Who’s your clothier?

Colossians 3, in The Message Remix 2.0, it says this:

12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

Too often, IMO, we choose other designers for our wardrobe. Tall Skinny Kiwi even confessed (in a brilliant piece) that sometimes he dresses like a pagan. Sometimes, the devil is really in Prada! When we let Calvin Klein, Polo, Izod, Guess, etc. be our primary wardrobers, we often find that we are not dressed in compassion, kindness,
humility, quiet strength and discipline. Sometimes, yes, but not quite as often as we like to think.

In this God focused life, we don’t care so much what we wear, but how we wear it. That is, we don’t seek to impress, but to serve. Jesus, if you will recall, dressed to serve. He even told us, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest
among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”

That’s the backwards ways of the Kingdom of God. The first are last, the greatest are the servants. It sounds absurd until you try to live it — then you truly find that the greatest fulfillment comes from emptying yourself. The greatest joy for yourself comes from seeking joy for others, and not for yourself. The greatest love truly is laying your life down for others.

So today, I’m going to make sure I put on my best clothes. I’ve got my compassion shirt, my kindness hat, my humility pants, my shoes of quiet strength and my belt of discipline. I’m going to put my coat of love on over it, and I’m going to get dirty. I’m going to serve people today. Not for myself or my joy, but for God. Today, I will live my life for my Creator. How about you?

 

Finding Jesus

I’m still working my way through Colossians, and today I read the 2nd chapter in The Message Remix 2.0. In verses 8-10 it reads:

Colossians 2:8-10 (The Message)

8-10

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness
of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

Wow! I love that! “You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ.” Sometimes, I think we’re all like this guy:

Urban Cowboy: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

We’re looking for love in all the wrong places. Jesus isn’t hiding from us, whether you believe it or not, most often its us who are the ones hiding. Even back in Eden, God wasn’t the one in the fig bush.

Over at Jesus Creed there is a post about Trumanistic Christianity. The Philosophical Pastor retorts with a wonderful metaphor here. I think they are both hitting on a pulse in North America –we-re becoming theological ostriches! We’ve got our heads so far buried into our doctrinal bubbles that we’re missing Jesus! He’s everywhere there
is need. You don’t need to look far off to find Him! He’s just around the corner!

We spend so much time wrangling over what is and what is not “essential” to our Christian faith that we don’t see Jesus standing just beside us. We put the Bible under a microscope trying to find the Man at our shoulder! We’ve got to get our heads up and see Jesus!

I’m discovering that Paul’s admonition — “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” — applies to Christian theologians, too. I’m discovering that when someone has to really try hard to emphasize their point, when they go to great lengths to show that their view is the most “logical” interpretation of the Scriptures, they are often (even though usually
unaware of it) trying to take you captive.

The Bible needs to be read and studied. The Bible needs to be interpreted for our day and place. But if the interpretation is convoluted, or a logical equivalent to a dominoes puzzle, beware! Jesus not only SHOULDN’T be that hard to find, He AIN’T that hard to find.

Look around, you’ll find Him near you, by your side. You don’t need fancy tools or philosophy. You just need to want to see Him.

 

Ripples from the pantry

TallSkinnyKiwi posted this link, worth considering. The call is to “Take The Pantry Challenge”.

In this world where waste is common, and in North America where our poor would be upper-middle class by most of the world’s standards, maybe this is a way for us to reach out by first reaching in. To see what its like to live only on food that is in your pantry you get an idea of just how hard it is when you have little/no choice in what you will eat. Secondly, you get to see just how well off you really are.

The money you would normally have spent on filling your own pie-hole could be spent helping out those in need. What a great idea. Give up some of our abundance to alieviate someone else’s poverty. I point you to here and here for
proof that this is not a new idea.

Maybe they’ll know that you’re doing this for Jesus. Maybe, you’ll meet Jesus while your doing this. Just a thought.

 

Strength training

After my morning work-out (its still January, too early to quit on my resolution!), I read Colossians 1 in The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In contemporary Language, I was struck by its take on verses 9-12. They read:

9-12Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not
the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.

Too often, in my obviously correct opinion , we get this picture of Christian endurance:

When, if the Message translation is correct, we should thing of this:

Ours is not a weight to bear, but a joy to serve. We don’t lift these weights alone, but with Christ, who strengthens us– allowing us to move mountains and endure ALL things! Ours is a joyful lifting, because God gives us a supernatural strength– when we let Him.

And that, in part, is what it means to love God. It means allowing Him to help. It means humbling ourselves and saying, “I can’t, but God can.” It means letting Him into areas of our lives that we normally keep Him out of. It means allowing His strength to be our strength, and our strength to be dedicated to serving Him.

So let’s lift joyfully! Let’s NOT grit our teeth but let’s laugh and say, with joy, “not my will, but Yours be done!” That, today, is my prayer for all of us.

 

Slip slidin’ away

Added 18 Jan: Well, the news teams finally realized that this was severe weather.  Check it out here.

This last Friday, ice hit Texoma. We had an ice-storm that lasted deep into the night. It came and went all day Saturday AND Sunday! The net result, well, see for yourself…

That’s ALL ice — even the parts that look like snow! The road is one huge sheet of ice.

Cars are sliding everywhere. On Monday, my wife and I went to Altus, a city (it probably doesn’t deserve a name that makes it sound so big) that’s about 35 minutes from our town. As we were driving down the ice – er, um, road — I saw a car on the side of the road.

It was very obviously stranded. There were two people inside, as I saw when I drove by. I did not stop. I’m not sure why. But now, I feel like I denied Christ. In Matthew 25, the famous (or is it infamous) parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus says that when we reach out to those in need, we are reaching out to Him. In Luke 10, Jesus tells us that ANYONE in need is our neighbor and, like the good Shiite -er, Samaritan — we are to reach out to them.

Remember the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Our neighbor is that person stranded in the car, am I too busy to help myself? Then why can’t I take time to help them? Our neighbor is the person who has no one to visit them in the hospital, the jail, or the nursing home. Am I too busy to reach out to them? Not if I treat them as I treat myself.

I, for one, indulge myself. How come it’s so hard to indulge others? I need to love others AS MUCH AS myself, not just a lot. I don’t know about you, but this is something I’ve truly got to work on!

 

Blessing others THROUGH stewardship

I read a good post over at The Philosophical Pastor, regarding living right. She recommends a book (I haven’t read it, but plan to), that calls for “downsizing” our lives. Evidentaly, consumerism is dying. ‘Bout time! We don’t need so much stuff pushed down our throats!

After reading her blog, I checked out http://www.freecycle.org/, to see what it was about. What a great idea! God has entrusted us as stewards of creation. As I’ve said before, when Dad gave you the keys to his car, he didn’t expect to get it back trashed! Quite the contrary for most of us, he expected to get it back washed and vacuumed!

This program at http://www.freecycle.org/ is a great way to take a step in helping to keep God’s creation clean. Free-cycling is based on the idea that “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” I am issuing a call to my church for someone to step up as a coordinator for the Frederick, OK, branch of this wonderful group.

Maybe then we’ll have more of this:

And less like this:

I, for one, have heard too few preachers talk about caring for our world. You don’t have to LOVE “Mother Earth” to want to care for the Father’s creation! To borrow from Dennis Miller, pardon me while I rant here, but, why aren’t we more concerned with caring for the gifts that God has given us? Genesis 2:15 tells us our purpose in God’s creation: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”

Note: God did not put us in His creation to abuse it, deforest it, strip mine it, pollute it and dump our refuse into it! He put us here to “take care of it”. Sure, we’re not in Eden anymore, but we are still to care for the earth.

End rant.

Anyway, http://www.freecycle.org/ seems like a great idea, and a timely mission.

 

No Pain no Gain

I started the second phase of my workout program this morning, and parts of my body that I forgot I had are screaming at me! Muscles I haven’t used in ages are killing me. Its funny (actually, its not –ouch!) how muscles that aren’t used often weaken, and lose strength. Its seems strange that once some part of the body is built up that it should ever tear back down.
But I think that is how faith is. We can build it up, walk out blindly trusting God, get to the point where we KNOW that God’s got us covered, and still, if we allow enough time to go by, start having doubts again. Our faith is like our biceps, its only big when we work it out: put it to use alot, and its strong and evident to all; forget it, and, well, forget it!
So, tonight, I’m gonna nurse my sore arms and back–and work out my faith! How about you?

 

Restoring the Temple

It’s a new year. I’m told it should be a new me.

When I watch TV, I’m being bombarded by two divergent messages. One says I should eat “more chikin” and other things that make me go, “Yummy!”. But that’s who I’ve been. That’s why I’m round. (I AM NOT OUT OF SHAPE, round is a shape!).

The other adds say its time to get the new me I’ve always wanted. Buff and tough. Trim and slim. Rarin’ to go. Use this supplement, buy this product, subscribe to this regimen, membership, etc.

I see a need to be a “New Me,” especially physically. But not for my sake. Will I feel better about myself if I’m thin and muscular? Duh! But, as I read through God’s Word, I’m struck again and again that it’s not about me and how I feel. The great “it” is about living the Two.

Should I be in good shape? Yes, but not for my sake. God made me. 1st Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Yeah, I know, Paul is talking about sexual impurity here, but I don’t find it too much a stretch to see ALL impurity as being covered by this concept. My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

With this in mind, I’m recall Jesus clearing out the Temple in Jerusalem. It had become a “den of thieves” and a place where man’s business, not God’s business was first and foremost. As I pour these artificial flavors, preservatives, and chemicals into my body, am I not turning this Temple into a place of corruption? A den of sickness? A place where MY business, not God’s business, is first and foremost?

5 days now I’ve been eating better (and ALOT less) and exercising. 5 days now I’ve been working on restoring this temple. 5 days now, I’ve been driving the corruption out. Pray for me, please, to restore and renew this temple of the Holy Spirit, and I’ll pray for you, too.

 

…and a happy New Year!

Here’s wishing to all of ya’ll a bright, wonderful new year full of God’s light and love!

I’m not going to write too much today, just two links:

first,The Philosophical Pastor has a nice idea about resolutions;

and, second, one or two of my own thoughts on resolutions.

I hope you resolve to enjoy them!

 

Merry Christ-mas

May God be very present in your life, and may all who read this receive His blessing.

Amen