Hasten To The Word of God

Paul’s Concept of Sincere Affection

 

 

Paul was originally a man who was willing to allow harm to those who he felt did not uphold the Law and God he so cherished. His zeal was so great he approved the stoning of Philip and began making house arrests putting Jesus believers in jail. (Acts 7:54-8:2)

It was not until Jesus came to Paul (at that time Saul) in a bright light on the road to Damascus and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting and oppressing Me?”. This word diako has a range of meanings revolving around pursuing or troubling. Paul was “troubling” the Lord. Paul told this story many times because of what the Lord instructed him to do after. Paul was to go to those formerly he despised and bring them the love of Jesus.

Paul’s message changed from law to love filled grace, something I like to call sincere affection. In Phil. 2:1-4 Paul talks about the fellowship of the brethren being one of deep affection and compassion. In verse one the noun translated as compassion (splagchnon) has a root meaning of bowels. According to Thayers Greek Lexicon, the bowels were regarded by Greek poets as the seat of strong passions such as anger and love.  But the Hebrews regarded it as the seat of tender affections such as kindness, benevolence, compassion.  It is coupled with the word “mercies” and then expanded upon in verses 2-4.  One could say that if we are to have true fellowship of the Spirit between us we are to draw from deep within our hearts and souls a compassion coupled with deep mercy and seek to unite our fellowship together in that kind of brotherly love. Certainly it required a humility that considers others needs as well as our own.

These are such lovely words. But how do we think Paul hoped for us to live them. Perhaps, it looks different for each of us.  What do you think?

 

PRIDE AND ALLOWING OURSELVES TO BE BESTED

 

 

Prov. 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

Prov. 26:18 ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.19 I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.20 And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.

 

Pride is something I’ve pretty much always avoided talking about. It’s not that I think I am so proud and dare not discuss it. Rather I know that I am like most humans and have a natural tendency toward pride from time to time. We generally do some small bit of exulting when we do well, because really we know we are not all that great. We feel good when we accomplish something. The real problem comes when it gets out of balance and we don’t exult in others when they do well or when we don’t give space for them to do well. And that is the point I wish to discuss today.

Leviticus is kind of scary on this subject. God must always be first. God is love and when we keep Him first we love well. When God is not first we love poorly and slip into different kinds of destruction, one being pride. When we walk in God’s Love as we should, God’s Holy Spirit rains on us and we produce the fruit of the Spirit and the anointing of the Spirit flows through us upon others. The peace of God falls upon us, we praise and honor God and rejoice in Him.

When we get off track and give ourselves the credit justly due to God, Leviticus says God will break the pride of our power and life gets hard around us. We know that life around us can be hard anyway. So, the idea that God would make life harder when we take honor upon ourselves is just scary. But the truth is that we humans do it to some degree all the time.

One area I am thinking of this morning is that of churches and leadership. The world teaches us that leaders are supposed to be better than others. Certainly, leaders need to be accomplished to some degree in order to be able to lead others somewhere. Too often I have seen this taken to the point of control. If we control who serves around us and only allow ministry to those who won’t in our opinion do better than us, then we can maintain our position of leadership. If we just don't give opportunities to others to grow, we can prevent them from possibly doing better than us. This is an issue of pride and fear. Keeping this attitude will make life hard around us. It will also make life difficult for those seeking to mature and gain experience in their Spiritual giftings. And that doesn’t please God who loves us all and wants all of us to be released into the fullness of our callings.

Speaking practically, men do this to women, and then women do it to each other. Men and women who believe that only men are to be leaders and teachers or preachers often become inwardly furious when they see women besting them in some area of church leadership. So, they begin to work to prevent and control these women. Pastors and church leaders will do this when they watch someone preaching a better sermon or teaching better. They feel that their position of superiority is being challenged. So, they simply will refuse to honor or encourage that person in those things giving them fewer opportunities. This is the ugly side of pride. And we will sense the heavens becoming like a wall of iron and the earth like a wall of bronze in being immovable. We will be stuck and either go backwards or simply not move forward.

One of the errors in this is thinking that in order to serve well leaders must do better than those around them. In general they should have a certain degree of competency. Men who think men must be leaders, think they must know more than women. Really men just need to give their strengths, whatever they are, to serving those around them. Being concerned over who is doing better than whom is not an option. In this way anointed leaders can allow themselves to be ministered to by whomever God sends. The best leader releases those around them into ministry and service so much so that eventually he or she will be surpassed in excellence from time to time. This has the potential to blossom into amazing Spiritual ministry and growth.

But pride will stop it all, pitting one against another, shutting down the wind of God’s Spirit. Let us instead concentrate on opening doors for others to do well and rejoicing with them when they do.  So, if you suddenly get a lot of bananas, share some.   :)

 

 

STIGMATIZING THOSE DIFFERENT

 

To stigmatize someone is to mark them as disgraceful or contemptible in some manner. To mark in a negative manner is to brand, to make an end judgment, to deem as unworthy or below oneself. This is something we humans do that is usually an inaccurate assessment of one’s whole person.  The picture above is me in the 1970's.  Hippie Teri.  Now there were some interesting viewpoints of hippies from back then.  :)

Humans are a unique creation of God’s. We have a capacity to be a vessel for either good or bad, and also for both. Thus, judgments and perceptions must be fluid in that we know that people can change directions or go deeper in the direction they are in. We cannot see that deeply into a person’s heart even though some people are more adept at perceiving where a person is at in the present.

Sometimes I wonder how God manages to stay compassionate to those who stray far from His amazing love in how we treat others. And then there is Genesis 6:17.

For behold, I, even I, will bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy all life under the heavens in which there is the breath and spirit of life; everything that is on the land shall die.

The hatred, contempt, fear and pain in human’s hearts and experiences of life must have just been too much for God to handle or to see, after creating humanity with so much hope for grander things. It is interesting that God says, “I even I”. In both the English and the Hebrew it looks like God is even dismayed with Himself. In Hebrew, “I, even me”.   God’s judgment was correct but even then God’s amazing love led Him to determine to find another way to lead mankind toward redemption. Four hundred years after the flood came Abraham who was to be the progenitor of God’s people. Out of the faith of Abraham was born a deep and intimate relationship with God bringing forth the Torah and eventually bringing forth the Messiah to the entire world.

Today we have racism and misogyny as the great universal dividers of humanity. The unimaginable wickedness that is born of this stigmatizing of national differences and gender differences must be painful beyond our understanding to the heart of God.

I just watched a tape of former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard in 2012. She was addressing some proposition being put forward by a member of their parliament (?). The proposition was openly misogynistic and she addressed many of the instances of this attitude in the members present, which was an incredibly brave thing to do. Because of her speech to which the majority said, “hear hear”, the Macquarie Dictionary of Australia adjusted its definition of misogyny to include, “entrenched prejudice of women”. To say I am shocked is an understatement. The hatred of determined misogyny is deeply ugly in so many ways. I think I understand just a pinch of why God said, “I, even I” am going to do this thing (cause a flood to wipe mankind off the earth) because I am overwhelmed with the darkness of heart that mankind has come to with misogyny and racism.

Those are the big ways we brand people we have chosen to elevate ourselves above. We make their very humanity as less than ours because we brand things that cannot be changed, such as gender and nationality (skin color, body shapes, etc.) as less desirable. And when we do that we lead the way to degenerate treatment, cruelties beyond normal thinking, tortures, limiting life styles, etc.

We also brand small things as reason for rejection such as religion, careers, life styles, social status, wealth, political choices, health, and intelligence and so forth to an unending list. To say that arrogance and criticalness have infiltrated humanity and the church to a huge degree is an understatement.

Why do we do this? I have concluded that the biggest reason is because we do not know or understand God’s LOVE. And since I am speaking to the international body of Christ, believers in Jesus as Lord and Messiah, I believe that it is our fault that we have allowed these stigmatizing sins to run rampant in the world without any noticeable check. And yes, that includes me.

We who know the intimate deep love of God toward all, without racism or misogyny, need to speak up. It is time. We will be castigated for it and called many ugly names, no doubt. But if you believe and know God does not segregate, brand or limit people through racism or gender stereotyping, I believe that gift was given for us to share with patience, compassion, forgiveness and diligence. And I sincerely hope that more people will stand up and stand against this international condition of a lack of God’s Love.

Let us read the Bible with prayer and share the truths of God’s healing, deliverance, and freedom to live with all who will hear us. And let us start today.

The Easy Way or the Hard Way

This morning I woke up with some curious thoughts upon my mind.  It was actually in the form of observing two people doing life differently.  One was doing things selfishly, trying to force upon others his incomplete ideas and conclusions, always pushing.  The other was doing life gently, not pushing, but waiting for a sort of peace.  Oddly still the subject was about understanding issues of life.

For most of us it takes all day long for us to digest one small important thought for life.  In order for that thought to materialize in making sense to us, we have to spend some time with it.  It requires a lot of mulling over.  We have to work our way around it from every angle we can think of.

If we push on it too hard it slips through our mind like a wet fish and we have to scramble to get it back. These things are fragile. Understandings of life and comprehension of deeper issues strangely can fracture right in the midst of our musings; almost as if we were holding them in our hands too tightly.

The hard way to do this thing of trying to understand life, why we are here, what is our purpose and so on, is to push, scramble, grasp, and even try to claim we have something we only saw a glimpse of.  The reason it is the hard way is that this desire to know something of these questions does not go away. It will eat at us. We are human. From the deepest parts of our soul and innermost being, we do want to know why we are here: "what am I alive for".  And we know when the answer we've got isn't the whole story, or isn't the 'real' answer.

The easy way to find these answers is to love.  It is the primary command from God. (Luke 10:27) When we do whatever it is that we need to do with the gentle compassion of godly love, considering other's needs first, that we have our eyes attuned and refocused to actually see spiritual truths.  So many times Scripture speaks of people having ears but not hearing, and eyes but not seeing. The key to understandings of life is to first love God with our whole being and then deeply care about other's welfare and to let them know that you care.

The reason this is the less complicated way of doing life, is because we are yielding to God when we seek the way of love. The Holy Spirit is then able to reach us and reveal the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 2:10-12) that we so long to know. God has reasons why He formed each one of us with our unique personalities and tendencies. As we love and adore God and have compassion and care for others, the Holy Spirit is then able to reveal the answers to our questions along with many other spiritual mysteries of life. And then it is our work to wait upon the Lord for more, holding gently the mysteries He gives to us.