A Change In Direction

Changing directions is a part of following Jesus. In Luke 9 and John 13 Jesus makes a course change for Himself and those who follow. Both Luke and John, although unique in the story and setting they tell, are clear about communicating a redirection. The scene changes from Jesus the teacher, leader, healer; to Jesus the sacrifice.

We are in a season of changing directions. The emphasis on teaching, leading and healing is at an end. The time for setting our face toward the cross has come. What we have learned in the past seasons of life we will need to help us get through the next season. But this season has its own challenges. Namely, we desperately need to rediscover the power of the cross through denying ourselves and following Jesus.

When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem;

Luke 9:51 NASB

Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

John 13:1 NASB

Lesson 1.

I hope to share more as we go along. Most of these are reflections following seasons of contemplation. I’ll share my view on contemplation too, later on, if I can say focused.

Actually, I’m crying right now. Crying for all those young kids I know that were told this life in Christ would be easy. We didn’t say it that way. We said it would be blessed. We told them they were special. But we didn’t tell them what kind of special or what pain is experienced when you lay your specialness down and pick up a cross.

Sometimes at night, or in the stillness, I can feel their heartbreak as they face this deception for the first time. That ugly moment when they see that Jesus is not going to give them all their heart desires. He is instead offering them only what He desires for them. Some return to the twisted theology of God serving man. Other face the pain and set out to follow Jesus on His mission.

If you have walked this pathway you notice some of the places where unnecessary items have been cast off. Like the Oregon trail across America, some places require a sacrifice of self and provision to keep going forward. More and more the trail to God in America is littered with pride, radical, elite, and other idols, and idolatries. We are discovering that the establishment of the self is not necessary for communion with God. The establishment of the radical self is definitely not.

But it’s hard to die. Even for Jesus. Even if you in a garden surrounded by friends, surrounded by God.

This is Too Hard

Few of us have experienced the God who allowed His people slavery for hundreds of years or a forty-year quest in the wilderness. Because of what we have experienced, or in this case, not experienced, we tend to think many of the normal things of God are too hard. We can assume that the things of God are supposed to be easy, achievable in a short amount of time. When we look at the years and decades that God took individuals and groups through for their development, what do we assume we should arrive in a much easier or quicker fashion?

The center command in the Bible is to love God. How long do you suppose it takes for someone to arrive at the place of loving God in the way God intends? I am not asking you if you love God. I am asking you if you know how God wants to be loved. I am asking you if you know how and why God can command love in the first place? And how is commanded love, love? How long and how is it possible for a person to love God for who His is and not just for their idea of God.

God challenges the best parts of us and asks all the goodness of our lives, all those bits, and pieces we like about ourselves, be placed on the altar along with the evil, bitterness, unforgiveness, and hate. This is hard. But it might not be hard for the reasons you think. It might not be hard because of the sacrifice. We all sacrifice for goals and dreams. We all give up something to have something else. So what if transformation is hard, not because of the sacrifice but because of the goal, the outcome? What if maturity in Christ Jesus is hard because it is the death of the self, a whole ordeal of becoming a new and different kind of being?

God is working on our soul and not just sending information or principles to our mind. It is hard because God is removing ourselves from the throne in our own heart. Each person has their own specific battle with Father, Son and Spirit being Lord of their life. Each one of us has adopted ways of this world that we call our identity, our purpose or our destiny. Transformation that establishes who I see myself to be is acceptable. Transformation that changes my identity and nature, is not so easily embraced.

In contemplative prayer you learn to face rejection and pain, you learn to honor God above others and your own heart, you learn that God can be trusted when you don’t understand and that explaining God to this world is sometimes impossible. Experiencing a transformation of your nature and identity is hard, painful and often lonely. Jesus went through thirty years in hiddenness followed by a wilderness fast incorporated with demonic temptation. The garden of Gethsemane reveals the pain involved in living out a “not my will but thine be done” lifestyle. Some of us can’t presently surrender our will about food, clothes, forgiving a minor offense or being faithful to a friend who has let us down.

American has developed a culture contrary to God. Our church culture, our religious culture is being shamed for who God is. Society does not like God being authoritative, judgmental, portrayed as masculine, and demanding love and obedience. This public shaming has caused some followers of Christ and churches to give in to social pressure and rewrite or deconstruct what God is like and what He says about Himself. We rewrite history and scripture to justify ourselves and make God in our own image, or at least an image that is more acceptable to the American public.

In Luke 9 Jesus is telling His disciples that they are headed to Jerusalem where Jesus is going to be killed. Who gets excited about a journey to death, let alone a cross. But therein lies the mystery we are revealing to the world.

Is there anything in this life worth giving up your identity, your nature, your destiny for? Yes, there is. Is there anything worth being rejected, disinherited, persecuted and despised for? Yes!

But it is hard. So hard you most likely will not be able to see it through without being transformed. You will not be able to live the life God requires without experiencing God. You will find yourself failing as long as you build your house on knowledge, human energy, trends, and movements. And that is why you are hearing and will be hearing, over and over again, the voice of the Lord calling to you, come unto me.

It is time we learn about the secret place of prayer again, the isolated place, the place of silence and stillness. It is time we open our nature to God for transformation and stop seeking Him for the empowerment of self. 

Lesson 1 - This is Hard.