Tag: Jesus

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Of Being Owned

Living our lives day by day in closeness to Jesus calls for desire. And intention.

Just like any healthy marriage motoring right into the sunset years, both parties – the man and the woman – make numberless small but significant choices. All along the journey each of them has grown into the habit of offering up expressions of worth and honor, the one to the other. This is the nature of what the Father had in mind in the covenant relationship – man wedded to the woman, woman wedded to the man.

In similar manner, the intentional and deliberate follower of Christ routinely offers up to him both actions and words. Expressions of love are core. It is this that sets the disciple apart. The casual Christian, meanwhile, may content himself with an occasional nod to a religious creed.

Priorities

That boy or girl, man or woman who’s growing in Christ is assured of belonging to him. They do not fear losing the relationship. Jesus their savior has redeemed them from the old kingdom of ego where Self sat perched atop the me-centered throne of the heart.

While secure in his everlasting hope, the disciple set on Christlikeness is one who is not content to merely qualify for the ‘someday upward flight’ to the afterworld. The apprentice counts the value tag of his life as a thing reflecting a far more expansive aim. While the afterlife destination means much to him, the love-smitten apprentice aspires less to owning heaven than to being owned by heaven.

© 2023 Jerry Lout

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Yield Signs

Jesus knows us in closeness. It’s something akin to what we witness in those enduring marriages we most admire. The envy of-the-world ones.

An aged couple, having grown deeper and deeper into oneness with each other over time present a heartwarming picture. It gives substance to a special word of endearment.  Companionship. While other couples speak sorrowfully of having “grown apart”, our two love birds only solidify their union, growing fused as one over their long marital journey. Why is this?

It is not because the two have been spared struggles and hardships. Indeed, intense pain and even trauma may mark such a couple’s history together. After all, what long-term marriage has not weathered some harsh, distressing storms?

Yet, in spite of everything, a mystery seems to be in play. Where deepening, loving companionship ends up actually flourishing – not just surviving. When broad-sided by overwhelming hardship, a surprising number of devoted couples emerge the other side with their marriage not only intact, but healthier than ever!

Marriage – especially Christ-focused marriage – illustrates well (though imperfectly) the beauty of the Christian life. Such a life grows and flourishes in close fellowship with Jesus, issuing from his own tested and proven love.

Every earnest bride who ever pledged “in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse” made the discovery along the way that vows are made for testing.

Likewise, the broad-smiling groom at the altar offering his pledge to love, cherish, protect. . . soon discovers he has entered a long and challenging learning curve.

Adapt – adjust – accommodate.

Married-life language shouts change. The words are marked by tangible elements of sacrifice. They strike at the heart of a wonderful and frightening movement toward growth – the yielding up or adapting of personal will.

And so it is for the Lord’s beloved ones – the love-smitten, fresh-launched followers of Christ. Their pledge is simple, yet sacrificial. Not shallow, not flippant. The pledge is weighty, and glorious. An all-out love-fueled – and practiced – surrender,

“Your will be done”.

©2023 Jerry Lout

 

 

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Near

What is it to know God – to know Jesus?

Turning the question around, what is it to be known by Jesus?  The answer does seem to matter.

Perhaps you, like myself, have puzzled over a phrase Jesus offered up once,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’*

I never knew you.

It seems we are in need of catching the nature of our Lord’s heart. God in Christ became one of us. He shared in our raw flesh and blood humanity. Jesus (remarkably and wonderfully) yearns for closeness to his fellow humans. Yes, God in the flesh longs to be closely known to us, stating even on occasion, “I no longer call you servants, but friends”*.  Jesus doesn’t stop here.

He also – and it is here we can miss a key point – yearns to know us. In this sense ‘knowing’ speaks of closeness. This is not a knowing about factual details of what we creatures are comprised of. Jesus does not see us as machines. We are not devices like a ipad or smart phone held by him.

With our laptops we flip open the lid, press a key here, another there. Presto, the operating system fires up. What sensible person would ever liken such a sterile, mechanical process to a warm, interactive relationship? We know better. We carry feelings, wishes, passions, hopes within our bones.

Our devices are things in our possession that we control and manipulate – hopefully for worthy uses. Creator God on the other hand, in relating to we his image-bearers, is after relationship. Heart and soul, mind and strength. All our being.

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart”.*

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”.*

God is Spirit and so are we. He seeks worshippers, wonderfully so – living creations akin to himself. Yes, out of all his handiwork we are the unique ones into whom he has breathed life (How do we ever get our heads around this!)

Biblical worshippers are those who happily and with eager hearts, engage their Lord in mutual companionship and love.

(c)2023 Jerry Lout

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‘Aspiring’

Jesus regularly forms his followers, those whose hearts are poised to grow into his likeness. He just waits on us to make a move. The apprentice grows more like his master by observing and doing the things his master (trainer/mentor) does.

Jesus modeled the practice of praying, for instance. Do you, like me, ever wonder why so many preachers, teachers and scholars write and speak on the subject of prayer? Well, Jesus started it.

Jesus not only taught on prayer. He prayed. A lot.

A. W. Tozer notes that Jesus prayed early in the morning and, at times, throughout all the night. That he prayed both before and after the great events of his life, and prayed “when life was unusually busy”.

Wherever you and I happen to be just now on our discipleship journey, we too may come to him as his early ragamuffin followers did those centuries ago. Bringing before him our earnest appeal about talking with God,

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time* If we should search for a single line to sum up a fundamental disposition present in a New Testament disciple, we might begin with that phrase.

It was he who spoke of us walking alongside him, donning an ‘easy yoke’.  It is Jesus who stirs the imagination, offering a word picture of fruit-producing branches. Each branch, each Christ-follower, draws a plentiful supply of life straight from him – the vine. One day at a time. . one moment at a time.

Through his own frequent rhythms of being present to his Father in prayer Jesus modeled the practice for any and every one signing on as his apprentice. The Lord Jesus, more than any other human, understood prayer’s non-negotiable nature. Endurance and flourishing (two longed-for aims of any meaningful life) find their fountain in direct union with God alone. Nothing else quite works.

I am afraid I have sometimes lacked the ‘sanctified ambition’ witnessed now and then in his early disciples when their hunger surpassed their timidity. “Lord, teach us to pray”.

Those of us who count ourselves as apprentices or apprentice wannabes can thank God every day that their appeal was made. “Teach us to pray” may rank as the most worthwhile request ever voiced by any person anywhere.

Apprentices learn by copying what they see in their teacher.

(c)2023 Jerry Lout

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Serenity Road

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

The phrase follows those widely-read first lines of the Serenity Prayer, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

That ‘living one day at a time’ thing lies, I think, at the heart of apprenticeship to Jesus. His disciples are common people who have chosen to set their day-by-day lives before him first thing every day. This is their aim and their practice. On some days the aim is not achieved. But the attentive Christ-follower has discovered that living in step with Jesus is the best possible thing one could ever do. Such a community of believers are not detoured by the occasional misstep. They routinely make peace with their own humanity and pick up the one-day-at-a-time rhythm at the sun’s fresh rising of the next day.

Heading into each morning in conscious companionship with Christ may seem like a small thing. It is not.

A truckload of mornings through the years found me emerging from sleep in a fog (sometimes caffeine helps there). But also at times a wave of anxiety or even panic has met me as I’ve contemplated what lay ahead in the coming hours. Not the ideal prescription for an unstressed life like that which Jesus prescribes. Indeed, that ‘easy yoke’ he invites his disciples to can often seem a distant and elusive dream. Can we ponder for a minute a scenario C.S. Lewis paints for us. Does anything resonate? Do we sense an invitation?

“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

If you yearn for the coming-in-out-of-the-wind kind of living, take heart. You and I can find encouragement and hope through a simple first step. By taking a thoughtful look at how Jesus likely got out of bed each day.

©2023 Jerry Lout                                                        *C.S. Lewis  Mere Christianity

 

 

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Contagion

 

“Where there are prophecies, they will fail”, the writer pointedly asserts. In the same abrupt language, he follows that even faith fails. Then finally (to the readers’ glad relief no doubt) comes the apostle’s astonishing assertion, “Love never fails.”

Wow. Love never fails.

Such a breathtaking truth will mean a lot of things. Here is just one of the joyous discoveries about God’s unfailing kind of love. Love begets love.

In other words, once we welcome into ourselves God’s pure love in Jesus – repeatedly receiving it over and over – we soon find ourselves reveling in it. We never want to be without it or him. What’s more, a new dynamic has shown up on the scene.

We find it impossible to hold the agape of God to ourselves. By its nature, God’s love – like an overly-filled bucket of water – sloshes out on the surroundings. The Psalmist would not keep such news under wraps, “He restores my soul – my cup overflows”.

Love fueling love. By faith God’s much-thirsty kids simply receive. They take into themselves his generous and forgiving acceptance of them, his free-flowing affection toward them. So, Drinking. Drinking, they receive. They want never to stop receiving. Such a mindset exactly reflects the highest hope their Father above entertains. Heaven dances!

Bookshelves overflow today, and likely groan under the weight of account after biographical account of history’s multiplying disciples. In the truest sense these apprentices are pure lovers. They are being fed and fueled on the Father’s love. Such apprentices have tasted and have drunk of the Spirit’s living waters. Narrative upon narrative recounts the multiplication factor. Spanning generations and language groups – traversing mountains and deserts and plains. “Love never fails”.

It is often noted (sorrowfully and accurately) that hurt people hurt people.

By contrast, the saving love Jesus introduces into our strife-plagued world carries within it seeds of a kind of holy contagion. Like an unbridled virus on the move. From the holy contagion all those flourishing branches – linked everyone to the single common Vine – yield up succulent fruit, fruit of the Spirit. The kingdom expands. From it there springs a cycle,

Loved people love people.

©2023 Jerry Lout                                                    *1 Corinthians 13; Psalm 23

 

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Receiving

The wise apprentice acquaints himself with tools of the trade.

The disciple of Jesus is a person who desires and pursues gifts – tools God has given for aiding us in whatever tasks he may assign.

Yet, Christ urges us to something even better than his wonderfully stocked toolbox. He puts before us a thing that secures for us a way of living that is best of all. The way of love.

In his letter to the Corinthians, the tentmaker/teacher – guided by the Holy Spirit – makes clear the thing we would go after above all, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”*

When false pride hits the wall and collapses under its own weight.

When trying and trying ends in discouragement, even despair.

Surrendering to our Lord’s best-of-all way opens before us the different kind of living he has promised. The flourishing kind, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.*

If you are like me, this flourishing kind of life itself can on some days (let’s be honest) feel elusive. It is in these times that faith in Jesus recenters us to the one thing, the best-of-all thing. God’s love in Christ.

So, now that we know that love is the answer do we trade one kind of trying for another kind of trying (“I must now, out of the grit of my will, generate love”). How despairing is that! No, we get to be done with the trying. That is forever behind us. Effort yes. Purposeful motion. But not of the grinding, disheartening kind. God’s grace to the rescue!

Love, authentic love, issues out of God’s grace.

If you are a dog lover, think of the most affectionate and loyal canine you can imagine. Those special endearing qualities are simply expressions of his nature.

A common animal may not serve as the best metaphor, as we seek to illustrate a feature of the creator and sustainer of the cosmos. That said, love is God’s nature. He is himself the source, the fountain of love. Scripture condenses it down in straightforward language so that we don’t miss its impact, “God is love”*

You and I can never manufacture such a precious life-giving element. Yet, all the Christian life is to be marked by faith at work through love. The one thing that we can do, the thing we are ever called upon to do, is to receive love. And continue receiving, and receiving, love. Christ’s love alone generates love, and his love alone fuels power to do and become all that he intends for us, “Apart from me you can do nothing”.*

Receiving and living out of his love is doable. It is a case of meeting with him in simple practices. It is a faith journey in apprenticing.

 ©2023 Jerry Lout

*1 Corinthians 13:13; John 10:10; 1 John 4:8; John 15:5

 

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Bridging the Divide

Our cinema van slowed, rolling forward to the shoreline.

Africa’s vast body of water, Lake Victoria, lay directly ahead. If we should reach our destination, Rusinga Island, we must await the ferry here at Mbita Village.

We watched the ferry approach. Soon the Toyota, bearing us two missionaries, a diesel generator, a movie projector and gospel films departed the mainland. We and our cargo floated toward the water-encircled land before us.

Throughout it all the ferry was key. We had no other way to make it there. This was it, the ferry. Just this.

A religious group in the city where I now live set a sign in front of their meeting place. The organization promotes an idea that there are many equally valid “life paths”.

The sign reads, What is the true bible for you?

To the disciple of Jesus, such a question seems odd.

To his delight, the disciple has found that the book of the ages – the Holy Bible – holds in its pages the answers to life’s biggest questions. Foundational truths addressing the deepest concerns of every culture and people through every generation are preserved in the ancient Judeo-Christian texts.

Amazingly, the Bible leads anyone who responds to its invitation to the answer of all life’s primary needs. That answer does not lie in a philosophy or a principle or a creed. Rather, in a person. Jesus.

The earnest Christ-follower stands assured that each broken individual, every fractured, upside-down society can be healed, can be put right. Truths found in scripture supply hope for every soul who lives. What is needed is opening and reading and honestly considering the Book’s words. And responding to God, to his salvation offer of ongoing abundant living with him. In surrender to Jesus.

What Bible is for me?

The disciple has looked carefully at Jesus’ life in the scriptures and says, “I like what I see in the nature of this person, Jesus. I want that. I want it more than anything I have ever wanted, more than anything I could ever want.”

Terrific! It is at this place then, we must meet our challenge. Deep waters lie before us, our complete inability on our own of getting to the place we need to go. It is like gazing across Victoria’s waters to Rusinga Island but with no ferry to get us there.

Good news.

The disciple is not left stranded, the apprentice is given means. A land of the living beckons.

©2022 Jerry Lout

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Which Me?

Turning my Sherlock Holmes microscope away from other people’s lives – their habits of mood and attitude and behavior – I nervously aim the instrument to myself. Assuming I am taking an honest inventory, sweat droplets begin beading on my forehead.

In my (imaginary) self-exam mode, I assess how I am doing in a brief series of 24-hour segments.  Suppose that early on, I might register a good day (part of a good day?) where my natural responses to people and circumstances rank pretty well on the ‘selflessness’ scale. I start feeling a little heady over this, start edging toward self-congratulatory mode.

But right when the ego celebration is about to launch, I catch a nagging reminder that this is not all that I am called upon to have brought about in my life. I am a willing and, yes, loving follower of Christ.

I begin drilling down beyond the superficial. And find that the onion surface conceals a lot of layers. I rediscover that I am a whole being – body, mind, heart, will. What if my master, Jesus, is calling me to full-on renovation? That would mean a lot of things.

It would mean the disassembling – portion by portion – of the entire bundle (thinkings, feelings, choosings, etc), followed by the methodical rebuilding of all. His way. After all, if he is set on my growing to fully resemble him (in character, patience, generosity, service, peace, joy, love), a hefty amount of ‘me’ has got to go. Such transformation would mean my being somehow ‘traded off’ for a better ‘me’. Interestingly, someone* wrote a useful book about that very thing, “The Me I Want to Be”.

Pondering all this, I pause a moment and offer a half-whispered question, “Is this what Jesus asks of a disciple? Can the apprentice get to the place the master is leading him toward without the disciple’s all-out surrender to a renovated life? A radically changed life?

©2023 Jerry Lout                                                                                  *John Ortberg

 

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En Route

What does a Christ-loving disciple look like?

Imagine for a minute being assigned the task of people-watching for a day, having one focused objective as the aim. Locate and identify one or more persons within your neighborhood or town whose natural disposition is one of consistent selflessness. You are looking diligently to spot such a selfless, caring person wherever you go today – the marketplace, school, office, in traffic.

In your investigative people-watching quest you’re especially on the lookout for responses these persons give as they encounter life’s circumstances and people. Facial gestures, body language, speech come under the microscope as you watch for the exceptionally selfless person amidst the rest. You might recognize them as “Jesus-like” in this one regard. Selflessness.

Gaining this rare kind of closeup look at people’s lives in numerous settings and conditions might prove revealing, right. (a creepy exercise, yes. We’re only imagining, remember).

Carrying our imaginary survey a step further, at the end of the day you review in your mind the parade of individuals you have ‘spied on’ (we assume you’re a benevolent spy).

By now you can identify dispositions (observable attitudes) of a good number of run-of-the-mill Sallys and Joes for this one day. Giving it your best shot, you might now zero in on two or three of the ‘most impressive subjects’ you’ve tracked. Lovely dispositions, all.

Your new assignment – soon ending the creepy espionage game – you undertake the first task once more. Now, however, you are tracking only the one or two people you’ve deemed as ‘high-ranking’. For them the disposition test will now run not for just a day but for seven days, a full week.

I must offer a confession here. While writing the imaginary scenarios above, I felt my interior self ‘looking over my shoulder’. Let me never be so observed or evaluated! A further sensation is one of feeling immeasurable gratitude to the One whose regenerating love covers “a multitude of sins.”

Can we hope that the illustration, flawed as it is, might bring home a couple worthy lessons for us as we aspire to closer kinship in our apprenticing walk with Jesus. Stay tuned.

© 2022 Jerry Lout