Christ’s Identity and Purpose – A Declarative Prayer

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Christ’s Identity and Purpose

 

Lord, I affirm and accept my status as a new creation in Christ and I thank you for making me a joint heir with your Son, Jesus Christ. I proclaim and also affirm that I am among the chosen, the fortunate ones you have selected as your holy and beloved.

Father, I thank you for piercing the darkness and searching for me and I especially thank you for your patient endurance in pursuing me, especially when I was fleeing and hiding from your Light.

I am eternally grateful my Father that you were steadfast in your love for me and that you found me, embraced me, and carried me out of this dark kingdom. I awakened in the brilliance of the One True Light which fills your glorious kingdom – indeed Lord, the New Canaan, the realm of your sinless Son who you loved even before the world began.

Dear Lord, I know in my mind and in my heart, and I affirm with my tongue and lips that you are the perfect, visible image of the invisible God and that when I look upon you, I behold the fullness and totality of God. I realize and affirm that to know you Lord Jesus, is to know the Almighty, the one true Creator – He who was, is, and is to come.

Lord Jesus Christ, you are the firstborn of the entire cosmos, the first person to appear in creation and that you are preeminent in all of it. All things visible and invisible were created by you, through you, and for you. You are the Originator and the Goal – the Creator as well as the Consummator – the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end.

Lord Jesus Christ, you existed before time began as the eternal Son and you were before all things. The entire universe is held together in you and you are the cohesive force – the gravitational power that holds all created elements, seen and unseen, together. Without you, the entire universe would disintegrate.

It is you Dear Lord, the One True Light – Adonai – that gives meaning to all creation and all of life. Without you, there is no purpose, either universal or personal, for it is you Lord Jesus, that rose higher than the highest heaven, filling all things with your presence and your purpose. You are indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Light –

I thank you for adopting me into your Family of Light and I commit my life and my ways to you, your care, and your blessed Kingdom.

In the Holy Name of Jesus I pray,

Amen.

 

Proactive Compassion and Authentic Christianity (Part Two)

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L.D. Turner

(continued from Part One)

Our nation has evolved a Christian faith that is a far cry from the one Christ intended. Blended with our culture’s worship of individualism, materialism, and personal freedoms, the Christianity that developed in America was, and remains, more American than Christian. The fact is, and few of us want to face this reality, our minds and hearts remain too small for Christ’s gospel. The following words by Houston Smith, renowned scholar of comparative religion, ring far too true:

…we have heard Jesus’ teachings so often that their edges have been worn smooth, dulling their glaring subversiveness. If we could recover their original impact, we too would be startled. Their beauty would not paper over the fact that they are “hard sayings,” presenting a scheme of values so counter to the usual as to shake us like the seismic collision of tectonic plates…We are told that we are not to resist evil but to turn the other cheek. The world assumes that evil must be resisted by every means available. We are told to love our enemies and bless those who curse us. The world assumes that friends are to be loved and enemies hated. We are told that the sun rises on the just and the unjust alike. The world considers this to be indiscriminating; it would like to see dark clouds withholding sunshine from evil people. We are told that outcasts and harlots enter the kingdom of God before many who are perfunctorily righteous. Unfair, we protest; respectable people should head the procession. We are told that the gate to salvation is narrow. The world would prefer it to be wide. We are told to be as carefree as birds and flowers. The world counsels prudence. We are told that it is more difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye. The world honors wealth. We are told that the happy people are those who are meek, who weep, who are merciful and pure in heart. The world assumes that it is the rich, the powerful, and the wellborn who should be happy. In all, a wind of freedom blows through these teachings that frightens the world and makes us want to deflect their effect by postponement – not yet, not yet! H.G. Wells was evidently right: either there was something mad about this man, or our hearts are still too small for his message.

For those of us steeped in Western culture and raised within the walls of the church, it is hard to fully grasp the true revolutionary, radical nature of Jesus’ teachings. Yet when compared to the general religious worldview of his day, as well as the practices that went along with that worldview, the Master’s approach to the spiritual life was a complete anachronism.

We get the first hint of this on the occasion of Jesus’ first public miracle – the turning of water to wine at the wedding feast in Cana. The magnificence of the miracle itself, the changing of water into wine, often overshadows a more subtle, symbolic aspect to the events of that day. The water Jesus changed into wine was not just any water – and the vessels holding the water were no common containers. Instead, Jesus told the servants to fill six stone jars to the very top with water. These stone jars were the ones used for people to wash themselves in compliance with the dictates of their religion. By this act, Jesus used his first public miracle to deliver a symbolic yet very real message.

Rather than ritualistic cleansing, rules, and regulations, through Jesus God was bringing something totally new into life on this planet, something much more intimate and celebratory. Through Jesus, God was indeed bringing joy, good news to the people. As the Master said when he quoted the prophet Isaiah, he had come “to set the captives free.” And the irony of all ironies is that his people were not enslaved by the Egyptians as in the time of Moses. No, and the enemy was not just the Romans, either. Instead, I am convinced that Jesus saw his mission as intricately tied up with subverting the existing religious order, which had turned what was intended as a vital, dynamic, and intimate relationship with God into a burdensome shackle of trivial religious laws. Bruxy Cavey, in his excellent work entitled, The End of Religion, describes the subversive, radical nature of the Master’s mission:

I was faced with an unexpected but undeniable fact: Through his first miracle, Jesus intentionally desecrates a religious icon. He purposely chooses these sacred jars to challenge the religious system by converting them from icons of personal purification into symbols of relational celebration. Jesus takes us from holy water to wedding wine. From legalism to life. From religion to relationship……Jesus seems to be saying that his message of love – a radically accepting love – is too great to be contained by the old ways of religious tradition. His new wine demands new wineskins (see Matt. 9:17).

As Cavey later points out, and as any astute reader of the four gospels will soon discover, Jesus did not come as the meek and mild savior with a flower in one hand and a white dove in the other. No my friends, Jesus made it quite clear from the outset that he came to shake things up. If you have any doubts about this, go back and carefully read through the gospels. Pay particular attention to the Master’s words in Matthew during the Sermon on the Mount. See how often he prefaces his teaching by saying, “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” Jesus challenges the old teaching and then replaces it with a new one.

Jonathan and Jennifer Campbell, in their remarkable, insightful book entitled, The Way of Jesus, make the timely observation that:

God is bringing forth new wineskins for a fresh outpouring of wine, and it does not look like anything we’ve ever seen. So we must focus on Jesus and the wine he is pouring out, and not on the wineskin. Remember, the purpose of the wineskin is to furnish the appropriate environment for the juice of the choice grapes to ferment and season at just the right time. We should be open and flexible, like new wineskins, in order to have Jesus fill our hearts and communities. This new wineskin must be very simple and able to expand and grow with the new wine.

Renewal is not enough. We all need to go through a conversion something like what the apostle Peter experienced in Acts 10 and 11. Peter’s conversion from an ethnocentric Jew to an advocate for Gentile missions was one of the most significant paradigm shifts in the history of the church. Likewise today, the church must repent of any cultural tradition that hinders the movement of the gospel across cultures. The current spiritual-cultural crisis calls for nothing less than complete repentance, what the Greeks called metatonia, a transformation of the mind, a change of heart, and a new way of living. Just as Gentiles received salvation free of Jewish tradition, so all people have the right to follow Jesus without having to become Western or institutionalized…………Jesus calls his followers to undergo a systemic shift that goes to the root of our identity – one that questions all the assumptions of the Christendom model. What we really need are people living the life of Jesus in community, drinking the new wine of the Spirit and living as fresh wineskins in the world.

From all that has gone before in this article, it should be apparent that as followers of Christ we have a divine calling that is both real and urgent. Our world is wounded and hurting and there is a strong need for grace and healing. Yet if any degree of healing is to take place, we Christ-followers must deeply understand that it has to begin within our own walls. It is imperative first of all that the Body of Christ become more unified in both theology and purpose. Yes, there is indeed a place of diversity, but diversity must never devolve into divisiveness. As Christians, we have to get our minds and especially our hearts around the concept that no matter what our differences might be, we have a divine calling to give flesh to grace and that his calling, given by the Master himself, transcends any sectarian differences that may exist.

Listen to Richard Stearns again as he speaks to the missing link in our gospel understanding as well as points us in the right direction.

I believe that we have reduced the gospel from a dynamic and beautiful symphony of God’s love for and in the world to a bare and strident monotone. We have taken this amazing good news from God, originally presented in high definition and Dolby stereo, and reduced it to a grainy, black-and-white, silent movie. In doing so, we have also stripped it of much of its power to change not only the human heart but the world. This is especially reflected in our limited view of evangelism. Jesus commanded His followers to take the good news of reconciliation and forgiveness to the ends of the earth. The dictate is the same today.

Christianity is a faith that was meant to spread – but not through coercion. God’s love was intended to be demonstrated, not dictated. Our job is not to manipulate or induce others to agree with us or to leave their religion and embrace Christianity. Our change is to both proclaim and embody the gospel so that others can see, hear, and feel God’s love in tangible ways. When we are living out our faith with integrity and compassion in the world, God can use us to give others a glimpse of His love and character. It is God – not us – who works in the hearts of men and women to forgive and redeem. Coercion is not necessary or even particularly helpful. God is responsible for the harvest – but we must plant, water, and cultivate the seeds.

Just as Christ knelt before his disciples and washed their filthy feet on the night before he died, we are to do the same. No, this does not necessarily mean that we have to wash each other’s feet. What it does mean is that we must be sensitive enough to discern where need exists and willing to go forth in faith and love to address that need. This requires each of us to transcend our own tendencies toward self-absorption and personal preoccupation. We must, with the power of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts, become “other-focused” and willing to get down and get dirty if need be. Christ embraced the lepers of his time and in our own day and age, we are to do no less.

I am of the firm belief that if we who follow the Master consistently exhibit this kind of servant evangelism, we can do much good in this world. And while we are at it, we might make great strides toward healing the title “Christian” as well.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Proactive Compassion and Authentic Christianity (Part One)

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L.D. Turner

When we take an honest, unbiased look at the life of Jesus as presented in the four Gospels of the New Testament, we are left with the undeniable impression that his primary concern in inaugurating his kingdom on earth centered on caring for the poor and the marginalized. Despite the concerted efforts of those self-proclaimed “believers” who have made brazened attempts to alter the message of Jesus to fit their political agenda, anyone with even a grain of objectivity and personal integrity will admit that the Master called us in no uncertain terms to care for the less fortunate among us.

“I have come to preach good news to the poor,” Christ tells us in Luke 4:18. With these words, and a proclamation taken from Isaiah 61 Jesus launched his mission. If anyone doubts his concern for the marginalized, let them study carefully his closing words in Matthew 25: 31-46 where the Master states clearly that our eternal destiny is intimately connected with how we treat the poor, the sick, and the infirm. As disquieting as Christ’s words are in this section of Holy Writ, the implications are clear and cannot be dismissed out of hand, just because they happen to fly in the face of our political ideology. It is for this reason that when the LifeBrook Faith Alliance began back in 1997, it was with these words as our motivating credo:

As followers of Jesus Christ, our prime calling is to give flesh to grace.

I am convinced that this was the directive Jesus operated under and I feel I should do no less. In concrete terms, instead of giving people advice, trying to convert them or get them to come to church (these are not bad things by the way), our mission is to help those who are hurting find a better way of navigating through their problems and living in the solution. Instead of asking, “Are you saved?” we instead ask, “What do you need?” or “How can I help?”

Unfortunately, the vast majority of practicing Christians in America have drifted far off course. Instead of looking for positive and effective ways to be of service to others, many of us have opted for a more comfortable and less challenging version of the faith. Seeking at all cost to maintain the status quo and keep the application of Christianity within the respectable bounds of American culture, we have settled for something far more tame and far less radical than what the Master called for. In the process of living beneath the standard set by Christ, we have also managed to more often than not, major in the minors. And in doing so, the once-honorable title “Christian,” has become a derided term.

Francis Chan makes the following cogent observation regarding the contemporary church in America:

I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don’t swear, and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered. That’s for “radicals” who are “unbalanced” and who go “overboard.” Most of us want a balanced life that we can control, that is safe, and that does not involve suffering.

I have found that at least in a general sense, most American Christians shy away from churches that are serious about putting on the mind of Christ. Like Chan says, the typical American believer prefers a church that is safe and predictable. This desire for safety and predictability goes even farther. These same Christians also prefer a Jesus that is equally safe and predictable – one that sits quietly on quilt-board displays holding lambs in his lap and patting kids on the head (or maybe that’s the other way around, with kids in his lap and patting lambs on the head).

The point is this: the radical, firebrand Jesus that showed up in the flesh and went on to challenge the religious leaders of his day, calling them everything from a brood of vipers to white-washed sepulchers, was and is far too dangerous. That’s why one of the primary tasks of the church throughout the centuries has been to domesticate the rough-edged revolutionary who set this new faith in motion.

In the somewhat detailed notes below, taken from Richard Stearns The Hole in Our Gospel, the author describes how anemic and superficial Christianity has become. From his perspective as President of World Vision U.S., Stearns also looks at some of the causes of this situation and how a return to a more complete gospel, based more solidly on the actual teachings and life of Jesus provides a way for the church to heal.

More and more our gospel has been narrowed to a simple transaction, marked by checking a box on a bingo card at some prayer breakfast, registering a decision for Christ, or coming forward during an altar call………..It was about saving as many people from hell as possible – for the next life. It minimized any concern for those same people in this life. It wasn’t as important that they were poor or hungry or persecuted, or perhaps rich, greedy, and arrogant; we just had to get them to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and then move on to the next potential convert. In our evangelistic efforts to make the good news accessible and simple to understand, we seem to have boiled it down to a kind of “fire insurance” that one can buy. Then, once the policy is in effect, the sinner can go back to whatever life he was living – of wealth and success or poverty and suffering. As long as the policy was in the drawer, the other things don’t matter as much. We’ve got our “ticket” to the next life.

There is a real problem with this limited view of the kingdom of God; it is not the whole gospel. Instead, it is a gospel with a gaping hole. First, focusing almost exclusively on the afterlife reduces the importance of what God expects of us in this life. The kingdom of God, which Christ said is “within you” (Luke 17:21 NKJV), was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it.

Jesus’ view of the gospel went beyond a bingo card transaction; it embraced a revolutionary new view of the world, an earth transformed by transformed people, His “disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19 NKJV), who would usher in the revolutionary kingdom of God. Those words from the Lord’s Prayer, “your kingdom come, you will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” were and are a clarion call to Jesus’ followers not just to proclaim the good news but to be the good news, here and now (Matt. 6:10). This gospel – the whole gospel – means much more than the personal salvation of individuals. It means a social revolution.

For those of us raised in the embrace of American Christianity these words may be difficult to digest, but digest them we must. The Master we have chosen to follow calls us out of our comfort zones and into the roiling cauldron of poverty, disease, and injustice. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are not afforded the luxury of sitting quietly on the sidelines, shaking our heads in dismay, spouting scripture, and uttering a chorus of sympathetic platitudes while children are starving and dying of preventable diseases. As those bold enough to take on the mantle “Christian,” we have not only blessings but responsibilities. Christ charged us with taking care of the last, the lost, and the least. When we do this, our hands are likely to get dirty and our hearts are likely to be broken. Jesus warns of this and encourages us to count the costs before we set our hand to the plow.

To be continued……

(c) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wisdom for Reflection and Application

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We find it difficult to grasp the idea that God calls us righteous because we actually are righteous. It feels more humble to believe we’re filthy worms awaiting a future change into beautiful butterflies…………..Jesus stated it best. He said that our righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees in order to enter the kingdom (Matthew 5:20). So if we Christians don’t claim to possess perfect righteousness, we are lowering God’s standard. We are watering down the gospel. We insinuate that Jesus can unite himself with sin. And we insult the perfection of God.

Andrew Farley

(from The Naked Gospel)

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Remedies for What Ails the Church: Christ’s Proactive Love (Part One)

Mick Turner

For quite some time now I have pondered and prayed over the various reasons the contemporary church is in such a state of crisis. In addition to people leaving the sanctuaries in drove, the church itself is rapidly becoming marginalized in its impact on American culture and this, coupled with dwindling numbers and a chronic affinity for internal bickering, has left the Body of Christ in a general state of paralytic impotence.

There are many reasons for this state of affairs – far too many to catalogue in this brief article. I would like, however, to focus in particular on one specific causational factor that I think contributes greatly to the church’s current woes.  Before delving into that issue, however, I want to spend a few moments discussing the issue of “lost faith” or, as some describe it, “weak faith.”

I mention this because I think that these faith problems are related to our overall lack of understanding and acceptance of Jesus Christ, his mission, and the impact of that mission on life as we know it. As we will discuss below, one of the primary factors contributing to the exodus from the church is that it has lost its most vital, life-giving focus. A side-effect of this is that many people have what those – in – the – supposed – know call a “crisis of faith.” This crisis can take many forms, but each tends to share a few common elements. The following description by Brian McLaren provides a cogent summation of what I am talking about:

One way or the other, we outgrew the faith of our childhood or youth. Now we are seeking for a faith that we can hold with adult integrity, clear intelligence, and open-eyed honesty. So, many of us need in this way to renew or replace the faith we lost – to fill the old vacancy in a new way, to see faith with fresh eyes, or better – to let a mature, refreshed faith become the new eyes through which we see life.

Others of us have faith, but it is weak or damaged. We feel that we are walking on a sprained ankle or trying to enjoy a delicious meal with a bad tooth. Perhaps we have been spiritually undernourished, malnourished, or mistreated and injured by a church or religious family member. We don’t have confidence in our faith, and it brings us more pain than comfort. Or we have a faith that is little more than a set of concepts to us. This kind of faith is often called nominal, meaning “in name only.” It doesn’t affect our behavior, at least, not positively. Perhaps for some of us, faith is like a vaccination – we have just enough in our system to keep us from getting “infected” with a full-blown “case” of vibrant faith. There’s faith there, but it needs to be “set on fire”; it needs to come alive; we need to really “catch” it. In these ways some of us need to invigorate the faith we already have.

I don’t know about you, but I can see myself and many others in this description of those in a “faith crisis.” I especially recognize McLaren’s description of those whose faith is like a vaccination, giving them just enough Jesus to prevent them from catching the real thing.

As I stated earlier, the reasons for the dwindling numbers and declining social impact of the church in our culture are many and multi-faceted. And, I might add, the responsibility for more than a few of these problems lies with the church itself. Overall, I think it is safe to say that as a body, we have done a generally poor job of carrying out the mandate given us by the Master before he departed for the heavenly realms.

One major reason for this situation flows from the fact that the church has lost focus on Christ, who and what he was and is, what he accomplished, and what he expects of us. Without this knowledge, a Christian lacks a functional compass with which he or she may navigate through the shoals of daily living. Further, when the focus on the biblical Christ is either weak or lost, an individual lacks the basic information needed to truly make a decision as to whether or not to follow Christ. I dare say that there are untold numbers of self-proclaimed Christians out there who, other than the standard “he died for my sins” teachings, have no clue as to the true magnificence of Christ’s being.

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, in their excellent book Jesus Manifesto, speak directly to this situation and how it impacts the most fundamental question each person who faces Christ must answer:

Can our problems really be caused by something so basic and simple as losing sight of Christ? We believe the answer is a resounding Yes. Answers other than Christ to the problems of the church today mean we are more into solvents and solutions. For that reason, this global, Google world needs a meta-narrative more than ever, and the Jesus Story is the interpreting system of all other systems in this hour…

Sweet and Viola then state that each of us needs to answer one specific question and if you think about it, every other thing that follows hinges upon how we answer that question. It is the same question Jesus put to his disciples:

“Who do you say that I am?”

I have come to the conclusion that the church has, as a whole, done a poor job of educating its members on the importance of answering this question and furthermore, our efforts at educating new believers on the incredible nature of this being we call “the Christ.” We have played the “personal savior” and “Son of God” tapes until they have lost much of their meaning. Although the importance of Christ’s role in the process of restoration of right standing with God and the remission of sins is a key element in his mission, but it is only an element. And his status as the Son of the Living God, as evidenced by Jesus’ response to Peter’s answer, is also highly significant, but this, too, is only one aspect of Christ’s identity and his agenda for coming to earth.

I am of the strong belief that until we educate new Christians (and reeducate established ones) on the truly magnificent nature of Jesus Christ, who and what he is, all that he accomplished, and his agenda for the restoration of God’s plan on earth, we cannot hope to fulfill the mandate we have been given as the Body of Christ.

I am hesitant to give a highly specific prescription for how churches might go about this educational mission, primarily because each church is a unique entity in terms of its congregational demographics, its denominational affiliation (or lack thereof), its theological orientation, and its particular mission. However, several areas of commonality may be mentioned.

To be continued…..

©L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Today

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If you ask most people what Christians believe, they can tell you, “Christians believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that Jesus rose from the dead.” But if you ask the average person how Christians live, they are struck silent. We have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else; they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way. And doctrine is not very attractive, even if it’s true. Few people are interested in a religion that has nothing to say to the world and offers them only life after death, when what people are really wondering is whether there is life before death.

Shane Claiborne

(from Irresistible Revolution)

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Essentials for the Spiritual Life: Self-Mastery (Part Three)

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Mick Turner

(continued from Part Two)

At first glance, it would seem this process of personal mastery and changing problematic behaviors would be simple. We just identify those behaviors and make up our minds not to engage in them anymore. However, as anyone who has ever tried to change deeply ingrained behaviors will attest, this process is far more difficult that it seems. Further, we are often our own worst enemies when it comes to this sort of personal mastery.

 From the time I was five years old I have been an avid baseball fan. I played the sport throughout my school years and, once I became an adult, played competitive softball for many years.

I normally played middle infield, either second base or shortstop. For many years I used the same softball glove. In fact, I used it so long that the strings kept breaking, all the padding was gone out of the pocket and the leather was cracked in several strategic places. Nevertheless I refused to buy a new glove, in spite of the frequent protestations of my teammates.

The reason was simple. I was comfortable with this old glove. It molded to my hand perfectly over the years and it felt reassuring to put in on before I took the field. All too often, however, I would catch a hard line drive right in the pocket and my hand would sting, then remain numb for several minutes. Still, I wanted no part of a new glove.

A new glove, as anyone who has played the sport knows, is a real pain for awhile. It feels funny, awkward and stiff. It is easy to make errors with a new glove, at least until it is broken in properly. No, my old glove was find thank you very much.

One day our third baseman wasn’t able to make the game and I played the so-called “hot corner.” Things went okay for the first two innings. Then, in the third inning the batter hit a hard liner right at me. I responded quickly and raised my glove, only to have the ball break right through the ancient webbing an hit me square in the forehead, knocking me out cold.

Two days later I bought a new glove.

My experience with my old softball glove is not unlike my experience with the behaviors that flow from my old self. No matter how much I try to take off the old and put on the new, the old keeps rearing its head and biting me. I suspect that I am not alone in this predicament.

Many of my old behaviors, like my old softball glove, may hurt me time and time again. But, they are comfortable in the sense that they are familiar and predictable. My old self resists change and it is here that we are vulnerable to our habitual responses to life, however unhealthy and painful they may be.

There is no need to complicate this issue of self-mastery beyond what it is. On a very practical level, mastery of self involves nothing more complex or arcane than saying no to self. Granted, this is often easier said than done, but let’s not kid ourselves by inserting all sorts of esoteric metaphysics or psychoanalytic mumbo jumbo into the equation. Like James Allen, let’s cut right to the chase:

By his personal indulgences a man demeans himself, forfeits self-respect to the extent and frequency of his indulgence, and deprives himself of exemplary influence and power to accomplish lasting good in his work in the world.

Perhaps one of the most vital areas where we must gain self-mastery is our tongues. Jesus, when he was being questioned by Pilate, chose to remain silent. Likewise, there are many occasions where our best recourse is to be still and say nothing. This is especially hard when we feel we have been wronged in some way or perceive some sort of encroachment has been committed. Still, learning to hold our tongue in such situations will eventually reap great dividends both in terms of self-control and relations with others.

Think about it for a moment. If you desire to be more balanced in your emotions and harmonious in your relationships, it is often best to maintain silence. Our world if filled with those who engage in excessive talk and empty diatribes. Even those who are moderately discerning can tell when a person is speaking weak, empty words. The control of the tongue is essential if we want to achieve success in any endeavor. Most often, it is better to not talk about what you are doing, but instead, just devote yourself to doing it. That way, when you are finished, your work speaks for itself.

The Book of James clearly warns us about the potential dangers of the unbridled tongue and the necessity of getting it under control:

For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way. We can make a large horse go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth. And a small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go, even though the winds are strong. In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches. But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself. People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. Sometimes is praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. (James 3: 2-10)

to be continued….

(c) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

 

Essentials of the Spiritual Life: Self-Mastery (Part Two)

(Continued from Part One)

As we have seen, establishing and maintaining self-discipline has many rewards, the chief of which is an internal sense of strength and confidence. Rather than some willy-nilly, unfocused, and nebulous sort of confidence, the confidence that comes from being a master of oneself is a practical, concrete and highly efficient trait that serves as an anchor in life’s sometimes turbulent seas. Allen concludes:

 With the practice of self-discipline a man begins to live, for he then commences to rise above the inward confusion and to adjust his conduct to a steadfast centre within himself. He ceases to follow where inclination leads him, reins in the steed of his desires, and lives in accordance with the dictates of reason and wisdom.

 We all seek a North Star, a point of reference to which we can align ourselves and thereby judge our position. Without such a point of reference, we waste valuable time and energy, flitting here and wandering there and ending up nowhere. John Wesley wisely taught that when seeking such an anchor for our lives, we can turn to four sources: tradition, scripture, reason, and experience. During the course of my life, there have been occasions where I have used any one or combination of these sources to make proper judgments and reach vital decisions. Yet more than any other source, I have found greatest value in that “inner light” which God deposited in me. Known by many names, this is indeed the “light which lights every man that comes into the world” as John so aptly put it in the famous Prologue to his gospel. It is this same inner luminous core that George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement, spoke of as the radiant wellspring of Christian revelation.

 If we are to  reach any degree of mastery over our lower self, we must establish, deepen, and maintain steadfast contact with this inner light. James Allen, speaking in context of establishing an anchor for our lives, describes the process in very succinct terms:

 A man does not commence to truly live until he finds an immovable center within himself on which to regulate his life, and from which to draw his peace. If he trusts to that which fluctuates, he also will fluctuate; if he leans upon that which may be withdrawn he will fall and be bruised; if he looks for satisfaction in perishable accumulations he will starve for happiness in the midst of plenty…Be contented that others shall manage or mismanage their own little kingdom, and see to it that you reign strongly over your own. Your entire well-being and the well-being of the whole world lies there. You have a conscience, follow it; you have a mind, clarify it; you have a judgment, use and improve it; you have a will, employ and strengthen it; you have knowledge, increase it; there is a light within your soul, watch it, tend it, encourage it, shield it from the winds of passion, and help it to burn with a steadier and ever steadier radiance. Leave the world and come back to yourself. Think as a man, live as a man. Be rich in yourself, be complete in yourself. Find the abiding center within you and obey it.

 Often the Holy Spirit brings to our attention areas of our thought, feeling, action, or belief that are either inaccurate or no longer serve a useful purpose. It then is incumbent upon us that we cast aside these aspects of our being. Paul speaks to this theme repeatedly when he tells us to take off the old and to put on the new. James Allen tells us:

 He who would be clothed in new garments must first cast away the old, and   who would find the True must sacrifice the false. The gardener digs in the weeds in order that they may feed, with their decay, the plants that are good for food; and the Tree of Wisdom can only flourish on the compost of uprooted follies.

…….to be continued

(c) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

 

Essentials for the Spiritual Life: Self Mastery (Part One)

Cover of Byways to Blessedness

L.D. Turner

If you believe your situation is hopeless realize this: that is a perception that is both erroneous and self-defeating and further, it is from the very pit of Hell. God can and will help you if you ask and this is a reality that has been proven over and over again in countless lives. Does that mean you have nothing to do but plead your case before God and wait for him to fix your problem? No. What it does mean is that God will supply you with all you need in terms of perseverance, fortitude, and inner resources. You, however, have to do the leg work. James Allen, in his own straightforward, no-nonsense way, lays it out clearly:

However tightly a man may have bound himself round he can always unbind himself. Into whatever morasses of trouble and trackless wastes of perplexity he may have ignorantly wandered  he can always find his way out again, can always recover the lost highway of uninvolved simplicity which leads straight and clear, to the sunny city of wise and blessed action. But he will never do this by sitting down and weeping in despair, nor by complaining and worrying and aimlessly wishing he were differently situated. His dilemma calls for alertness, logical thought, and calm calculation. His position requires that he shall strongly command himself; that he shall think and search, and rouse himself to strenuous and unremitting exertion in order to regain himself. Worry and anxiety only serve to heighten the gloom and exaggerate the magnitude of the difficulty. It is a great day in the life of a man (though at the time he knows it not) when bewildering perplexities concerning the mystery of life take possession of his mind, for it signifies that his era of dead indifference, animal sloth, of mere vegetative happiness, has come to an end, and that henceforth he is to live as an aspiring, self-evolving being. No longer a mere human animal, he will now begin to live as a man…

 

I don’t know about you or your past, but speaking of my own history I can readily identify more than a few occasions when I found myself in a “morass of troubles” and even more often, discovered that I had lost valuable time and energy by wandering down “trackless wastes of perplexity.”

The only way out of this morass of confusion and perplexity is to gain some degree of personal mastery in general and mastery of the mind in particular. Let’s face facts and not seek to become overly intellectual or get bogged down in a mire and muck of philosophical sophistication. The reality of the situation is actually quite simple: until you establish control over your thoughts, feelings, and behavior you life is going to be characterized by instability and difficulty. Until you develop personal discipline, you will exist but never truly live.

 

Referring to an undisciplined person, James Allen states:

He does not intelligently reflect upon life, and lives in a series of sensations, longings, and confused memories which are unrelated to any central idea or principle. A man whose inner life is so ungoverned and chaotic must necessarily manifest this confusion in the visible conditions of his outer life in the world; and though for a time, running with the stream of his desires, he may draw to himself amore or less large share of the outer necessities and comforts of life, he never achieves any real success nor accomplishes any real good, and sooner or later worldly failure and disaster are inevitable, as the direct result of the inward failure to properly adjust and regulate those mental forces which make the outer life.

 

I still clearly recall the time I first read these words by James Allen, along with the above cited comments about taking a meandering route down “trackless wastes of perplexity.” If ever a message described my undisciplined nature, especially related to my thought life, this one surely did. Allen’s words hit me between the eyes with the impact of a 2×4. It was, in short, one of those personal epiphanies that we are blessed with from time to time. I’ll be the first to admit that at the time it didn’t especially seem like a blessing, but in retrospect, that is exactly what it was. It was this revelation, engineered no doubt by divine forces, that began the process of a profound change in my thought life. Did that transformation take place overnight? Of course not; but it did take place and I am forever thankful. Allen, in his remarkable little work entitled, Byways to Blessedness, continues by describing the necessity of getting a grip on our cognitive life:

Before a man accomplish anything of an enduring nature in the world he must first of all acquire some measure of success in the management of his own mind. This is as mathematical a truism as that two and two are four, for, “out of the heart are the issues of life.” (Here Allen is referring to Proverbs 4:23). If a man cannot govern the forces within himself, he cannot hold a firm hand upon the outer activities which form his visible life. On the other hand, as a man succeeds, in governing himself he rises to higher and higher levels of power and usefulness and success in the world.

to be continued………

(c) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

 

Wisdom for Personal Reflection

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…..we feel a massive disconnect in the church today, and we believe that the major disease of today’s church is JDD: Jesus Deficit Disorder. The person of Jesus has become increasingly politically incorrect and is being replaced by the language of “justice,” “morality,” “values,” and “leadership principles.” The world likes Jesus; they just don’t like the church. But increasingly, the church likes the church, yet it doesn’t like Jesus. . . . . . . Something is wrong when it’s easier for some Christians to think of the world without Christ than the world without Bach or the Beatles or Bono. When we dethrone Jesus Christ from His rightful place, we tarnish the face of Christianity and redefine it out of existence. . . . . . . Can our problems really be caused by something so basic and simple as losing sight of Christ? We believe the answer is a resounding “Yes.” Answers other than Christ to the problems of the church today mean that we are more into solvents than solutions. For that reason, this global, Google world needs a meta-narrative more than ever and the Jesus Story is the interpreting system of all other systems. In this hour, the testimony that we feel God has called us to bear revolves around the primacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Specifically, we need to decide how we are going to answer one question. . . . . . . “Who do you say that I am?” is the question required of every generation, and every generation must answer it for itself.

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

(from Jesus Manifesto)