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November 24, 2022

Twin Companions

Training is key.

Entering into the “Jesus life” sets a person in motion (like a theater production) into something much larger than a single First Act.

Don’t misunderstand. Entering God’s kingdom through spiritual rebirth marks a profound start on the journey. For the gift of sins forgiven we contritely thank him from the deep of our being, offering a resounding, “Yes, Lord Jesus. You are mine. I am yours!”

Yet now the journey commences. The Second Act enters. Our larger story within his own begins to unfold.

Life in Jesus was never prescribed as a single transaction. It is not (in athletic language) a sprint. Our marathon life in him carries forward into and through all our days. Each day affecting change as we offer responses to him in love.

Going forward we no longer live life “alone” on our own. We journey together now, with Jesus and his ever-expanding family.

What does it mean when one speaks of his ‘with-God’ adventure toward and throughout eternity. As the scripture informs us, we’re “no longer our own.” We are “purchased with a price”.*

Twin companions mark us – Believing, Following.

We believe.

Into all the coming days of our earthly pilgrimage, we place our real-time goings and doings at his disposal. Believing means venturing forward, trusting God as best we know how.

We follow.

As with any kind of journey it helps to know in clear terms what we are aiming for – where we are headed. Where are we to find ourselves “at the end of the day”?

When he was a young man my dust-bowl-era father travelled by freight trains from Oklahoma to California. He did not ride just any train that came along. The trains he boarded – all of them – were west or northwest-bound. Why? Because California, his travel target, was that direction (“go west young man”).

A Jesus-follower makes one direction their aim. And here is the important thing, the truly big thing when traveling forward on the Jesus Route. Our aim is him. God brings us to him, Jesus. All centers on him. Christ is both our destination and our God-incarnate travel companion.

November 17, 2022November 17, 2022

A Kind Of Life

“He loves us too much to leave us as we are”

The phrase speaks of God’s heart poised our direction and of his mission to shape us over time to look more and more and more like his Son, Jesus. Why would an apprentice aim for anything less?

If we do, in fact, believe him – if we have entrusted to Jesus our eternal future, claiming him as master of all – what is our place in this relationship?

As we look to him, setting our attention his direction, we literally choose him over our selves. We see this as the only intelligent way to move forward in this life. To trust and respond to his invitation, embracing his instructions in living the good kind of life. The quality and manner of life he himself knew on earth as a human.

His life. That is what he offers, what he calls us to.

Astonishing yet soundly true.

An important truth enters here. As with my friend R.S. and the snail tale, we display through our actions the things that we are coming to believe.

Being forgiven our sins is wondrous and will remain so to every person choosing to follow Christ. Yet this tender provision (being forgiven of all our wrongs) is just the beginning of salvation’s walk.

Forgiveness is a doorway through which we pass to grow, to become like someone we have not fully yet become. Fully resembling Jesus is no small dream. Still, this is our aim. We know it in the deep place of our being. The New Testament brings the thing into very sharp focus.

“My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you*”

Look again at the wording, “in the pains of childbirth”.

Intense, right.

Nothing feels more challenging nor appealing to the apprentice than having his character transformed to well resemble that of the savior. Nothing.

My dinnertime visit to the college campus left my tastebuds stirred. May we now sense God’s open invitation, “Come. Taste. See.”

The richest of flavors await – joy, peace, righteousness, love (and more) – “until Christ is formed in you.”*

Next we may ask, “what is the process then? How does it happen, this ‘becoming like Jesus’? How does the walk unfold?”

The answer is simpler than we likely imagine. One step at a time.

Training is key.

November 10, 2022November 10, 2022

Nature Study

My engineer friend from South Asia, R.S., knows something about shapes. Long after he had, in faith, opened the door to his own god-shaped space within, R.S. was seeing his professional life thrive amidst shapes and designs. Science-research and revelation took him there.

Once a person comes to faith – trusts his life to Jesus – he starts becoming a new kind of person. In Bible language, the old has gone, the new is here!*. He begins the long journey of “growing into” a new kind of living and thinking, a new kind of “being”.

A scientist growing in Christlikeness? An engineer training in righteousness? Imagine. Scripture comfortably speaks of growing in Jesus as “training in righteousness”.*

Like an infant child who is born to thrive and grow and mature, the new Christian is to change. In most instances over time his belief in Jesus gets to be “seen”. This is the calling of every believer. So that our lives show on the outside what we confess to be true on the inside.

We know that taking thoughtful close-up looks at nature has at times led to mind-boggling scientific insights. So, my engineer/professor friend, pondering one day over the created (especially oceanic) world, caught a revelation. And promptly took his theory to the classroom.

“Whenever you think of trying out a new idea”, Dr. R.S. urged his university students, “you will want to explore what the natural world can offer you.

“Suppose, for instance, I visit the seashore. At the water’s edge, I spot a snail, one of those cone-shaped kind. The creature reminds me of a project I am on at the lab – a petroleum industry drill bit. This little creature from the world of nature may carry within its design important keys to manufacturing a more effective drill bit”.

Because R.S. had confidence in (believed in) his theory about nature’s role in research, he acted on it. He wrote of it. He lectured and demonstrated to his students that his thoughts were likely based on what is true and what is helpful and real.

If you are a Jesus-follower, you are made for formation. If simply given permission Jesus will change you and you will come to show forth his ways, his nature.

He invites, “Come. Be with me, be my apprentice”.

November 4, 2022

Abundant

As we hunger on after God he ensures that plenty of life-enhancing nutrients come our way. With him as supplier we don’t fret about scarcity. Rather, we take comfort, even delight, in this wondrous fact. His kingdom into which we have entered and now live overflows in plenty.

‘Supply chain interruption’. The phrase is seldom voiced among those abiding in Jesus, living under his governance. And part of the great news is this – the currency of our Lord’s kingdom. We live by faith. God himself supplies the faith (kingdom currency) needed, and it never ever diminishes.

Everyone has a faith story, even if it is not yet clearly known to them.

We grow to live our lives rooted in things that we believe. . . What we believe about ourselves. What we believe or disbelieve about God, and about the world. Our belief or non-belief about an afterlife beyond the grave.

A person’s behaviors (their routine actions in life) make it clear as to what they actually do believe, what they hold as truth. More about that later.

I first got introduced to the Christian faith as a young child. It was only afterward that I gave much thought to spiritual hunger.

I think everyone gets hungry for God. It is a little like the natural hunger I had that day at the college campus. Yet it is not the same. My mother and father were moved to yearn after God in their time of deep sorrow at the drowning death of their young son. But, whether through a great crisis or simply in a time of honest questionings we sense there is a “something” missing.

For some of us, this hungering is a thing we have not given much thought to. Yet most all people across the world have deep life questions. And we feel the yearning for the something that is beyond ourselves.

In truth we are yearning for him – God. We thirst for his help and we yearn for his companionship. It is him, the One who is ready and able to fill up the hungry space inside us. Indeed, the one by whom and for whom we were made.

French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal offered a word picture,

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” *

October 27, 2022October 27, 2022

Hungering On

We humans are different from other creatures – birds and fish, beasts making up earth’s animal kingdom. As with animals, humans do of course get hungry. We grow thirsty. We are fueled with a drive to reproduce.

And yet.

We stand much apart from the families of cows and of dogs and of giraffes.

Humans have souls. Another way of putting it is we are souls. Among the most ancient writings found in what is called “wisdom literature” – we are offered a remarkable idea. Human beings are created as “image bearers” of God.

This is a big thought. That we share important qualities found inside the nature of God himself. Though we certainly are not God, nor could we ever become God.

Ancient Bible texts make the bold claim, “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27 NLT).

For some of our readers, such an idea as this may come as a new thought. Let us look a little closer.

Assume that we are made by God for relationship with him. If so, such a condition might give rise to a certain nagging hunger within us. Such a hunger does exist. It is a kind of hunger straining within every culture and among every generation. We grapple with the yearning again and again. We are hungry creatures indeed.

For me, my hunger for God went like this.

In my most quiet and private and honest moments I sensed a “knowing” – an awareness that something was missing.

“What if the something is God” I wondered, “my designer, my maker, a someone who keeps me going?”

Opening the ancient texts (the Bible) my questions continued. . .

“What if God is the one being in all the cosmos who knows me through and through? “And suppose, furthermore, that he is perfectly wise and is the full embodiment of what we feebly call love.

“What if he has fashioned me so that he and I – along with others – may actually enter a living relationship together. Growing ever richer in peace and joy (inseparable companions of love), continuing on and on forever?”

This was, I realized, what the Bible was telling me.

My appetite grew.

October 20, 2022October 20, 2022

Longings

“Grant me the courage to change the things I can”.*

I had been a rebel and my stubborn self had grown weary of the struggle. I was finally ready to give up.

For me, giving up meant coming to my senses. It meant the scary but good decision to yield over my will. The road ahead could likely see its own bumpy stretches but I sensed the journey might go much better if I trusted my life (gave myself over) to Jesus Christ. For this to happen, though, I would need to keep wanting him. I found myself wanting to want him.

“Cause me to desire you, Lord”. I offered this cry through the next several years.

Change of character takes time and it begins with turning. Turning a new direction. Desire plays a big role here. The prayer was voiced again and again, “Increase my desire. Grow my desire, please, Lord”.

Wanting God to help change us is akin to growing an appetite.

.The time was the mid-90s. The setting, Tulsa University

“Delicious smell!”, I thought as I tilted my head and let my nostrils draw in the aroma. Few things stir a person’s appetite like catching the whiff of a hot meal in the making, especially following hours on a near-empty stomach.

My volunteer work had brought me to the college apartment complex in hopes of getting in a short visit with some international student friends. I had tried timing my arrival to avoid disturbing their evening meal. The sweet smell of chicken curry floated in the air. Taste buds stirred and my lips moistened.

Desire for a changed life, an entirely changed life, is a little like that.

We all know that natural desire comes through simply being human. We sensed it from our earliest moments, within mere seconds of birth. We craved air right away. You. Me. Each of us fought for our first breath.

Thankfully, we do not remember those stressful entry moments into life. But being human is this way, desires pulling at the whole person. In time we detect somehow that our stirrings are not limited to desires of our body. Our soul, our spirit – those nonphysical interior features of us – hunger as well.

At the top of the appetite list, lies our most meaningful kind of hunger. Our heart hungers. We hunger for something (for someone) beyond the tangible material world. We are made to belong to God. What’s more, we are (astonishingly) designed for routine, joyful interaction with him. His earliest intention for us is that we may grow into the fully human people we were meant to become. The Scripture invites,

“Taste and see. . the Lord is good.”*

October 13, 2022October 13, 2022

Bring it

Our old self is the self of rebellion. The prophet levels the charge without apology, “We have turned – every one of us – to our own way.”

Change must come. God through Jesus would bring it.

The Spirit of God has a way of very often beckoning us nearer in toward himself. The closing pages of scripture supply us a touching image depicting this, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone would hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and have fellowship with him and he with me.”*

Jesus is a bonifide historical one-of-a-kind person. This brown-skinned itinerate messenger, his voice carrying a middle-eastern accent, brought the reality of God to earth in tangible form. He is relevant as ever.

Living out his righteous, unique, generous life among us, Jesus gave himself to all humanity as God’s offering, paying in his sacrificial dying the penalty for all our wrongs, our sins. His crucifixion death secured complete freedom from guilt as well as from judgment in the afterlife for those who trust their lives to him.

For the Jesus-follower this all marks the beginning point, because to know Jesus is to grow in Jesus. In bringing us to himself he has ushered us into a brand new kind of living. It is companionship-centered. Jesus has laid claim to our present and future. He “companions” us, as children of the heavenly father into growth toward and into his own likeness. Once again, the thing Jesus brings to us is change. Beautiful, essential, transformational change.

We don’t easily drift when remaining near enough Jesus to feel his breath. The word plateau is a foreign term to those entering God’s kingdom with the aim of keeping company with the kingdom’s king, to train or apprentice under him in the way of love. The journey ahead is not static but dynamic.

Jesus came to change us. Are we In?

While it’s true the change begins the minute we first turn and yield to him, Jesus sets out to transform us day by day, little by little. If transformation is to happen at all it will mostly come by centimeters not yards. The Serenity Prayer suggests an appealing pace,

“Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time”.

* Revelation 3:20 ESV

October 6, 2022

A New Look

Marathoner or sprinter, the athlete runs with focus, keeping the goal ever in view.

The best kinds of changes tend to often happen over time. Changes of character, changes of growing into the kind of person one is trusting or hoping to become. As we shift our attention from our own selves redirecting our spiritual gaze to the person of Jesus (the power source of a transformed life) a lot of old, unprofitable things begin simply dropping away.

Once the sprinter hears the crack of the starting gun her focus is laser-like. One thing alone matters. The finish line. Even when circling the track at points where the finish tape is momentarily out of view, the athlete keeps in some way holding that image constantly before her mind’s eye.

In my broken state as a teen I had been fixated on me. . . my wants, my self-centered ego. One Old Testament prophet casts a flood light about the soul, “We have turned – every one – to his own way”.*

Finally, in all the mess of my self-inflicted pain, I looked away to God (memo: prayers of mothers are underrated). And right away, then and there, my head turned his way, a curious thing called wisdom started taking form. Redirecting my line of vision. A radical shift in focus had happened, spurred from the aching heart of a wayward teen. turned me Jesus’ direction. I didn’t know it but he would soon be positioning before a new starting block. What a run lay ahead!

Anyone who has ever competed in a race – even a childhood dash to be first to the ice cream truck – feels a heart-stir in a brief reading from an old Hebrew parchment. Note, in the appeal, the object of the athlete’s focus, the disciple’s gaze.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV)

September 29, 2022

Resemblance

What would it be like to resemble God – Yes, eternal creator, sustainer of the cosmos and all that it holds? Could we mere humans even ponder such a notion?

The astonishing thing is we already do (by Holy Scripture’s account) share a profound likeness with the Almighty. While no mortal human has ever been or will ever be godlike in terms of things like self-existence, all-knowing, etc. . . Still, every human is in some precise way made in the image of God.

But further in, at a level even further beyond our ability to grasp, he has purposed that God’s redeemed (saved) ones embody the qualities of Jesus’ own character. To reflect the very nature and the virtues of his one and only Son Jesus. Yes, Christians are meant to, over time (through plenty of changings and growings) truthfully own the statement, “as he is so also are we in the world”*.

It is the interior world of Christ God calls us to emulate.

This, the Almighty assures, is within our grasp. With God’s nonstop assistance on our behalf to be sure. But within reach. Possible.

Christlikeness comes about through training in the ways of love and of joy and of peace. Qualities which he alone possesses in full and which he alone can reproduce in us as we humbly and courageously cooperate in the lofty enterprise.

So, what might be a first step?

The beginning move his direction always has and ever will be about vision. Onto what am I setting my gaze? To whom or to what am I continually directing my attention? We hear a saying, “You become like the thing you focus upon”.

Rick Warren penned four shocking words as the first sentence of his classic work, The Purpose Driven Life – “It’s not about you”, (ice water to the ego).

In order to set my attention more and more in the direction of Jesus so that I come to flourish in his qualities of love and joy and peace, I will find it necessary to shift much of my attention away from – yes – me.

Does the phrase “a work in progress” spring to mind?

Probably.

September 22, 2022September 22, 2022

Near Resemblance

Whether changing flat tires in far off lands or fostering character qualities on the long journey of becoming Jesus-like, his followers make use of means.

What does means mean?

Means are things (practices/instruments) necessary to move toward a worthwhile goal.

The goal of getting changed into a kind of person resembling Christ is an aim unlike any other. What pursuit in all of life could bring greater challenges and deeper satisfactions when entered into with the whole heart?

Transformation to Christlikeness comes about (let’s be honest) through many days given to lackluster, routine plodding.

Doing the next good or right thing. If Jesus’ life is anything it is good and it is right (righteous). And it is routine plodding which often marks the pathway of the sincere person applying means to take on Jesus’ temperament, his humility and power. Routine – not lifeless.

The whole apprentice-in-formation journey can be equally characterized by surprise and adventure. Boring Jesus is not!

We never graduate from experimenting in the use of tools (means). This is the part where we discover a happy truth. The tools or the practices (stillness, worship, community, service etc) never are the point. Never. No more the point than if after undergoing a medical procedure the patient insists the surgeon hand over stethoscope, scalpel and sponge, “Just place them in my overnight bag at discharge time”. The point of everything was the patient’s wellness, not the collection of devices employed in the process, good and helpful as they surely were.

Though I was clueless at the time, the moment I decided as a high-school junior to opt for the Typing I course over the Spanish language track, a life-altering shift was set in motion. All this while any notion of tackling spiritual disciplines in hopes of becoming like Jesus could not have been further from my mind. Indeed “What are spiritual disciplines?”, I would have wondered. So, this small snapshot from my story serves only as an illustration.

As a high schooler, my means of afterward landing a job with a newspaper included the useful practice of learning to type. Those hours and hours of attentive practice yielded some rewarding fruit. Firstly, gaining a set of marketable skills (typesetting). Secondly, landing a job in the glorious Wyoming Rockies. And finally, stumbling into a setting there where I would get introduced to a pretty young lady – my future bride. Surprise. Adventure.

We may then be wise on our spiritual journey to ponder and apply in humble faith some ancient, proven practices (means).

Practices which could bring each of us over time to (wonder-of-wonders) mirror a close resemblance to Jesus – Son of God.

2022 Jerry Lout

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