Abraham on a journey of the heart, continually testing him and telling him to do things that would remove more and more of his stubbornness, his doubt, his fear and any deep-seated mistrust. Why? So that Abraham could become more like God and actually hold the promises when they came, enjoy them and pass them on to Isaac and his sons.

When the Holy Spirit spoke to Katy and I last year, we began a journey of the heart that was years in the making. God spent years preparing our hearts to obey some hard things. Everything had its purpose and timing. He’s asked us to do some hard things recently that don’t make sense naturally. Give things away, sell stuff, pack without selling our house, take part in a church plant that’s spread out across 750 miles. Why? He’s got a good future for us in the natural, no doubt. But along the way he’s having us do it a certain way because he’s cutting away stuff in our hearts. We’re on a journey that can’t be seen in the natural. The “stuff” is really inconsequential. Houses, cars, jobs. They come and go…really…but there are more permanent things that determine all of that. Everything that happens in the natural follows what’s already going on in the spirit. And it’s critical for us to see this. That’s why Jesus says, “Seek first the Kingdom and all these things will be added to you.” It’s simple, really. But it can also be painful. How much heat can your heart take? It’ll be determined by how connected your heart is to the “stuff”. Ultimately, I’m asking “Which kingdom am I living in?” If it’s mine, then I better get everything here and now that I possibly can, and I’ll have to rely on my own understanding to get there. But if it’s an eternal Kingdom, then it’s got to be done God’s way. And that inevitably means I’m not always going to understand everything until I’m looking back on it. And trust me, we’ve looked back over the past year and realized that God knows exactly what he’s doing.

My brother recently commented on an old post about choosing weakness. He included a link to an article on brokenness. It’s pretty much eating my lunch right now. Here’s the link and a few excerpts:

http://path2prayer.com/site/1/docs/Demoss_Choosing_Brokenness.pdf

“You and I will never meet God in revival, until we first meet Him in brokenness.”

“Ultimately, brokenness is a matter of surrendering control of my life to God, much as the horse that has been broken is sensitive and responsive to the wishes and direction of its rider.”  

“How can we know if our hearts are proud or broken?  Proud people focus on the failures of others; they have a critical, fault-finding spirit. They look at everyone else’s faults with a microscope, but their own with a telescope. By contrast, broken people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need. Therefore they can esteem all others better than themselves. Proud people have to prove that they are right, but broken people are willing to yield the right to be right. Proud people are quick to take offense; but broken people are quick to forgive and overlook offenses.”

Excerpts from “Revival in the Heart: Choosing Brokenness” by Nancy Leigh DeMoss

The contrast between the ”Shinarites” in Genesis 11 and Abram in chapter 12 is a perfect example of kingdom vs. Kingdom

The Shinarites ”said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks’” while Abram left his home behind and struck out into the unknown “as the Lord had told him.” They “settled” in the plain while Abram “traveled” from place to place. They said, let’s build ourselves a city with a tower to heaven, but he built a humble altar of worship and pitched a tent. They said “let us make a name for ourselves” but he “called on the name of the Lord.” They didn’t want to be scattered all over the face of the earth, while Abram followed God from Ur to Haran to Canaan to Egypt and back to Canaan.

Here’s the incredible irony. Everything they desperately wanted God freely gave to Abram, and much more. Everything they feared came upon them, while God settled Abram’s fears and carried him through difficult times into abundance, promise and legacy. They wanted to hole up away from the wide world while God thrust Abram out into the world and made him a blessing to many nations. They wanted a name and got nothing but confusion. God gave Abram a new name that lasts to this day.

Abram trusted God without evidence. He put his family, his fortune, his faith and his future into God’s hands, trusting an unsubstantiated promise. He went out not knowing where he was going, but he had a living word from a living God. He wandered in tents, exposed to the elements but full faith, fully surrendered. In exchange, God gave him protection, peace and favor with those around him, a great name and eventually a place to settle and call home. His only monument was an altar of surrender, and what did God have to work with in the natural? A barren woman who laughed at the promise and her 100-year-old husband.

Man has kingdoms. Lots of them. And they’re impressive, no doubt. I have kingdoms. Mostly little ones. In reality, we all tend to have our own little kingdoms we’re working on. But God has a great big Kingdom, and he operates his differently than we do ours. 

Here are some questions I continually ask myself. Whose kingdom am I building? Am I settling somewhere, getting comfortable and surrounding myself with protection, or am I letting myself get thrust out for the sake of others? Am I building any monuments to myself, even little ones? Am I helping someone else build a monument to themself or to a group’s hard work and smart planning? Am I still willing to risk everything to follow Jesus, to go whenever and wherever he might lead?

Most people glaze over when someone starts talking about the kingdom of God. We get the general idea, but the word kingdom isn’t appreciated since it’s outside our experience. For a voting democracy, the idea of life under a dictatorship is too foreign to carry any practical significance. But there’s a really great reason why Jesus’ first sermon topic was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!” We’re easily caught up in the “kingdoms” of men because they’re all around us, and they’re pretty amazing, naturally speaking (Dubai comes to mind). It’s what we can see and hear. But God’s kingdom is so different. It’s not observed with looking or listening.

Some years after the flood of Noah’s day, a bunch of people got together and moved to a cozy little plain in Shinar (Babylonia). They baked up a ton of bricks and built a city with a massive tower in the middle (a ziggurat). Their motivation was to band together, muster their collective strength and wealth and make a name for themselves. Oh, and they wanted to build something that would reach to heaven, representing their amazing mad ”skills”.

On the surface you might think that these people were just acting on common sense. I mean, isn’t that pretty much what everyone does? You get together, build a city, put up a wall, pool your resources, fight off the bad guys and live happily ever after with your family and a little garden out back, right?

The catch is that they knew about God, the history of the garden, the fall and the flood. They knew God had a way of doing things, but they deliberately chose to leave God out of their plans. They wanted their own thing, something great that would be a monument to what they could accomplish without him. Of course, you know the rest of the story. God takes one look, doesn’t disagree that they have amazing skills, but foresees the danger of their rebellious independence and in mercy stops it before they have a chance to pull it off and self-destruct in a lifestyle of arrogance and self-indulgence. At the end of the day, they got off pretty easy.

A little segway. Clarity by contrast is a beautiful thing. Bite into a Gala apple from Wal-Mart and you’ll think you’ve got a really crisp, refreshing apple. But then sink into a Pink Lady from a local health food store and strap your taste buds down, cause it’s a world of difference. Or take that blue shirt you bought 2 years ago. It’s still a deep blue in your mind, even though you know you’ve washed it a million times. You wear it over and over, thinking it still looks great. But then one day you see it in an old picture and realize how faded it has become.

Ok, the point. Tomorrow I want to contrast the “Shinarites” from Genesis 11 with the story that immediately follows in Genesis 12. This is where it gets good.

In general, most historians seem to write from the perspective of social, economic and political influence and power. Important events are defined by key shifts in power along with the key influencers who motivated or directed these shifts. Interestingly, the writers of the Bible come at things a little upside down and a bit sideways. Take for instance the Old Testament kings. Two of the most politically and economically influential kings after Solomon were Omri and Jeroboam II. The author of Kings says that they did evil in the sight of the Lord and then gives minimal details of their rule. They’re basically sidelined. But then you have guys like Ahab and Josiah and Hezekiah that get all kinds of coverage by the author. Why?

The writers of the Bible saw history from God’s perspective, and what God cared about was whether or not people obeyed his word. For Israel, everything centered around the covenant God had with his people. If they obeyed the covenant, things would be good. If they did not obey it, they were in big trouble. So, biblical historians didn’t care so much if a king was wealthy or influential or politically savvy. They cared about the king’s heart, whether or not he obeyed God’s laws and followed the covenant.

The Old Testament prophets were continually calling Israel and her leaders back to God’s covenant. Back to righteousness, justice, mercy and love. The kings who got the most coverage were the ones who either blew it big and sent Israel reeling into rebellion (Ahab) or the ones who crusaded major reforms, destroying idols and calling the people back to covenantal obedience (Josiah).

What about our own view of history? Everything that’s on TV or in the paper comes at life events from a political, economic or social slant. The secular media doesn’t care about God’s perspective. So, where are we getting our perspective of what’s going on around us? Why are certain events important to us? What motivates us to pray for our leaders or for change to happen?

God, give me a heart to see my generation with your eyes. Let me hear with your ears so that the drawings and yearnings of your heart don’t get drowned out by a thousand other voices. I am constantly judging by what I see and hear naturally and what I discern with my own sense of right and wrong. But here is my mouth and my eyes and my ears. They’re yours, set apart for your purpose. Father, what do you care about? How do you interpret what’s going on in my generation?

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It always helps to get your head pulled out of your…er, out of the sand, so you can look around and see the bigger picture. I watched this new short film by Deidox a few days ago and was suddenly reminded that I’m part of this big family serving Jesus all over the earth. It’s a family full of amazing, ordinary people who are walking in obedience and choosing to love people despite the sacrifices. This isn’t some dramatic story, but it’s real and it hit home with me.

“A lot of people thought what I was doing was foolish, and they probably were right. In the eyes of the world, I think it is foolish. But God has a different strategy. He tends to choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.”