TheNarrowRoadPursued

[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=power+lines&iid=5146947″ src=”2/5/f/f/High_voltage_electric_9a36.jpg?adImageId=12580546&imageId=5146947″ width=”355″ height=”360″ /]Modern Christianity has more or less limited itself to the ability to convince its adherents to voluntarily conform to a certain standard of acceptable behaviors.  This “self-betterment” is in essence no different from any number of psychological constructs designed specifically to lead an individual through partially self-directed change.  From my point of view there lacks a clear distinction between committing one’s life to serve others and quitting smoking.  Both activities are helpful, even healthful, yet may be accomplished by human means directed by human ingenuity.

The kind of life to which Jesus calls his disciples is far outside human capacity to perform.  Jesus knew this and promised to empower his followers by his own indwelling presence. 

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you.He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you.Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live.When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:16–20, NLT)

“And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.” (Luke 24:49, NLT) 

It is a sad fact that much of my life bears few marks of the energizing movement of the Holy Spirit.  I have far too often chose personal comfort against participating in the mighty work of a Sovereign God.  I absolutely hate this.

God patiently allows me opportunity after opportunity to reflect his magnificence and not my own paltry attempts at being important.  Why His patience remains is truly a mystery, but here I am breathing my confession.

I do feel an internal and irrepressible urge to beg God to allow me to participate in things only He could accomplish.  The utterance of such a request gives me frightened chills for in my unworthiness I still ask.  I am Peter, one foot planted on the boat deck, one floating on the water, one firmly stuffed in my mouth.

The question is, “When God calls this time, will I say “Yes, Lord!” and go directly to Him?”

The voice that bids the storms be stilled
The hand whose scars remain
The eyes that see from heaven’s gate
The heart that bears no stain
Has once for all His life-blood shed,
And claimed His rightful throne.
The power that called Him from the grave
Makes all who will, His own.
In life, in death, in victory
His is a solitary art.
No other than the God made man
Eternal life imparts.
Oh Father take what you have given,
All that I am or ere will be
And make of me a gift of love
To Him whose life has ransomed me.

©2010 Roberta Franklin, LaBarge, WY

Thanks Mom!

[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=fireworks&iid=7915505″ src=”0/9/f/b/Spring_Festival_Celebration_5c7d.jpg?adImageId=11964558&imageId=7915505″ width=”380″ height=”253″ /]If the opportunity fell to you to make the Fourth of July a more intensely celebrated holiday, what would you do?  Would you order in bigger fireworks?  Would you make it mandatory that every city hosted a massive free BBQ? Would you hand out red, white and blue facepaint?  How would you make the national celebration of freedom more meaningful?

This is the day the Church has set aside for generations for the remembrance of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples.  The manner in which the gathering of the saints is conducted changes from generation to generation, but the main point remains.

Jesus celebrated a “Fourth of July” kind of meal with his disciples, just a few hours before his death.  It was a meal that recalled the slavery of the people who were descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  It recalled the hopelessness of their estate and their powerlessness.  These people were a related people but were not a nation.

But God called them out.  He gave them a meal of promise, a “pre-celebration” of what only God could do. God mandated the meal be observed perpetually by the generations to come as a remembrance of their salvation and a declaration that the God of Israel reigns.  It was THE meal of meals and Jesus intensified it.

Most Christians are aware of the great promise of deliverance in the words, “This is my body…this is my blood.”  Few, however, remember how Jesus humbled himself and washed his disciples feet.  Even fewer recall Jesus’ “new command” given the same night he was to be betrayed.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. John 13.3, NASB

It doesn’t get any more intense that this.  What a command, that Jesus’ followers are to love each other with the same kind of love that went to the cross, entered the grave and calls others to follow into eternity.  It is extreme, it is intense.  It is impossible and Jesus knew it, that is why he promised his own Spirit to indwell those who would seek to obey him.  To love others with Jesus’ kind of love, requires Jesus’ kind of power.

I wonder what the disciples who shared that meal with Jesus were thinking.  To take a ancient and revered national holiday and transform it into a personal challenge must have been overwhelming.  It is two thousand years later and I still feel the sting of the command.

How about you?