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

Praying on the "Thank God Ledge"

(I'm re-posting this. It's from my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God. Linda and I saw "Free Solo" at the Imax in Ann Arbor. It's about Alex Honnold's rope-less climb of El Capitan. Amazing, and frightening!) 

Several years ago I watched a "60 Minutes" segment that fully engaged me. I dvr-ed it and showed it to several people. It was on rock climber Alex Honnold's "free solo" of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

Half Dome is a nearly vertical 2000-foot sheer granite wall. Alex climbs it... without the assistance of ropes or harness. It's just him, his hands, and his tennis shoes. It made me nervous watching him, even though I knew he survived. The shots of him clinging to the wall, with the trees and river a half mile below him, are astounding.

No one else in the world has done this. Perhaps no one else can. Alex's focus is amazing! One cannot help but think: one mistake and you are dead. No second chance. It's either perfection and completeness or total failure. This sport is unforgiving. To conquer Half Dome you have to be perfect.

Nine-tenths of the way up Half Dome there is a place climbers call "Thank God Ledge." This ledge is a 35-foot-long ramp that is anywhere from 5 to 12 inches wide. If a climber can get himself on this ledge he can jam his fingers into small cracks in the wall and "take a break." "Thank God Ledge" is a place of relief. It's a slim moment of mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

Alex Honnold on
Thank God Ledge

Fortunately, when it comes to God, it's all about forgiveness, mercy, and grace. In Matthew 18 we read: "Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."" (vv. 21-22) Which means: we just keep on forgiving other people when they fail and when they fall. Why? Because we have been forgiven. Of much. Paul writes, in Colossians 3:13: "Forgive as you have been forgiven."

Thank God that he is forgiving! His forgiveness is not narrow. God's love is wide. 

Back in the 70s I wrote a song called "How Many Times?" The words go: "How many times we all fall down, broken and bent by the wind. How many times His love comes down, lifts us up again." 

In the forgiveness of the Cross God has placed us on "Thank God Ledge." When we experience his forgiveness we are lifted up to this place of beauty and rest. It is a place of restoration and healing. When experienced and understood, it provokes praise. When we forgive others we invite them to join us in this place. Unforgiveness lets people fall to their destruction. Forgiveness rescues.

In the Cross of Christ you have been conquered by God.

There's plenty of room on Thank God Ledge. Pray there.

Two Modes of Thankfulness

 

("The One Who Showed Mercy")

Not every mode of thankfulness is to be applauded.

One misguided form of thankfulness is seeing a beggar on the street, and thinking, "Thank God I am not like this beggar; that, while she does not have a roof over her head and food to eat, I do. And for this, I give thanks." 

This is hierarchical gratitude. One sees people who have less than I. This is accompanied by a feeling of gratitude for having more than they. 

"More than they" means things like: more giftedness, more opportunity, more stuff, more money, more beauty, more experience, more square footage. The "prayer" that rises to God out of one's place on the status-honor hierarchy sounds like: "Today, God, as we approach Thanksgiving Day, we know there are people who do not have food enough to eat. We see them on TV. We read about them on the internet. But we do have enough to eat. For this bounty, we give You thanks."

That is Pharisaical thankfulness. It's a gratitude that grows in the soil of confidence in one's own righteousness and status.

Luke 18:9-14 says, "To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'  "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."" 

Pharisaical thankfulness is comparative, based on the idea that one's physical condition and circumstances indicate the approval or disapproval of God. The man born blind must have sinned, or at least his parents must have sinned. Thus, he deserves his blindness.

"The Pharisee stood up and prayed about." His self-prayer ("I... I... I...") only makes sense on the honor-shame hierarchy. His occasion of thankfulness is someone else's infirmity. Pharasaical thankfulness looks like this: I see someone who has less than me, and I thank God that I am not them.

This is not true gratitude. Real thankfulness, having a thankful heart, comes out of one's relation to God and not to others. The core recognition is: I need God, and God's love came down and rescued me. This kind of praying says:

• God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
• You have had mercy on me!
• Thank you God.

True thankfulness is a function of an awareness of one's own neediness, and not that of others. It contains the realization that God has displayed, and is displaying, his mercy towards me. When you realize how in need of rescue you are, and rescue comes, you will feel thankful. 

At this point prayers of thanks can become passionate. One outcome of a God-directed thankful heart is the heart-desire to be used of God to rescue others, rather than looking at them and feeling good about your own abundance. 

There's no honor-shame hierarchy in the kingdom of God. We're all beggars in need of bread. Give thanks in the right direction, and for the right reasons. 

Potato Chips and Thanksgiving

 

(From my book, Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God, Kindle Locations 3590-3612)

There was a man in our church named Floyd. Floyd died several years ago. It was my privilege to do his funeral. 

When I met with Floyd’s wife, Grace, she shared something I had never heard before. “Floyd,” she said, “was a thankful person who was always thanking God for what he had been given.” 

Floyd had not come from a wealthy family. As I heard about him and his thankful heart, it reminded me of my mother who, as a young girl, sometimes received only an orange for a Christmas present, and cherished and savored it, and was thankful. 

How deep did Floyd’s heart of thanks run? 

“Whenever we had snacks, like potato chips,” said Grace, “Floyd would stop, bow his head, and thank God as the bag of chips was passed to him.” 

“You’re kidding me, right?” I said. “Floyd would give thanks, in front of everyone, for potato chips?!!” 

“Yes. He was grateful to God for anything that came his way.” 

I thought: I’m not that thankful. I take too many things for granted. 

“For granted” - to expect someone, or something, to be always available to serve you in some way without thanks or recognition; to value someone, or something, too lightly. To “take something for granted” - to expect something to be available all the time, and forget that you have not earned it. 

A “for granted” attitude presumes. A “for granted” attitude has a sense of entitlement. Like: “I am entitled to these potato chips.”

“For granted” - to fail to appreciate the value of something. 

“Entitlement” - the belief that one is deserving of certain privileges. Like: “I deserve these potato chips.” 

Floyd, it seems, had no sense of entitlement, as if God owed him something. He didn’t take provision, in any form, for granted. From that framework, giving thanks logically follows. And, in yet another “great reversal,” God is deserving of, and entitled to, our praise and thanksgiving. God, for Floyd, was not some cosmic butler whose task was to wait on him, and make sure he was satisfied with the service. 

The apostle Paul instructed us to “always give thanks for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “For everything” is all-inclusive. Nothing exists outside the realm of “for everything.” Everything is a gift from God, even my very life, even my eyes as I read this, and my breath as I inhale. If I gave thanks for everything, my gratitude would be unceasing. 

If I realized how God-dependent I actually am, I would stop now and say, “Thank you.” And then, in my next breath, I would say it again.

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.