Reposo I

'Reposo' is a Spanish word meaning 'rest'. Much like the 'selah' that is interjected into the Psalms to indicate a reflective pause, a casual (lazy) stroll through various quotes from various sources will be the final post of every month in an attempt to slow down, meditate, and enjoy. I invite you to take a deep breath along with me and ponder...

'The LORD sets prisoners free,
He gives sight to the blind,
the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down...'

'How good it is to sing praises to our GOD,
how pleasant and fitting to praise Him!'

'He spreads the snow like wool...
Who can withstand His icy blast?
He sends His word and melts them;
He stirs up His breezes and the waters flow.'

'For the LORD takes delight in His people...
Let the saints rejoice in this honor
and sing for joy on their beds.'

'God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him' - John Piper

'Desire reveals design, and design reveals destiny' - John Eldredge

'Courage...means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ...[A man] must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.' - G.K. Chesterton

'Thus God would have me grow - though the rain may seem disagreeable, it comes softly and builds me up, giving me what I lack to withstand yet heavier storms.' - Jim Elliot

'Father, let me be weak that I might lose my clutch on everything temporal. My life, my reputation, my possessions, Lord, let me loose the tensions of a grasping hand. Even, Father, would I lose the love of fondling - how oft I have released grasp only to retain what I prized by 'harmless longing', the fondling touch. Rather, open my hand to receive the nail of Calvary - as Christ's was opened - that I, releasing all, might be released, unleashed from all that binds me here. He thought heaven - yea equality with God - not a thing to be clutched at...so let me release my grasp.' - Jim Elliot

'I will proclaim the name of the LORD.
Oh, praise the greatness of our GOD!
He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong...'

'My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.' - Jesus Christ

'Be still, and know that I am God...'

'Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.'


Psalm 146:7-8; Psalm 147:1; Psalm 147:16-18; Psalm 149:4-5; 'Don't Waste Your Life'; Wild at Heart'; 'The Journals of Jim Elliot'; Deuteronomy 32:3-4; John 17:15-17; Psalm 46:10; Psalm 116:7

The Muddy Work Of God

Darkness. Blindness. Not being able to recall what 'sight' even is. Zero vision. I'm describing those times in life when nothing seems to be working. No amount of prayer or devotion or effort on your part will produce even a ray of insight into the deep cavern you feel within your chest. Not only is there an absence of light, but there is a smothering sense of the absence of anyone else. Aloneness. Questions receive no answers or acknowledgement. Prayers echo off the walls. And the thought that becomes most prevalent and repeated is one word..., 'why?' (or as it's most often pronounced, 'WHY!!!'). I know you can relate (as I certainly can) to being in that place of utter blindness. If you can't, just wait awhile. Your night will come.

We all find ourselves struggling with blindness at some stage in life. The duration varies for all of us. Days, weeks, months, sometimes years go by without so much as sensing one glimpse of light penetrating our hearts. So what are we to do? Start by closing your eyes. Imagine having never seen one single thing. Blind from birth. Not even the memory of light. John 9 gives us the account of Jesus and His disciples encountering such a person, and the lessons drawn from it can literally be eye-opening for us.

The story starts with Jesus crossing paths with a man who has never seen anything. His disciples want to know whose fault this is (we love to do this as well!). Who sinned? The man or his parents? The first 'Why?' has surfaced. And here's where the miracle begins to unfold. Jesus says that no one has sinned. 'This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in [this man's] life.' What is this 'work of God'? One perspective of this term is: what God can and does do. However, three chapters earlier, in John 6, we find another slant on what this means. Verse 29: 'Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.' This is the human side of the work of God. So the work of God is what He does and our subsequent belief in Who He is revealed to be.

Now, there's no back story here of this man born blind. Whether he was bitterly railing against God and the injustice of his life, or if there was a testimony to God's faithfulness and years of steadfast, unrelenting faith in the face of this tremendous hardship, we don't know. But, as is the case today with you and with me, it doesn't really matter how we've handled things up to the point when God shows up. Whether you've been a whiner or a winner, the power of the story comes in the present, not the past. How will you respond now? So, let's allow the story to roll forward and see how this 'work of God' reveals both God's actions and the man's (and hopefully ours) in the darkness.

'[Jesus] spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes.' What? What kind of healing is this? Doesn't this fit your experience of God showing up on our scene? We're locked in darkness. Jesus is the 'Light of the world' (v. 5). He'll wave His hand, brilliant lightning bolts will shoot forth from His fingertips into my eyes, and BANG! I can see! Yes!..........No. 'Why?' makes it's second appearance in the story. Why is Jesus doing what He is doing? Here's why: this is the 'work of God'. He will do it the way He chooses. If you're grappling with and groping through a blinding situation right now, I pray you'll hear these next words. You won't want to, but here they are: God rarely (maybe never) delivers us from our desperate darknesses in the way we want Him to or hope He will or think He should. We must remember our side of the equation. We are to believe in the Answer He sends.

The miracle continues to unfold in the next verse. ''Go,' he told him, 'wash in the pool of Siloam' (this word means Sent).' Notice the irony. Why does the man need to go wash? He's got mud-spit on his face. How'd it get there? The One telling him to wash, put it there! You can hear him thinking, 'Lord, if You want me to be clean, why the mud bath?' And so 'Why!?' rears it's ugly head for the third time. Here's the take away from this part: Don't despair in the darkness even as your lack of understanding deepens. Our role is not understanding, but belief. A belief that obeys. And here I pray that we will show as much obedience as this man does in the midst of his darkness. 'So the man went...and came home seeing.' I find some significance in the name of the pool in this story, Sent. Much like the story of Naaman (2 Kings 5), it wasn't the reputation or fame of the water that mattered, but the emphasis remained on the man's belief in God's direction. In this case, the man was sent to Sent, and he went where he was sent. And the work of God continued to be unveiled.

The story here takes us into the new perspective of the healed man as he returns home and encounters those he's only known as voices until now. First, his neighbors inquire about what has happened, and the man gives his simple, sweet testimony. '[Jesus] put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I see!' I fear much of our trepidation about sharing our testimony of the work of God in our lives stems from the amount of material that we have interjected into it. This is our attempt to make more sense of what has happened, but it usually just makes the story more complicated than it needs to be. In our effort to explain away the mystery, we diminish God's role in the story, and inflate ours. Brothers and sisters, let us follow the example of the man in this story, and simply stick to the truth as mysterious and God-centered as it is. After the man's neighbors are done with him and can't figure out what's happened, he's taken up the food chain to the Pharisees. Here he's given opportunity after opportunity to give credit where it isn't due in order to explain away the mystery, but thankfully he keeps the truth of the work of God at the center of everything. In the end, because he won't offer any more palatable explanation than the truth, he is thrown out.

Jesus reappears at this point. 'Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him...' I love the last three words there: He found him. It stands to reason that the man wouldn't recognize Jesus (he never saw him), so Jesus, in the continuation of the work of God, seeks him out and goes beyond the opening of the man's physical eyes; He opens the 'eyes of his heart' (Ephesians 1). Earlier, as the man was testifying before the Pharisees, he was asked who he believed Jesus was, and his answer was, 'He is a prophet.' Now Jesus draws near to take the man beyond his experience of Jesus's power as a prophet, and reveals to him His identity, his person, as the 'Son of Man'. He draws the man into fellowship with Who He is. This is a deeper place than What He does for the man (or you or me).

And this is the 'work of God'. He reveals Who He is by What He does in our darkest times, and we believe in the One He has sent. And what is born is worship - the perfect ending to the perfect picture of the work of God in our lives. In the darkness, God muddies, we believe, we see, we testify, He draws near, we know Him, we worship Him.

Lord, You are the Light of the world, and You find me in my darkness. You reveal Yourself in Your time and in Your ways. You heal my blind eyes and heart. You rescue me from the dominion of darkness and bring me into Your Kingdom, Your Presence. Thank You for the work You are doing in and through the circumstances of my life. I believe Who You are, and I worship. Amen.

My 5 Exes (part 2)

Moving forward now to the final three 'ex-' statements that provide direction and clarity to the question, 'What is the purpose of my life? What is my goal?' The first two are Express God's character and Extend God's love. These are the Who and the What that the remaining three Hows rest upon. Jesus as the 'exact representation of [God's] being' (Hebrews 1) living in me, and His mission of God's outreaching love and salvation for the world accomplished through His cross and carried forward through our lives today. So, 3-5......


3) Explain God's Word - '...that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.' (Ephesians 6); 'the gospel...is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes...' (Romans 1); 'faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.' (Romans 10). If we want a picture of what this looks like, we can turn to the account of Philip and the Ethiopian in Acts 8. The Ethipoian is reading a passage f scripture from Isaiah when Philip is prompted by the Holy Spirit to strike up a conversation with him. The key exchange happens here:


Philip: "Do you understand what you are reading?"

Ethiopian: "How can I unless someone explains it to me?"


Like Philip, we must be available and obedient in order to be a resource to those around us at the proper time. This is the way almost every person in history comes to understand the gospel. But often we shy away from conversation believing that we don't know enough. We shouldn't feel inadequate if we lack a PhD in Biblical Languages. We each have a testimony and we each have the understanding of the Word of God taught to us by the Holy Spirit. Remember the theme here - this is all about God. Not you. Not me. The voice and the life experience and the words of explanation He has placed in the person that will best suit His glory and purposes will be the one He will use. Be available. Be obedient. I'll add this though, be ready. Paul exhorts Timothy to 'correctly handle the word of truth.' (2 Timothy 2). Peter says to 'always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.' (1 Peter 3). Be in the Word. Daily. Significantly. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. Ask for understanding and seek knowledge. However, we don't just need to be better learners of the Word, we must also practice it. Be 'doers of the Word'. Do one thing deliberately according to the Word of God today. 'Train yourself to be godly.' (1 Timothy 4). The more we practice what we know, the better we understand, and the better we can explain it to others (we may not have to use words at all!) We can all attest to the truth that one's actions speak louder than one's words, and if you want to know what someone really believes (and understands) watch what he/she does. What we say and do can and will explain to a dying world what the Gospel is all about.


4) Expand God's Kingdom - 'to preach the gospel where Christ [is] not known...' (Romans 15). What I have in mind here is perhaps a bit different from what the imperialistic tone of those words may conjure up. Certainly there is a geographic element to this (as will be seen in #5), but think with me in a more abstract way as well. Take the knowledge of Christ into an arena where He has not been considered before (either by those who are native to that place or perhaps by you in your own thinking). This can mean seeing work or recreation or socializing from a different perspective. Any area that you can see or imagine, take the gospel there. Any part of your inner life that has been a bit too sensitive to let Christ touch, let the great message of the gospel abide there. We can all think of areas of our self or our life or our world where 'Christ is not known'. Those are the places where the gospel must be taken and where the expansion of God's Kingdom can take place. No need to feel unqualified or unable to face these challenges (within and without) because we know we are not left to our own devices. This continues to be about God and what HE is doing in the world, our generation, and our hearts. The Bible says that this gospel, the amazing news of Jesus Christ, is 'bearing fruit and growing' all over the world (Colossians 1). Jesus said that 'the Kingdom of heaven [is] forcefully advancing' and He is building His unconquerable church (Matthew 11, 16). Our role is to yield our barren places within to Him, and to boldly take His Name into all the barren places of the world.

5) Explore God's World - 'Go into all the world...' (Mark 16). I love to read adventure biographies and accounts. Jim Eliot's journal. Thor Heyerdahl building a primitive raft and sailing it from South America to the South Pacific islands. A team of people going source to sea down the Amazon river in kayaks and rafts. When I get lost in these stories I catch myself realizing how amazingly diverse and large this world really is. And how new the experience of God can be simply because the setting is in a different place. One huge mistake we can often make, whether knowingly or not, is to believe that God's character can be totally expressed by one culture or country. Romans 1 talks about the qualities of God being 'understood from what has been made'. And the last time I checked the same God that made the U.S.A. is the same God that made the Amazon jungle and the Sahara desert and Antarctica. Also, think with me beyond just the geographical places to the almost immeasurable diversity of cultures and peoples in the world. It borders on sinful arrogance to believe that God can be fully known without having a totally global perspective. God is amazingly local - no doubt. He knows and loves my little cul-de-sac more than I can ever fathom. But please don't miss the bigger picture. He is the exact same way with every street in Shanghai and Belarus and Johannesburg. Let us let go of having (needing?) a small enough God that can be contained by our borders, and let us behold The LORD - Creator, Savior, and God of 'every nation, tribe, people and language' that are contained on this globe called Earth. Here's my encouragement, take a trip. Go on an adventure. That will mean different things to different people, but whatever it means - do it. Go. There are a thousand reasons we can't, but nothing will correct a myopic Christianity more effectively than getting on a plane and being foreign for a while. Beware, this may involve some discomfort (the best trips always do!). But that's okay. It'll do us some good. A closing line from one of my favorite books, 'Running the Amazon' by Joe Kane, reads this way and I think it's pointedly appropriate: 'Without a doubt running the Amazon was one of the looniest things I've ever done. ...I felt relieved when we were finished and was happy to get home. ...I like books, movies, good food, cold beer. In short, I enjoy the distractions of modern life, and I'm thankful to be in a culture that readily provides them. But the Amazon taught something about the true cost of such comfort: Basically, it's insulation. Direct experience is our best teacher, but it's exactly what we are most bent on obliterating because it's so often painful. We grow more comfortable at the price of knowing the world, and therefore ourselves.' And I would add: and knowing God.

God, You have expressed Yourself in infinite ways. Lead us into those places and situations where all eyes will be opened to see You more purely. I pray we would speak and exhibit Your words to those around us. Be pleased to expand Your kingdom through and throughout our lives. Thank you for the expansive creation You have blessed us with. You have truly amazed us and we are truly Yours forever. Amen!

My 5 Exes (part 1)

I was listening to a sermon by Ravi Zacharias recently (link to the right), and he was talking about purpose in life. Where does it come from? What is it for you? He did something a little unfair in this day and age. He asked me to actually do something specific. He asked me to sit down and write on a piece of paper what the goal of my life is. Because let's be honest if you don't know where you're ending up, how will you ever move in that direction today? So I prayed and thought and wrote, and what I came up with are what I call my 'five exes'. Five phrases that I pray would describe any and every action I do and/or the motivation behind them:


1) Express God’s character – ‘the invisible is understood by what has been made’ (paraphrase of Romans 1:20). I'll say up front that this is the all-encompassing one, and quite frankly the one that is the hardest. Why? Because it has more (if not everything) to do with yielding myself to Him Who is the full expression of God's character - Jesus than on actually doing or being anything on my own. And as I'm sure you can testify, humility is harder than pride when it comes to being present in this world. So what is God's character? Well, we can start anywhere, but He is infinite so we certainly won't ever end anywhere. But how about 'God is love.' (1 John 4); 'He Who called you is holy...' (1 Peter 1); 'God is light...' (1 John 1). Forgiving, merciful, patient, generous, outreaching......like I said the list is as He is. Infinite. But here's the treasure. You don't have to exhaust the list before you get started (believe me one trait is hard enough to do consistently). Slow down and start with one. Press in and allow the change to come because '...we are being transformed into His likeness...' (2 Corinthians 3). Remember, it's GOD'S character that is central here not our interpretation or perspective. Our part is to embrace (humbly but actively) our role as His Image bearers here and now. Words like obey, yield, and follow are the main actions we find being employed here. It's time to begin. Because if we fail here, nothing else we do will be worth doing. Figure everything else out, but neglect this point and we will accomplish nothing. I fear this is one of the big reasons (if not THE reason) our testimony and impact in this generation has been (and is increasingly becoming) impotent.

2)Extend God’s love – ‘as though God were making His appeal through us’ (2 Corinthians 5:20). This is where the rubber meets the road, and where we get a bit squeamish (at least I do). Extending God's love is parabalized and illustrated a thousand times over, but application is usually lacking. When is the last time I actually was the good Samaritan? Why doesn't Isaiah 58 describe my actions? These texts and plenty of others focus on the command we have been given to be involved in the unjust, unfortunate, and unappealing situations that surround us daily. Jesus said that He is sending his disciples into the world just as the Father had sent Him into the world (John 20). Our mission is to be as impacting as Jesus' was and is (or even more impacting - see John 14). That's a tall order. So where do we start? What are some ways to put this principle into practice? I think the words of Isaiah can apply here (Isaiah 6) when God says that though we have eyes and ears we don't see and hear (or ARE NOT seeing and hearing) what is going on around us. Our part in this mission is being willing to see the desperate situations and to hear the pleas for help. In a word we must acknowledge the lives around us, and rather than being overcome by the enormity of the task, we are to extend love into the mix. The same Love that saw us and heard our heart's cry. So just as it is with God's character, we remember it is God's love that makes the difference. Not some cozy, isolated, intangible love, but God's extreme, heroic, outreaching love expressed through Jesus Christ.....and now through us.

There are three more exes I want to share, and I'll pop those out at the end of the week. But for now, let's start with these two. They're plenty. Lord, thank you for Who You are and how You have loved us. Conform us so much to the likeness of Your Son, Jesus, that this world will see Your character and feel Your love through us. Hallelujah and amen.

Where we begin

"In the beginning God ..." is where it all started, and from then on it has ever been the same. So as I begin to share here let me first (and always) acknowledge that there is nothing new under the sun, but if my perspectives and thoughts can come alongside yours then we both get a better understanding of things.

By way of introduction, let me start with what 'Pure Heart' means to me. Pure heart is a way of living - from the inside out. What we do is a reflection of what is within us. Jesus gets to this in His teaching found in Matthew 5-7. The fever of the day was to defend and rationalize the outward actions of a person in order to define their righteousness. A sort of 'you are what you do' mentality, and if you try hard enough and if you can show the right things then that will translate to your heart.

I see this in myself in these current days as well. If I don't watch that movie, or say that word, or think that thought then I will be at peace within, and my righteousnes will be intact. But Jesus turns that around. No degree of external righteousness can or will ever be enough. And if we're honest, our hearts testify to this even in our best moments.

So, 'pure heart' is a phrase that, to me, hits on a couple of thoughts. First, the purity of the heart itself. We find from Jesus that what we do IS related to who we are, but in the opposite way from how we thought. Words, actions, and thoughts spring forth from the heart of a person. Therefore, rather than putting out all the fires on the outside, we should deal with the internal source of the problem. The heart.

Here's the good news. God doesn't ask us to do all the external things that please Him and leave it at that. He ('In the beginning, God' again!) tackles the very nature of who we are and plants Himself at the core of who we are. We become a different person rather than merely or solely doing different things. We will certainly bear new fruit, but those pure actions will be the true fruit of a heart made pure rather than a mock up version of our take on purity.

The second thought is the emphasis on living/acting from the heart. I'm a sports guy, so I've watched my share of games, and that's where I draw a lot of my insights from. The players I appreciate the most and root for the hardest are the ones who play from the heart. The scrapper who doesn't look like a star at all, but he/she is consistently vital to their team's success. The assist leader. The one who practices and prepares because there is a love of team and a sense of responsibility. Words that are often used of these people are dedicated, sacrificial, honest, hard-working. Those are the traits of a pure-hearted life as well.

A thousand anonymous acts done everyday by pure hearts testify to that substance of life we all laud and admire. The heart life is pure life.

So be encouraged right now that the pull you feel in your heart for better living and better times is right. But rather than relying on your supposed strength to construct some outward likeness of life, go deeper. Get to the source of the problem and solution - the heart. Give up the old one and ask God for a new, pure one (Psalm 51). Then begin to live from there. You'll find more Strength than you could ever imagine when '[you] no longer live, but Christ lives in [you]' (Galatians 2).

Lord, You are greater than my heart. And in full knowledge of both who I am and what I've done, I humbly ask you for a new, pure heart. Create it in me, and be glorified by the life I now live by faith in the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.