Communion With the Risen Life of Jesus

I read the title of today’s reading and immediately thought I would read about why my Master is not always crystal clear with me.  Instead it was about when to relate what He has been clear with.  It initially was a let down.  I want to know why things are not clear right now.  I want a road map to where we will live, when we will live there, and so on.  It seems I am not ready.

In Mark 9:9, as Jesus, Peter, James and John are coming down from the mountain where Jesus has just been transfigured before their eyes, He tells them to not tell anyone what they’ve seen until He rises from the dead.  I’m sure that they understood that to mean “never”.  They really did not accept that Jesus would die soon.  So, understanding what they saw was not easy for them.  They didn’t have the fuller context of the purpose of Jesus’ life. 

So Chambers says that we, in the same way, are not to relate the word we have from Jesus until His risen life is alive in us.  He describes this having communion with His risen life, as knowing about the impartation of the risen life, and having His Spirit.  This bothers me on two levels.

The first level on which this bothers me is the level of reflection on my ministry history.  While in the throes of my addiction, could I have had communion with the Risen Life of Jesus?  I wouldn’t characterize it that way.  I know I can be hard on myself for what I was gripped by at that time, but I still, in my more lucid moments, would not characterize my time in ministry as being in communion with the Risen Life of Jesus.  I would have said, and would say now, that I had His Spirit living within.  I would say that I was able to interpret Scriptures.  In fact, that is the period in which I came up with a theological core around which to do Biblical Theology, as well as “Knot Hole Theology”.  So, I believe I had part of Chambers’ requirements for being able to relate to others what my Master had related to me.

The second level on which his definition bothers me is the level of reflection on where I am now.  I confess that I have not been free from this addiction long enough for its power to fade from my life.  In fact, each week I still feel the tendrils of its power during my day.  And I admit that the frequency of this sensation is increasing lately.  This does not bode well, and I have some idea of where it comes from.  I know that stress, fear, and shame are my primary triggers.  I know that currently I face an unknown path and that causes both fear and stress.  So, understanding where these struggles come from is not difficult.  If this evil within me is so near the surface, how could I say that I am now in communion with the Risen Life of Jesus?  So, if I am not, why do this blog?

Here again, I believe that the Spirit of my Master does reveal truth from the Scripture to me, and I believe that His Spirit still does reside within.  So, of the three definitions, I still have the latter two.  Is two out of three sufficient?  Or perhaps I am in communion with the Risen Life of Jesus because I experience and live by His grace daily.  Perhaps in the daily struggles within the consequences with which I live I do commune with the Risen Life of Jesus.  Can I say, as Paul did, that the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me?  I think I can, but I am not so sure that I can claim I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live.  That is where my trouble lies.

My Master is truly Master of the Universe and everything in it.  He created it, He sustains it, He continues to create it (as my brother so superbly pointed out to me), and He entered it to save His human creatures.  He died in a horrible fashion, but suffered an even more traumatic event than physical death.  And He was raised from that death three days later.  I believe that it is this resurrection which completes the death of my Master.  I believe that it is this resurrected life He now lives that defines my relationship with Him.  As I follow Him, it is through a death which ends in a resurrection.  My understanding falters at the point of the details of that death and life, but I believe that is where I am headed.  It may also be possible that is where I am currently (hence the faltering understanding).  Perhaps I am in communion with the Risen Life of my Master, but this struggle I have with my past behavior which still invades my life today argues against.  Is this the work of the shame, one of my powerful triggers?  Or is this struggle simply the residue of the death throes of my past?  I want to be crucified with Christ, my Master.  I want to no longer live but I want Christ to live within me.  I want to live this life in the body through faith in the Son of God, the One loving me and having given Himself up for me.  I want to have communion with the Risen Life of my Master.  And this body will go and do whatever my Master wills, as Audio Adrenaline once put it, “…like some kind of zombie.”

Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest": April 7th.

Circumstantial Faith?

Today’s entry is a hard one.  I think it’s hard because it was distilled down and I am missing some explanation.  On the other hand, what is left is succinctly on point.  First, my Master will bring me into circumstances where my faith in Him is tested against actualities (difficulties where I do not sense His blessings).  Second, my focus will be tested in the same circumstances to determine if it is on Him or on His blessings (am I a mercenary follower).

The passage in John 16 is part of a discourse where Jesus is trying to prepare His disciples for His coming execution by crucifixion.  He has been trying to get across the event, but also the meaning.  Both seem to be missing them.  In verse 32, Jesus is responding to their claim to “finally believe” or “understand”.  He replies with “Really?  The hour has arrived when you will scatter and abandon me alone.”  How’s that for a tough response?  Jesus sees through their pretense, through their own denial and inability to see themselves, and into their ability to connect their faith with the actual circumstances they will face.  The ability is not there.  He knows this and brings them into it anyway.  He does so because He also knows that these twelve will then have the faith to take the good news of His the work He is about to do to the very ends of the known world, and beyond.

My Master is still working with my faith in actualities.  Am I tied to my beliefs about how He must work, and is my understanding of that work driven by my desires?  Or have I reached the point beyond saying that “He works however He likes and I will follow” and actually living that statement out?  Have I focused past the blessings to the One blessing?  When I tell my Master that “You love me, You have my back, and I am at Your service,” does that statement then reach into actual events of my day?  I believe that at this point, to a large extent, it does.  But an hour comes and has come when that faith is tested in actual events that I can not predict, do not understand, and where I am completely at His mercy. 

We have an apartment and storage unit, but we also have an appeal by family for help.  This transition is no longer about whether or not to enable family members to relax in happy luxury, it is now about assisting aging parents.  Now the decision to stay or go is no longer easy, but it seems clearer.  The marks previously used have been superseded by the appeal.  Now the Scripture compelling me to take care of my own household applies as it did not before.  So, the call appears to be to leave what has been achieved here, minor and major levels of success, and start over socially and economically.

This is the actual set of circumstances I am in.  Where is my faith?  Do I follow the blessings I have enjoyed here, or follow my Master into a hard life?  Well, I hope McDonalds is hiring where we’re going.

Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest": April 4th.

Walking With My Eyes Open

This one of those entries in My Utmost For His Highest where I get somewhat lost in Chambers thought trail.  He starts out about being true to the vision God has given 24/7 and then, in mid-sentence/paragraph somewhere, switches to waiting for the vision.  The idea he is getting at he wraps up at the end, and I get what he was saying.  I suspect this is one of those entries heavily edited by his wife to fit within a page.

In any case, the idea is where he uses the phrase, "My utmost for God's highest," so I assume it's a pivotal entry.  The passage he works from is Acts 26, a speech by my buddy Paul to one of those rulers who hear him before he heads off to Rome to appear before Caesar.  It seems more for the rulers entertainment since neither of these guys can do anything to release him after he has appealed to Caesar.  In this speech he says that he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision (the one he received on the road to Damascus).  This statement is his transition from what happened to him to change him into what has gone on since.  It forms the segue into how he got there, capping off the reason why he would be there at all.

I do not have such an experience.  I was not knocked off my feet by a vision of Jesus in heaven asking me what I was doing, and why I was kicking goads.  He probably didn't want to explain what goads were, it would totally ruin the whole mood of the event.  No, there were no bright blinding lights, or voices for me.  For me, I felt two calls in two very similar settings.  Between them I discovered this book, the Bible had a lot more in it than I was taught in childhood.  It was an unsettling discovery, because I began asking questions that none of the older people around me would answer.  They seemed bothered by them.  The sequence goes something like this:

1. In Jr. High (Middle School), felt God calling me to preach while on a church youth group trip
2. Ignore call through High School
3. In the Army discover that the Bible has more in it than I first thought and am troubled by what I find
4. Ask those around me who taught me growing up, but they do not answer (I think they know but it troubles them too)
5. Receive the same call again while on a youth trip, this time as an adult counselor

At this point, I began to switch up my goals and direction in schooling.  It wasn't easy, and cost more than money (but it cost a lot of that too).  One of the colleges I attended had a strong religion program.  I sort of expected the same response to my questions, so, initially, I didn't ask.  But there, in my class, my teachers began asking these questions of us!  I laughed (it wasn't an appropriate time to laugh, but I was used to that).  I was validated and challenged to delve into this area of the Bible my former leaders would not go with me (don't get me wrong, it wasn't all that profitable a pursuit, it was fun and interesting - I have always been blessed to be led by amazing godly people who seemed to have better things to do than pursue biblical minutia for entertainment purposes).  I had two seemingly diametrically opposed skills while in school.  I was adept at using computers, and studying the Bible.

So, the vision I received was an odd picture or reflection in a pool where I kept touching the water and warping the view.  I believe that is partly what Chambers is talking about.  Wait for God to finish the vision before diving into the water.  Then, once you finally receive it, jump in, dive deep, and swim for the rest of your life here on earth.  So, I have been in and out of the water a lot (and it's always cold when I first get out).  I have returned to the pool again and again in hopes of seeing the vision complete.  I believe that my current situation is part of that pool-side vigil.  I wait for the next thing my Master gives me.  The house proceeds through the sales process, and we, look at options for renting locally until my daughter finishes school.  But beyond that we have no clear call to leave, and so, since we are here, we examine options to stay.  It's surreal, but I believe that is what my Master is calling me to do.  I wait for the vision, or the next part of it with an open available life.  I worship the great Master of all things which keeps me mindful of Who I am waiting on.  And I walk before Him because my day requires me to engage with this situation in which He has placed me.  So, today, I again walk, looking for the evidence of the next part of the vision.  I walk with eyes open, head up and looking about me, ears open (no headphones), and mind alert.  I wonder what my Master will show me today.