Joy – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

June 1, 2023

Element of Peace

The left footprint on display in the fresh-turned soil bore no resemblance to its counterpart. My right foot featured a really high arch while the left one lacked an arch at all. This one’s imprint carried the appearance of a flat board.

Thus, my bare feet had left a trail of odd alternating marks as I leapt to keep pace with my daddy’s longer strides across the plowed furrows.

Yes, the hardship of poliomyelitis from a prior time had left permanent marks. Yet, here I was curiously limping. . . and frolicking.

We don’t find people who are prone to relish suffering. I would certainly not be counted among them. Words like hardship or adversity or pain stir in many of us a cringe of resistance and angst.

Still, visiting the Bible’s pages we routinely find triumph mingled with trial. Pleasure and pain show up as near neighbors. Happiness keeping company with hardship.

We muse over these strangely-matched companions. Especially so in reflective seasons like Holy Week, the period of Jesus’ (and history’s) darkest hours leading to his awful crucifixion.

How perplexing seems the phrase of the New Testament writer, “looking to Jesus who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross*

Enduring flogging and a torturous public execution with its attending shame, Christ’s suffering comes to us as ‘hardship’ utterly redefined.

So, we revisit our prayer – “accepting hardship as a pathway to peace”.

The apprentice of Jesus comes to actually affirm the beauty of suffering when endured in a grace lavishly supplied. Holding the master’s image in view the disciple settles into an element of peace words fail to capture. The difference is found through the example and presence of the resurrected, sacrificial coach.

Christ’s disciples make up that unusual sampling of humans who reconcile the paradox – hardship, an indispensable part of the good life.

He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace*

February 9, 2023February 4, 2023

Wanting

Apprenticing to Jesus bears fruit of the finest variety – kingdom fruit. God’s kingdom is that place where his will is done, “Thy kingdom come”.

Once a clear “Yes, I’m in I will be a Jesus-apprentice” is resolved, a new kind of season gets underway. And, hopefully, goes forward into a lifetime.

This is the season of habits, but habits leading to something far richer than the mere exercise of repeated practices. The season of habits, employed under the guidance and power of the Spirit offers promise of immense gratification.

This is the joy of inside-out transformation. Think of it. You and I humbly growing/changing through clearly laid out movements, into a vivid likeness of the one who invites, “Learn of me”.

We need to ask ourselves a question. Is the average, everyday Jesus-follower called to this radical kind of thing? Incorporating specific practices into routine life that would lead the believer to full-on Christlikeness? What about you?

Over and over the New Testament makes clear that every Christian is granted salvation with an assumption that life-long growth and change lie ahead,

“. . speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”*

Men and women through history affirm the high aspiration, A spiritually mature Christian is “one whose whole character—dispositions, words, and actions—emulates the character of Jesus Christ himself.”**

Want.

Training for a life as a bull rider when you are, at your core, wired to work with spread sheets in the accounting field is a path that might well lead to despair (if not an injured spine).

Being a Jesus’ apprentice happens only in the life of the person who wants it. A genuine inner desire will mark the man or woman, youth or senior, who chooses discipleship to Jesus as their core life aim. Without a hungering for life in the company of Jesus, any ‘choice’ of apprenticeship can take the person to one of two places. Neither, a really fun place to be.

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”.

November 3, 2015August 28, 2017

Revived

He’s a Norwegian man’s man.

In his eighties now, Merland’s handshake transmits power – and tenderness, a rare combination. Minnesotans boast, with good cause, their ten thousand lakes. Many choose fishing over the comfort of a fireplace from a hard week’s work. For others, it’s simply that. A happy way to rest. Wintertime fishing demands stamina common to a working man. Famous for thriving in hard winters, anglers navigate the cold like NASCAR drivers do curves. . . It’s there. Make the most of it.

Let’s go do some ice fishing, Merland.

The friend had been standing near a window, studying the sky. By now he was already moving toward a side room where tackle was kept.

Merland responded without coaxing.

En route to the lake, visions of Northern Pike, Jumbo Perch and Blue Gill swam in his imagination. His large hands rubbed together. Part anticipation. Part to warm them.

A light breeze across the frozen lake chilled his flesh – even buried as it was beneath layers of clothing. Today was extra cold. Beyond frigid.

He hardly lowered his fishing line beyond the just-drilled eight inch hole. Bam, a nice hit. Merland’s reflexes were as sharp as the bursts of cold from newly forming wind gusts. Detaching the hook he tossed the catch a safe distance away from the hole, its single escape route. He dropped the line again. Bam.

He turned to his friend, Cold day, yes. . . but fine for hauling in dinner. His chuckle attended a smile that broadened with each new catch. The air was so harsh, the temperature so low, that each fish flopped three or four times on the lake’s surface before stiffening rigidly like curved planks.

In minutes the two men’s lines had hoisted a decent mess from the waters.

Merland’s friend turned to him, his teeth chattering.

This has been the best day in a while, yeah. A good thing, too. Let’s get to the house!

Once home Merland half-filled a large tub with water.

Ultra cold fish are something like people. We can grow so cold, so unpliable, to seem fully beyond recovery. Then a warmhearted person comes along – someone like Merland. An ancient Scripture is shared. A warm handshake given. Compassionate Norway eyes – or those of others – touch the heart.

Fresh warmth – long forgotten – finds entry and a thaw begins. We feel revived.

Merland slipped each fish into the water one by one. He stood watching. In seconds they limbered, then swam again, lively as ever.

I would love to hear from someone who, like myself, has experienced cooling times in life? Passion faded. Joy moved out as cold set in. Then followed a wonderfully welcome thaw. Usually through a big-hearted person who simply cared. Springtime displacing winter in the soul. I am thankful it happens. And can happen again.

January 24, 2018February 13, 2018

Invitation

The membrane-cloaked calf lay still from exhaustion on the dew-soaked Bermuda grass. The little bull had, the past few seconds with the gallant aid of his mama, thrust his way outward from her womb and into Autumn’s sharp early-morning air.

Wanting to grow to be like Jesus comes naturally for any born-anew believer. It is as natural a thing as conception – gestation – birthing and maturing are natural to reproductive life.

The progression, in fact, sounds normal. That is because it is normal. The thing that does not come naturally (automatically) for the believer, though, is the actual doing it. . . becoming like Jesus. At least not for a good while. Not for most.

Transformation to Christlikeness, however, is not unrealistic. Nor is it such a hard thing to make headway in. The issue that makes growing into the likeness of Jesus most difficult is likely our simple lack of know-how. This had been true for me, no question. I wanted change like crazy. Make me like you, Jesus. I just didn’t know how to start getting there.

Reflective musings

So, moving from being a ‘not-much-like-Jesus’ person to becoming very much like him. Are there ways to go about this, ways to understand how? Can there be things, we press the matter further, “hands-on, practical things – I could learn to do? Could do together with Him, leading me to pleasurable rhythms of Christ’s joy, his love, service, character and life. . . For real? That I could grow to live in that curious easy yoke he seemed to matter-of-factly invite us to?”

Easy yoke? The easy had eluded me. And for quite a long time. How could I start, where to begin?

The birthing language helps me get a handle on something.

“Oh, my dear children!” Paul writes. “I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives” (Galatians 4.19 NLT)

The fellow credited for writing much of the New Testament uses here the birthing metaphor to help us catch the idea of God’s means of bringing the change we yearn after. We catch a feeling too for how passionately the Holy Spirit wishes this for us. Labor pains. We can’t help getting the feeling he really means it. Christ – radically developing us, reproducing his nature and character within our lives. Freely. Easily. . . Remarkable.

For a good while – decades actually – I struggled over this thing. A discussion, mostly silent, went on in my head and my heart.

Once a person is saved, brought to faith in Christ, a new beginning has launched, right.

The believer isn’t born into the family of faith to stay an infant. We are born to develop, to grow in the faith, to mature, be transformed. We are to get better at being a Christian. This is what he is saying, what he is after.

Every child of God, every one of us, is handed the oxygen-charged assignment. To change. And, what is more, sliding our neck into an easy yoke with Jesus us sounds more like an invitation to dance than to trudge forward under a burdensome, ever-crushing load. What if Jesus is approaching. Offering his hand, extending a question.

May I have this dance?