Great Things or Great Love?

In conversation with a friend this week about the things that life is made up of that really count, I was reminded of something that Mother Teresa said:

"We do no great things; we do small things with great love."

Be blessed and know that it's the very little things that are done in love that count most in our journey of living our lives the way Jesus lived His.

No-Strings-Attached Giving and Receiving

Recently as I was thinking about our response to God's unconditional love when it came to us in Christ Jesus, I realized that we fallen humans don't really want to be loved unconditionally. Our response was that of rejection and finally crucifixion.

On the one hand, we crave to be loved and yet something in us hates to be loved with no strings attached. I have a Korean friend who is over-the-top generous towards me. She lives in another state, and I see her once or twice a year; it never fails that, for no reason at all, she sends me back home laden with goodies! One time when I was with her, she insisted that we visit a Korean grocery store and she took me down all of the aisles and pulled off the shelves 2 or 3 of each item that she was sure I needed or wanted and filled up the grocery cart.

The whole time that she was doing this, I was thinking about frugality and how much she was spending and racking my brain to know how I could "pay her back" for this generosity. It made me very uncomfortable!

Later as I was complaining in my heart about all of this, the Lord spoke to me something to this effect: "Nita, I want to show you extravagant, no-strings-attached love through her undeserved generosity towards you. Receive it with thanks...and then you do the same towards others." I'm slowly getting it but I'm not yet there, because each time I see her and she loads me up with good things, I cringe a little inside; I want to deserve the gifts or have some way to pay her back! It's very humbling to receive with no way of paying back.

So deeply ingrained in us is the idea of pay-back or "evening the scales" that we, the human race, couldn't tolerate perfect unadulterated love when it showed up in Jesus. In this season now of gift-giving and receiving, it's not easy to receive a gift from someone that you didn't give to; even if the giver had no strings attached to the gift, our inner drive is often to feel like they expect something back or that we should give something back. This may be a good time to pause and remember the extravagant, no-strings-attached Love of God in Jesus and by His grace, humbly and gratefully receive the gift...and then give to others in the same way.

Next Book: Telling God's Story...

I'm reading a wonderful book by Peter Enns about how to teach the Bible to children. Because I'm concerned with how I was raised to think about the Bible (see introductory post on The Bible Made Impossible - http://nitasbookclub.blogspot.com/2011/12/increase-of-truth-looks-like-error.html), I have a strong desire to see children raised now with a better idea of what the purpose of the Scripture is and thereby later in life find the Bible able to stand under scrutiny rather than to find it a stumbling block when doubts about it arise.  (Statistics show that young adults are leaving the faith in huge numbers now, and one reason for that is their sincere questions and doubts about what the Bible is presented to be by their parents and Bible teachers.)

I also have great respect for Peter Enns whose writings have had significant influence on me in the very recent years, particularly as they relate to what God's intentions were in giving us His Word.

For these reasons I'd like to go through his book, Telling God's Story, a Parents' Guide to Teaching the Bible.  It's available at amazon.com:  http://www.amazon.com/Telling-Gods-Story-Parents-Teaching/dp/1933339462/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354116103&sr=8-1&keywords=telling+god%27s+story

My prayer is that those who are raising and/or teaching children would find this book a blessing and encouragement.

(I hope to begin this early in 2013.)

The Superiority of Jesus

I'm listening again to the wonderful book of Hebrews and so will repost what I wrote a couple of years ago in line with this:

I want to share a thought about the big message of the book of Hebrews - the superiority of Jesus to the Old Testament rituals and systems and practices, He being the fulfillment of them all.

As I went through this book several times recently, I was struck as never before with how those human systems and practices were done away with in His coming in the flesh. In fact, without the removal of the human systems, Jesus' beauty was obscured.

With this in mind, I saw the well-known chapter of Hebrews 11 on faith in fresh light; a couple of simple things stood out to me about faith:
1. With the removal of external props in worship, the true believer is forced into a life of faith at many levels.
2. Faith thrives and grows in the absence of external props because there is nothing left to lean on but the Person of Jesus.

Knowing our proneness as fallen humans, I wonder what systems and practices we modern evangelicals have that hinder a life of true faith? Holy Spirit, we need Your help to be able to see, and we pray that You will magnify Jesus and remove whatever You need to remove in order for us to see Him as He is and to grow in faith. Thank You for hearing and answering!

Backlog...

Just a quick message to say that last week those of you who were signed up to receive my postings by email may have received an email with a long list of postings on it. That was a backlog of all the postings I've done since the system quit sending out emails (for an unknown reason to me). Because I'm not techology-savvy, I couldn't figure out how to correct that (though I tried!).

I don't understand how this works and I guess I chalk it up to a quirk in the blogger system. It's possible that now the email piece of it will start working...we'll see!

Blessings and peace to you today!

You Don't HAVE to Pray!

When God came to earth in Christ Jesus, He gave us new wine: Himself unveiled! And in order to rightly mediate this new wine, there had to be a new wineskin. Jesus addresses this in Mark 2:18-22 when speaking about fasting; I believe, however, that this truth can probably apply to all that has to do with the gospel, including prayer.

The purpose of the wineskin is to contain the wine in order to experience it; in other words, it “mediates” the wine. If Jesus is the new wine, then there must be a new wineskin in order to experience Him. The old wineskin cannot mediate His life adequately.

The apostle John makes a startling statement in John 1:17 “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Until Jesus came, what humans knew of God was mostly through the wineskin of the law. With the appearance of God in the flesh, the way we encounter Him now is through an entirely different medium or wineskin. Under the law, we experience God as Judge; under grace and truth, we experience God as Father.

When it comes to prayer (and other issues in God), the paradigm shift that has taken place through Jesus’ coming is that there is no law to pray. Part of the good news (gospel) is that you don’t have to pray! The old wineskin was about law/obligation/ requirement; the new wineskin is about voluntary acceptance of God’s loving invitation to participate with Him.

Apart from this new wineskin, we can’t experience Jesus rightly; He is too untamed to be contained (mediated) by the old wineskin of law.

So when it comes to prayer, if need be, ask the Lord for grace to see it through a new wineskin: grace and truth (God's gracious invitation to participate with Him).

Target Practice

Since my "retirement" the Lord has had me on an unexpected growth spurt in knowledge and understanding of God, resulting in major mindset shifts which have in turn resulted in much freedom and joy and love - unlike what I have ever experienced before in Him.

I've observed that there is something seductive about gaining knowledge when done independently of Jesus. In other words, it has the power to delude the learner into thinking he/she is superior to others. This, of course, was what the tree of knowledge in Eden was about - being god (superior) by knowing independently of God. Paul says in 1Corinthians 8:1 that knowledge "puffs up" while love "builds up."

Would to God we followers of Jesus would all be being renewed in our minds continually (which means shifts in mindsets), but my caution is that we make love our goal in all pursuit of knowledge, even in the pursuit of knowing God. I believe that aiming at love while growing in knowledge is what it means to live from the tree of life - Jesus.

In my walk now as I continue to grow in knowledge, I'm making the effort to consciously see myself in Christ Jesus, He being the One dispensing the knowledge, feeding me. There are times when I sense His quiet voice within me saying to stop my reading or studying; and I've learned that even though it may be wonderful and true material (and I really want to keep digging into it), if He is slowing me down, it's because He knows how much and how far I should go in that moment in order not to be led down the road of spiritual arrogance that would see others as inferior to me.

In I Corinthians 14:1 the apostle Paul says to aim at love, which could imply that we don't hit the mark perfectly every time; God doesn't ask us to be perfect marksmen but to make love our target; and the more we practice, the closer we will get at hitting it. Eating of the tree of life is about growing in love as we grow in knowledge - that is only possible in Jesus and under His leadership. The goal of all learning is to love - to receive the love of God and then to give that love away to others. If I'm not growing in love and tenderness towards others along with growing in knowledge, I may need more target practice!