A Late Night Encounter
April 24, 2008
I boarded the plane in the Portland airport weary after a long day. “11pm. That’s 2am at home. No wonder I’m beat!” I put my pack in the overhead compartment, my computer bag under the seat in front of me, pulled out my earplugs and eyemask, and prepared for some much-needed sleep on the cross-country flight.
I glanced at the thirtyish man sharing the row of three seats with me. “Hi, my name is Coty.” He smiled. “I’m Jacob.” As he looked me in the eye, I quickly saw that God had other plans than sleep for this flight. After going through the normal pleasantries – Are you going home or leaving home? What’s the purpose of your trip? – Jacob began to share about his spiritual growth in the last few years. Through yoga and meditation, he had grown in his self-discipline, in his ability to deal with disappointment. He had simplified his life, eating well, cutting out TV and other distractions; in work, he now focused on flexible jobs that he greatly enjoyed. This enabled him to save enough money to travel to Sri Lanka recently and spend several months at a meditation center. He rises every morning and spends an hour doing yoga and meditating – and that time then flavors his entire day. He was happy, well-adjusted, and excited about his spiritual life – so excited he wanted to share that with others.
He was also interested in me, and was a good listener. He asked probing questions, and wanted to know about my own spiritual journey.
My body was screaming for sleep. If he spoke more than a minute at a time, it was hard for me to stay focused. I tried to maintain eye contact and prayed, “Lord, don’t let me fall asleep while he’s talking!” I could hardly think straight. When Jacob made the classic pluralist statement, saying how he was on one path to God and I was on another, but we were both going the same place, I couldn’t even remember the reference for “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (It’s John 14:6, by the way.)
So I continued to pray silently. “Lord, my brain had checked out. Yet you’ve placed me here with Jacob. Help me to acknowledge the temporal benefit he has gained through self-discipline. But then open up to him Who You are. Help me to turn to passages of Your Word that will be helpful. Use your mighty Word in His life. It’s more apparent than usual that I can do nothing. Be at work for Your glory, in spite of my weakness.”
We spoke for three hours. We went through all of Psalm 77 together, and most of John 8. I spoke of the genuine but limited value of physical self-discipline, of God’s authority over us as His creation, of our rebellion against Him and thus our guilt, of Christ’s incarnation, perfect life, and sacrificial death; of our need to respond to Him. God, man, Christ, response. Even half-asleep, I could remember those four words.
I don’t remember much of the specifics of what I said – most of the discussion is a sleepy blur. I’m sure when I spoke rather than read the Word, I was far from eloquent. There were undoubtedly better ways to address Jacob. But God put me in a place to serve as His ambassador. In my weakness, I prayed, opened my mouth, and opened the Word. In this encounter, weak as I was, I was faithful.
Two lessons I want to take away from this:
First: Look for such occasions. In this case, I perceived early on that Jacob would listen, and I abandoned my plans for the flight. In how many other cases do I blindly stick to my plan, and miss the opportunity to be Christ’s ambassador?
Second: Jacob is highly self-disciplined in order to achieve the temporal satisfactions that come from yoga and empty meditation. Should I not be at least as self-disciplined in turning to the riches of God’s Word and the joy of relating to God the Father through Jesus Christ?
I left Jacob with a Quest for Joy tract and a DGCC card. Please join me in praying that God would open the eyes of his heart, so that he might see his desperate need for God’s grace through Jesus. And join me in praying that all of us, weak as we are, might be the ambassadors God intends, showing up, recognizing our task, leaning on Him, so that all those we encounter might smell the aroma of Christ.
Praying that together we might so delight in Christ that we cannot but speak of Him,
Coty
Ripping Away the Old Man
April 18, 2008
Do you want God’s refining? Or would you rather just clean yourself up?
On Sunday we considered Malachi 3, in which God says concerning the “messenger of the covenant”, the coming Messiah:
But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. (Malachi 3:2-3)
Fire burns. It hurts. It may seem to be destroying. But the fire wielded by God for His purposes in His people cleanses and transforms, so that they might become what He intends them to be: those who offer themselves back to Him, those who delight in Him, those who display His glory to all of creation.
C.S. Lewis gives a marvelous picture of this refining process in the third book of the Narnian Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The central character is “a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” He is transported magically to the land of Narnia together with his cousins, Lucy and Edmund. There they join Prince Caspian on a journey by ship to the End of the World.
After a storm leaves the ship battered and broken, the travelers drop anchor near a mountainous island. To avoid having to work, Eustace escapes inland, climbing over a ridge. He gets lost in the fog, however, and then, as the fog turns to rain, has to take refuge in a cave. There he finds jewels and treasure of untold value – the hoard of a deceased dragon. He puts a particularly precious bracelet on his arm, and goes to sleep, imagining all the power he will have with this wealth. When he awakes, however, something has happened: “Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”
It takes Aslan, the Great Lion, the Son of the Emperor over the Sea, to change him back. Here is how Eustace tells the story to Edmund:
“I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. . . . It came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it – if you can understand. Well, it came closer up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it….
At last we came to the top of a mountain…. There was a garden – trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.
I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells – like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg [where the bracelet was now squeezing his transformed arm]. But the lion told me I must undress first….
I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins…. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
“Then the lion said…. You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . .
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on- and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turn into a boy again.”….
Neither [Edmund nor Eustace] said anything for a while. The last bright star had vanished and though they could not see the sunrise because of the mountains on their right they knew it was going on because the sky above them and the bay before them turned the colour of roses.
[C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” (Collier Books, 1952), 88-92.]
This is not the end of Eustace’s problems. He still may have dragonish thoughts at times. He may still appear hard and knobbly. There will be more refining. But the decisive moment has come. He is no longer a dragon. The skin is gone. Aslan has transformed him.
This is what Paul commands in Ephesians:
Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God – truly righteous and holy. (Ephesians 4:21-24 NLT)
Where are you in this process? Have you been trying to clean yourself, peeling off layers of ugly behavior, correcting faults, disciplining yourself – but not dealing with the fundamental issue of a wayward heart? Do you fundamentally love the world rather than God? Have Christ’s claws never ripped deep into you, making that fundamental change? Then turn to Him. Repent. And be made new.
Or has the fundamental change taken place in your life – you are no longer a dragon! – but lately have you been breathing fire and acting dragonish once again? This is the situation Paul addresses in Ephesians 4. Put off that old man! Put on the new man! Become what you are! This, too, is a refining; this, too, is painful; this, too, requires some ripping away by our Lord and by His Spirit.
So don’t settle for some version of a self-help gospel. God created you to display what He is like, as a purified priest. Be purified – whatever the cost.
Praying with you for our joint purification,
Coty
Genocide and Forgiveness
April 11, 2008
Fourteen years ago, the genocide in Rwanda was at its height. See this link for a fascinating account - in the New York Times of all places - of the impact of the Gospel on reconciliation and forgiveness between perpetrators and relatives of victims. Here’s an excerpt: Words spoken by Jean Baptiste Ntakirutimana to the man who murdered his mother:
By the time he started explaining how he killed her I partly lost consciousness. I prayed to God to give me His spirit to revive me and give me more strength to continue, as I felt it was His mission I was on. Miraculously I felt warmth from my head to my feet, I felt like a big rock melting from my chest and my head. I felt very refreshed, cleaned up my tears and carried on the conversation tremendously relieved from my whole being. I then told him that I have personally been forgiven all my wrong from God and that it is in the same spirit that I was coming to him offering him pardon myself. Then it was like a huge veil off his face he started smiling with a lot of words of gratitude. He started holding my hands and telling me many other things I couldn’t expect about himself and the reality around the genocide. He agreed to go and see other people for whose family members he killed.”
Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!
Inner Change or White-Washed Tombs?
April 11, 2008
During Sunday’s sermon, I briefly discussed the implications of being in Christ on three different aspects of a person’s life:
- First, the inner life: How do you think? What occupies your mind? What do you value and treasure? What do you long for?
- Second, the personal life: How you work, how you allocate your time, how you spend money. These are decisions you make on your own that primarily affect you.
- Third, your Life in Community with others: Your relationships in marriage, in your family, among your neighbors, among your colleagues.
Most Christians would agree that becoming a believer should change all three aspects of our lives. But how do these changes take place? Is there a correct, biblical order to the changes?
Consider Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
We are to be transformed, to be changed utterly. The Greek word translated “transformed” is the source for our word “metamorphosis.” But where does this metamorphosis begin? Not in our behavior. It begins inside us, through renewing our minds. The inner life changes first, leading to the other changes.
We see the same idea of God changing us from the inside in many other Scriptures. Consider the great New Covenant promise in Ezekiel 36:26
Ezekiel 36:26-27a And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you . . .
God replaces my old, corrupt, stony heart with a new, tender heart – indeed, He gives a new spirit, His Spirit. This is true internal change.
Only after the internal change takes place does he then deal with behavior:
Ezekiel 36:27b . . . and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Or consider Psalm 119:97. The verse begins with the inner change: “O How I love your law!” But that inner change has an impact on decisions about how to spend time, as the second half of the verse shows: “It is my meditation all the day.”
This idea – that the transformed mind in turn transforms personal decisions – is common throughout Scripture. Consider these examples:
1 Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Colossians 3:23-24 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Ephesians 5:15-16 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Thus, the changed inner life leads to a transformed personal life.
But the changes don’t stop there. The same Spirit that transforms our minds and our personal decisions in consequence also transforms our relationships. We see this especially clearly in the book of Ephesians. After spending three chapters explaining and praying for profound inner change in his readers, in chapters four and five the Apostle deals almost exclusively with interpersonal relationships. Consider these excerpts:
Ephesians 4:1-3 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:11-13 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
Ephesians 4:32 - 5:4 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Beginning in 5:22, Paul then discusses the transforming effects of the Gospel on our most intimate relationships: between husband and wife (5:22-33), between parents and children (6:1-4), and between employees and employers (6:5-9).
Thus, being a Christian must entail changes in personal life and in our relationships. But note the danger: It is easy for us to exhort people to improve their personal decisions and improve their relationships apart from any Spirit-wrought internal change. And, given that we are forced to admit sin and failure more easily in our relationships than in our inner lives, people are hungry for such advice. Thus the proliferation of how-to books and seminars: “Twelve steps to a happy marriage;” “How to raise great kids;” “Seven keys to success in the workplace.”
But we cannot start with external change. For this is not the Gospel. The Gospel says that I am a slave to sin, and will continue to be a slave to sin even if I take a bath and thus have a less putrid odor. Changing the outside does not change the inside. Remember, Jesus said the Pharisees were like whitewashed tombs – clean, lovely on the outside but inside full of rotting carcasses.
Instead, the Gospel says that I will never have a marriage that reflects the relationship of Christ to the church unless God replaces my heart of stone with a heart of flesh, unless the Holy Spirit opens my eyes to see the beauty of Christ’s death and the power of His resurrection. Furthermore, as one who is in Christ, I will become more and more the husband, the employee, the child, the church member God intends as I apply the cross to my life, as I grow in the inner fruit of the Spirit, day by day and hour by hour.
So, yes, let us tell people that God cares about their felt needs: their marital problems and workplace issues and child-rearing challenges. But we must go deep, to heart issues, to internal change – that is, to the Gospel. Then and only then will we fulfill our purpose; then and only then will Christ will be glorified in our inner lives, in our personal lives, and in our relationships.
Praying that we might live out the Gospel,
Coty
