Getting rid of the warp

What is your biggest preoccupation? What do you spend the most time thinking about? If we were honest, our answers would range all over the map, from money to health to sports to sex. What you think or worry about the most becomes your focus in life.  Everything else gets rearranged around it. The problem is when things are arranged the wrong way, our whole life gets bent out of the shape God designed for it. It gets warped. And then everything starts to go wrong.

The focal point, the central reality of Paul’s life, was knowing Christ. Everything else was entirely secondary. He wanted to know Christ, to know the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and to become like him in his death (Philippians 3:10-11). He wanted to know Christ enough that he was willing to pay whatever price it took to achieve that goal. He knew that when Christ was the focal point, everything else would come into order. The warp would be gone. And to get rid of the warp would be worth the price.

He knew a secret. The only place to find Jesus is on the road to Calvary. But the road to Calvary is the only road that leads on to glory.

How much time do you spend thinking about Christ, about his will for you, about his Word, about his call on your life, about how to please him? Do you spend more time thinking about those things than about your bank account, your job satisfaction or your favourite sports team? 

When Paul found Christ, he set everything else in his life aside. The things that had meant everything to him were now without value. This he makes clear so vividly in Philippians 3:9: “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.” You can’t gain Christ without losing whatever takes precedence over him!

If we have to pay a price, what is the benefit? Well, when our lives stop being warped and get back into the shape God designed for them, we start making a lot fewer mistakes. We make it easy for God to help us. We find that all that time spent seeking stuff the world offers was a waste of time. We lose a lot of fruitless activity and gain a lot of priceless peace.

God has designed our lives to move in an upward trajectory: from the suffering of the cross to the glory of the resurrection, from the place of first accepting Christ to the place of being transformed by him, from the bottom of the pit onto the highest mountain, from under the worst curse into the greatest blessing.

Getting rid of the warp will unfold the magnificent beauty of the garment that God has designed to represent your life. When the warp begins to go, you’ll wonder why you tolerated it for so long.

The purpose of failure

Failure is part of God’s plan for us. That was the last post. If you survived that, here are four specific God-designed purposes of failure.

Failure teaches us we are really nothing. Life is not all about us. Failure teaches us the only thing that matters is God’s opinion of us and God’s plan for us. If that plan took Jesus to the depths of humiliation in the eyes of the world, maybe the same will be true for us. Never accept the world’s standard of failure or of success. One of the worst problems is when those wrong standards enter into the church and into our thinking as Christians. Prosperity, ease of life, personal fulfillment, no challenges, no fears to face.... that’s what we all want. The problem is not just that these are wrong, it is that they are a delusion. The main cause of disillusionment is because we have believed an illusion. We need to prepare ourselves for failure, or for what will look like failure.

Second, failure leads us out of our plan and into God’s plan. Many years ago, I had a great plan to return to England, take a very promising ministry position, and get out of the dead end rut I had sunk into in Canada. God had a different plan. He kept me in Canada. Years of apparent failure were the result, but I hung on because I knew it was God’s plan, and I never believed I was a failure in his sight. Eventually I realized there were areas of pride and need for recognition that the failure was forcing me to confront. Dealing with that brought release, but there were more years of failure before God’s plan started to come to deeper fruition. Something in me had to die. I came to realize that God was using my apparent failures to reveal his sovereign plan. Now, looking back, I can see that God uniquely positioned me for a day he knew was coming. I had to be there waiting and preparing. My plan would have taken me out of human failure and into human success, but God’s plan took me out of human failure into Kingdom success.

Third, failure proves I am loved and valued by God. Even as Christians, we think of our failures as proofs that God has judged us, forsaken us or forgotten us. The opposite is the case. God loves me enough to use failure to deliver me from the delusion that success by the standards of this world is the goal I should live for. God loves me enough to save me from the kinds of superficial success that would rob me of achieving my eternal inheritance. C.T. Studd gave away his fortune and spent his life in poverty on the mission field, achieving little human recognition. He was a failure by the standards of the world. Yet the money he gave away financed significant Christian advances in various parts of the world, and the seeds he planted in China, along with others like Hudson Taylor, laid the foundations for the greatest revival in history. C.T Studd is a hero primarily because, by the world’s standards, he was a failure.

Finally, failure proves we are children of God destined for glory: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs -- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:16-17). Suffering, including failure, is a privilege which proves we are God’s children. In fact, it is a necessary prerequisite for our being glorified. Why? Because we must follow down the same road as our Saviour. The greatest apparent failure in history involved a naked man hanging on a Roman cross. Mission failed? No, mission accomplished.

In 1774, the poet William Cowper wrote an amazing hymn, God moves in a mysterious way. The words of the third verse of this hymn were used powerfully by the Lord 35 years ago to strengthen me at one of my many times of failure:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break

In blessings on your head!

Whatever your circumstances, may his mercy clouds break with blessings on your head today.

Facing failure

Several years ago I was driving out of a city on a major highway feeling deeply disappointed and hurt - why that was the case doesn’t really matter. I don’t usually listen to music in the car, but that day I put on a CD I happened to have with me. Immediately I heard the words, “His love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me.” And God met me.

Paul experienced disappointment in a way I will thankfully never know. It runs throughout the first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians. He poured his life into people, and received nothing but rejection in return. Things were so tense he postponed a personal visit, fearing more trouble. And in the midst of this, he suffered a personal disaster so great he describes the effect of it as a sentence of death passed on him. He felt a failure.

Suffering often comes in the form of failure. Nothing is more debilitating than facing the fact we have failed. I know this is true for men, and I am sure it is true for women also, though it may come in a different shape. But Paul had a plan for facing failure and disappointment.

First, he focussed on God. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3). He knew God is a Father who will never abandon his purposes for us. No apparent human failure will stop the purposes of God. He brings strength in the darkest hour. Failure is the time to run toward God, not away from him.

Second, he understood that God is in the trouble: He “comforts us in all our affliction” (verse 4a).  God takes us out of our troubles, but first he meets us in the midst of them. He is not afraid of crisis. He does not promise us that we will be shielded from it. But his plan is to bring good out of it. Ninety per cent of our growth comes in times of trouble. That’s when we are driven to go deeper into him.

Third, he knew that this comfort is not just for us. It overflows into the lives of others (2 Corinthians 1:4b-7). We can help someone in trouble only because we have been through it ourselves. It is a powerful thing to be in the presence of someone who has passed through severe trials and emerged victorious.

Out of all this come an unshaken hope (verse 7). “Unshaken” is a Greek word referring to a gilt-edged security. It’s always worth going through it because there’s gold at the end of it. Suffering and failure drive us into God. If that’s all our suffering accomplished, it would be worth it.

Paul was able to survive because the experience of failure and suffering did not for him detract from his understanding of a sovereign and loving God. Because he knew God was loving, he was confident of an inner peace in the midst of the turmoil. Because he knew God was sovereign, he was confident that God was working a purpose through it all that in the end would be worth the pain.

Failure is the route to deeper fellowship with God. Failure is the means of knowing and understanding God more deeply. Failure draws us closer to God. If failure is all we see, it is only because we have defined success incorrectly. We think of success as achieving a particular goal (as defined by us), but often God has an entirely different goal in mind. Failure is often the door to finding the real purpose of God for our lives. This is just another way of saying that failure is the doorway to success. The experience of failure enables us to redefine and understand the meaning of success.

And when we redefine success, we redefine failure. We need to start to look at failure through the lens of God’s purposes. Who would have considered Jesus a success at Calvary? Even his closest friends had deserted him. His life’s work had come to nothing. Jesus understood things differently. For him, the only success was to remain obedient to the Father, all the way to the cross. For three years, Jesus had viewed success and failure by that standard, even while his disciples were viewing things entirely differently. That’s why they never understood his warnings about his death, and why they deserted him at the cross. They wanted to make Jesus the political leader of Israel and get themselves places at his right and left. If Jesus had succeeded at that, he would have failed in his mission from God.

If failure was part of God’s plan for Jesus, failure is part of God’s plan for you and me. Failure is just as important as success, and it is usually through failure that we understand success. Embracing failure will lead you deeper into God and his plan for your life. And that is success!

Crossing the finish line

At year’s end, it’s a good time to reflect on this truth: it is part of God’s character to complete what he has begun. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). As we follow him, we are meant to become like him. We also are meant to complete what we have begun. That is why that little verse at the end of Colossians is so important: “And say to Archippus, ‘See that you complete the ministry that you have received in the Lord’” (Colossians 4:17). There might even be a pun here, for the first four letters of Archippus’ name are similar to the Greek word for “beginning.” Paul is saying to Archippus: are you a beginner, or a finisher? Lots of people start, but not all finish. Many drop out along the way.

What is it that hinders us from finishing what we have begun? What causes us to give up, to turn back, to lose the ground we have gained? Jesus said it would happen. Read the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. Jesus lists four categories of people. The first group don’t even get to first base. The second group receive the seed, but it soon dies. The third group lasts a little longer, but their life is choked out by thorns. For all three groups, what the world offers is more attractive than the cost of a life following Christ. These people hardly make a beginning, let alone cross the finish line.

And let’s stop for a moment to note that Jesus does not allow people to blame problems in the church for their own spiritual failures. People who fall away from the Lord and whose spiritual commitment dries up have only their own sin to blame. Please do not blame your sin on someone else. Churches are imperfect, and God will deal with them, but no one is let off the hook of their own disobedience.

But there is a fourth group in the parable. Jesus describes them as those who hear the word and understand it. In their case, the seed falls on good soil. That’s hopefully us! But even here, some lives produce far more than others -- more than three times, in fact. What happens even in the lives of sincere believers to diminish their effectiveness and reduce the fruit that comes from their lives?

Sometimes people who really want to follow the Lord get tragically derailed by the circumstances of life. Adversity causes them to give up, or falter for a season.

If we could go back in history, we could learn some lessons from the experience of one such person, Mary Magdalene. We find her at Jesus’ tomb (John 20:11-18). The tomb is empty, but as first the angels and then Jesus himself appear to her, she is so overcome by grief that she doesn’t realize what has happened. She is immobilized at the exact moment she should have been launched into orbit. She was about to give up at the exact moment of breakthrough. Every single one of us can relate to Mary. We all have moments where we feel like giving up, and sometimes we make decisions based on disappointment which cost us and cost the kingdom dearly.

What caused Mary nearly to miss her destiny? Let me list three factors, and let me suggest they are the same things which will come against us.

She saw the circumstances as insurmountable. Jesus was dead. Yes, Jesus had raised at least three people from the dead, but who was there who could raise him? All of us can lose hope in the face of impossible situations. Yet Mary had forgotten that nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37). Don’t evaluate the promises of God by your circumstances. Evaluate your circumstances by the Word of God.

She was overcome by a disappointment caused by false expectations. Mary’s hopes were crushed because she had based them on false expectations. Along with the disciples and everyone else, she thought the Messiah would inaugurate a revolution which would drive the Romans out, not die on a Roman cross. God will often fail to meet our expectations, but he will never fail to fulfill his promises. Go back to his promises when your expectations are not met.

She lost sight of the power of God. Mary had forgotten things she should not have forgotten. She knew Jesus had taken five loaves and multiplied them into thousands. She knew Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. She knew Jesus had walked on the water and calmed the seas. She knew he had given sight to the blind and raised the crippled to their feet. She knew he had restored speech to the mute, opened the ears of the deaf and cleansed the lepers. Most of all she knew the miracle of forgiveness -- the day Jesus met her, cast seven demons out of her, set her free from the power of darkness, and gave her eternal life. We may not have seen the things Mary did, but all of us have seen enough. We have all witnessed his faithfulness, his provision, his forgiveness and his love. Even if we may not see how God can move us forward, we should still know that he can.

The walk of faith sometimes seems like its all uphill. But when the circumstances seem impossible, our expectations are not met and we lose sight of God’s power, we need to go back to what God has said. Our words mean nothing, but God’s Word never fails. The fulfillment of God’s word is built into its foundations. For God, speaking is doing. God created the entire universe simply by speaking. How much easier is it for him to fulfill his plan for our lives? To Jeremiah, preparing him for a lifetime of testing and trial, he made this firm promise: “I am watching over my word to perform it” (Jeremiah 1:12). And so God did, for both Jeremiah and Mary Magdalene.

In the midst of your battles of faith, go back to what God has said. Don’t walk away from God; dig yourself into God. And don’t ever give up. Remember there is an end to every valley, and your breakthrough is probably right around the corner. He’ll finish what he began in you -- if you allow him to do it!

The real meaning of discipleship

What did Jesus mean when he talked about discipleship?  That was a question the "discipleship movement" of the 1970s sought to answer. In general, the body of Christ, at least on the North American continent, moved on without listening much. But in the New Testament, the word "disciple" is used about 250 times, and mostly in connection with following Jesus, so it's obviously a very important concept. My suggestion is we can't really understand what it means to follow Jesus without understanding more about discipleship than we often do. It was a common practice for educated and well-connected Jewish men to become disciples of leading Rabbis, which in turn would lead to them assuming the same role toward others. They would take in his teaching and pass it on to others. Such a position would be financially and socially rewarding. So when Jesus appeared on the scene, the most natural way people had of understanding him was as a Rabbi, and those following him would become his disciples.

But from the beginning, Jesus changed the entire meaning of discipleship. A fundamental characteristic of New Testament discipleship is that Jesus called the disciples to himself, whereas in Judaism a disciple decided which teacher he was going to follow. Neither were there any particular qualifications (social or educational) needed, other than the willingness to follow Jesus. That is why Jesus called tax gatherers and sinners to be his disciples, and scandalized the religious establishment in the process. And as to earthly benefits, there were certainly few of them involved in following Jesus! The commitment of his followers was to the person of Jesus, whereas in Judaism it was to the teaching of the Rabbi. With Jesus, a person follows his teaching only because he has encountered his person.

People tried to understand Jesus' teaching, but without understanding  who he was or being willing to follow him. That's why even learned teachers could not get what Jesus was saying -- look at the Pharisees or even Nicodemus. In Christian discipleship, the Word of God becomes powerful in someone's life only to the extent that they are willing to follow Jesus in personal commitment. If you try to follow Jesus' teaching without knowing him personally, you will wind up either in utter failure or in legalistic hypocrisy. In Judaism, the relationship of disciple to teacher was determined by the teaching, so that someone would follow a particular Rabbi in order to get his teaching or interpretation of the Bible more than a heart knowledge of God. But without a heart knowledge of God, even the most learned theologian will never understand the Bible or the God who inspired it. And this led directly to the Pharisaical legalism that nailed Jesus to the cross. But the people who followed Jesus did so simply because they were committed to him as a person and to whom they understood him to be.

Discipleship is not about knowledge of doctrine, but about faith in a person. Doctrine (a right understanding of the Bible) is important, but it is birthed in an encounter with Jesus and a revelation from God as to who Jesus is. In Judaism, a disciple's obedience was limited to agreement with the Rabbi's teaching. By contrast, Jesus' disciples are called to obey him in every part of their lives. There is nothing in the life of a disciple independent of Jesus. Everything we have and are is drawn into fellowship with him. But the way of Jesus leads to the cross, and so we also are drawn into the path of sacrifice and suffering with him. Maybe that's why the discipleship movement didn't gain many converts!

The bottom line is this: the reason we often fail to reproduce New Testament Christianity in our culture has something to do with the fact we equally fail to understand the meaning of New Testament discipleship. It's a thought to ponder.