Jesus came not to give us more talking points for our theology but to actually give us a view of God our creator.

Jesus came not to give us more talking points for our theology but to actually give us a view of God our creator.

Nov 18

“The question…is no longer, Is Jesus God-like? but, Is God Jesus-like? Jesus reveals God to us, God does not reveal Jesus to us. We cannot deduce anything about Jesus from what we think we know about God, we must now deduce everything about God from what we do know about Jesus.” Brennan Manning 

This quote sums up so much of what I have learned about grace and God’s unconditional love. I would have never understood this about God if Jesus had not lived out the complete loving nature of God. That is why I feel the need to pour all my theology and Old Testament concepts of God through the sieve of the New Testament revelation of Jesus Christ. That way I can ask myself, “Would Jesus act in this way? If not then I must reject that concept of God because Jesus said if we want to know what God is like we should watch and listen to Him. 

You see the world was getting it wrong about God. God was trying to speak through the Old Testament prophets but God was suffering in the translation so the Word had to become flesh. Because we do not think in the abstract very easily. We could argue all day about what we perceive beauty to be…and never come to a consensus. But if we point to a sunset…or the waves splashing the shoreline glistening with the diamonds of the sun’s rays….Then we could agree…That is beauty. Before Jesus came God suffered from the stereotypes of Gods that were around then.

 In the Greek-Roman world Gods were….unknowable to mortals uncaring….detached from the world…who required much sacrifice…. God cried out in the Old Testament…I don’t want your sacrifices…. I just want to have a relationship with you….I want to be your provider! I am a loving God! And yet God’s image remained hidden because people perceived him to be just like all the other Gods…. When Jesus came to earth….Jesus gave flesh to the word God. God was made flesh….in the dark streets of Bethlehem and totally blew out of the water the misconception that God had to be distant and cold and unfeeling and mean-spirited….

Chris Glaser in his devotional book, “The word is out” says that Jesus overcame the way people isolated, stereotyped, and limited their experience of God.

Mark Lowry sums all this up in his characteristically humorous way,

“I’ve always heard and still believe that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. But, I think if I’d just landed here from another planet and read the Bible, it might appear to me that, somewhere between the Old and New, He discovered Prozac or something. He seems a lot nicer in the New Testament. My pastor said one Sunday, in a joking manner, that it looks to him like God got saved between the Old and New Testaments.

There are very few things I still think I ‘know’. Here are two: 1. God is good. 2. He’s crazy about us.

A friend of mine explained it to me like this: The revelation of God is like a crescendo. It’s been a crescendo in my life. And it was a crescendo in the Bible. In the Old Testament, it was big news when they learned there was one God. Not many. Not several. Just one. One God. And, from that moment to the arrival of Christ, they got some things right and some things wrong. Finally, God shows up. Jesus is born. ‘Jehovah on foot’. We see His face. We hear His voice. We watch how He loves. We see Him worshipped with palm branches and, a week later, slaughtered like a dog by the same people.

They didn’t get Him. Even the religious folks who should have known Him ridiculed Him for hanging out at the bars with sinners. They didn’t like the fact that Jesus hung out with the wrong people. We hear Him chew out the self-righteous (Matthew 24). Yeah, He would rather hang out with authentic sinners than fake saints. And we heard Him correct the Old Testament. Jesus said, “You’ve heard it said ‘eye for an eye’, ‘tooth for a tooth’ but I tell you, love each other.” The only way I can make sense of the Old Testament is to view it through the lens of Jesus.

Jesus not only loved sinners; they felt comfortable in His presence. They felt loved and accepted. The woman at the well, the woman caught in the ‘act of adultery’. Nicodemus. No one who ever came to Him was ever turned away. The more of their scars they showed Jesus, the more He wanted to hang with them. Heal them. Love them. Sinners never felt condemned in His presence. And, you know, I haven’t either. Now I have felt condemned in the presence of some of His people.

Have you ever seen that bumper sticker that says, “Jesus, please save me from your followers”? Have you ever wanted to put one on your car? When I am alone with God (which is usually in the shower) and I’m praying and really feel His presence, I never feel condemned. I have felt convicted. But, never condemned. Never shame. I don’t think God ever makes His children feel ‘shame’. I could be wrong. But I know I’ve never felt ashamed in God’s presence. I have felt loved, covered, encased, secure, safe, ‘at home’ but never shame.

Russ Taff said to me one time, “If your God is a condemning God, you need to fire Him; you have the wrong one.” And the Bible backs that up (John 3:16): “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And the next verse (John 3:17) says, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved.”

So today let’s not be so sure of what we are sure of. Let’s realize that Jesus came not to give us more talking points for our theology but to actually give us a view of God our creator.

Parker Palmer says,

 “How is it that so many disembodied concepts emerge from a tradition whose central commitment is not to the word become doctrine but to the word become flesh.”

MY TRIBUTE TO TAMMY FAYE

MY TRIBUTE TO TAMMY FAYE

Nov 16

 

Tammy Faye Messner, the colorful controversial PTL Club co-founder and ex-wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, died on July 20, 2007 of cancer. The following day, the 65-year-old Pentecostal pop icon was cremated and buried. Instead of summoning one of the stars of televangelism to lead the private memorial service, her family selected a central Arkansas preacher to eulogize Tammy Faye. The Rev. Randy McCain, pastor of Open Door Community Church in Sherwood, is friends with Jay Bakker — a fellow preacher and Tammy Faye’s son. McCain wrote this account of her funeral service for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The sun was shining. The white, billowy clouds seemed to shimmer against a backdrop of blue Kansas sky. A small entourage of family members walked from their cars to the blue funeral tent that had been set up by a local mortuary to give shade and shelter to the grievers. Tammy Faye LaValley Messner’s ashes were placed on a raised platform, between two bouquets of flowers. The service was brief. Sobs could be heard gushing forth at times from the broken hearts of Tammy Faye’s two children, Tammy Sue and Jaime Charles. Tammy Faye’s husband, Roe, sat next to them. His face reflected the pain of losing a beloved spouse.

Tammy Faye had announced on Larry King Live, “I want my funeral to be a real happy time. I want everyone laughing and remembering how crazy I was.” But on this day- the day after her death- the grief was too fresh for laughter.

“We are here to celebrate the Life of Tammy Faye,” I proclaimed. What an honor I had been given. Tammy’s son, Jay had asked me to preach his mom’s funeral. I had never met Tammy Faye in person, yet my life had been touched by this cultural icon. As a gay man and a minister, I had been told that I was not qualified to be a reverend. Yet I had felt the call to ministry as Tammy had; in childhood. Some nights I couldn’t sleep, deep in depression because of my feelings of spiritual alienation. I had been told by so many Christians that God hates homosexuals and that if I wanted to know what God thought of people like me I should read in the Old Testament what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah.

During these dark nights of the soul there was a shining light piercing my darkness. It was the light emanating from the eyes of Tammy Faye. I would channel surf until I came across the PTL Club hosted by Tammy and her ex–husband, Jim Bakker. There was Tammy Faye, smiling even through her tears, looking it seemed, into my very soul. She would say in her cheery, upbeat, little girl voice, “God loves you! Just the way you are! He really does!”

I cannot count the times I got through the night thanks to the light from the eyes of Tammy Faye. That light was a reflection of her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whom she loved so much. Even in her last interview with Larry King, less than forty eight hours before her death, looking into the camera, barely able to speak because of her shallow breathing, she still was able to crinkle up her nose and squint her eyes as she painfully created a smile. “I think people need to know,” she whispered, “that there is great peace and joy in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.”

She was always positive and forgiving. She seemed to literally breathe out grace. As I stood there under the funeral tent, I struggled to find the words that would comfort these broken-hearted family members. “There is nothing I can say today that will take away your grief. I wish there was. But please remember the One of whom it was said, ‘He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,’ Jesus. This is what I believe Tammy Faye would want me to say to you today, ‘Look to Jesus.’ Because even at her weakest, if you got very close to her and looked into her mascara curtained eyes, you would see a reflection of Jesus, her true focus. Today she can say, ‘My eyes are clearly beholding my King’ and Jesus Christ is wiping away every tear from the eyes of Tammy Faye.”

I finished with a prayer committing her ashes to the ground but her spirit into the loving arms of Jesus. We stood around talking about this incredible woman, who once said, “I refuse to label people. We are all just people made out of the same old dirt and God didn’t make any junk.”

In a world where so many have been preaching hate and exclusion, this amazing Christian evangelist, Tammy Faye, preached love and inclusion. As we slowly made our way back to the cars, I looked at the warm rays of sunlight cascading down, forming a halo around the grave plot, and the words to Tammy Faye’s signature song ran through my mind; “The sun will shine again!”

DOUBTING GOD’S LOVE FOR US

DOUBTING GOD’S LOVE FOR US

Nov 05

Don’t ya hate it when you get it wrong? Doesn’t it hurt when we secretly take a look at ourselves and see inconsistencies in our life?

For those of us who were raised in a church that taught that you were saved by grace but that your salvation was maintained by works, we are constantly beating ourselves up for our failures…or we just finally try and live in denial and refuse to take a good look at the person we truly are and simply put on a fake façade…one that we think others and even God can live with.

How sad that we have this twisted idea of God’s love for us. It is a love that is very much like Santa Claus…

“He’s making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out whose naughty and nice….he knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.”

I always heard that God’s grace was amazing…why we even sang about its amazingness… yet to me the definition of grace did not fit God’s reality. Grace was unmerited favor… getting good when you deserved bad….and yet we were taught that if we were bad God would not love or accept us. You could literally lose God’s love at the drop of a hat. Because if you dropped your hat and said a dirty word you were at that moment hell bound!

As I grew older I wondered how in the world you could be vulnerable to a love that was so easy to lose.

I have said before that my relationship with God

was sort of like being in a relationship with an abusive husband.

God could take out his anger on me

and I was suppose to love him even more.

Like the woman whose husband beats her when she burns the toast.

When her friends find out and try to talk her into leaving

this poor excuse for a husband she says,

“Oh no don’t blame him. It was my fault.

If I hadn’t burned his toast this morning then he wouldn’t have

 given me this black eye.”

That was the sick relationship I had with God. He could love me one minute

and drop me the next.

What a petty relationship that was.

But praise God I learned that God is not like that at all.

It took the Holy Spirit getting out a jack hammer to break up that old image of God But the image that is coming into sight now is so much more lovely.

And I have learned that his love for me is everlasting.  I don’t have to be insecure. I don’t have to hide from him.

 I can come out of the shadows and look fully into his face without fear.

I can come to Him with excitement and a calm assurance

of the love I will receive from him in return.

I had to learn that God is happy to see me….not dreading it.

 The first time I came to God it was because I saw him as a bully that was bending back my fingers until I cry uncle and say…Okay, Okay, I give! I’ll say it, I love you.

 But the next time I came to God it was because I fell in love with the God who first loved me.

 Jesus taught us that grace means receiving reward without having to earn them…

….being forgiven all mistakes without having to atone.

Grace is a gift from God.

Everything received under the law was supposedly made “the old fashioned way” We earned it!

The new covenant was Unmerited Favor! A Gift!

In 1 John we read that

“ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

There is no fear in love . But perfect love drives out fear,

because fear has to do with punishment.

The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:16-19

We need to get away from this concept we have of a punishing rewarding God.

We need to see God as constant in grace, compassion and love.

Punishment does not come from God;

Punishment is the consequence of what we or others do.

When we do wrong God does not punish us…our actions have a reaction.

Just like when you shoot a shotgun the action of the bullet going forward

causes the gun to recoil  backwards as any seasoned hunter knows.

Jesus taught us that God is a never changing God.

We cannot manipulate God into acting out of character towards us

God isn’t up there saying,

“Kid you’re getting on my last nerve. One more mistake and it is curtains for you!”
No one can be bad enough to exhaust God’s grace. No one!

We try to make God small enough to fit into our theology but God is so much bigger and so much kinder than we can imagine.

Paul asks the question in Romans 8, “What can separate us from the love of God?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Did you get that? Nothing in all creation…

Let me ask you something; are you a part of creation? Then Paul is saying that even you cannot separate you from God’s love!

Now that is a grace I can call AMAZING!

Almost 400 years ago Jesus spoke a prophetic word to a 34 year old widow named Marjory Kemp and it is as penetrating now as it was then….Jesus said to her,

“More pleasing to me than all your prayers, sacrifices, and good words is that you would believe that I love you.”

That is the secret folks…We must know and rely upon the love of God.

It is not about what you can do to earn God’s favor, you already have it.

Someone may be reading this today that has been dangled over hell for so long

you have scorch marks on your backside.  

You try to go to sleep at night and you are haunted by that frowning God

who seems to always be disappointed in you….

God is either looking at you in a mean attacking way

 or he is looking at you in disappointment as if to say,

“why did I ever create you…you are such a disappointment to me.”

Either one of those looks is not very comforting when you know you will stand before him someday.

But the Apostle John says,

Love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence

on the day of Judgment.

It is time you here the sweet music from your heart…

“Yes Jesus loves me…..”

“O how he loves you and me…”

“Could we with ink the ocean fill

And were the skies of parchment made

Were every stalk on earth a quill

And every man a scribe by trade

To write the love of God above

Would drain the oceans dry

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

Though stretched from sky to sky.”

Listen to the true love song that God is singing to you right now…

God does not want you to fear him because he knows that if you fear him

you will run from him and not to him.

Turn off the negative reports from those who try to sell you a bill of goods

that come with too heavy a price tag of works and the Law.

In the next post I will revisit the story Jesus told about the Prodigal Son. There is a wonderful truth in the story that has been overlooked by many. But it is a truth that has set me free.

Also I encourage all those who have not read “Abba’s Child” by Brennan Manning to do so. It will open you up to the awareness that you are loved, accepted and adored by your Abba Father in Heaven.