THIRD HEAVEN RANCH

I’m currently taking an online course from the ministry of Francis Frangipane on the topic of Christlikeness.  Today, I’m meditating on these words from Pastor Frangipane:

The steadfast prayer of the wounded intercessor holds great sway upon the heart of God.

We cannot become Christlike without being wounded.  You see, even after we come to Christ, we carry encoded within us preset limits concerning how far we will go for love, and how much we are willing to suffer for redemption.  When God allows us to be wounded, He exposes those human boundaries and reveals what we lack of His nature.

I’ve noted lately that the ‘Christian world’ runs from pain, therefore as I see it, we tend to run from true Christlikeness.   God’s desire for us as His children is that we are Christlike….no wonder our ‘Light’ is not shining when we run from what causes us to shine.  We really are ‘hiding our lamp under a basket’.

Matthew 5:15 (ESV)  “Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.”

I’ve never really applied this verse to myself before, but what people are drawn to in the Christian faith is Christlikeness, not ‘Christian-likeness’.  There is a world of difference between those two words.

How can we win a lost world if our lights aren’t brightly shining and attracting others to Jesus? Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered (Hebrews 5:8)…how can we expect it to be any different for us if we are going to be like Him?

James 1:2 (NIV84)  “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,”

These are questions I’m pondering today.  Your thoughts?

Light in the darkness

My project for today is to write a permanent page for my blog which is commonly referred to as the ‘About Me’ page.  A permanent page is accessed by a tab at the top as opposed to a blog entry that shows up on the ‘front page’.  I’ve had no training in this….I’m just taking this new blog venture one step at a time.  

Have you ever stopped to think how hard it might be to write about yourself?  What to say?  How much to say?  What not to say?

So I’ve just written a paragraph that says this:

I come from a family line of people who love the Lord back to at least 4 generations–filled with ministers, church workers, seminary professors and presidents, as well as those in business who serve Him daily.  I realize that’s a pretty incredible heritage and I’m very grateful for it!  At the same time, that kind of heritage easily became a source of pride and ‘elite-ism’ that had to be stripped away–quite a painful process I might add.  I had to learn Isaiah 64:6a (KJV)  “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;”

I immediately thought I needed to blog about this because the process was an important part of my current walk with the Lord.

So often, all we know is the way we were raised and the ‘frame of reference’ we received about life as a child.  This can be good and bad…even horrific for some.  It’s often quite difficult to see things from a different perspective than the one you have been ‘trained’ to see.

I was a 4th generation Southern Baptist…raised to see life and God in a certain way.

My Granddaddy and his 8 brothers--8 of the 9 boys were in full time Christian service.

While I ‘walked an aisle’ as a 6 year old child, my true conversion experience came at age 24 late one night.  A few years later I began to attend a ‘non-denominational’ Bible study called Bible Study Fellowship.  At this Bible study we were not ‘allowed’ to even mention where we went to church.  That was a first for me!  All I ever knew was ‘Baptists were right and everyone else was wrong’.  But we were taught in this study to allow God to speak to us from the Scripture…no commentaries, no notes…just us and God.  That study started a process in me that continues to this day….that process is a search for Truth and a desire in my heart to remove any parameters from my mind that would limit Him in any way.  In other words, I’ve asked God to ‘renew my mind’ with His thoughts and not mine; His ways above mine; and to keep me centered in His Truth.

So while there are many benefits of a Christian heritage, there are also ‘issues’ that come along with it.  Often those of us with a rich heritage are looked at as having an ‘easy road’.  That’s not necessarily true.  I’ve had to ‘unlearn’ many things along the way and God has spent many years repairing my foundation to be based solely on His Truth.  Will my understanding change again….absolutely!  As humans, we never arrive at ‘Full Truth’ until we meet Him face to face!

1 Corinthians 13:11-12 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Well, I had no idea there would be a ‘part two’ to “Rest” but something interesting happened this morning.  (You can read part 1 here.)  My pastor preached on ‘persistence’ and the importance of being persistent in our faith walk….to keep on keeping on even when things are disappointing, tough, or seemingly impossible.  At the end he called for those who felt like they were ‘weary’ in their walk to come up for prayer.

Even though I wrote yesterday about how many people I see who are weary, I was astounded at the number of people at the front of the church.  I have to guess, but I’d guess at least 1/4 of the congregation was at the altar…and these were only the ones who went to the front–how many more stayed in their seats?

Does this surprise you?

I was grieved  to actually see ‘weariness’ in such great numbers.  Where I’d been seeing it in individuals, to see a collective group of ‘weary Christians’ was sobering.  What’s missing in our faith walk that is causing so many to suffer when we are promised abundant life, peace, and a Comforter?

One thought I have is that so many people have been taught rules over relationship; busyness over intimacy; independence over dependence; and ‘Christian-likeness’ over Christlikeness.  [I believe Jesus desires to ‘conform us to the image of Christ’, not another Christian…even if it is an exemplary one.  Is your goal to be a ‘good Christian’ or to be like Jesus?  This is not an issue of semantics, but an issue of the heart.]

Jesus really does desire that we come ‘sit with Him awhile’.  He has the answers to all our problems and is waiting to share solutions with us!

Won't you sit with Me awhile?

What are your thoughts?  Just click on ‘leave a comment’ below and let me know!

Matthew 11:28  “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:29  “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.

Come away with Me to a quiet place and rest for awhile. MK 6:31

I believe God is saying today, “I AM Rest for the weary.”

To ‘give rest’ in verse 28 in The Complete Word Study dictionary has this meaning:

anapaúō; To cease, give rest. To give rest, quiet, recreate, refresh

Don’t you love those words ‘quiet, recreate, refresh’?

In the next verse when it says “you will find rest” this variation of the word is used:

anápausis; fem. noun from anapaúō (G373), act., to give rest. Rest, inward tranquility while one performs necessary labor

What a thought!!  ‘Inward tranquility while one performs necessary labor’.  Does this describe you?

He is our Rest and the only place to find this inward tranquility is in Him.  He says when we come to Him we will find this rest.

“Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”

He also says: “In Him we live and move and have our being”.  Acts 17:28a

It is ‘in Him’ that we find ‘rest for our souls’.  “In Him” is a pretty significant phrase in the New Testament and worthy of study.  But we’ll save that for another day.

Our world is weary.  I hear it when I talk to people, I see it in their faces, and often it comes out of their mouths…bone tired and weary to the core.

What does it mean to be weary?  Dictionary.com says this: 

1. physically or mentally exhausted by hard work, exertion, strain, etc.; fatigued; tired: weary eyes; a weary brain.
2. characterized by or causing fatigue: a weary journey.
3. patient or dissatisfied with something (often followed by of): weary of excuses.
4. characterized by or causing impatience or dissatisfaction; tedious; irksome: a weary wait.

I believe we become weary because we are trying ‘to do it ourselves’.  He is our Rest but we have to come to Him and lean on Him.  He won’t force us, but when we take one step, just one step, in His direction (which indicates a turn toward Him) He responds.  It’s His promise to us.  Remember the phrase, ‘inward tranquility while one performs necessary labor’.  That’s the complete opposite of ‘weary’.

Jeremiah 33:3  ‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’

Will you call today?

Matthew 18:3  And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven