Love Is Not an Entity to Be Worshiped

 

                                                              (Lake Erie, Monroe, MI)

(I am re-posting this for a friend.)

For followers of Jesus, love is great. But love is not the greatest. First Corinthians 13 tells us that love is the greatest, among faith and hope. In the great triumvirate of faith, hope, and love, love takes first place.

As mighty as love is, love is not a thing. It is not a substance. It is not an entity. Love is not an object, nor is it a being, or a person. Therefore, love is not to be worshiped, since it is irrational to worship non-entities, be they physical or non-physical.

Love is a multi-faceted verb, manifesting itself in actions we call "loving," such as patience, kindness, gentleness, not easily angered, protective, trusting, and so on. While 1 Corinthians 13 appears to reify love, that's just a rhetorical device to elevate the behaviors associated with love. Love acts in certain ways, and does not act in certain other ways.

When the Bible says God is love, it is telling us that love is an essential attribute of the being of God. As an attribute of God, love is not to be worshiped. We don't worship attributes. Let's say, for example, that one of my attributes is weighs 170 pounds. (I wish this was true!) While weighs 170 pounds would be commendable, this attribute is not an entity or a substance which, in itself, is praiseworthy. We wouldn't expect someone, unless they are mentally incapacitated, to bow down and worship weighs 170 pounds.

Don't reify love. It's misleading, and false, to do that.

Don't bow before love and worship a verb.

Worship God who, in his being, is love.

Faith and Knowledge. Grace and Effort,

 

                                                    (Looking out one of our church windows.)

One of my morning devotional books is Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, by Dallas Willard. Here is from the Sept. 27 entry.

"People of faith sometimes think knowledge is unimportant because they think they should have faith instead of knowledge. But having faith is not the opposite of having knowledge. Faith and knowledge work together. (Instead, the opposite of living by faith is living only by sight.) People of faith often misunderstand grace as well. They think grace is the opposite of effort and since they are “saved by grace,” they should not make effort. God’s grace and our effort work together. (The opposite of grace is earning.)" 

The Power of Influence

(Room, in our home.)

I’m not entirely against starting a movement, 

but most movements don’t amount to very much, 

frankly. 

On the other hand, people who know how to stand, 

and stand in the Spirit of Christ, 

change people all around them. 

They never fail. 

They never fail. 

When you have that, 

it will never fail to change people all around you. 

Dallas Willard, “How to Be 

in the World but Not of It”

(In Gary Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard, p. 175). 

This is the power of influence. It's not about trying to change people's hearts. But as your heart is broken in the right places, you will see breakthrough in people around you.

40 seconds of flamenco guitar

Prayer, Poverty, and Thanksgiving

(A meal of rice and vegetables in Kenya)

(I'm re-posting this for the Thanksgiving season.)

I embarrassed myself when I was in Kenya. 

I was leading a Pastor’s Conference in Eldoret, with sixty wonderful men and women from Kenya and Uganda. They were part of New Life Mission, a network of over 150 churches in Kenya and Uganda. 

We ate many meals together. This was real Kenyan food – vegetables, cooked raw bananas, rice, maize… I loved it!

I noticed many of the pastors taking very full plates of food. A lot more than I took. I made a joke, saying “Kenyans and Ugandans eat a lot, but still are slim and run so fast!” My host, Cliff, later told me the reason they load their plates with food is because they only eat two meals a day. When they have the opportunity, they eat a lot.

Inwardly I sank. Who am I, that I am so out of touch? 

The prayers of many Kenyans and Ugandans are for food to eat, today. I, on the other hand, fight overeating. My problem is not securing my next meal. It's that there is so much food available, and I approach our American Thanksgiving Day hoping I do not overeat.

I live the land of over-plenty, over-eating, and struggling to diet. In the midst of abundance, I am being processed by God. Here are some things God is showing me. 

1. I am no longer to see someone who is foodless and thank God that I have food. I am to thank God for food, for a roof over my head, for clothing. But this thanks is not to come at the expense of someone else’s poverty. There is something wrong about this. It uses another person’s bondage as an occasion for my thanksgiving. 

Jesus never looked on sick or hungry people and said, “Thank God that I am God and not like these sick people.” Instead, he had compassion on them. Actually, he became one of them, for “the Son of Man had no roof over his head.” 

My focus must be on my own need for God’s mercy, rather than giving thanks that I am not among the mercy-deprived. I am not to be like the Pharisee who prayed, “I thank you God that I am not like these other people.”

2. If this thought comes to me - "Thank God that I have more than these poor people"  - I must assume this is God calling me to help. Why would God show me someone poorer than I as a way to make me give thanks? Authentic thankfulness results in overflowing, sacrificial giving. To those who have much and thank God for it, much is expected. Thankfulness is hypocritical and meaningless if it does not overflow to others. Pure Pharisaic “thankfulness” thanks God that I am not poor; true thankfulness to God impacts the poor. Self-centered gratefulness is faux-gratitude.

3. At one of our recent worship gatherings God was speaking to  me about such things. It was a beautiful time of intentional thanksgiving to God for how he has blessed us as a church family. That day God told me, “John, when you see someone who has nothing, and then give thanks for what you have that they don’t have, that is the spirit of poverty on you.”

A spirit of poverty, a spirit of “lack,” whispers to me, “You do not have enough.” This heart of not-enough-ness, when it sees someone worse off than me, feels thankful. This is the spirit of poverty’s solution to my dilemma; viz., to keep me perpetually enslaved to a poverty mentality by comparing me with others. 

Some drive new cars and I feel deprived; some have no car and I feel thankful. A spirit of poverty is never satiated, and in this way it continuously punishes. 

Feeling thankful when I see someone who has no food comes from feeling I do not have enough. One thinks, “Whew, I’m not so bad off after all!” We only say words like that when we feel “bad off.” 

Real thanksgiving has nothing to do with any of this. I’ve been living under a spirit of poverty, and renounce it.

***

My books are:

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Disciples of Jesus Love as He Loves

 

My Teacher has instructed me that love is the greatest thing of all.

The love of God is a power. It is a weapon against darkness, hatred, and violence.  

The love of God is a force.  

My life with Jesus began when God told me that He loves me. As much as my parents loved me (which was a lot!), I needed to be touched by the One who is love, whose love is without limits. That moment was transcendent and transforming.   

The School of Jesus is a School of Love. All the power, and all the spiritual gifts and natural talents, are nothing if the love of God does not flourish in my heart.  

God's love continues to grow in me. More of it captures me today than ever before. The love of God is a bottomless well of supernatural treasures, to be discovered his disciples.  

I'm now thinking of a Promise Keepers event I attended. The main speaker was talking about "success." I have never forgotten what he said: "Success is being on your death bed surrounded by your family that loves you."

I think this way. If love is the greatest, then the end-game of not only my life, but of all reality, is love. Therefore: people get ready.  

I am ready.  

Love has a Name.

DECLARATIONS

I love You, Lord.

I walk through the day filled to overflowing with God's love.

 I never ceased to be amazed at how much Jesus loves me.

 I never take God's love for me for granted.

 The love of God, in me, changes atmospheres.

 The love of God, flowing through me, brings healing to the people I meet.

 I experience the love of Jesus as a force that defeats my enemies!

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

Why So Many Kids Are Not OK

 

                                                      (Empire Beach sunset (Michigan))

Jonathan Haidt's book The Coddling of the American Mind was so good I read it twice. And refer to it often.

Haidt's new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, comes out in March 2024. Haidt makes a powerful case that the shift from play-based to phone-based childhoods is wreaking havoc on mental health and social development.

Some of you already know this, right? 

***

Listen to Russell Moore's interview with Haidt HERE.

Renewal School Of Ministry Winter Classes

 

Renewal School Of Ministry

The Renewal School of Ministry is excited to announce our Winter Term classes. If you are unfamiliar with our ministry, our school was started three years ago by the Holy Spirit Renewal Ministry. Along with our parent ministry we have been blessed to encourage training and renewal within our ABC Regions.

Our courses on Zoom and are held for 1.5 hours per week for 6 weeks. Our desire is to help prepare lay pastors and church leaders for ministry. This term begins January 14.

Courses:

1. Ephesians (Sundays, 8 p.m. ET) - Rev. Ed Owens

2. Ministry through Power and Spiritual Gifts (Mondays, 8 p.m. ET) - Dr. John Piippo

3. Women in the Bible (Tuesdays, 8 p.m. ET) - Cheri Ford

4. Christian Leadership (Thursdays, 8 p.m. ET) - Dr. Clayton Ford

5. Biblical Answers to Cultural Values Seminar (Feb 24, 11 - 1:30 p.m. ET) - panel of Dr. Clayton Ford, Dr. John Piippo, and Holly Collins)

We welcome you to enroll in any courses that will meet your needs for growth in your faith and ministry. Details and enrollment can be found at https://hsrm.org/rsom .

Spring term coming March 17

Disciples of Christ Are Humble

 

A humble heart is the key to experiencing the grace of God.  

One of the first books I read as a new Jesus-follower was C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. One of the chapters is called "The Great Sin." What, I wondered, could that be?  

Lewis said it was pride, or self-conceit. Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind. Francis Frangipane calls pride "the armor of darkness." As I read Lewis, I am sure I agreed with him. I am also sure I did not realize how much pride I had in me.  

In 1993 Jesus gave me a lesson about pride. It began with a dream.

One night I dreamed I was driving a tour bus in the Smoky Mountains. The roads were curved and twisted. I could barely get the bus around the corners. Then, after an exceptionally sharp curve, the bus came to a cliff, with a deep drop-off. That's when I woke up.  

The dream shook me up inside. Nevertheless, I eventually lost sight of it and went through my day. When I came home in the afternoon Linda had bought a card for me. She sensed I was struggling with things in the church. When I opened the card and saw the cover, I was stunned. It was a drawing of a road, twisting through mountains, that came to a cliff that dropped off into nothing. How could she know? I had not told her, or anyone, about my dream.  

God was trying to tell me something! 

I decided to take some praying time. I opened to a devotional book I was reading. It was on James 4:6: God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. It was like God took a bright highlighter and lit this verse up for me to see.   

When I drove to pick up my boys at school, I was early, and went into the gym. I walked around the gym several times, repeating James 4:6. While doing this I felt led to fast from food until God revealed the meaning of the dream to me.  

Two days later, the revelation came. 

I was driving to a leaders meeting at the church building. I was still praying about James 4:6, still stunned by the dream and the card Linda gave me. Another Bible verse came into my head - Proverbs 16:18 - Pride goes before destruction; a haughty spirit before a fall.

That's it! God was telling me if I don't get rid of pride in my heart, I will take this church for a fall.  

I felt relieved, and joyful. Every warning God gives contains a rescue. I shared the entire story with our leaders. None of them disagreed. This was another important lesson in the School of Jesus. Humble disciples experience the outpouring of God's grace.  

A humble heart is one that is good soil for God's Spirit to plant seeds of renewal in. A humble heart is teachable. Humility is the foundational attitude for spiritual transformation.  

May this attitude be formed in you.

DECLARATIONS

 Lord, if there is any conceit in me, remove it.

 I have a teachable, trainable spirit.

 I am growing in humility.

My constant prayer is, more of Jesus, less of me.

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

African, and African-American Spirituality: A Select Bibliography

(One of my Spiritual Formation classes at Payne Theological Seminary)

What a blessing it is for me to be an Adjunct Faculty member at Payne Theological Seminary! 

My class is Spiritual Formation. I've been teaching this class for many years at a number of theological seminaries, seminars, workshops, both in the U.S. and in places around the world. Through the years it has been my privilege to instruct many pastoral leaders from Africa, and many African-American pastoral leaders.

Here are books that line my bookshelf, and populate my Kindle, on African and African-American spirituality. 

Michelle Alexander

• The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Must reading for anyone desiring to understand racism in America.)

Lewis Baldwin 

• Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King Jr. (This is the book to read about King's praying life, a life entirely ignored by the secular media.)
• Revives My Soul Again: The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr. (This is the book to read on King's spiritual life, a life entirely ignored by the secular media.)
• "Thou, Dear God": Prayers that Open Hearts and Spirits

Taylor Branch

• America in the King Years

Flora Wilson Bridges

• Resurrection Song: African-American Spirituality

Lewis Brogdon

• Hope on the Brink: Understanding the Emergence of Nihilism in Black America

Clayborne Carson

• The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr

James Cone (It was my privilege to be one of three teachers at a Transformation Leadership week-long conference. Dr Cone taught, Deotis Roberts taught, and I was given Friday morning and afternoon to wrap the week up. [Thank you Dr Leah Fitchue!])

• God of the Oppressed
• A Black Theology of Liberation
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree 

Melva Wilson Costen

• African American Christian Worship

Frederick Douglass

• Slave Narratives Collection

W.E.B. Dubois

• The Souls of Black Folk

Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar

• World of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa

Cain Hope Felder

• Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation 

Walter Fluker

• They Looked for a City: A Comparative Analysis of the Ideal of Community in the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Obery Hendricks (Hendricks is former President of Payne Theological Seminary and currently Prof. of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary)

• The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted

Johnny Bernard Hill

• Prophetic Rage: A Postcolonial Theology of Liberation

Diana Hayes

• Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality

Dwight Hopkins

• Introducing Black Theology of Liberation
• Heart and Head: Black Theology Past, Present and Future

Rufus Matthew Jones, Kerry Walters (Note: the Quaker-mystical theology of Rufus Jones deeply influenced the spirituality of Howard Thurman)

• Rufus Jones: Essential Writings

Robert W. Kellemen, Karole A. Edwards

• Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction

Eric Lincoln

• The Black Church in the African American Experience

Malcolm X

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X

John Mbiti

• African Religions & Philosophy
• Introduction to African Religion

Latasha Morrison

• Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

Peter Paris

• The Spirituality of African Peoples
• Religion and Poverty: Pan-African Perspectives

James W. Perkinson

• White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity

Anthony Pinn

• Varieties of African American Religious Experience

Samuel Proctor

• My Moral Odyssey (Dr. Charles Brown of Payne Seminary recommended this to me.)

Albert Raboteau

• Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South

Luther E. Smith

• Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet

Katrina Dyonne Thompson

• Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery

Howard Thurman (Thurman, in my mind, is the leading African-American figure in contemporary spirituality, not only writing so profoundly in this area but living out a contemplative and active life of Jesus-following)

• Jesus and the Disinherited
• Howard Thurman: Essential Writings
• Meditations of the Heart
• For the Inward Journey
• With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman

Ngugi Wa Thiongo

• Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

Nat Turner

• The Confessions of Nat Turner

Cornel West, Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

• African American Religious Thought: An Anthology

Gayraud Wilmore

• Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans 

Vincent Wimbush

• Bible and African Americans

THANK YOU, again, Dr Leah Fitchue, for the privilege of teaching under your leadership in the D. Min. Program at Palmer Theological Seminary, and the M. Div. Program at Payne Theological Seminary.