A Month of Studying and Encountering Jesus

 

                                                                            (Cancun)

For decades, before Easter weekend, I take a month to focus my reading and praying times on Jesus. I do the same a month before Christmas. 

Today is one month before Easter. So, here I go again!

Today I am reviewing portions of Gordon Fee's Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study. There's no better guide into the depths of Christology, for me, than Fee. This book is, as I. Howard Marshall says, a "gripping account of Paul's high Christology." 

Plus, I've begun another time through the four Gospels. 

The goal is my ongoing transformation into Christlikeness. 

The fist worship song I ever wrote, in 1971, was about this. I called it "More Like You." I am thankful to say, today, decades later, this desire has only intensified in me.

I have not yet arrived, but I am pressing on to make this my own.

My Life-Command for Marriage

Linda and I will celebrate fifty-two years of marriage this coming August. Recently we talked together about the abundant life the Lord Jesus has blessed us with. 

This includes the.many help-sessions we have had with premarital and marital couples

We talk with them about mutual submission. About serving one another. About putting the other before oneself.

I give the husband or husband-to-be my life marital verse. It is Ephesians 5:25.

Husbands, love your wives, 

just as Christ loved the church 

and gave himself up for her 

I often write this verse on a 3X5 card and carry it with me, pulling it out often to read it again. And again. And...  The Holy Spirit has led me to do this. Repetition (meditation) on God's instructions causes them to descend from my mind into my heart.

Ephesians 5:25 is not a suggestion. It's instruction for how to do marriage well. It is, as New Testament scholars agree, a command. An essential. Like all God-given commands, it is life-giving and abundance-producing, when accompanied by the Spirit's power. 

The analogy I use is this. I used to teach guitar in a guitar studio. All my students wanted to play better and more beautifully. I taught five-finger fingerstyle picking. I could produce a certain kind of sound. I taught this to my students. Yes, among skilled guitarists, there can be stylistic differences. But there are several basic techniques that all agree are needed. If you want to get this particular and wonderful sound, you must do it this way.

Ephesians chapter five, says New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass, gives us a series of Pauline commands about how to live in the Kingdom. (See Snodgrass, Ephesians, pp. 266 ff.) This includes Eph. 5:21-33.

Husbands, do you want abundance and flourishing and beauty in your marriage? If yes, then love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. You'll need the Holy Spirit's empowerment to do this. Ask for it, with all your heart.

EPHESIANS 5:21-33

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

The Myth of Value-Free Hermeneutics

 

(In Bangkok)

One of my doctoral qualifying exams was in hermeneutical theories. That was in 1980. I have not stopped studying such things.

I'm reading Craig Keener's The Historical Jesus of the Gospels: Jesus in Historical Context. In the Introduction Craig makes some methodological points, such as this: "no one is free from assumptions, and... the presuppositions of skeptics are no more value-free than those of believers." (xxxi)

I agree. Failure to recognize this is seen in fundamentalist hermeneutics as well as a skeptical fundamentalism that is often a reaction against one's fundamentalist Christian upbringing. The Jesus-skeptic who thinks he is unbiased is hermeneutically just as narrow-minded as the fundamentalist hermeneutic he criticizes. As one who was not discipled in such anachronistic ways I see "value-free" discussions as essentially misguided when it comes to interpretation theory.

More recently, Craig has published Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. 

Confess and Forgive

 

                                                             (Sunrise over Lake Erie.)

When Linda and I are asked "What makes for a good marriage?" we respond: confession and forgiveness. C&F.

C&F is more important than clear communication. When X says to Y, "You are stupid" and Y responds with "I hate you" (with a four-letter word added), they are communicating clearly. But this kind of clear communication does not make for a good marriage. 

Here's how I confess to Linda (and she to me). I say the words, "I was wrong to (do or say this specific thing)."

Then I request, "Would you forgive me for doing/saying this?"

She responds with, "I forgive you."

C&F is more powerful than apologizing. Apologizing can be a one-way street; C&F moves two ways. Every confessor needs a forgiver. A certain kind of loving response is needed.

To confess requires humility. In confessing I take responsibility for my hurtful actions, and do not blame the other for "pushing my buttons." After all, those buttons are mine, and if I didn't have them I wouldn't have reacted the way I did. 

It's also destructive to look for hot buttons on others, and use words or actions to set them off. 

A confessor admits their own culpability in wrongdoing. This requires humility, accompanied by regret ("I am sorry I did that to you. Would you forgive me? I never want to treat someone I love that way.") Don't let pride keep you from doing this.

To forgive means: to cancel a debt. When Linda and I forgive one another (which we have done many times over 45 1/2 years), we release the other from any indebtedness. Forgiveness cancels indebtedness. If the Federal Government forgave your student loan you would not have to make any more payments. When X forgives Y, X will not in the future "make Y pay" for whatever Y did. Again, don't let pride keep you from doing this.

To forgive is not to forget. But our experience is that, when this is practiced as needed (and it is needed in every marriage and friendship), a lot of forgetting happens. This is because C&F cuts loose the heavy anchor that had us stuck in that bad place, and now we're moving free from it. We no longer spend our hearts and minds brooding over the details of the struggle, because the matter has been settled and healed.

Why practice C&F? Linda and I do this because we are like the sinful woman who kissed and poured perfume on  Jesus' feet. She had been forgiven much. Therefore she loved much.

(Note: If you repeatedly keep hurting your loved ones, then get help for yourself. If a loved one keeps hurting you with their words or actions then: 1) forgive them; and 2) assist them in getting help for their repetitive harmful behavior. If you live in our Southeast Michigan area make an appointment to get help here.)

For scholarly, empirical data on C&F see University of Wisconsin scholar Robert Enright's The Forgiving Life: A Pathway to Overcoming Resentment and Creating a Legacy of Love; and check out Enright's International Forgiveness Institute.

One of the best practical guides to C&F is David Augsburger's Caring Enough to Forgive. 

Tim Keller's Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? is excellent.

Disciples of Jesus Finish Well

 

Dear Spiritual Warriors,  

Disciples of Jesus never retire. They never graduate from the School of Jesus this side of heaven. Linda and I learned this from our parents.  

We had parents who followed and served Jesus until the day they died. For example, my parents' church had a large outdoor concert amphitheater that sat 3000 people. During the summer months famous Christian musicians came and did concerts. After a concert was over, the place was littered with waste paper. My parents, who were in their seventies, with other elderly couples, would return the next day with garbage bags and pick up all the trash. They were great servants!  

Linda's father lived with us for seven years. He was in his eighties. Every Saturday morning I would drop him off at the local mall. He would stay in the food court, and approach people to tell them about Jesus. The mall managers heard of this, and asked him not to bother people anymore. But Linda's dad was not to be stopped!  

He had a t-shirt made, with the words on it: "Let's talk about Jesus." He kept going to the mall on Saturday mornings, wearing the new t-shirt. After he died, we had it made into a pillow. Here it is. 

When I enlisted in the Army National Guard, I signed up for six years. I kept my commitment. When I said my vows to Linda on our wedding day, we signed up for life, until death separates us. We have kept our vows. 

When I was twenty years old and said "yes" to Jesus, I told him I would be His disciple for the rest of my life, and into eternity. This Spring I will celebrate fifty-four years of discipleship. I have never regretted this. I thank God for changing my life forever!

The Bible presents life as a race, where people run towards a finish line that has a prize. Linda and I not only plan on finishing, but finishing well. Discipleship, like a  marriage, is a life commitment. Disciples don't retire from the great race.

You are Jesus' disciples. May you run well, and finish strong!

DECLARATIONS

I am running with Jesus, stronger than ever!

I have placed the cross before me, and the world behind me.

I love You Lord, and I'll never stop loving You.

I thank God that He has not asked me to retire from following and serving Him!

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship. 

Join me at the Prayer Summit - April 5

 

 

Saturday, April 5

ABC-MI Prayer Summit

Come join us for a day of powerful prayer, worship, and fellowship at our First Annual Prayer Summit!

By American Baptist Churches of Michigan

Date and time

Saturday, April 5 · 10am - 12pm EDT

Location

West Highland Baptist Church

1116 South Hickory Ridge Road Milford, MI 48380

About this event

• Event lasts 2 hours

Welcome to the ABC-MI Prayer Summit! Join us at West Highland Baptist Church for a day filled with prayer, worship, and community. The people of ABC-MI churches will gather for the purpose of praying for the movement of God among & through us.

LUNCH PROVIDED

How to Communicate When In Conflict

Art on a building in Columbus, Ohio

(I am reposting this to keep it in play.)

One of the blessings Linda and I have had is to know and be taught by David Augsburger. We were in a couples group with David and Nancy for two years. We dog-sat for them (they had Irish Setters). David was one of my seminary professors.  After hanging around him in these contexts, I felt I could be helped by meeting with him. David was kind enough to meet privately and counsel me. At the time I did not understand his counseling approach. Only years later did some of this activate in me.

David is one of Christianity's great scholars on understanding anger and conflict, and ways to work through these things. Linda and I still use his book Caring Enough to Confront. David takes Ephesians 4:15 and develops a template we use to this day: Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

How should we communicate with others when we are in conflict? Ephesians provides two actions we are to take:

1. Speak truthfully

2. Speak lovingly

Both are needed. 

If we only speak truthfully, we can blow people away. I could tell you the truth in unloving ways. Speaking truth without love can injure people.

If we only speak lovingly, we may never address the truth. This can leave issues undealt with. It feels warm and fuzzy for a while, but the bleeding has not been stopped.

Instead, says Paul, we are to speak the truth in love. The formula is: Truth + Love. That sounds like Jesus, right? Jesus asserted the truth, always in love.

Practically, says Augsburger, it looks like this.

• I care about our relationship & I feel deeply about the issue at stake

• I want to hear your view & I want to clearly express mine

• I want to respect your insights & I want respect for mine

• I trust you to be able to handle my honest feelings & I want you to trust me with yours

• I promise to stay with the discussion until we reach an understanding & I want you to stay with me until we've reached an understanding

• I will not trick, pressure, manipulate, or distort the differences & I want your unpressured, clear, honest views of our differences

• I give you my loving, honest respect & I want your caring-confronting response

These are attitudes Linda and I learned and practice. These teachings have been so important to us! As a young married couple we saw, lived-out before our eyes and ears, how to be loving and truthful even when you don’t like each other at the moment. Even when you are angry.

Speak the truth in love to one another.

That is the way out of what sometime seem like irreconcilable differences.

***
Two of my books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God(May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018).

Solitary Praying and the Great Encounter with God

 

                                           (My old praying chair, by the river in our backyard.)

I am writing this on a Monday.

Yesterday, on Sunday, Linda and I spent the morning and evening in community with our church family. 

In the morning I preached on Revelation 1:4-8. The word 'revelation' (apocalypse) means "an unveiling." Like when you take the lid off a simmering pot of stew and look inside at the ingredients.

In the book of Revelation God takes the lid off the pot, and John the Revelator looks inside. What does he see? Scot McKnight writes:

“Revelation symbolically transforms the world into a battlefield in which the forces of the dragon are assembled against the forces of God.”

Craig Keener writes: “God has a plan larger than the details that we can see, and that we fit into his plan for history, the goal of which is a people who will constitute a kingdom and priests.”

John writes Revelation from the position of solitariness. Henri Nouwen says that solitude with God is the place of "the great encounter." He writes:

"Every time we enter into solitude we withdraw from our windy, earthquaking, fiery lives and open ourselves to the great encounter. The first thing we often discover in solitude is our own restlessness, our drivenness, and compulsiveness, our urge to act quickly, to make an impact, and to have influence; and often we find it very hard to withstand the temptation to return as quickly as possible to the world of “relevance.” But when we persevere with the help of a gentle discipline, we slowly come to hear the still, small voice and to feel the gentle breeze, and so come to know the Lord of our heart, soul, and mind, the Lord who makes us see who we really are." (Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

Tomorrow is Tuesday. As is my habit, I'll find a quiet place, alone with God, and pray. I've been doing these alone-times with God since 1977. I write about my experiences and encounters and understanding in my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God. 

In this quiet place, I experience the great encounter.

A Disciple Gives to Others

 

Dear Spiritual Warriors, 

​I was flying to Bangkok with eight men from our church. We were going to help with a ministry we support that rescues women out of sex trafficking. I brought a book to read on the long flight – The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Stearns of World Vision. The book is about the things in our world that break the heart of God, and how Stearns’s heart was broken by such things as poverty, famine, and sex trafficking. While flying at 30,000 feet I found myself hiding my face so others would not see my tears. 

​I re-read Matthew 25, through my blurry vision. There Jesus addresses the call to help the sick, the homeless, the naked, those in prison, and all who suffer oppression in our fallen world. He concludes by saying, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” (V. 45) 

​A disciple’s heart is broken by the things that break the heart of God.

If someone would ask me what the greatest thing I have seen God do in our city, it would be God Works Soup Kitchen. This ministry began fifteen years ago. A great leader named Jeff had been given a vision. He invited four people to listen to it. I was one of them. Through us, God launched a ministry that provides a meal every night of every week of every month of every year, for fifteen years. 

​I remember driving around our city with Jeff. His heart burned to feed the hungry and homeless. I asked him, “Jeff, where did you get such a heart?” He told me, “My father would take me for drives in impoverished areas of our community. My father said to me, “Son, we must never allow people to go without food.”” Jeff said, “That got inside me and had never left.”

That is the burning heart of Jesus, right? John Wesley said, “The test of a Christian is to work as hard as they can, to make as much money as they can, to spend as little as they can, so as to give away all that they can.” 

​Disciples of Christ love the Lord with all they are, and love their neighbors the same. Just as Jesus sacrificed his life for the sake of the world, so also his apprentices give their lives away for the sake of others. ​

That’s me. And you. ​

We exist to know Christ, and make Christ known. This happens as the love of Jesus manifests itself, through us, to the benefit of others. 

Love,

PJ 

DECLARATIONS 

I lay my life down for the cause of Christ. 

I sacrifice myself for the benefit of others. 

I give lavishly of my resources, time, and talents. 

My heart breaks over the things that break God’s heart. 

God leads me to take action in the war against poverty and hunger. 

Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:31-46 are engraved on the walls of my soul.

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship (p. 92). 

Disciples of Christ Understand They Are in a Spiritual Battle

 

Dear Jesus-Followers, 

I was once physically attacked by a demon.

It happened in 1970. I was a twenty-one, and a brand new follower of Jesus. I had become the youth leader in my Lutheran church.  

I was asked to come to a meeting with our pastor, a few church leaders, and a husband and wife who were long-time church members. The husband and wife shared they had experienced something new to them. They wanted to share it with us. They had begun to pray in tongues. I didn't know what the manifestation of tongues was about, but was interested. 

As the meeting went on, the atmosphere felt tense. This had never happened in our church. I could see that the leadership was not going to allow this. The pastor said we should stop and pray about this.

That's when a demon attacked me. 

I had never felt anything like this in my life. It was as if something evil was inside me. I was sitting in this meeting, head bowed, eyes closed, praying, "Help me Jesus! Help me Jesus!" I had no training for this. What was going on inside me? 

The prayer time, and the meeting, ended. I went to a phone and called Linda. I was crying. "Pray for me. I don't know what's going on. I think I've been attacked by a demon." 

Since that time I've learned more about spiritual beings like demons. I concluded that, yes, I was under a demonic assault in that meeting. Over a spiritual gift. Can you believe it?

I read my Bible and saw that Jesus was confronting Satan and demons, all the time. My Teacher believed in demons, and engaged in battle against them. 

As an apprentice in the School of Jesus I have been taught that my true enemies are not people, but are demons. I am not to wage war against flesh and blood, but against the dark spiritual agents who are against Jesus. 

In my Lutheran church we sang Luther's worship song "A Mighty Fortress." I still love this song! Look what the lyrics say.

 For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and pow'r are great, and, armed with cruel hate,  

On earth is not his equal.  

And though this world, with devils filled,   

should threaten to undo us,  

We will not fear, for God hath willed   

His truth to triumph through us;  

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;  

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,  

One little word shall fell him.  

This song was in my DNA years before I became a disciple. When that happened, the words took on rich, new meanings.

My dear brothers and sisters, we are in a spiritual battle.

 Love,

 PJ

 

DECLARATIONS

 I do not see people as my true enemies.

 Today I am engaging the enemy.

I defeat the enemy using weapons of righteousness, such as love, and truth.

 I am a spiritual force that sets captives free.

 My mission is to tear down strongholds the enemy has erected in the hearts of people.

 The enemy has been defeated! Sin and death have lost their power!

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship (p. 90).