Tag Archives: Christ’s love

Being Found

Posted on by

0

“Then Jesus told them this parable: ‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country to go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” (Luke 15:4-6)

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

“Amazing grace–how sweet the sound–
That saved a wretch like Me!
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.”

Being found. It implies that we must have been lost. It implies we might have been lonely. We don’t know which way to go. Maybe we’re in darkness and we’re frightened.

Imagine being found by Someone who loves you deeply; without measure.

The truth is, God seeks us even as we may be seeking him. In fact, his Spirit seeks us out when we may not be actively looking for God. He knows we’re lonely, frightened. He’s aware that we don’t know where to turn next. Like sheep who’ve gone astray, we wander without purpose.

Once the Shepherd finds his sheep, he rejoices to have it in his arms, taking it home to green pastures.

What joy should fill our hearts knowing that he celebrates in having found us. What joy should fill our hearts knowing that we no longer need to be alone. We don’t have to be afraid; we know the darkness is gone. Forever.

The Letter

Posted on by

0

(The story here is a version of what might have happened when the slave Onesimus returned to his master, Philemon. Purely conjecture, it is nevertheless partly based on facts.)

I heard the door of the outer chamber open and close and went to investigate. Quartus stood with Onesimus kneeling next him. Onesimus stared down, holding out a sealed letter.

“Onesimus has returned, master,” Quartus said.

“I see that, Quartus; you may leave us.” I was full of conflicting emotions. Anger. Sadness. Confusion. Mostly relief. “The letter, Onesimus; what is this letter? Hand it to me.”

He stood and handed me the letter. He remained standing with his eyes averted while I read the whole thing through. In fact, I had to read it twice. It was from Paul, the apostle, imprisoned in Rome. The letter was a plea on behalf of my slave–a request to accept him back now that he’d become a follower of Christ.

It was a good letter and he made good arguments.

“Do you know what this means, Onesimus?” I asked him.

Onesimus nodded, his eyes still averted. “Master, I cannot speak as Paul does. His words are much more convincing. Of course, they are or I wouldn’t be here. All I know is that now I belong to Christ Jesus. I was freed from the bonds of my sin to serve Him. I suppose you could say I’m a slave in two ways; first to God and then because I’m still bound to you. That’s why I’ve returned.”

Yes, he knew exactly what it meant.

“You may go to your quarters, Onesimus.” He left and I sat down heavily on the chair by the table.

He’d made it all the way to Rome! Somehow he’d found Paul and now he was a follower of Christ and a brother. Of course, he knew what could happen to a runaway slave. But he returned.

I got up and paced the room. I pounded my fist on the table where the letter lay. I don’t know why I was so agitated. Paul’s letter requested nothing more than what my Lord would do. But forgiveness is hard, even when it’s someone you care about. And I had always cared about Onesimus. Maybe we hadn’t always seen him as anything but a house slave, but we cared about him.

I put my head in my hands and I prayed. I thanked God that Onesimus had made it safely to Rome and found Paul. It was a blessing that he could be of use to Paul so I thanked God for that as well. Then I prayed that God would give our household the willingness to accept my decision because we are bound together in love with Christ as our head. I sighed deeply before calling him to me.

“Onesimus, come!” Once again, he stood before me, his eyes cast down.

“Look at me,” I said. A man is what I saw through my eyes. But now, because of what had happened for Onesimus in Rome, I saw someone else in my heart.

I put my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “Welcome home, Brother. It will be a pleasure having you here serving again.”

Facing Adversity

Posted on by

0

The journey of spiritual maturity isn’t always easy. From the first tentative steps we take as Christ followers, we experience hard times. Adversity comes to everyone, not just those who live in obedience to the sinful nature.

Yet with our eyes focused on Jesus, adversity doesn’t have the power over us it once had. If we’re living in his presence and listening for his voice, we understand more about who Christ is and we grow deeper in our relationship with him.

As we stay in step with the Holy Spirit, we experience less of the troubles we once made for ourselves. However, when those inevitable times of adversity come, we’re promised that they’re only for a specified time, which God has already ordained.

We also know that God is present in any circumstance, good or bad, and provides the resources we need to get through. The resource may come in the form of another person’s assistance, finances, a specific need for our health, or the prayers of the saints.

When hard times come and put us to the test, God always does his part; what is expected of us? In my experience, relying on God and deepening my conscious contact with him brings peace. Rather than running full-tilt to try and solve a problem, he’s shown me it’s better if I slow down. That doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means I slow down enough to hear what he has to say to me.

“I tell the Lord my troubles and difficulties, and wait for Him to give me
the answers to them,” said one man of God. “And it is wonderful how a
matter that looked very dark will in prayer become clear as crystal by the
help of God’s Spirit.” I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their
prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down
and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them.
Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor’s doorbell,
and then running away as fast as he can go. ~ E.M. Bounds

Scripture says we can rely on the power of God to help us through times of adversity. “We are struck down, but not destroyed.”

Jesus warned that in this world we would have trouble, then assured his disciples that he himself had overcome the world (John 16:33).

Following the Master means denying ourselves, which is to die to our rights; carrying our cross, which is to die to our old nature; and to follow, which is obedience.

What does that mean for us? Trials are bound to come in life even with our new life in Christ. But with the power of God working through us, we can overcome any situation and live the abundant life promised to us.

Without God, we’re helpless; but with him all things are possible

Fleshing Out a Flannelgraph

Posted on by

0

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

When I was a child going to Sunday school in the basement of my church they used “flannel graphs” to tell Bible stories. A flannel graph consisted of a flannel-covered board on an easel and cloth Bible characters. The characters stuck to the flannel as you placed them then peeled them while telling the story. There was Joseph and his brothers; Noah, the ark and the animals; and of course, Jesus.

The stories I heard about Jesus in Sunday school always made him sound larger than life. He worked miracles healing people and made a little bit of food go around to feed a multitude. He was a pretty awesome Jesus.

Then I’d go upstairs to big church and the pastor’s message about Jesus was that he died on a cross for me. That kept Jesus in the larger than life realm. Not knowing exactly what a crucifixion entailed, I assumed it was pretty bad and that I was lucky Jesus would do such a thing for me. The pastor talked about how angry God was about sin and how much I needed his forgiveness. He was a pretty awesome God too, but for different reasons. I made a decision to ask God to forgive me and asked Jesus to come into my heart.

God and Jesus fell into the larger than life category for a long time. And there’s nothing wrong with that; they are larger than life. But something was missing and it kept me from really knowing how much I could benefit from the decision I’d made about Jesus. I didn’t know it then, but what I was missing was Jesus with flesh on.

Skip ahead several years. I had become confused and disillusioned by church, leaving it to try my own way of living. I still believed in God, but he wasn’t part of my worldview. Then something happened to create in me a hunger for him and I returned to the church. Because I was hungry for God, I began to read my Bible. In fact, I devoured it. Guess what I found?

I found a Jesus with flesh on.

I don’t remember the folks in the church where I grew up talking about Jesus as a man. They must have, but I was young and mostly listening to the anger part. I never really got a glimpse of Jesus with flesh on until I read about him for myself. As I traveled through Galilee and the Judean countryside with him and his followers I watched him interact with people like a real person would. I saw him express emotions like anger, joy, and grief.

He got tired and slept. He got hungry and ate. He ate with friends and with some Pharisees (who weren’t always counted among the friendly). He worshiped on the Sabbath. He engaged in normal human activities found easily if you look in scripture.

Maybe it’s the storyteller in me that looks for what’s hidden. I look at more than just the words and read between the lines. For starters, he was a carpenter. Imagine Jesus banging his finger with a hammer and getting one of those black fingernails. We know he had sisters and brothers and though we aren’t told much about his childhood, it must have been a fairly normal one with playtime, chores, and “school”.

Then his ministry began. Look at the loaves and fishes story. After Jesus multiplied the food for the crowds, he sent his disciples on to Bethsaida “while he dismissed the crowd.” (Mark 6:45) Call me goofy, but I see Jesus talking to people as they leave as if he knows them personally. It’s not a “Hey, all of you, clear out of here now” type of dismissal. It’s the type of thing a host would do, saying goodbye to as many as possible and seeing that their needs are met. Anyway, that’s the Jesus I was getting to know.

I got to know a Jesus who was a single man all his life while many his age would have been betrothed or already married. Jesus lost a relative, John the Baptist, to a cruel death and took time to grieve alone before he was called again to minister to the crowds. Jesus’ closest relatives misunderstood him to the point that they tried to manipulate his actions, thinking they knew better what he should do. At a crucial moment, his best friends deserted him. One of his friends committed suicide.

After becoming familiar with this Jesus, I realized I need the God who’s larger than life and truly awesome. But I also need this Jesus that has been human and can understand what it’s like to be me. Many of us have no mate, have grieved the loss of a close relative, are genuinely misunderstood, and have been deserted by a friend.

Jesus with flesh on makes him able to relate to us in every problem and in every success. God wants to get up close and personal. He wants us to know he’s not just a flat personality we peel and stick to our circumstances when we need him. He’s a fleshed out God who relates to every situation in which we find ourselves. And his desire is that we’ll get to know him as that pretty awesome Jesus.

My Big, Big World

Posted on by

1

The ringing phone woke me up yesterday morning after I’d been up quite late the night before, unable to sleep. Even without glasses, I could see that the person on caller ID was someone I knew. When she began to speak, I knew her voice immediately.

She introduced herself and told me she had been reading, as part of her morning quiet time, a meditation in The Secret Place. She noticed the author was from the same city and state she lived in, so decided to look the author up in the phone book and give her a call.

The author was me.

All the time she was talking, I assumed she knew to whom she was speaking; then she asked me what church I attended. To her surprise, we attend the same church. In fact, three weeks ago, I sat next to her and her husband in the back row.

“Oh, now I know you,” she said. “I just didn’t connect the last name with your first name.” We chatted some more and then  rang off, saying something like, “See you Sunday.”

I wondered later if she said to herself, “Small World,” as many would be prone to do considering the circumstances. The idiom seems to fit because you feel like the world keeps bringing people into your life that were there all the time, unbeknownst to you.

But I say, “What a Big, Big World.”

Since I decided to follow Christ, He’s enlarged my space. In fact, He’s given me the whole world. By introducing me to the people of His Church, my “family” increased immediately.

He also gives me the world He wants to save. I’m warned to not conform to the world and its standards, but encouraged to remember what the darkness was like. From that attitude, I’m more able to see people who need Christ’s love shown to them just as I did (and still do).

With Jesus, I have a new relationship with the world which takes into consideration His agenda for saving those He loves and helping to bring them into a relationship with Him. “Go,” Christ says, into the world He created.

Formerly, my life reflected worldly values and behavior. That was a Small Space in which to live. I have to admit the temptations of the world are always there. But now, my fruitful life includes everyone I meet on the path God’s put me on. Each of them challenges me in some way to walk more closely with Christ, becoming a little more like Him every day.