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OC can be pretty deep. His spiritual musings often have me reading and re-reading several times. His words are challenging as today when he explores issues of perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Sometimes I need more practical lessons. I got such a lesson the last two days at MacDonald’s in Rayne.  The men of Amana took on the task of disassembly and reassembly of a “play land” which Mac Donalds has donated to the church. It is no small task. I would like to say my contribution has been substantial, but there is too much evidence to the contrary. My greatest contribution has been staying out of the way, handing tools to the real workers when I understood what tool they were asking for and driving around a trailer that someone else donated. But I have been greatly blessed watching men who certainly had more pressing things to do, spend hours in cheerful, difficult, and productive labor. At Amana we are blessed with leadership and membership that is not afraid to get its hands’ dirty or to take on the toughest jobs.  Today OC asks: “Am I perfecting this type of holiness in the fear of God? […]

So we make it our goal to please him. 2 Corinthians 5:9 I love to watch my great-granddaughter Kaydence. She knows what she wants. She’s happy, ecstatic really, when she gets it and she’s upset when she doesn’t. Life at 18 months is pretty simple. But you can begin to see traces of complexity. She is beginning to want to please others. She loves to dance around, but she’s starting to like the attention it gets her. She’s starting down the road that leads to acting to please others. That’s a good thing. A step in the process of maturing. We are meant to move from being self pleasers to being unselfish people with a desire to give pleasure to others.  But there is a further step in maturing, getting to the point when our principal motivation is to please God. The child of God lives to put a smile on the face of God. It’s a high place of maturity and a difficult place to stay. We keep slipping back into a life of self pleasing or people pleasing.  No one likes a self pleaser. After all they’re selfish. Thinking mainly of their own desires, they go through […]

When I was a student, I was a crammer. I would wait until right before a test to try to learn all the information put before me since the last test. This was a particularly difficult exercise in classes in which only a final exam is given. I would have to  try to learn all the material in the course in a couple of days. Not a good idea. Craming in life is an even worse idea.  We know that there is a great test at the end.  Paul says that we must all, preacher and people alike, “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” Like a class with a test only at the end, our tendency is to “put off” our thoughts of this final test. If we do that we don’t learn the lessons of life God tries to teach us on a daily basis.  If we place ourselves before our God daily, consider what He already knows: our struggles, our failings and our triumphs. And we spend some time listening to Him, He can make corrections before we become horribly off course.    “Keep yourself steadily faced by the judgment seat of Christ; walk now in […]

You know what it’s like to make a big purchase, say a new car. No matter how much thought you put into it, after a while you begin to second guess your decision. I paid too much. I should have gotten a different model. All of a sudden everyone seems to be driving the same vehicle you just bought. Never noticed that before. You think about taking it back. We call it buyer’s remorse. When we first decide to follow Jesus, how much thought do we put into it? We are elated at our salvation and excited about a new life. We like the “new car smell..” But after a while something akin to buyer’s remorse can slip in. I’m following but where exactly is He going? I don’t like not knowing the destination. Like a kid in the back seat I keep thinking “Are we there yet?” But with Jesus we never are. It seems He always expects more. We consider that maybe things weren’t so bad back in Egypt. We were slaves but we weren’t all that badly treated.  As we follow folks notice we’re different. They don’t like it and we become uncomfortable. Maybe we’re being […]

I find myself a slave to ungodly forces. Before you are too quick to judge me. Consider whether this might be true of you as well. If “slave” and “ungodly” are too strong for you, would you agree that you are occasionally controlled by negative forces? Or how about this: Do you sometimes find yourself doing things that you know aren’t right and later regret? If we are honest we are all, at times, slaves to ungodly forces. The sad truth is we have bound ourselves to this slavery. We become enslaved when we yield.  When we yield to a temptation (oh you caught me, yes we are talkin about “sin.”) we soon find ourselves bound to it. And upon each repetition we are more tightly bound. Even if we notice our ensnarement, we can conclude that since we got ourselves into this mess, we can get ourselves out.  The path to freedom from these enslavements requires four giant recognitions. 1. The recognition that we are enslaved. 2. The recognition that we are responsible for our enslavement having yielded to it willingly. 3. The recognition that “there is no power in the human soul of itself to break the […]

“Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have realized that John 3:16 means that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us, without any calculation.” I must take this warning from OC seriously. I can’t talk about abandonment from experience as he does. I have not reached that level of abandonment. I recognize the need for it, the wisdom of it, the joy in it. I just haven’t achieved it.  I guess I have been caught between the teachings about the freedom the new life in Christ brings and those who stress the holiness that life is to produce. It seems difficult for the two to coexist in one life. I believe I need to focus less on the effects and more on the relationship, less on the blessings and more on the person. “Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself.” The idea of any kind of relationship with God has been overwhelming. […]

Sometimes OC is just too much. Today he seems to be saying that we are not only to abandon everything for Jesus, but we are to do so purely out of our devotion to Him. We are called to love Jesus Christ purely for Himself not for anything we can get or have gotten from Him. “If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest. That we gain heaven, that we are delivered from sin, that we are made useful to God – these things never enter as considerations into real abandonment, which is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself.” How can I possibly do that? How can I forget what the Lord has done and continues to do for me? How can I love Him purely for who He is without a remnant of memory of past graces and an assurance of future blessings? It just doesn’t seem possible. OC seems to be saying that we need to have an Agape love for the Lord. Agape is unconditional love. Love for another without expectation of any return […]

 John Maxwell recently wrote about how Pope John Paul II led the toppling of world communism by having Vision – Connection and Direction. The Pope was following a 2000 year old plan: God’s plan.  Christ’s vision for His Church is clear: a community of believers who so love Him and each other that  others are compelled to join up. He provides His Church with the Holy Spirit to connect it to Himself, each other and the world, and to keep it moving in the right direction.  Satan knows this plan and his strategy to stop it is to prevent the life of community. When he can’t prevent it; he provides deceptively similar alternatives. The explosion of “social networking” on the internet: “communities” like facebook or twitter, appear to meet the need God has placed in each of us to connect with each other. The attraction of these networks is the illusion that we can connect without really connecting. The “church” has been doing this for years, providing television and internet “alternatives” to a living breathing community.  Like the wolf eyeing a flock of sheep, Satan loves it when an individual separates from the flock or the herd. They’re oh […]