Spirituality Column #772

August 31, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Community Effort

By Bob Walters

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.  …  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” – Acts 2:42, 47

Twenty years ago today I didn’t know Jesus. 

But 20 years ago this week, Sept. 2, 2001 – a Sunday – Jesus found a very surprised me sitting in church in Indianapolis.  It’s an old story I love to tell.

In August of 2001 my then-8^th grade son Eric asked, at the dinner table, “How come we don’t go to church?”  The kids on his junior high school bus in Carmel, Ind., had been talking about which churches they went to, and Eric simply wondered why we didn’t.  I hadn’t been to church on a Sunday by choice since I was an Episcopal altar boy about Eric’s age, fully 30 years earlier.

But … kid wants to go to church?  Let’s take him to church. 

Here I leave out a big chunk of the story, but Sunday, Sept. 2, 2001, we came through the door of East 91^st Street Christian Church, dropped Eric and his younger brother John off in what to me was a surprisingly and unexpectedly welcoming and nice youth area, and then headed to the service.

Let me be clear: I was not looking for Jesus.  I wasn’t looking for anything, except to fulfil my son’s desire to experience “church.”  And here we were; so, mission accomplished.  But when I got into the service, I found something else surprising and unexpected … and it was the people; it was the church. 

Jesus wasn’t sitting up front with a bait box, hooks, trout creel, and tissues  No … I saw hundreds of friendly, polite, happy people, obviously drawn together in a freedom, love, purpose, and joy that was both totally alien to me but strangely, unexpectedly, and immediately recognizable.  I wanted to know more, and the Spirit met me right there, with a peace and a promise in my heart that God would take my faith seriously. 

The Spirit sealed the deal with the gentle, happy tears on my cheeks; assuring deliverance of that holy promise.  It was my “Awake Date” – the day I awoke in the Spirit. I was baptized three months later.  It was the church, not sacrifice, that got me.

My point is that our communion we share as believers is one of love and joy in the purpose and service of glorifying God by sharing the truth of Jesus Christ, together, in fellowship.  The bread and cup of communion, to me, represent fellowship and life, moreso than a broken body of punishment and the shed blood of death.

Our sins are terrible, and Jesus’s sacrifice was terrible.  But Jesus instructed his disciples to break bread in fellowship with Him and each other, and Jesus called the cup “the blood of the New Covenant” … for Jesus is the Covenant of life, love, faith, sacrifice, joy, truth … and eternal hope.

I give thanks to the global body of believers for their fellowship, and thank the Lord for the life to which we are restored by his blood.  It’s a community effort.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) used this church fellowship story as a communion meditation at E91 this past Sunday.  We often meet His church before we meet Jesus. Btw, Sept. 2, 2001, just happened to be the day E91 celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the ministry of Russ Blowers, who became a dear friend as he was to everyone who knew him.  Russ had a way of helping people open up to the Spirit … together.

Spirituality Column #771

August 24, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

My Favorite Place to Be

By Bob Walters

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.” – Ephesians 2:4-5

“God is in control” and “God has a plan” – we hear it all the time – but God also gives us in this life freedom to challenge His control and the autonomy to disrupt His plans. Why would He do that?

What God wants – as He searches for us – is for us to freely find Him.  If love were not so precious, God could coerce us to find Him, gather to Him, and obey Him. But this God of love knows that only love based in our free will that leads us to choose to love others more than ourselves is the true divine love; that’s His love.

We are to give selflessly for God’s glory, rather than take selfishly in our greed.

That’s the part of our human existence we call life.  Need an example?  How about, Jesus came for everyone, but not everyone comes to Jesus?  Whatever God’s control or plans or provision for our well-being, our ignoring them, in the end, only hurts us. God’s righteousness will be true no matter what we do.  Ours depends on His.

God gives us freedom and autonomy, I believe, to seek and find Him, our Creator, in His loving, perfect, glory and life, not to “find ourselves” in our earthbound morass of pride, passions, fear, and death.  We properly fear God in His judgment only when we don’t completely trust the presence of His mercy.  When we do trust God – and I don’t mean a little bit and on our own terms of “God, do something for me,” but on the grand and eternal scale of “I am the Lord thy God” – what we discover is the comfort of His love and mercy, and the trust to let go of our fear of His wrath and judgment.

God abounds in mercy, and His mercy is why we can know peace.

As Paul so accurately frames God’s mercy in the Ephesians verse above, sinful man can often only perceive God’s mercy as an antidote or a “pass” for our behavioral, human transgressions.  A perfect life would be our ability to do exactly as God says, all the time.  It’s like following the directions on a cake mix … follow the directions, and you have a cake.  Follow your feelings … and you’ll have a mess.  Then, if you’re at the mercy of man … good luck.  God’s mercy won’t bake the cake; but it provides one with the good reason and confidence to follow directions, i.e., God’s truth.

A good Christian friend reminded me over that weekend that God “brings some low, and exalts others” (Psalm 75:7), and that we are “at God’s mercy.” And I thought, “Praise God for that!”  Most Bible verses about “mercy” refer to our transgressions in the behavioral realm, not the low moments and seasons of health distress, injustice, abuse, or other calamity traceable to human fallenness but not to our own sin.

Hebrews 4:16 instructs, “Let us then with confidence draw near the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.”  In any case or in any season, if I am at God’s mercy and am blessed to know that God is full of mercy, then “at God’s mercy” is exactly where I want to be.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) trusts God’s love and is thankful for God’s mercy.

 Spirituality Column #770

August 17, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Odd Grace of Prayer

By Bob Walters

“Be still, and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10

Prayer doesn’t tell God anything He doesn’t already know – not about a situation, the person praying, a human heart, or the eventual outcome.  The educated party to be – the one who is to be informed, shaped, and changed in prayer – is the one praying.

Yes, talk to God.  Spill your heart, guts, love, or rage.  Then be prepared to listen.

Prayer is where we discover 1. our relationship with God, 2. on a good day, discern the will of God, and 3. on our very best days, call down the action of God.

On any day, our best prayer outcome is when it reveals and nurtures our growing and abiding closeness to, trust in, and love of God.  Great prayer is where we shelter in God, not blame Him or beg Him. 

Prayer isn’t where we tell God what we want done, how He should proceed, who He should save, who He should condemn, or what He needs to do to get our approval of His actions so we will call Him righteous.  That kind of prayer is folly; God is already righteous.  Good and evil are whatever God says they are, and quite often humans don’t look in the most obvious place to discover what God is really thinking: in their own hearts.  We don’t see the long game; God does.  His promises and righteousness are eternal.

Thus, “God Is Good All the Time” is a fine truism, but tyrannically so.  Was God “good” when He removed his protection from Job and allowed Satan’s torments?  Was God “good” when he demanded Abraham sacrifice Isaac?  Was God “good” when His Son Jesus hanged mercilessly on the Cross?  Is God good when the most heinous and heartbreaking human injustices, crimes, diseases, dissensions, and accidents befall our paths today?

That’s the tyrannical part: we wonder – we demand! – why God would allow awful things when we think He should only provide good things.  But the fact is, it is our human freedom, aspiration, fear, pride, greed or a number of any other “human conditions” that Satan uses to mask and corrupt our view of God’s ultimate goodness and purpose.  Not the least of our difficulties being our and the world’s general fallenness … since Eden.

What Job, Abraham, and Isaac discovered after trials, what Jesus taught in His trials, and what we must trust in our trials, is that our faith and relationship with God is purified in these trials. Come out the other end of a life trial in faith, and our relationship with God will be strengthened beyond what we could imagine.  Think how Job grew in the Lord.  

God’s goodness and grace are always there, and our first clue that they are is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  We have the freedom to pursue our own agenda, but our true joy and abiding perseverance is only going to come by Christ’s great commandments: that we are to love God and love others.  We think life is about “me.” No, it is about God’s glory.

The greatest and most common self-inflicted wound in all humanity is to ignore the grace of God, and to not see it, expect it, and trust it in every situation.  We are the ones who make a hash of assessing God’s goodness; we are the ones who deny Jesus.  

Now … do I think some people have a special pipeline to God?  Mysteriously, yes.  Of course.  Absolutely.  Can God surprise any of us with a tangible, spiritual, discernible response to prayer?  Praise God, yes.  Must we trust God regardless?  Yes, then listen.

It’s among the oddest of God’s graces, but it is in our humility before God that we find our greatest joys and strengths. That is the peace that passes all understanding.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays boldly but understands he’s the one being judged.

 Spirituality Column #769

August 10, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Vine of Truth

By Bob Walters

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” – Jesus, John 15:1

I am hard-pressed to think of anything Jesus says in the Bible that is not in some way an attempt to explain to a mostly unbelieving Israel who He was … and still is.

Mary and Joseph understood (Matthew 1:20-24, Luke 1:31-32, 46-49).  John the Baptist understood (Matthew 3:11).  The disciples, eventually, understood (Matthew 16:16).  The Angels of God understood (Luke 2:9-12).  Even Satan, “the devil,” “the tempter,” understood (Matthew 4:1-3).

The Pharisees and other Jewish leaders?  They mostly hated Jesus for the threat he posed to their positions of power.  If they knew so much scripture and prophecy, how could they not understand?  If they were truly close to God, how could they not love Jesus?  Yet for all but a few, the scales never fell from their eyes.  They had bent covenant Law to their own purposes, and had grown as a rogue, unproductive vine outside the Father’s will.

People in general were fascinated by Jesus’s miracles and healings, the authority of His teaching, and the power of His interactions.  But the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would kill the Romans, not to love sinners and prove the fruitfulness of God’s vine.  By the time of His crucifixion, Jesus was no longer the savior they were seeking: “Crucify Him!”

It is especially fascinating to me that in His final few hours with the disciples – at the last supper and then on the way to Gethsemane where He would be arrested – Jesus focused His final words to them not on sin and salvation, but on His identity as the Son of God, His mission of obedience and love, the disciples’ mission of love and perseverance, and the persecutions they would face ahead.  Faith would be their only way forward.

Most of us tend to seek God on our own terms.  We want Him to be and do what we want Him to be and do … for us.  We don’t immediately understand how surely that separates us from His fruitful vine and impedes the relationship Jesus brought to humanity as a saving, divine gift.  As Jesus expressed His faith in and obedience to God, He was also sharing his love and identity with these very frightened friends: God’s vine, on God’s terms.

“I am the true vine” is Jesus telling the disciples that He himself, not the covenant of Israel, is God’s one, true, fruit-bearing vine.  Throughout its existence Israel kept the vine as its national symbol.  Jesus was saying that God’s true fruit in humanity is shown by the fruit of Him in the Spirit, elegantly listed in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. 

Pause and think how Israel over time soured that fruit (Isaiah 5:1-7).  Pause also and imagine what the Pharisees thought every time Jesus intoned that God – their God – was His Father.  “Father-Son” had never been a part of Israel’s relationship with God.  And now the disciples learn that the “Son and Father” are “vine and gardener.”

Grapevines grow quickly, deep, and have branches that produce fruit and branches that don’t.  Fruit-bearing branches are pruned heavily to increase the fruit, and since the “wood” of a vine is useless, non-fruit-bearing branches are cut, gathered, and burned.

For all Jesus said about His identity, there is no biblical signal that anyone deeply understood His mission, gift, or truth until His resurrection. The branches were yet to grow.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) hopes the fruit-prunings, i.e., our sins, are burned too.  Still today, some folks catch on and some don’t.

 Spirituality Column #768

August 3, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Sacrifice … or True Life?

By Bob Walters

“I am the good shepherd [who] lays down his life for his sheep. – John 10:11

In a world without God, sacrifice makes no sense.  And in a world without Jesus, there is no good shepherd and the sheep are on their own.

How can we sacrifice for the good if there is no absolute good to serve?

Sacrifice, you see, requires at least a reasonable expectation that some good will be served.  In the person of Jesus Christ on the Cross, we see both a perfect sacrifice and a perfect purpose: the unblemished lamb who defeats death to glorify God. Perfect.

In the case of you, me, us, and everybody on the planet, our sacrifices of ourselves, time, treasure, talents, toil, or even our lives will always be a bit blemished, possibly tarnished with at least some doubt, and perhaps loaded with just the slightest nod to self-interest.  You know, “What’s in it for me?  What do I get for my trouble?”

But that doesn’t mean we don’t try, and in the spirit of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus and the perfect good of God, many of us survive and grow and glorify God in our faith, work, and intentions.  In Christ, we have learned the possible.  In faith and hope, we too can experience the joy of the shepherd who loves his flock and honors God.

I think that’s true not only of Christians but also of good-hearted, generous, compassionate folks all over the world who “get” the notion of giving of themselves for the good of others and know the warm, fuzzy joy, the reward, of lending a helping hand.

It’s marvelous, and I’ve yet to encounter a Christian who can’t name at least one “good person” – a friend, family member, colleague, etc. – entirely outside active faith in Jesus who nonetheless dependably and selflessly seeks the well-being of others. 

To me that doesn’t disprove the necessity of Jesus; it absolutely proves the human goodness God created.  Almost everyone has it – at least a spark – but the pity is when the divine source is not recognized.  Where does one celebrate and find joy – the true joy of divine communion and fellowship of Godly relationship – if our sacrificial instincts reach no further than our own, imperfect sense of self-congratulation?

It is also true that in this fallen, sinful world many folks truly look out only for themselves with not even a visceral sense of Godly good; only their pride and appetites. And we ache for those who possess neither security nor hope of good touching their lives.  To their loss, the good and perfect “seeking” shepherd Jesus is unknown or ignored.

We cannot match Christ’s perfect sacrifice, but we are challenged every day by the sacrifices demanded of us.  We weather a fallen world’s relentless menu of sin, disappointment, dangers, disease, disfunction, and uncertainty, and our sacrifices are as personal and varied as are any one person’s relationship with Jesus.

Jesus knew what His sacrifice would be and what it meant to God.  We, generally, in the case of our own sacrifices, don’t.  But our joy, love, and trust in the Lord are the great governors of our attitude toward turmoil, and it’s our sacrifices that teach us to trust the absolute truth of God’s love, goodness, righteousness, grace, and true life.

These are not lessons we learn where shepherds are unnecessary.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has grown to be thankful we are not on our own.