Running Life’s Race With A Limp – Page 2 – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

December 22, 2022December 21, 2022

Living Springs

What now should be done?

For quite a good while my Christian journey centered on “shoulds”.

I had believed on Christ in my youth. I knew he had pardoned my sins through his sacrifice on a cross. When I turned to him, confessing my wrongs and trusting in him, I knew deep down that I was now his. The Bible speaks of being born anew from above. That was me.

I also knew in those earliest years of grace that my life in Jesus was not meant to plateau. It was meant to keep changing. I was not meant to live my life any longer on my own. His salvation was to go deeper than just getting me into heaven after this life.

But there was a problem. I lacked some critical knowledge about how that might work.

Over time I came to think and live as though “pleasing God” was the central purpose of my being his child. Some poor thinking took form, ironically, through things I often heard in church. My understanding of the gospel – God’s good news for all people – had gradually changed to something called “performance-living”.

I was no longer fully living my faith from the inside out. Rather, becoming Jesus-like seemed to call for taking on the next God-pleasing task assigned me. Such tasks, I was reminded, were what I “should do” if I were indeed a true Christian.

It’s worth noting that none of the Christian performances I undertook were bad. Not at all. They were good, sometimes noble, acts of service.

Like many Christians, as I later realized, many of my “wants” were in the right place. Discovering this brought a measure of comfort. After all, I hungered to please God and longed to be a truly “good Christian”. One thing that seemed lacking now was joy, the happy measure of joy I had tasted in those earlier God-companioned days.

And too, the sweet empowering love of earlier days began to wane. My good Savior’s springs of abundant living were being traded for an overburdening list of shoulds.

Only later would I recover the way of living Jesus had in mind for his disciples all along. More of a fruit-bearing kind of living. While not all things going forward would prove fun or easy, my way would become characterized more as a joyous, teamed-up partnership with him.

In the company of fellow disciples-in-training, I could move ahead under his accepting, empowering Spirit. The season was to become a very special period of training for me – especially in discovering how eager Jesus was about all this. His label for it, “life in abundance. . . in the easy yoke”.

December 15, 2022December 14, 2022

The Branch – a yuletide narrative

[Note. This fictional six-minute read may best be savored while relaxing with a steaming cup of hot tea or cool glass of eggnog. Regardless, Merry Christmas to you and yours.]]

Gaspar sat atop the moving beast, his body swaying in the rolling gait. Memories stirred.

He savored such occasions as this when he could, without interruption, review his past, his station in life, and his good fortune.

Gaspar knew that certain inner qualities had seemed to elude him. Like humility. He found himself growing uneasy these days with his self-congratulatory reflections. But only slightly.

‘Of Course it was I”, he mused, “I, who first took serious note of the unique light beam in the western sky. And didn’t I, Gaspar, in my research, uncover the mystery-promises?’

The promises he reflected on were oral references of ancient Hebrew parchments – oracles predicting a king’s birth. A child-king promised to the Hebrew peoples. . . perhaps even to the larger world!

‘Of Course, it was I.’

His shoulders lowered and he sighed, still hesitant to credit others who were equally vital to the venture onto which they had embarked. At this point they were months in.

The star’s brightness radiated almost directly overhead now. Gaspar squirmed atop the saddle. A curious discomfort of spirit had been welling within. The saddled shifted again.

The star’s beam – brighter than he had yet observed it – converged, it seemed, with another kind of light.

Gaspar felt a stab of conscience unlike any he had felt before. The regal traveler muffled a cry.

“Impure! Impure am I – unworthy and defiled! I have regarded my brothers with contempt!”

His remorse persisted, conviction’s light piercing his inmost self. “Unworthy.”

His brow furrowed, “Yet before whose face I am unworthy I know not. This I do know, I dare not proceed to the place of the king-child, not with this, this inner stain.”

He mused further within himself, ‘Who is this one really, this child? Is it he himself who moves upon me so – here beneath the night sky, even before I behold his face?’

He drew his camel back and brought a scarf about his face.

At his command the camel lowered its frame to the sandy earth. Dismounting it, Gaspar went to his knees. I must find mercy. . . mercy!

“Oh exalted being”, he whispered, his eyes turned to the heavens, “Oh great governor of constellations. . . mercy!”

In this moment he sensed a thing wholly new to any experience he had known. Sitting motionless, the learned star-chaser felt a warming presence – bathing him, it seemed. Wave on purifying wave. Burning, cleansing. . . Comforting. Wave on wave.

Gaspard did not measure how long he lingered before moving to rise. His right foot pressed beneath him so long had lost feeling. Extending one hand upward, he grasped a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree. A picture slowly took form in Gaspar’s mind as he rose, balancing himself on the steadier foot.

‘Yes, yes, I am seeing it now.” His grip tightened about the branch. “This is who I am, I am a man not able, not of my own might, to properly stand. I am out-of-balance, weak and in great need of support – much as this tree limb supplies aid for my body now.’ The thought lingered.

He sensed within him the stirring of a fresh, even joyful, resolve. A whispered pledge began to form – strong, tender. His jaw anchored in place even as tears of relief moistened his eyelids,

‘From this hour I shall walk in the company of others. . . Yes, in the company of my brothers – Melchior and Balthazar! Indeed, and all others about me. All unto whom I shall henceforth render true service. And to my household, my family. Yes, we shall be – each to the other – a supporting limb. As a branch.’ Gaspard lifted his gaze skyward, his voice fading to a whisper, ‘May we find strength.’

Suddenly, excited voices came, spirited cries, from a place further ahead.

Each step brought him nearer, discerning more clearly the shouts – jubilant, adoring, calls voiced in varied tongues – Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Arabian. The calls rang in proclamation, shouting sacred homage to a special personage, obviously near at hand.

The child-king!

A Hebrew voice bearing a trace of Persian accent rose strong amidst the others. Distinct, jubilant.

Cupping a weathered palm to his ear, Gaspar savored the exclamations.

“All worship to him”, the shouts went up, “to the Christ-child, the Messiah!”

More titles followed, “to the King! The Morning star . . .

“the branch!”

Gaspar’s heart leapt, ‘the Branch?’

He swallowed. A breeze touched his face, stirring his graying beard. Turning briefly, he glanced to the tree and its still-extended limb, now back of him and beyond reach.

Peering once again to the path ahead the sage took in the lighted glow of a modest dwelling. A tender and purest kind of warmth enveloped him,

“Soon I shall offer up my gift of myrrh to this, this regal young one – my Lord.”

Gaspar gave a tug to his animal’s halter. “Come, camel. Do you see the light of the dwelling there, camel? It is there at that place we shall meet a child. .

“The King-child. The Branch.” *

December 8, 2022December 7, 2022

Proactive

The thing about transformation into Christlikeness is that the process is impossible. It is, frankly, unproductive.

Apart from him.

Becoming like Jesus in disposition, in love and in happy obedience. These are aims which can be realized. But only by his very close-at-hand presence working with his disciples.

Many have learned that no better life exists than a life wholly yielded to God. It is he who empowers, he who changes us to Jesus-likeness!

We hear the saying, “Practice makes perfect”. The principle applies in the area of spiritual transformation as surely as in any other. Our practicing is done not alone, but with God’s continued aid. His nearness grows evident as we grow in prayer.

Three men – all friends, employees at the same local university – have seen something play out year after year. The men are followers of Jesus. Each one takes a proactive approach to being with Jesus in the place and profession where he’s placed them.

Years ago one member of this trio, a science professor, invited the other two to walk the campus every week prior to office hours. The idea was simple. Walk and pray. Pray and walk. The practice goes on year after year. One-half hour each Friday the three move steadily along, eyes wide open (when praying one wants to avoid colliding with lamp posts and the like).

Two outcomes have arisen from this year-after-year practice by common gentlemen whose informal praying carries the ‘scent’ of the love of God.

Each fellow – Jerry, Pete, John – sees growth quietly happening in his personal and family life. Positive changes from down within their own souls.

Also, the three look back occasionally and note various things (good things) happening here at their place of employment. They see God at work in lives of students, faculty members, grounds keepers, administrators. Noting such things lifts their spirits. They carry forward in their Friday practice the next week, and the next. Praying without fanfare or fuss. Praying.

Individual and community prayer gives rise to caring more deeply for one’s fellow human. An increased lightheartedness settles in throughout the work day. Tensions, while not vanishing altogether, diminish. A marked tranquility is sensed.

The Bible identifies such qualities in precise terms – love, joy, and peace. Each one an expression of the Holy Spirit’s fruit highlighted in a New Testament book*. These qualities were routinely demonstrated in one particular life. The life of Jesus.

Faith-grounded praying works things into people and conditions over time. The discipline of prayer transforms individuals and groups, from the inside out.

December 1, 2022December 1, 2022

Help En Route

Taking Jesus Christ as both our destination (our full human aim) and our with-God companion, we soon realize (or likely should) that our basic life focus really must change. To quote John the Baptizer, “He (Jesus) must increase, I must decrease.” After all, a Jesus-resemblance does not naturally spring forth through this jar of clay which God unflatteringly labels “dust”.

We ask God to lend a hand in training us to live as we are designed to live. He does better, not giving merely his hand but his entire self.

Here is how I think this “with-Jesus” living works.

First, he shows to us our need of getting rescued. Next he rescues us through sacrificially dying and then resurrecting. By this means Jesus has supplied us with something incalculable – forgiveness of all wrongs. All.

This is the start.

God now sets us on an entirely new path by which we along with others shall walk. Jesus shares with us his life and his kind of living here, now, in this broken world.

Also, quite amazingly, God introduces another element. He supplies a Helper – a living, empowering personal helper to aid us throughout. Holy Spirit (the Helper) moves into our lives.

Jesus makes clear that his gracious, all-powerful Holy Spirit is now among us to work mightily in shaping us to grow ever more like our master.

Under the Spirit’s empowering and in the guidance of God’s Word, the Bible, we proceed forward taking wonderful baby steps, in living as Jesus lives. Furthermore, we are helped at nearly every turn by other fellow disciples.

Do we tremble a little with fear? Are we uncertain of what our tomorrows hold? Surely.

Still, faith and love tug us forward. Confidence in him has taken root.

Family members – those other imperfect but forward-moving disciples – travel with us and we with them. We are indeed an imperfect, sometimes struggling company of persons. Some have employed the term, Ragamuffins. Our aim is Jesus.

We want above all else to be with Jesus and to grow to love like him – to give like him, and to laugh and to weep and to serve like him.

The one way this happens is in spending time with Jesus. Often simply one-on-one, but also with him in the presence of those “others” of his family. They need us. We need them.

Our coming to fully resemble who Jesus is in the world is no sprint.

But in the company of his grace we are set. We lean in.

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.”*