Month: March 2017

“Truly, truly I say unto you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24). There’s a lot of truth in that little “kernel” that Jesus shared with the disciples and us. On the most important level He was talking about His impending death and, don’t forget this… burial. He saw His death as a seed being planted before the harvest. Unless the seed is planted, it remains alone. Since it was planted, a harvest came with Jesus the first fruits.

Even the most elementary gardener among us gets that. Planting comes before harvest. Seed in ground = plants and more seed coming out of the ground. But somehow the spiritual impact of that escapes us. It is literally saying, “unless you die you will live alone. If you die you will bear much fruit.” This is not about prearranging our funeral. This is about living an abundant life.

We are all seed, you see. God’s desire is to “fling” us (sorry: Kentucky term) onto the soil and allow us to be “planted.” As we die to ourselves, we will bring forth spiritual fruit. If we refuse to die, we will live alone.

This is a hard but necessary truth. We don’t want to receive it because it means that life is not about keeping ourselves, but losing ourselves. It is about laying our life down for the Kingdom. It is about following Jesus in self-denial.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred, German pastor who died during World War 2, put it this way in his classic The Cost of Discipleship, “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

And that we must.

FOR MEDITATION: And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.     John 12:23-26

FOR REFLECTION: How can we begin to die… today?

“In the cross of Christ I glory, towering over the wrecks of time.” So wrote a believer who had been shipwrecked and stranded at sea without hope of rescue, without knowledge of the direction of land. As he waited in the waves and wind, being blown either towards land or deeper out to sea… he didn’t know… he caught sight of what he at first though was a dream or hallucination.

It was neither. It was a cross.

It was a cross atop a steeple which jutted above the shoreline and buildings around it. The author, Sir John Bowring, was an Englishman, poet, author and politician. Reflecting upon his miraculous rescue at sea, upon seeing the cross on land and swimming toward it, he wrote the words which have become a famous hymn, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory.”

The words are based on the verse spoken by Paul in Galatians which states, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord.” It is only in the cross of Christ that our rescue is assured. We are tossed about… lost… awash in a sea of condemnation and guilt… and suddenly the cross appears. We can accept or reject our rescue through the cross, but it divides… believer from unbeliever, saved from lost, belief from skepticism, eternally blessed or eternally rejected.

So when we see the cross, wherever it is displayed, we must know that it is our rescue and be grateful to God for it… or our condemnation if we fail to flee to it by grace through faith.

Do you glory in the cross?

FOR MEDITATION: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord, but whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.
Galatians 6:14

FOR REFLECTION:  What does the cross of Jesus Christ mean to you?

We now officially live in a day when, with enough money, you can leave the planet! Two individuals with said money have now arranged to be the first two passengers to leave our atmosphere on a “bus” that will transport them to the moon. What they will do when they get there is anybody’s guess, (pretty sure Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts haven’t arrived yet); but there we are.

It should not escape our notice that is has been God’s intention to get INTO the world that we are so desperately trying to get OUT of. That is the full message of the Genesis account with Adam and Eve and God visiting each day. God delighted in His creation, and though fallen and badly broken, still loves it.

He loved it enough that He gave… He sent… His only begotten Son, the firstborn over all creation, as a sacrifice of atonement for His erring world. It is the culmination of that sacrifice that calls our attention at the cross. It is there that Heaven and earth meet in a painful, bloody, but redeeming intersection of wood, steel, flesh and blood.

For God so loved the world… that He gave His only begotten Son. We should never let the wonder of that simple verse slip away from us. It is the very defining reality that knits our eternity with God. It is life, and eternity, and forgiveness, and explanation all in one. “But God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself….” (2 Corinthians 5:19) There is no greater wonder than that.

And no greater love.

FOR MEDITATION: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” John 15:13

FOR REFLECTION: Remind yourself today that the next five people you see… whoever they are… are people that God deemed worthy enough to send His Son to save.

Today begins the season of Lent. While we do not formally celebrate this season with the imposition of ashes and other practices, it is still a good discipline for us to walk together with a consciousness that helps us focus on the work of the cross. The next several blogs will help point us in that direction, so that we may see our Savior and hopefully encounter Him in fresh ways.

In this first column, I want us to think for a few moments about self-denial. Jesus said, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” Following Jesus is preceded by and inclusive of self-denial. This is not a popular thought or common practice in our culture. We actually are constantly bombarded by just the opposite message: “Indulge yourself. Grab life with both hands. Fill your life with things that bring pleasure. Drink your fill of good things.” To such a culture, the message of self-denial sounds foreign.

But we need to know that we did not come to this first. Every human being, because of our brokenness and sin, is inclined to think that ultimate pleasure and happiness can only be obtained as we meet the demands of our flesh. When we exalt our flesh and our needs over God’s demands and God’s call of self-sacrifice and self-denial, we end in emptiness and not fulfillment; sadness and not joy.

Jesus not only called us to self-denial, He modeled the way. We follow Him as our guide to this end… that we might die to ourselves and live to Him alone.

MEDITATION: Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Mark 8:34

REFLECTION: How may I today and in the days to come, find ways to daily say “NO” to the flesh that I might more perfectly say “YES” to God?