Life Ministries

“I Came…”  (Somehow these last two posts got mixed up.)

    The third principle of the new law which we need to understand is: We are wanting to be SUCCESSFUL and God keeps wanting us to be AUTHENTIC. This calls for a whole new way of thinking. It goes against the grain of everything our culture believes. The kingdom of God really is an upside down kingdom. In this kingdom success may look like failure. The way up is down. Those who lead must become servants. The first are last and the last first. Those who are the greatest in the kingdom are the least. Adults are to become like children. Less is more. Those who mourn are joyful. Those who are poor inherit everything. The meek rule. The hungry are the ones who are full. This way of course, seems like insanity to the world.

    Jesus called a little child and had him stand among the people. He said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4) A child is authentic. There is very little pretense. They seem to be totally unaware of how they look or how they smell. What you see is what you get. You are quickly made aware of their needs and wants. They have not yet learned to pretend to be something they are not.
    Henri Nouwen speaks of the need to die to the false self. He says that we have to “give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others.” We must find our meaning and value in God. We measure ourselves by His yardstick. He says that we are His children and that He is and has all that we need. We live authentically with our genuine self showing through. We reject the standards of the world by which it defines success. We understand that success in the kingdom is measured by faithfulness. That faithfulness may not look like success in the eyes of the world, but it pleases God, and that is our concern.
    Those who are poor in spirit do not look successful. The meek, mourners and merciful are not always those the world looks up to. The pure are often seen as prudes. The persecuted are rejected outright by the world, but they belong to God and will be rewarded by him.
    This kind of authenticity is illustrated by a man like Charles H. Townes, who when he speaks about winning the Nobel Prize for his work in laser technology says, “It’s like the beaver told the rabbit as they stared up at the immense wall of Hoover Dam, ‘No, I didn’t actually build it myself. But it was based on an idea of mine.” It is like Alex Haley, the author of Roots, who has a picture in his office, showing a turtle sitting atop a fencepost. The picture is there to remind him of a lesson he learned long ago which says: ‘If you see a turtle on a fencepost, you know he didn’t get there by himself.’ Halley says, “Any time I start thinking, ‘Wow, isn’t this marvelous what I’ve done!’ I look at that picture and remember how this turtle “me” — got up on that fencepost.”
    The man in the New Testament we call the rich young ruler was a man who wanted to take all the credit for his spiritual life. He thought of it as something he was doing for God, instead of something God was doing for him. He began well by asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18) But when Jesus told him to obey the commandments, he proudly announced, “All these I have kept since I was a boy.” He must have said it with a smile, expecting Jesus to congratulate him. The Bible says, “When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Luke 18:22) But when he heard this, he turned away with sadness, because he was a man of great wealth. He was not authentic. His religion was a matter of impress-ing God and others. He did not want to hear that he still lacked something; he wanted Jesus to compliment him. Instead of listening to Jesus he was justifying himself. His actions were right, but his heart wasn’t right.
How do we follow the new law? We ask him to change us and give us a new heart. We internalize the words of Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30)
    He came to die, so that we might be delivered from the penalty of sin, the power of sin in our lives, and one day, the presence of sin as we live in glory with Jesus Himself.
    One day this man came to teach the class about the Law and its place in the overall scheme of Scripture. He came to the front of the class, but he had a big glob of mud on his face. He didn’t seem to notice it, and the students were too polite to say anything about it. He continued to teach, and finally, the students got brave and told him he had mud on his face. So he pulled out a mirror from his pocket, examined his face and saw the mud. Then he did something odd. He used the mirror to try and clean his face, but all that happened was that the mud smeared on his face, making the mess worse. As the students finished their laughing, the teacher made his point: the law reveals our sin, but it cannot clean it up. The Law is a mirror.