Category Archives: Faith

You Must Be Born Again (Part II)

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NicodemusIn my LAST POST, we began looking at Jesus’ late-night dialog with Nicodemus (Jn 3). Highly educated and thoroughly trained, Nicodemus came curious about how one could function with the Kingdom Reign of God, of which Jesus spoke so often.

Jesus’ answer: You must be born again.

Nicodemus’ reply: How is that possible?

Jesus’ response: Similarly to how your father impregnated your mother, you must conceive this new life via a fertilization by the Spirit of God.

If this seems abstract, look into the flesh face of someone. The offspring around the planet are your proof. You have come forth from the union of your father and mother, and you likely look the part!  Animals produce appropriate offspring; plants produce seeds to match. THIS begets THIS; THAT begets THAT.  Flesh begets flesh, and spirit begets spirit. (Jn 3:6)

So what would it take to produce a man or woman tightly tuned to the voice and moves of God?

What would be required to create a man or woman filled from and fueled by the infinite well of wisdom, grace, and love?

What would be necessary to bring forth a man or woman whose life had such substance as to send ripples through the spiritual realms?

That requires a work of the Holy Spirit, nothing less. In this sense, rebirth is not optional but rather non-negotiable. (Jn 3:7)

The Wind Blows

wind-blowingAfter speaking of the womb, Jesus moves to the wind. Those who live on the Canadian prairies know wind more than most. Yet even to us, Jesus says that this oh-so-familiar wind is filled with mystery. We may feel it and see its effects, but we are clueless to its origin or destination.

I used to think that Jesus was comparing the wind to the Spirit.

But he is not.

What he says is: “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (Jn 3:8).” The wind’s mysterious nature speaks to the mysterious nature of those who live Spirit-filled lives.

As is the wind, so is the man or woman born of the Spirit.

You may have met such a man or woman. Their faith was alive in a way that was noticeable. A fire burned in them, but the blaze could not be accounted for by merely scanning their resume. Considering the sum of parts like personality, background, education, and experiences failed to square the equation. Some immeasurable force was involved. Something beyond calculation was blowing in this life.

The Spirit is that wind.

How Can This Be?

Nicodemus is struck dumb by this teaching: How can these things be?  Can it be that Jesus is right to speak of a realm far beyond ritual and regulation? Is divine fertilization really the game-breaker for our transformation and entry into Kingdom life?

Jesus’ answer: You’d better believe it!

In fact, Jesus now marvels (Jn 3:9-10). Is it possible that a teacher of God’s people does not grasp this truth that the Spirit alone births new creation?  The one who should be blazing trails for others and shining forth a guiding light is mystified by the vital and basic truth that the Spirit is front and center to the whole journey.

There is no question that God desires every redeemed life to be a model and an inspiration. There is no doubt that He wants every church to play such a role in their settings.  If we are play this part, it will be necessary to grasp one truth with two hands.

The Spirit Births

The Holy Spirit births life.

It is He who breathes it and brings it forth. The salvation of our city will not hinge on the number of our programs or quality of our preaching. The redemption of our region will not hang on our facility size or worship styles.  Of course, we are to strive for excellence in what we do as a church; less would be lazy.  And lazy would be unfaithful.

But more than exerting efforts, there is need to submit ourselves to the Spirit that churns under every surface.

Begin to attend to His movements in your little life, then stretch that attention to consider His movements in the little lives around yours.

Plead for stronger winds, tornado-force gusts capable of blowing down or tearing up the walls we build to take refuge from the Sheltering One.

Ask for spiritual fertilization and for healthy pregnancies. We do not want miscarriages or stillbirths on God’s work in our lives. We wish to see His wonders brought to term and maturing to multiply and fill the earth.

How It Is

factJesus closes the conversation (Jn 3:11) with Nicodemus by declaring that this view is not an opinion. Jesus is not hazarding a guess at how things work. He describes himself as a witness speaking of first-hand knowledge, perfect and complete.

He even says that it is not just HE who knows this, it is WE. Apparently, his followers are having firsthand experiences with the ways of the Spirit. They are tasting the wonder of rebirth for themselves.

I am praying today for you, my friends, that a similar sampling is being delivered into your homes and churches as well, even this very moment.

YOUR TURN: What have been your key takeaways from Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus? How do you grasp the process of “being born again”?

You Must Be Born Again (Part I)

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NicodemusOne of Jesus’ most intriguing encounters took place when a Pharisee named Nicodemus sought him out fin the wee hours for a private conversation.

John 3 records Nicodemus’ desire to learn from Jesus about how one enters or participates in the reign of God (His Kingdom).

Again or Above

Depending on your English Bible, you might see Jesus speaking of the need to be born AGAIN or from ABOVE (Jn 3:3). William Barclay hits the home run by keeping both terms: “Reborn from above.”  Jesus is emphatic: One enters the flow of God in a radically new fashion.  She cannot enter by striving or straining; he cannot evolve or inch his way past the threshold.

In other words: “Nicodemus, there is one path from here to there, and you can neither find it, nor walk it.  You must be born again.”

Not surprisingly, this fails to answer every question and raises several more. That list is headed by this query:  “How can this be?” (Jn 3:4)

Smarter than We Think

We have not flattered Nicodemus; we have laughed that he would envision a physical rebirth. But Nicodemus is no numbskull. Among the brightest and most educated minds of his nation, it is highly unlikely that this teacher is tone-deaf to metaphors and is instead visualizing a man being crammed back into a uterus.

Far more likely, Nicodemus has engaged the rhetoric and is actually on to something fairly profound. He might have thought it like this:

Each man is the sum of a lengthy equation. We are who we are today as a result of all our yesterdays. That lengthy equation is a bundled mess of doubts and dreams, hopes and hurts, faith and fear. It includes choices wise and foolish, and habits healing and harmful. All of this is layered and swirled over a lifetime. Surely, everyone longs at some point for a clean break and a fresh start. But that is a fantasy. I mean, if physical birth is beyond possibility, how much greater a miracle would it take to remake the core of a person?

Hmm.

Good question.

And accordingly, Jesus replied: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (Jn 3:5)

Water and Spirit

How are we to understand this phrase? The mention of water quickly takes many minds to baptism. This may be, but it is certainly not Christian baptism as we know it. That imagery would have meant nothing to Nicodemus at his point on the timeline. If any baptism is envisioned, it is John the Baptist’s work for purifying repentance.

That said, a better interpretation awaits.

The first clue is hidden in the Greek grammar. The words are cobbled together in such a way that one phrase is indicated, not two concepts. So we are not decoding water and Spirit; we are speaking of one thing. I call it Spirit-water.

And what might that be?

water_dropWell, it might be this.  Rabbinic writings often used “water” as a graceful euphemism to speak of semen. In other words, “You must be born of spiritual seed.”

The miracle of life begins with a woman’s egg cell being fertilized by a man’s sperm cell.  Within the woman’s body, there is a monthly potential for new life. What makes all the difference between life and no-life is the fertilization of that cell. In this light, Jesus is declaring, “As surely as you live and breathe in this world, you are here because one of your father’s cells fertilized one of your mother’s cells. With that same certainty, you will function in the Kingdom of God only if the Father fertilizes something. Within everyone lies the potential to participate in the divine nature, but mark it down: There is no such experience apart from the Holy Spirit’s awakening fertilizing.”

So yes, Jesus and Nicodemus were basically bouncing around sexual (ie: reproductive) innuendo filled with spiritual connotation. And the dominant point within it all: Nothing is happening minus the Spirit’s conceiving and birthing efforts.

Commentator extraordinaire Leon Morris says it like this:

”It is the perennial heresy of the natural man to think that he can fit himself by his own efforts for the kingdom of God. Jesus makes it clear that no man can ever fit himself for the kingdom. Rather he must be completely renewed, born anew, by the power of the Spirit.”

That is enough for today. Tomorrow, we will add one more layer.

See you then.

Losing Faith VII: Trading It In

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This is the seventh post in a series called “Losing Faith”. All posts can be viewed HERE.

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As mentioned in the first post of this series, it was a blogging friend who originally dispatched this train of thought for me. He observed how travel had played a part in the unraveling of a faith he once held.

I would echo that sentiment with an alternate angle.

TREASURE OF TRAVEL

farawayExposure to faraway lands and interactions with the folks of those places have led me to lose much of my faith as well—particularly faith in my culture, in popular Western thought, and more specifically in myself. However, those undoings only served to intensify my felt need for some form of Anchor, some Foundation upon which to construct.

There is a special pleasure to deconstruction. Who has ever carried a tool more fun than a sledgehammer? But at some point, there is need for some skilled builder to enter the scene. Creating rubble is fun, but it hardly provides a place to live.

This is my metaphor. others can grasp at their own well-fitted images. But for me, this is glove-like.

For I love to play the cynic more than most. To feign enlightenment through critique, this is the safe and satisfying life of the skeptic.

At least, it is until it isn’t.

Safe or satisfying.

My travel experiences and other life-tastes have at times fed that cynical, skeptical streak with a fresh spread of questions and rebukes toward the status quo that had both nurtured me and numbed me up to that point. Some of this caused me to grow; some just caused me to grump.

When it comes to religion, Christianity in particular, I often chuckle. I can recall a handful of conversations where speakers in attack mode unveiled their “faith-destroyers” to me. Typically, these “questions” ended with periods, rather than question marks. But punctuation aside, the tone carried a whiff of superiority silently declaring that the statement being made was surely news to me, and perhaps everyone else who ever “mindlessly” fallen into faith. In fact, it appeared certain to at least one in the room that surely no human in history had ever formulated this ground-breaking assessment of reality.

Feet in SeaNow to be sure, I learn things every day, from sources and angles of every sort. But these types of encounter cause my chuckle to rise because they suppose shallowness.  To discover that my feet touch the sand on the bottom hardly means that I’ve plumbed the depths of the sea.  It merely means I can touch where I am.  To crucify Christianity for its smallness when the “great big world” enlightens is one form of losing faith.  To move my feet in pursuit of deeper and purer waters was mine.

Though I didn’t foresee the amount of seawater I’d have to swallow along the way!

I SAY THAT TO SAY THIS

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAI can state with confidence that the faith I have lost along the way was a small faith.  Perhaps that is exactly why I lost it. It is easier to lose coins than cars.

In exchange for my feather-weight faith, heavy on its need for certainty and control, I am receiving a more substantial faith, rooted in dependence upon the eternal Spirit of God and a recognition of my need to keep step with Him.  This need is driven by neither fear nor threat, but by the simple recognition that moving out of rhythm with the beat that drives the universe is clumsy and costly.  I would rather sync myself to sink myself into the groove awaiting those whose stride is guided by the All-of-Life-Giver.

LOSING THINGS

I hate losing things. Misplacing keys or phone drives me almost mad. Part of that is driven by the fact that I am typically very careful with my things, seldom losing track. So when I do, it cracks my composure. Losing my faith, even the small version, has felt like that. It had grown dear to me; it was worn and comfortable from years of use.

But it no longer fit.

Perhaps it never did.

Losing Faith (Part VI): Less than Certain

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NOTE: This post of an ongoing series titled, “Losing Faith”. Previous posts can be seen HERE.

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certainty

I love certainty.

Great comfort arrives when pieces fit snugly together. If I have must have letters, let the I’s be dotted and the T’s be crossed. If I must have ducks, let them be in well-straightened rows.

That said, it’s easy for me to enjoy the opening chapters of Scripture. Genesis 1-2 contain the poetic telling of the world’s origins. In three words: Creator calms chaos. A state of lightless emptiness receives form and fill. Perfect pieces are shaped and snapped into one another. God called it good, and my order-loving self rejoiced.

However, Yahweh’s demolition skills are also exceptional when He notes the need. Genesis 6 begins the story around Noah, in which God unravels the intricate stitching of the Creation account. Re-creation is preceded by un-creation. I can sketch this logical need with clarity, but I failed to consider what such swirling floods would feel like when my own feet were swept away by the current.

Faith and Certainty

You see, the trouble is that faith and certainty are mutually exclusive. The quest for one endangers the other. More than that, the demand for one executes the other. The term “faith” is found 400+ times in the Bible (depending on translation used). In turn, one could reasonably conclude that certainty is therefore not a central experience to those who desire interaction with God. He has never dealt in that currency.

When Jesus called his first disciples, we read that they left behind nets and fathers and tables and what-not. They had no idea where Jesus was taking them or what would unfold along the way, but they held no illusions that they could both stay and go. There is no option of receiving without releasing.

Over the last few years, God has asked me to release my mind.

That sentence is begging for misunderstanding.

What I Do Not Mean

I am not speaking of believing blindly, of tossing aside one’s discernment, or becoming foolish or reckless or stupid. Our brains are glorious gifts, capable of shocking possibilities. I am certain that God wants them used to their fullest potential, and I am set on faithfully stewarding the one in my skull.

God’s nudge that I “let go” wasn’t a prompt to stop thinking. It was a loving lesson delivered vividly multiple times in the past four years. Even the slowest student starts to soak up a message after that type of immersion. What did I soak up?

My mind holds me back.

Trust me when I say that arriving at those five words required a climb-Mount-Everest type of trek for this fellow. Far easier to type it than to travel it.

Speaking of Typing

typingSurprisingly, the act of typing provided one of the breakthroughs. There is a sweetness to hitting one’s typing-stride. Keys are clicking, phrases are forming, and Creation ex nihilo is unfolding. My dust hands, tapping on Steve Job’s handiwork, are forming a never-seen-before reality. Wow!

But I have noticed something. I make more typing errors when I am thinking about the task. When eyes survey the keyboard, mistakes increase. Typing, at its fastest, happens more quickly than my brain can track. Demanding a mental log of the actions taking place is akin to tying an elephant to a Ferrari’s back bumper. Within this task, better to check the brain at the door and let muscle memory dating back to high school typing classes (Yes, I am old enough to have had typing classes!) carry the load. For here, my mind holds me back.

Typing is not the only such realm.

A Knowing Beyond Knowing

Within the spiritual dimensions, the mind—with all its power—can actually serve as anchor rather than compass. The demand for certainty is an inside insistence of one’s own sovereignty. Nothing in this post is a criticism of philosophy or science or religion or any other intellectual discipline. This is simply a statement of surrender from one man whose spiritual experiences have long ago left his head spinning. There is revelation beyond reason, and there is life above logic. And if one wishes to engage on those levels, his grip for control will have to break. One cannot stay and go simultaneously.

Mystery is the gap where Divinity lives. Strive ruthlessly to eliminate that space, and you will bulldoze the residence of the Divine in your life.

Or He might hijack the bulldozer and head your way!

1273bulldozer

 

Losing Faith (Part V): Invaded by an Uninvited One

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This post is the fifth in a series on Losing Faith. All previous posts can be seen HERE, if context might prove helpful.

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Somewhere near the end of our time overseas, we were home to visit. I must have been expressing some aspect of my changing perceptions on the Christian life. My slightly-older, significantly-wiser friend responded with a question.

O_Come_Holy_Spirit_by_LordShadowblade1“You’re not a cessationist, are you?”

The term felt awkwardly unfamiliar upon my ears, and my face must have said so. He clarified.

“You don’t believe the gifts of the Spirit ended with the New Testament, do you?”

For the first time, my mouth stated with my spirit had long sensed.

“No, I guess I don’t.”

This confession surely sent a unseen tremor through my tightly-wrapped-in-rationalism faith—a suspect form of faith, if there ever was one.

A Spiritual Sprinkling

Far more recently, it has dawned on me that my past version of a “Christian worldview” was actually a thoroughly naturalistic view, with a side order of God. According to Wikipedia, “naturalism commonly refers to the viewpoint that laws of nature (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe.”

abstract-word-cloud-for-naturalism-with-related-tags-and-termsMy particular version of naturalism was more personal in nature than Wikipedia’s. I have always been suspect of evolution as an adequate theory of how life originated, and I have long voiced that life’s richest realms are (relationships, art, love, dreams, morality, emotions, and more) fall somewhere beyond the horizons reached by verifiable facts.

My naturalism was a mutant.

I was convinced enough that God was real that He HAD to be part of my diagram, but I had no idea how to position the I AM within my tidy sketch.  So I simply placed Him on the fringe, where He wouldn’t mix up the other pieces.

And He had grown tired of that treatment.

Breaking Me by Breaking Free

In short, I have been forced, by a growing list of experiences and encounters, to acknowledge that my largely logical and rooted-in-reason approach to life is an insufficient processor for the reality in which I live. Its substance is too superficial, and it lacks the weight to grapple with life as I now know it. My former framework held fast so long as God respected my boundaries and operated within the office I had set up for Him. When He began to interact intimately with me and to surprise me through the lives of better-tuned instruments than myself, profound paradox unfolded. Logic imploded upon itself, as I was forced to admit my irrational inconsistencies, surely ever-present but now painfully exposed.

God of the Emoticon

In light of recent revelation, it would be intellectually irresponsible to insist upon the validity of my long-held worldview.

God has revealed Himself as undeniably present. In a shocking twist, the Supernatural invaded my naturalistic worldview, the world view that handed Him a long list of all He could not do.

In response, He has broken the door’s hinges with a one-line declaration: “Your naturalistic view is not nearly naturalistic enough, for it fails to handle life as you now know it. You will recalibrate, or your head will blow up and your spirit will bellow against you. But it’s your choice, right? Because you’re so in charge of what’s real and what’s not. ;-)”

(Yes, God used a winky emoticon.)
Imagine the unsettling nerve!

God showed up in ways that I could not explain and began threatening a cozy worldview, which had safe—and harmless—spots reserved for Him.

I have not simply lost my long-held faith; it was ripped from my hands!