The multi-Oscar-winning movie, Amadeus, from 1984 shows the story of the unusual musical genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in contrast to the hard working, good composer, but not divinely talented Antonio Salieri. In the movie we see how Salieri is offended by God’s grace as bestowed on Mozart. He recognizes that God for some reason that Salieri can’t understand has decided to express himself through a in Salieri’s view lazy, no good, cocky, young Austrian by the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He is furious at God and his grace towards Mozart. He is angry that God had decided to give him certain gifts in writing music, but nothing that came close to Mozart’s level. Watch this clip from the movie, and especially the last minute where Salieri vows to do what he can do to destroy Mozart’s career, and where he declares war on God, because of God’s choices:
I thought about this clip this last week as I was teaching about grace and identity in Christ. How easy it is for us as Christians to fall into the same trap that Salieri, and the older brother in the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 fell into where he end up being offended by God’s grace. God’s grace is shocking to us. It is per definition unfair. Or rather: it has nothing to do with fair or unfair! God’s grace is a mystery. God’s grace is bestowed on small and large, important and unimportant, disciplined and undisciplined, educated and uneducated….we can’t stop it. We can’t control it. We can only embrace and celebrate it.
I was teaching about grace last week and some of the people in the group I was teaching were very obviously offended by God’s grace. They obviously wouldn’t use such language, but that was still the case. It feels absurd, maybe even unfair that it’s possible for people to become Christians and then choose to waste their whole lives not serving God one bit, and yet, they are eternally loved, secure and will be safe in God the Father’s arms now and forevermore and nothing they will ever do/say/think/feel will ever be able to change that. That’s offensive to us. That’s not right. Why isn’t there a limit to grace, we ask? We want a limit. We understand that there are consequences for living in sin here on planet earth, but it doesn’t seem right to us that you can just waste away your life as a Christian and God is still gonna love and accept you. But he does. And he always will.
I rejoice in God’s grace. So undeserved. So needed for me. So capable of changing from within. So powerful in melting the iceberg of hurt, anger, blame, self-righteousness, lust, lies, wounds and everything else that keeps me from fully embracing who I really am in Christ.
Let’s refrain from dissecting God’s grace and look at it as it was a frog chosen for that sort of experiment. God’s grace can’t be controlled. God’s grace is per definition insane. I pray that God will always keep me in awe of his grace, so I don’t end up being offended by it.
Salieri couldn’t forgive God for being gracious to Mozart. The older son hated his father for loving and accepting his younger brother without any sort of plan for how he was going to repay the debt. Are you offended by God’s grace to all of us? God truly is a lovesick father. He longs to forgive and renew you and I.
I celebrate the grace of God!
“Concepts create idols. Only wonder grasps anything” /Gregory of Nysa
It’s been a bit more than a year and a half since this blog site saw the light of the cyber space day. I thought I would give you, dear reader, a chance to listen to a little devotion that I did a few weeks ago where I talked about the reality of my brokenness, the reality that I don’t know everything there is to know about living my life as a follower of Christ, and the places I go to when I’m just plain, old disappointed in myself and how I live my life.
You are very welcome to listen to this devotion here on Grace Ministries International’s website.
Here is the quote that I read in the devotion plus a few other quotes that talk about the truths that I reflect on in the devotion.
“Jesus, my brother and Lord, I pray as I write these words the grace to be truly poor before you, to recognize and accept my weakness and humanness, to forgo the indecent luxury of self-hatred, to celebrate your mercy, and trust in your power when I am at my weakest, to rely on your love no matter what I do, to seek no escapes from my innate poverty, to accept loneliness when it comes instead of seeking substitutes, to live peacefully without clarity or assurance, to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in my life fade away, to belong no more to myself, not to desert my post when I give the appearance of staying at it, to cling to my humanity, to accept the limitations and full responsibility of being a human being – really human and really poor in Christ our Lord” (Brennan Manning in Reflections for Ragamuffins)
“Your real new self will not come as you’re looking for it. It’ll come as You look for Him (Christ). Only in Him will I know who I am” (C. S. Lewis)
“And now, with God’s help, I shall become myself” (Søren Kierkegaard)
“My primary identity rests on what God has done for me through Christ” (Brennan Manning).
I hope that God will bless you and speak to you through listening to what He has been teaching me.
I have been thinking some about a verse from Romans chapter 6. It’s verse 23, and it goes like this:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
Typically this verse is used in an evangelism context where Christians talk to non-Christians about the fact that if you choose to stay in your sin you’re going to end your life in Hell (‘death’ in the verse). The fact is, however, that this verse is not spoken to non-Christians, but to Christians. It’s a part of Paul’s letter to the Roman church, and it talks about realities that we as Christians experience today as well. The verse talks about clear choices with clear consequences.
If I choose sin and choose to live according to who I used to be (a sinful person with a sinful nature), and not according to the truth of who I am now (a new creation, 2. Corinthians 5:17, who wants to do what God wants to do, Ezekiel 36:26-27), I experience death. What does ‘death’ mean? Death in a biblical understanding often means ‘lack of life’. And in this verse it’s talking about how a believer, when he or she chooses to sin, chooses to live as a hypocrite (hypocrite=not living according to who you really are), you experience death in your relationships to God, to yourself and to other people.
How does this look like? It’s very practical stuff. If I choose to ignore what the Holy Spirit is telling me is the best thing to do, and I choose to sin, the results are simply worse relationships with God, myself and other people. I can’t be as open, vulnerable, honest and safe as I am when I don’t choose to sin. I don’t have to sin. Sin is not my master anymore (Romans 6:14). I don’t have to obey sin’s temptations (1. Corinthians 10:13). I recently heard an illustration where a speaker said that living as a believer is much like playing in a basketball or football match. Unless the referees blows the whistle and tells you that you’ve done something wrong, you can assume you’re doing right. As a believer filled with the Holy Spirit and his guidance in my life, I can be convinced that he’ll blow the whistle if I’m sinning. If he doesn’t blow the whistle, I can safely assume that I’m living according to God’s will and that I’m walking in the Spirit (Romans 8). As a Christian, and as a brand new creation in Christ (2. Corinthians 5:17) I have been given a new set of ‘default settings’. When you cut to the chase inside of me you find perfection, because you find Christ and what he has done in me. I am forever perfect in Jesus (Hebrews 10:14), and nothing I will ever say, do, think or feel or will not say, do think or feel will ever change that. But that doesn’t mean that I will necessarily get to experience the fullness of Jesus’ life here on planet earth. If I choose to sin, I will receive the wages of a sinful lifestyle. And the paycheck is death. It’s a lack of life. It’s a lack of intimacy with God. It’s a lifestyle of lying to my spouse and my friends and myself. It’s a masquerade where I have to cover up what I do and what I really think about myself. It’s a road of pretending, minimizing, exaggerating, hiding, lusting, or whatever your particular brand of flesh may be. It’s a reality of mediocrity, whining and pouting, because you don’t get to experience the fullness of relationships with God, with yourself and with other people that we desire. But God didn’t promise that we would ‘feel good and close to him’ when we choose to sin. He never said that we would have great relationships with other people, when we choose to sin. He said that choices towards sin will lead to death. Pure and simple. And then he was kind enough to leave us with another choice in the other half of the verse in Romans 6:23. I’ve seen the principle of death when I choose sin at work in my life many times. Most of my life I have been living in dishonest relationships with other people and trying to pretend that everything was okay when really that wasn’t the case. I’m so happy that Christ has shown me more and more of the life that’s available when we abide in him.
A wonderful gift to receive
The other half of Romans 6:23 again: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord“. It’s important to understand that ‘eternal life’ is not something we enter into the day we die and go to Heaven. Eternal life is the very person of Jesus Christ as shown here in a couple of different verses: “we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (1. John 5:20), “and the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son” (1. John 5:11), “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
Jesus is the eternal life, and he is given to us as a gift. And all that he is is given to us as a gift. It’s the gift of himself. Romans 5:17 calls it the gift of righteousness. Galatians 5:22-23 talks about Jesus when it talks about the fruit (singular, not plural!) of the Spirit. Jesus is the one who possesses all wisdom (1. Corinthians 1:24).
I want to learn more about who Christ is. I am tired of learning from other people and hearing other peoples’ wisdom. We don’t possess all wisdom, only Christ does. Just yesterday I was talking to somebody about what humility is, and it struck me that the best person to ask, but often the last one that we end up asking (…) is Jesus himself who gave us the invitation to learn from him in Matthew 11:28-29:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”
Christ invites us to learn from him. I am beginning to ask him more to teach me who he is and what eternal life really looks like. I don’t want other people to teach me. Other peoples’ experiences with Christ can be interesting to hear about, but I need to encounter Christ by myself and experience him heal, touch, direct, bless, challenge, encourage, strengthen, speak through me to really experience him and for it to really make a difference in my life. How I long for Christ to be more visible through me.
I love the line from this song called You Be Lifted High: “and I fall to my knees, so it’s You that they see, not I, Jesus, You be lifted high“:
A choice that I’m often presented with is the choice between cynicism and joy. Growing up and in most of my life I have always had a tendency to be very cynical (‘honesty’ I used to call it…), negative (‘realistic’ was my term for that…) and sarcastic (‘having a sense of humor’ in my words…). Cynicism, negativity, sarcasm, fault-finding are all different words that have to do with judgment. Judgment of God as being incompetent and not living up to my expectations, so I decide that he is a liar with his lofty promises (“abundant life?….yeah right!”) and I choose to live a life as a believer where I profess to be a Christian, but spend the vast majority of my energy judging other people for their mistakes and hating God for not giving me what I want. I also judge other people and deem them not worthy of my time and energy. Soft, good-hearted, forgiving people are seen as weak and pathetic, and it becomes very hard for me to relate to a God of compassion, grace and relentless love.
I am a cynic in healing. Some Christians I have met say that “it’s just natural for me to be more negative and cynical than other people“. That’s simply not true. It’s a lie. There is simply no way that it’s ‘natural’ for a born again child of God with the Holy Spirit living inside of him or her to be cynical, harsh, negative and judgmental. It’s flesh. It’s ugly. It needs to be recognized, confessed and exposed and put in its right place under Jesus’ leadership.
I am a cynic in healing. I have spent much time in my life finding faults. I used to belong to the large group of Christians who just never seem to find a church that fits them. There is always something that they don’t like. The other people never live up to their expectations. They think they are spiritually mature and have the gift of discernment because they can see that no churches are perfect. The problem is that we all know that no churches are perfect. It’s truly stating the obvious! But the tragedy is that these people, these cynical Christians, either just sit miserable in their bitterness and self-righteousness in the seats of whatever church or they conclude that church is a waste of time altogether and find themselves church-less, and often after a short while life-less as well. It’s a slow fade, but I’ve seen it happen for too many people I hold dear, and I thank God that he stopped me in my tracks when I was going down that well-worn path. And I thank him that he is healing me for the cynicism and negativity that used to control my life all the time.
It doesn’t mean that I’m not able to find faults anymore. Trust me, I’m great at that. I can find faults anywhere. But I don’t have to entertain that thought, invite it in for dinner and invite other people to share that discovery with me. I can say to God that I don’t want to live in darkness, and he will gradually show me more and more what it looks like to live as a child of the light.
Grace-healed eyes
I was very challenged by the following sections fromThe Return Of The Prodigal Son. It speaks volumes to me and challenges me to continue down the path of healing with Christ where he changes me from a son of cynicism to a child of joy, just the same way he changed the Apostle John from a son of thunder who wanted to call fire down on unrepentant people (Luke 9:51-55) to the apostle of love who couldn’t stop celebrating Christ’s love for him and named himself ‘the disciple Jesus loved’ (John 20:2) when he wrote his gospel.
“The father of the prodigal son gives himself totally to the joy that his returning son brings him. I have to learn from that. I have to learn to ’steal’ all the real joy there is to steal and lift it up for others to see. Yes, I know that not everybody has been converted yet, that there is not yet peace everywhere, that all pain has not yet been taken away, but still, I see people turning and returning home; I hear voices that pray; I notice moments of forgiveness, and I witness many signs of hope. I don’t have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint the Kingdom that is at hand.
This is a real discipline. It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded with lies. I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways. The reward of choosing joy is joy itself. There is so much rejection, pain, and woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration,. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to fertile soil for more joy.
Surely I will be called naive, unrealistic, and sentimental, and I will be accused of ignoring the ‘real’ problems, the structural evils that underlie much of human misery. But God rejoices when one repentant sinner returns. Statistically that is not very interesting. But for God, numbers never seem to matter. Who knows whether the world is kept from destruction because of one, two or three people who have continued to pray when the rest of humanity has lost hope and dissipated itself?” (The Return Of The Prodigal Son, pages 115-116).
A few years ago I would have been in the large group calling Nouwen and people like him ‘naive, unrealistic, sentimental and ignorant’, but they are not. The more I get, what Philip Yancey in his masterpiece What’s So Amazing About Grace called, grace-healed eyes, the more I see that I am called to be like Nouwen and the other naive dreamers. I am also called as a child of the light to point to the light in the world when it’s visible. I’m not called to be ignorant about the real problems that are in this world. And I doubt that will ever be a temptation for me to not be aware of the real problems that are going on. But being aware of the problems and talking a lot about them, doesn’t do much to solve them. I have spent a lot of useless time dwelling of the problems in the world, and the problems in the church, instead of being a part of the minority that is always active in loving people and bringing forth life and light where darkness, bitterness and mediocrity rule.
Darkness/light, cynicism/joy
I will give the scene to Henri Nouwen again in these two segments where he contrasts people of cynicism with people of joy. I recognize myself very well in the cynical people, but thank God (!!) I’m beginning to see more and more of the simple joy in my life. And joy, not cynicism is, after all, one of the fruits of the Spirit living his life in and through me.
“For me it is amazing to experience daily the radical difference between cynicism and joy. Cynics seek darkness wherever they go. They point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes. They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental. They sneer at enthusiasm, ridicule spiritual fervor, and despise charismatic behavior. They consider themselves realists who see reality for what it truly is and who are not deceived by ‘escapist emotions’. But in belittling God’s joy, their darkness calls forth more darkness.
People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. They discover that there are people who heal others’ wounds, forgive each others’ offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God’s glory” (The Return Of The Prodigal Son, page 117)
These are powerful words indeed. They expose the darkness that’s still inside of me. They expose how often I’m tempted to look at the dark instead of the bright colors of life. They expose that I often find it easier, more comfortable and even more spiritual (!) to criticize instead of encourage.
Paul urged the Ephesian church to: “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Real truth is always filled with love. And real love is always filled with truth. This is not a call to blindness, stupidity, a childish outlook on life or anything like that. We are called to be aware. Be aware of both the good, the bad and the ugly. But in this day and age where most people are focusing on everything that doesn’t work in and outside of the church or in their own lives, the calling to celebrate the light is even stronger than ever before. I rarely have any problems speaking what I believe is the truth. But if it’s not spoken in love, it’s worth nothing (1. Corinthians 13), and I always have to ask myself a key question: “will what I am about to say build up relationships or break down relationships?‘. If it will break down relationships, it is probably better to stay quiet, but if it will build up relationships, I am free to speak what’s on my heart and trust that God put it there.
Here is the song A Place Called Grace. The place that we can all run to no matter how caught up in cynicism and resentment we may be. It’s a place where God starts to melt the iceberg that is around our true selves and we get to experience that God’s forgiveness and mercy changes us slowly from within
Blessings, Torben – who is glad that it’s God doing the changing of focus! It’s not about me tricking myself into seeing more of the light in this world. I simply see it the more I see Christ – who is the light of the world – in my life!
As I already mentioned Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of The Prodigal Son has been a great read for me these past weeks. I like to eat this type of deep, spirit- and truth-filled book in small bites with some space in between the meals to properly digest all the beautiful food that is packed into less than 150 pages.
And so I have taken my time reading this book that talks about the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke chapter 15 and the many aspects of life with God that the story, and the painting by Rembrandt portraying this story, point out.
Nouwen discusses many choices in the book. Choices I can make as a child of God. Choices that determine whether I get to live in the joy and peace of Romans 8 and the rest of the New Testament or whether I end up in the misery and mediocrity of Romans 7 and the reality of too many believers today.
Our choices have consequences. If I choose to live in the darkness even though I am a child of the light, I miss out on what God has for me. If I choose bitterness and not brokenness, complaints and resentments instead of gratitude and hatred and unforgiveness in place of love and forgiveness I miss out on a multitudes of gifts that are mine as a child of the king of the kingdom of God.
This passage about choosing gratitude over resentment spoke to me about one of these choices:
“Gratitude goes beyond the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly. I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear the words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.
There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude because God has appeared in my darkness, urged me to come home, and declared in a voice filled with affection: “You are with me always, and all I have is yours”. Indeed, I can choose to dwell in the darkness in which I stand, point to those who are seemingly better off than I, lament about the many misfortunes that have plagued me in the past, and thereby wrap myself in my resentment. But I don’t have to do this. There is the option to look into the eyes of the One who came out to search for me and see therein that all I am and I have is pure gift calling for gratitude” (The Return of The Prodigal Son, page 86)
I know this choice between gratitude and resentment very well. I have often spend a lot of time in the darkness complaining, whining, arguing, debating…without many positive results! Resentment and bitterness are like bacteria that start small and insignificant, but the more you and I feed them the more space they’ll take up, until we can’t see any beauty and love for all the negativity that occupy our thoughts and feelings. Resentment is also dangerous because it attracts company. You’ll always be able to find people to sit and share your resentment and bitterness with. I never had a hard time finding whining-session-partners, but I have begun seeing more and more how destructive it is for me to be a person of always finding fault and always concluding that God is holding out on me. I have been bitter at God many, many years, and for me it was a huge step to allow myself to forgive God. That may sound absurd, and obviously God, who does not make mistakes, does not need my forgiveness. But I had to go through the painful process of forgiving God for making me that the way he made me, and allowing the things – good, bad, and ugly – to happen to me that have helped me shape me into the person I am today. I had to forgive him in order to come to the place of being able to thank him for everything he has done, is doing and will do in my life! I still have some steps to take with him, before I am at the place of giving him thanks in all situations and under all circumstances. But that’s where we’re heading, God and me. And I trust him to continue to change me with his love and care, so I live a life of gratitude and not a life of resentment and bitterness.
I have been reading a great book by Henri Nouwen called The Return of The Prodigal Son. It’s somewhat of a spiritual classic talking about the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15 and especially about the Dutch painter Rembrandt’s interpretation of this story in his painting The Return of The Prodigal Son
One quote stood out in the book that talks the choice we have as believers. We can, like the older son in the story and in the painting, stay in the shadows and pout, be bitter and miss out on most of what God has for his children. Or we can, like the younger son, allow God to embrace us and be changed into the fullness of who we are as his sons and daughters.
“The Father’s love does not force itself on the beloved. Although he wants to heal us of all our inner darkness, we are still free to make our own choice to stay in the darkness or to step into the light of God’s love. God is there. God’s light is there. God’s forgiveness is there. God’s boundless love is there. What is so clear is that God is always there, always ready to give and forgive, absolutely independent of our response. God’s love does not depend on our repentance or our inner or outer changes” (page 78)
God truly is a gentleman. He doesn’t force us to live in the reality of who we really are as children of light. We can choose to live in the bitterness and lack of life of the children of darkness. The choice is yours and mine. The invitation is open. God is always there. Always out looking for us. Always ready to forgive and forget and throw a party when we return to him and accept his boundless love for us instead of holding on to our own misperceptions of who God is and who we are as people.
The worship song Better Is One Day was written by Matt Redman quite a few years ago and have been recorded by Redman, Chris Tomlin, Kutless, etc. and has become a fan favorite in a lot of contemporary churches all over the world. This song also made it into the repertoire of the church in Nuuk we visited during our recent trip to Greenland. I shared with the small group that we were gathered with while singing this song a revelation that God showed me a while ago. It’s a wonderful catchy tune and the lyrics of longing after God are powerful. But not true anymore…
The lyrics to the song are taken from Psalm 84 where David cries out to God in this way:
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearn, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (verses 1-2)…Better is one day in your courts that a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked (verse 10)”
David is desperate to spend more time in God’s dwelling place which in Old Testament/Old Covenant days was the Temple of God. The temple that David so desperately desired to build for God so they could spend more time together, but where David had to accept that God had chosen David’s son, Solomon, to be the one who were to build the Temple in Jerusalem. David longed to come in and encounter God and be in God’s dwelling place. God’s dwelling place was a place outside of David. A place he longed to travel to and spend time in. A place that didn’t belong to David, but where he longed to be welcomed as a guest. Even if he just had to stay outside in the courts, David would be excited, because he would know that at least he would be close to the presence of God.
This was David’s reality and it was the reality of all believers in the Old Testament times before the New Covenant was set in effect after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the permanent coming of the Holy Spirit. But this is not the reality of any New Covenant believers, and therefore not the reality of any of God’s children today! We don’t have to travel to Jerusalem or somewhere else to visit God’s dwelling place. We don’t need anybody to intercede on our behalf, because we fear that we are not welcome. We don’t have to be afraid that the Temple will be shut down for us, because we have committed some sin or just don’t have the right heart attitude.
The great news of the New Covenant, of the new agreement between God and his children, is that we are now God’s dwelling place! And that dwelling place sure is lovely!
1. Corinthians 3:16-17 puts this piece of truth this way: “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God’s, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are“
Wow…I am the dwelling place of God! I am God’s lovely dwelling place! I can rest in that. I don’t have to go anywhere, do anything, wear special clothes, eat special food, attend any fancy ceremonies or anything like that to approach God, because he is already inside of me. And he has declared that the dwelling place of himself is holy, and I’m that dwelling place, and therefore I am holy! I am as holy and righteous and blameless as the Temple in the Old Covenant was. God lives in me, rules in me, encounters me in me. And I can always fellowship with him, because he is right here inside of me.
Stop praying like David!
We have to stop using language from the Old Covenant and talk about it as if that is our reality today. It is not! We are no longer in the Old Covenant. If you want to read through a book that talks about the difference between the Covenants, and why David, Abraham, Moses, etc. would be jealous that they didn’t get to live in the New Covenant days, that you and I experience, go to the book of Hebrews.
We have to stop inviting God to come. He came. He is here. He is in me. You only invite somebody to come who isn’t here. He doesn’t need an invitation. He is already here.
We have to stop praying with David from Psalm 51: “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me“. He will not take his Holy Spirit away from a true believer in the New Covenant. In the Old Testament/Covenant days the Holy Spirit came at different times as a visitor. Today he is here permanently living in each of God’s children. As Paul puts it in 1. Corinthians 6:17 “The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him“. Not two separate spirits. One spirit. Just one. We are one with Christ and his Spirit will never ever leave us. No matter what we do/think/feel or say he will not leave us. For David there was a real fear that the Holy Spirit would leave him. That fear is not a part of the New Covenant. Let’s appreciate this miracle and stop praying as if we were still a part of the Old Covenant.
Maybe we could change the lyrics to Better Is One Day to something like this:
“How lovely is your dwelling place O Lord almighty. For my soul longs and even faints for you. For within me you encounter me and I’m satisfied in your presence. I sing beneath the shadow of your wings.
Better is one day here with you, better is one day here with you, better is one day here with you than the reality I lived in before I came to know you
One thing I ask, and I would seek to see Your beauty, to find You inside of me and have you reveal Your beauty to me.
Better is one day here with you, better is one day here with you, better is one day here with you than the reality I lived in before I came to know you”
(I’m by no means a great song writer, so if you, dear reader, have a better New Covenant-reality-inspired version of this song, you’re very welcome to post it here!)
Here is a video with the old version of this song :
This passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans has been swimming around in my head during our trip to Denmark, Iceland and Greenland. Especially while being in my beloved native country Denmark and during our time in Iceland did I think of the tragedy of the way the majority of people choose to live. I write this blog entry with a heavy heart well-knowing that many people could read this, misunderstand it as me judging other people or putting myself up on some kind of pedestal, while nothing could be farther from the truth. I would be living my life completely the way that I describe in the following lines if it wasn’t for Jesus being at work in me and causing me to walk in his ways which bring life and not my ways or the ways of the world which bring death to me. I am well aware that I am as capable of falling into the depravity and destruction that so many people are in as anybody else. I just pray and trust that Jesus will always be there to lift me up when I fall. And I thank him that it’s with him as the hope for me, individuals and all the nations that I write these words that are on my heart!
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them“
(Romans 1:18-32)
Unfortunately this passage written about 2000 years ago describing what was going on in the city of Rome in Italy is directly applicable to what’s going on in the world in 2009. All over the world people are worshiping the created instead of the Creator. All over the world arrogance and pride is the name of the game and not humility, love and surrender to God who is love. But these weeks these verses describe very well what I saw going on in my home country, Denmark and on the beautiful little island of Iceland just south east of Greenland. Denmark is a nation of great Christian heritage. We have had the Gospel of Jesus Christ available to our nation since around the year 700, and especially since the second Danish king, Harald Bluetooth, got baptized and decided that Christianity should be the official religion of Denmark in 950, the Gospel has been freely preached everywhere in the little Scandinavian kingdom. But today more than 1000 years later the Danes have largely forgotten about the God of the Universe! As a nation we have became proud and cold and have decided that everything concerning faith, and relationship with a God we cannot see with our human eyes is ridiculous and for a majority of modern day Danes Christianity is about as relevant for their everyday life as Greek and Roman gods of olden days. Today Christianity is still the official religion of Denmark, but it’s a watered-down version with as much resemblance to the real deal as the brown water of Coke Zero is compared to real Coca-Cola…
I always grieve when I’m in Denmark. “They did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God“, Paul wrote. And that’s true for most of the Danes. They may consider themselves to be the happiest nation on planet earth. But it’s a happiness built around self-sufficiency, selfishness, arrogance and pride. Most Danes feel so embraced by the well-functioning welfare system of Denmark that they have decided that they simply don’t need God anymore. They may do some religious activities now and then (baptism, marriage in a church, confirmation, go to church on holidays, etc.), and 81% of all Danes are still members of the Danish Lutheran State Church, but there is very little spiritual life in the little kingdom. Many Danish Christians (but certainly not all! I am blessed to know a good number of on-fire believers who are still believing in and praying forth great breakthroughs of God’s kingdom in Denmark!!) are also caught in the postmodern cycle of self-sufficiency, cynicism and pride and many of these are simply not believing that God will become important in Denmark again. God has blessed the nation of Denmark so it’s one of the richest nations in the world, but as a nation we are not in a place of worshiping God for his good gifts. Instead we have largely decided to ignore him and everything he is.
Please understand that I write all these things with a heavy heart. I don’t mean to judge anybody. That is – thank God – not my job, but I know that there are terrible consequences for the godless way so many people that I encounter live. I’m grieved by the state of my home country, and I pray and believe that God is doing a new thing even in Denmark. He is setting more and more hearts on fire for him, and God’s kingdom shall not be defeated in Denmark either, but I want to be honest about where this nation is at, so I – and maybe you, dear reader – know how to pray for Denmark.
The contrast between the natural and worshipful beauty of Greenland and the sadness I felt while being in Reykjavik, Iceland where they were celebrating a gay pride weekend was very tangible. As Paul puts it: “they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them“. I am not by any means saying that lived-out homosexuality is a worse sin than any other, but I am saying that the very fact that sin, and lived-out homosexuality is a sin that’s destroying our nations, was being celebrated and encouraged in the streets of the beautiful city of Reykjavik and that little children were handed gay pride flags to wave with was tragic to observe. It grieved me deeply and caused me once again to pray to God for life to spring forth in Iceland. Though surrounded by so many examples of God’s unbelievably beautiful and creative creation, Icelandic people are also incredibly proud people and the truths of God are very hard to proclaim on the little island.
I pray for Denmark, Iceland and the rest of the nations of the world. I pray for a revival where we walk away from the lie that Satan has tricked us into believing. The lie that says that we humans are the center of everything and that we don’t need salvation and life in Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve bought into the lie from Satan in the Garden of Eden, and ever since we have chosen to walk our own ways and not surrender to God’s love for us. I pray that the kingdom of God will break through in new and powerful ways in Denmark and in Iceland. I pray that there will be a day soon where thousands of believers will be filling the streets of Copenhagen and Reykjavik parading through the cities singing worship songs to God and testifying about the freedom, life, love and passion without any hangovers that Jesus has given to them! I pray that more and more people will come to Jesus and be healed of their shame and guilt and may experience the free and easy life that Jesus, as the only one in this entire world is capable of offering.
Who would have thought a few years ago that I would end up preaching and teaching about God’s unconditional love as freely and fervently as I do these days? I used to have a messed up view of God and myself. I thought God was always disappointed in me, and I thought that I was simply “too much” for him and other people to handle, and that was why I lacked close relationship both with my Father in Heaven and with other people. How wonderful it is for me to look back a the last six years in particular and see how God has been at work in my life. And how joyful it is for me to work in the area of discipleship training with God’s worldwide church and share about God’s unconditional love for us and the freedom, peace and joy that is ours to live in if we will surrender to the life giving truths about who God really is and who we as his children are in him!
Just yesterday my wife and I returned from a four week trip to visit my family and friends in Denmark, and to visit the wonderful islands of Iceland and Greenland. I still haven’t processed everything that happened during these past four weeks, but it’s a great joy for me to see that all the things I’m learning about who God really is and who I am in him make a radical, tangible difference when life’s difficulties hit me. I see a difference in the way I react when I’m hurting, when I get disappointed and when I feel like trying to save other people and rescue them to a better and more fulfilling life that may not experience yet, but that I know is real. I see how God has been dealing with me and my Savior Complex. I see how forgiveness, surrender, and letting go of expectations on other people bring freedom and life to me. I see that what I believe is real and makes a difference that other people can see. The difference is called Jesus Christ. I take no credit for the transformation that has happened in my life these last six years since I agreed with God that it was him I was searching for and not some girl who would fill the void I felt inside of me. It’s truly all about who Christ is and how he is working out his salvation in me.
I tried something new when I was in Greenland. It may sound odd, but it was actually the very first time I tried teaching about our life in Christ in Danish! I have taught and preached in English many times these past six years, but it was the very first time I had to teach several hours in my mother tongue. It went pretty well, and it was good for me to see that the truths of God’s Word are just as powerful in Danish as in English The first time I taught in the small 45-people church that my friend in Greenland attends, I even had the privilege of being translated into Greenlandic, which is the official and very complicated-sounding language of Greenland.
I taught and talked much about God’s unconditional love during my trip. It truly is what we all need to have revealed to us. It gives such an incredible freedom to be ourselves when we know that we know that we know that we know that nothing we can ever do/say/think/feel or not do/say/think/feel will ever separate us from God’s love when we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior!
I will write much more about what went on in me during these past few weeks. But I thought I would just write this little blurb to get this blog re-started
Just today I was talking to a friend of mine about what a true relationship with Jesus looks like. It’s far removed from most peoples’ understanding, including many believers’, of what it is. It’s not a boring, strict, rule-based relationship. It’s vibrant. It’s life. It’s based on desire and honoring who we are as people.
Jesus extends two invitations. The first one is for all people. The invitation is to come to him and be transformed, be saved, become a new person. It’s the invitation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many accept it and are transformed into new creations with their primary citizenship in the kingdom of God. Others reject it and refuse to admit that they are in need of a Savior.
There is another invitation that Jesus extends to his followers:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest“(Matthew 11:28)
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door. I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20)
“Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6)
It’s an invitation to enter into a close relationship with Jesus. It’s an invitation to allow him to be the Shepherd, the one who knows best, the one who is in charge, and us just to be the sheep following Jesus accepting that we don’t know best, and that Jesus is always looking out for our good no matter how painful the road we’re walking may feel.
But it is just that. It’s an invitation. It’s not a command. You don’t have to follow Christ. You don’t have to come to him and experience rest, freedom, joy and healing. If you choose to go your own way, even though his way is best, you are free to do that. You will be miserable. You will be missing out on the fullness of God’s blessings in your life. You will always feel that “the abundant life” (John 10:10) is an illusion. In Greek the same word that is used for commandment in the New Testament also means prescription. And that describes our relationship with Christ. He is the doctor. We come to him, hurting and sick, and he prescribes what will lead to a better and richer life for us. But we don’t have to take that medicine. We don’t have to surrender to his wisdom. We can choose to continue to exist as sick people instead of living as healed people.
Jesus is a gentleman through and through. He doesn’t force himself onto us. We don’t have to be close to him. John put his head on Jesus’ chest and heard his heartbeat (John 13), but the other 11 disciples never came that close. John just answered the call from Christ to come close to him and get to know him, and at the end of his life John’s primary way of describing himself in his Gospel was “the disciple Jesus loved“. The same John that used to be known as the Son of Thunder (Mark 3:17) ended his life as the apostle of love, because Jesus transformed him.
But you don’t have to be transformed. You can choose to live in the frustration and absolute mediocrity that follows when you choose to live in your flesh, and choose to walk contrary to who you really are. Paul describes this situation so eloquently in Romans 7, and unfortunately too many Christians mistakingly believe that Paul in that chapter is describing a “as good as it gets”scenario for a believer, when in fact he is doing the exact opposite! Romans 7 is just a description of how your life will look like when you’re trusting in yourself, your own resources and whatever you can muster up to live a good life. It’s misery, because it’s based on your flesh. It will never lead to the Normal Christian Life which Paul describes in Romans 8.
If you and I want intimacy with Christ there is only one condition: we have to accept that we cannot experience intimacy if we continue to ignore what he is trying to tell us! If we continue to live in ways that’s contrary to who we really are (which is the biblical definition of a hypocrite!), we will not experience the closeness, the intimacy, the vulnerability and the safety and peace that Christ offers to his followers. If we continue to walk our own way, we will not experience the fullness of the life and the new reality that Christ has bought for us. It’s not a matter of losing your salvation. If you are a believer that gift has been given to you, and it will never be taken away from you. But if you never unpack that gift, you don’t get much out of it in this life. You simply miss out on the fullness of the blessings of life in the kingdom of God.
But it is an open invitation. You can say no. But the invitation is there. It’s not for an elite group of believers. It’s for all of us. Jesus desires intimacy with all his children. Jesus desires honest relationship. Jesus desires for you to walk the way that he has set out for you. It will be the one leading to the life that you truly want. You may not understand that or feel that. But that’s the truth. Jesus is, after all the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Outside of his best will for your life, you will not experience the life you’re looking for.
Jesus invites you today. What are you going to say??
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