Tag: Authentic Faith

Dancing with God

Background Passages: John 10:10; Psalm 116:13-14, Deuteronomy 30:19-20; Psalm 30:11

Have you ever noticed how you can find connections in random things? I read four seemingly unrelated things this week and found a connection I’d like to share. I hope it make sense when I put it on paper. Let’s play connect the dots

Dot One

As a part of my devotional studies this week I read a passage out of John. It is a lengthy story that is a part of the “I am…” statements of Jesus.

The man, blind since birth, dipped his hands into the Pool of Siloam as he was instructed, carefully washing the mud ball from his eyes. After he had done so, “the man went home seeing.” His rejoicing captured the attention of friends, neighbors and Pharisees. Because it was the Sabbath, a quick investigation ensued, leading the religious elite to Jesus. After a bit of verbal wrangling, Jesus explained to them…

“I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10 is one of my favorite verses, hinting at a life Jesus promises all who put their faith and trust in him. It’s hard to explain that concept to one who doesn’t believe in Christ. When we try to live life on our own it is easy to get disillusioned and disoriented. The chaos that confronts us at every turn saps the life right out of us.

Life with Christ, on the other hand, becomes worth the pain of living. Our relationship to Christ brings with it the possibility of a new joy, a new vitality, in the face of life’s troubles…if we embrace it.

Hang on to that thought.

Dot Two

My uncle, the Rev. Leslie Lewis, is the pastor of a Lutheran church in a farming community near Lubbock. One of his published devotional thoughts this week talked about taking up the cup of salvation as described by the songwriter in Psalm 116.

Leslie wrote about taking up the cup. “That’s the nature of relationship. All we can do is take the cup. The cup being life, with all its circumstances as it comes to us. For God comes to us as our life.”

Think about that for a second. “God comes to us as our life.” Life is messy, isn’t it? Disordered? Chaotic? God with us amid the chaos.

We find ourselves in a global pandemic, restricted in what we can do and where we can go. Unable to reach out and touch those we love. Even in the middle of something as broad as this, the other burdens of living don’t go away. Fractured relationships. Missing paychecks. Poor decisions. Sickness. Misunderstandings. Life easily becomes unbearable and disorienting if we let it. It is relentless in its attack. Each day brings new burdens to face. Doesn’t sound all that abundant, does it?

Leslie continued, “Sometimes we see life coming at us and are tempted to pray as our lord did, ‘If it be possible let this cup pass from me.’ But the relationship with life demands we take the cup…take responsibility for what is coming to/at us. A loving relationship with God is no more than willingly accepting the cup; the person, the circumstance of life as an invitation to dance with God.”

I love that! “An invitation to dance with God.” Abundant living is not the absence of all the issues that life throws at us for this life we’ve been given to live is both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Nor is it hiding ourselves behind a veil of religiosity.

Leslie shared that we Christians tend to hide behind pious platitudes, made empty because we don’t live the truth buried deeply inside them. “God is in control.” “God will never give us more than we can handle.” When life has us in its talons, our heart is not in them. We live on the surface of our faith, not in its depths. Hide behind the curtain of pious living.

Jesus later said as much to the Pharisees.

“You hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. First, clean the inside…” (Matthew 23:25-26)

Taking up the cup means embracing all that life holds and finding a way to dance our way through it with the Father. Leslie added, “Life is not for sissies. Those who only want to play it safe will never know the riches of his love.” Never know what it means to live the abundant life.

Hold on to this dot and let me take you to another.

Dot Three

I picked up a book this week from my personal library which I have not read in more than 45 years. Dancing at My Funeral, written by Maxine Dunnam in 1973, is about the joy that comes in the present from living an authentic, Christ-filled life.

In her book, Dunnam argues that the thirst for real life is as old as creation itself. That God built within us the desire to experience life at its fullest…in abundance. In Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, tells the Hebrew people…

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now, choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Dunnam writes, “Here ‘life’ and ‘death’ don’t signify ‘existence’ and ‘nonexistence.’ Rather, they hold a promise that existence can be enriched and thereby become real life.” Authentic life. Abundant life. “You can have a dead life or a real life—one that is lived in confidence, hope and gratitude.” And, if we’re truthful, we’ve all known Christians who were the “walking dead,” those who allowed life to suck the joy out of their relationship to God. That’s not what God intended.

Like my uncle, Dunnam argues that Christians tend to cloister behind the walls of the church or wrap ourselves in the cloak of spirituality to avoid the hazards of the world. Dunnam says real life is not in the avoidance of problems, but in our dynamic relationship to God. Staying connected to him while facing the world as it comes and ministering through the problems and the pitfalls. Abundant life is God’s gift in the middle of the messiness of life.

God offers us the same as he offered the Hebrew children. Choose life! Choose abundance!

Dot Four

Real and abundant life is an experience. The work of God is making us real. In the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams, the worried rabbit is told by the wise old Skin Horse that it takes a long time to become real.

“It doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully made. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

God’s call to abundant living is a call to love and serve others. Those acts of service will often leave us with hair loved off, eyes dropped out and a little loose in the joints. You may look ugly in the sight of the world, but they don’t understand. God loves our mangy, bug-eyed shabbiness that comes from an abundant life of sacrifice.

Connect the dots

What does abundant life mean to me? It means desiring the fullness of life that only a relationship with God can provide. Willingly serving and loving others. It means embracing our cup…this life…as it comes with all its joy and despair…all its turmoil and tests…all its passion and grace. It means to choose this life…to love God, to listen to his words and hold tightly to him at all times. It means living a real, authentic faith evidenced by a cup as clean on the inside as it is on the outside. It means full joy and contentment in a relationship with a loving Father.

It means dancing with God.

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosened my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.: (Psalm 30:11)

An Inconvenient Faith

Background Passages: Jude; Romans 8:28, Luke 14:28-33; Matthew 16:25-26

We live in a culture that carries with it a sense of entitlement to the good life. A belief that the world owes us a certain standard of living. An expected quality of life. There is an increasing number of people in our culture who hold an unrealistic, unmerited and inappropriate expectation that others should extend to them favorable treatment or conditions to make their lives easier. Our culture seems to have abandoned, to a large degree, the idea of personal accountability.

Everyone signs off on the idea of our responsibility of helping others, but we tend to qualify that assistance with “as long as its convenient and benefits me.”

It’s a sad enough perspective when taken at a culture level, when this sense of entitlement creeps into the life of the church it weakens our message and our ministry. Yet, there is a thread of entitlement weaving its way into the gospel turning worship into entertainment and God’s word into a watered down “make me feel good about myself” version of truth.

The brightly colored billboard advertising a mega-church led with this…

“All things work together for good…” (Rom. 8:28)

On its surface, a positive and encouraging message. The snippet suggests that God loves me so much that he will prevent bad things from happening to me. That I am somehow entitled to his blessing. That his will for my life is filled with financial blessing and physical health. That all I need to do is to stay positive. To think positive thoughts. It is the root of the prosperity gospel so prevalent today.

The trouble with faith grounded in entitlement is as life takes a turn for the worse, which it will inevitably do, the roots of our belief barely stretch beyond the topsoil, depriving us of the strength we need in troubled times. When life and faith fail to match our expectations, we question the reality of God’s love.

The problem with the truncated message of the billboard is that it left out the important part.

“For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

I have learned in my life that God works through tragedy and turmoil to teach me…and grow me…and nurture me…and sustain me. To make his presence known. To allow me to feel his presence through his perpetual love and perfect will for my life. For me to understand his working in my life I must focus my love, faith and trust on him. Whatever the outcome, God’s result will always be better than anything I try to do on my own.

The conflict between authentic faith and convenient faith is not new. It has been an issue for the church from the beginning. The rich young ruler turned away from Jesus because the demands of discipleship were too high. Judas betrayed Jesus because his gospel didn’t fit his world perspective.

Demas, a cohort of Paul’s during his second missionary journey, shirked his responsibilities and abandoned Paul while the apostle languished in a Roman prison. When Demas faced a difficult moment of ministry, God’s way looked too steep. The world’s way looked easier, more prosperous…more convenient…and he walked away.

Yet, there is an answer. Buried in plain view in one of the most obscure books of the New Testament.

Despite its rapid growth, the early Christian church fought through serious issues that challenged the nature of faith. By the time Jude wrote his letter to a group of Jewish converts, the battle for authentic faith hit with full force.

It didn’t take long for folks to try and make the Christian life more convenient by distorting the teachings of Christ. Within a few years of Jesus’ time on earth, there were those who perverted the concept of God’s grace. Since grace trumped the law, they reasoned, then morality doesn’t matter. You can live anyway you please knowing that God’s grace covers all sin. They took this idea so far that these false teachers declared that the more you sinned, the more grace was revealed, adding to your testimony of God’s goodness. As Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” once proclaimed, “How convenient.”

The early church also wrestled with those who believed that God granted special knowledge to some people that made them more godly than others to whom this knowledge was denied. That true salvation depended upon receiving this special knowledge.

Early in his letter, Jude tells us he intended to write them about the faith they share. Helping them grow deeper in that faith. Because of the issues they faced, his message changed, urging them, instead, to be prepared to defend the faith against those who would distort the truth. Jude recognized that the greatest danger to the Christian faith was not the opposition from outside the church, but from those inside the faith who would lessen the demands of discipleship to make it more palatable…easier…convenient. Jude called these folks, “clouds that drop no rain but are blown away by the wind.”

Authentic faith is never convenient. Authentic faith never promises personal prosperity. It never promises an easier life by the world’s standards. Authentic faith always calls us to step outside our comfort zones to be obedient to his will and to meet the needs of others. To live the life he called us to live. Authentic faith requires us to set aside any sense of entitlement and live in service to others.

The question is how do we do that?

Jude gives us the blueprint.

“But you, beloved, you must build yourselves up on the foundation of your most holy faith; you must pray in the Holy spirit; you must keep yourselves in the love of God; while you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ which will bring you life eternal.” {Jude 20-21)

Build our lives on the foundation of faith handed down through Jesus Christ. The person of faith rests his life not on personal opinion or a man-inspired gospel, but upon the words and truth of Jesus. A few verses earlier he called upon his brothers and sisters in Christ to “remember the words of the apostles.” To ground ourselves in scripture. Yet, he adds a clear distinctive. It’s not enough for us to rely on our own interpretations, but to look at the gospel of Christ under the prayerful guidance of the God’s spirit. Testing what we think we think we know against his word and the spirit’s revelation to us.

Jude also teaches that the foundation of our faith will be evidence in our love for God. God loves us unconditionally. His love is a gift of grace. Such grace…such love…demands that we make the effort to stay in close, intimate relationship with the God we love. Pure. Real. Honest. True. Demonstrated by our obedience to his will and the life he calls us to live.

You see, genuine faith is not designed to make the world different, but to make us different. Faith can never be an intellectual belief nor a cultural perspective. It is meant to be a life-changing, moral imperative.

Jesus told us there would be a price to pay for following him.

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it…so, likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:28, 33)

“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26)

We are called to an inconvenient faith. It will be hard…demanding…difficult…and, if expressed well, more joyous that you can ever hope to experience any other way.