students of jesus

I drove into town yesterday, just four days into the new year, and the roadside was littered with new years resolutions thrown aside like so much trash. We start each year with such good intentions--perhaps the road I was driving on was paved with them.

Jesus is looking for disciples, not revelers. Discipleship requires us to understand the difference between good intentions and intentionality. The Lord was quite clear: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16: 24-25). This kind of following is more than a one-time decision; it is no mere “accepting the free gift.” It is the conscious choice to lose our lives in him.

Intentional is the day-to-day outworking of our surrender, the surrender that brings an eternal quality of life even now. Rather than bubbly resolutions or grim religious rules, perhaps we could embrace in three foundational aspects of life in the Spirit.

1). Redeeming Time: We live inside of time, but we hardly consider its passage. God has ordained that we experience the passage of time one day after another. The days march by in succession, turning into weeks and months. Yet we are surprised. “What? Where did the year go?” The Psalmist prayed, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Each day would like to command our attention and draw us into the urgent, the pressing, the demands of everyday life. Each day cries out with a voice of authority, but it is the voice of an idol. Each day attempts to eclipse our relationship with the Lord: work, food, play, entertainment, even sleep. Could any relationship flourish only on the left-overs of the day? The Apostle Paul cautioned his friends in Ephesus: “Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:16) The King James translation employs the useful phrase, “redeem the time.”

2). The Presence of the Holy Spirit: Real change requires Incarnation. The importance of incarnation did not end with the Christmas story. We need the in-breaking of the Spirit every day, because we need incarnation every day. The Spirit gives life, but the legacy of flesh is corruption. “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.” (Isaiah 40: 6) It’s not that our flesh is evil, but rather that flesh is always subject to corruption. Imagine a perfect tomato: vine-ripened and red, resting on the kitchen windowsill. It’s flawless. You return to the kitchen the next day--remains firm and inviting. But imagine you left that tomato on the windowsill for six months: it's no longer perfect, and definitely not inviting! It’s not that the tomato was defective: it simply decayed. It’s the legacy of all created things apart from Spirit-infused life. Our plans are no different. “Perfect,” well-intentioned human plans are always subject to corruption. We need the life-giving Spirit of God conceive in us the life-giving plan our God. True change comes to those who seek the presence of the Holy Spirit each day.

3). A Response to Grace: Intentionality calls us to cooperate with the grace of God. The Apostle Paul recognized that receiving the grace of God was the initial step--God’s step, but there were also steps for Paul to take as well: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them - yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” (I Corinthians 5:10) How many of us associate the phrase “worked harder” with God’s grace? Make no mistake--Paul does not confuse his effort with God’s grace. He understands that his efforts come as a response to that grace. If we expect to experience godly change in the coming year, we must recognize where God’s grace is leading us, and then cooperate with his initiative. No amount of effort will replace God’s grace, yet we must add our strength to what the Master is doing. It’s how we commit ourselves to his leading. True change comes to those who add their best effort to God’s kindness.

The celebrations have already died down. School, work, family and the daily press of life will erode our good intentions as surely as the spring rains. But there is good news: the intentionality of discipleship can set us on a road paved with the daily grace of God.

My Dad used to believe some crazy things about me. Every so often he would tell me I could do anything. He said I was smart and funny. He thought I could beat up any kid in my class. It was comical because I was the pee-wee of the school who ran his mouth way too much and then hid behind the teacher’s skirt. Clearly, my father didn’t live in the same world as I did.

I was convinced my father had no clue about my life, so I ignored his advice. Years later, when I came to the pages of the New Testament I began to hear the same voice urging me to lift my vision. I’ve heard that voice at least four times, and I know it’s talking to all of us, not just me.

“God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” (Hebrews 11:40) After describing incredible heroes of faith, the writer of Hebrews turns is attention to us. Compared to all those other guys in the Bible, God has planned something better for us. There’s more. And it’s better. And it’s for us. wilder still: the stuff God has planned for us completes the faith of those from ages past. Are you kidding me? Something is lacking in the experiences of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and well, the whole list—and they are looking to us for the fulfillment of their experiences? No wonder there is a great cloud of witnesses looking on.

“His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 3:10) To begin with, I have no clear idea who the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms" are, but when God wants to put his wisdom on display, he points at the church. Are you kidding me? I love my local church, but it hardly reaches the level of manifesting all of God’s wisdom. God points at us, and we turn around as if he’s pointing at someone behind us.

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) Are you kidding me? Is he really talking about us? When Jesus opens up with “I tell you the truth” it means, “read my lips, this is serious.” Still stranger--his words are in the singular: “anyone” and “he.” My favorite rationalization about this verse used to be that Jesus meant that all the aggregate works of all believers in all times: but there’s no way you can read it like that. He means me, and then he means you. Actually, I would be thrilled to settle for just doing the stuff he did, but Jesus says there’s more.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness."  (2 Peter 1:3) The reason I have so much trouble with this verse is that it lays so much responsibility at my feet. Everything for life and godliness? Are you kidding me? He’s given us everything we need? Well then, go get ‘em.

My Dad may not have been a part of my childhood world, but my God knows this world better than I do. My natural father spoke to me out of parental hope and pride. Our Heavenly Father speaks to us out of transcendent truth. Why don’t we listen more often?

Robin McMillan and I share the distinction of having preached at each other’s churches--but we’ve never met. Like ships passing in the night, we are both passionately in pursuit of the King and his kingdom, but we’ve never put into the same port at the same time. Robin is the pastor at Queen City Church in Charlotte, NC. He’s a man brimming with personal experiences with God: stories to tell and life to share. He blogs here and Tweets there. Check him out!

The parable of the lost sheep is one of a trilogy of stories found in Luke 15 that Jesus used in response to the Pharisees’ criticism of His choices of friends and social interactions. The New Testament reveals that some called Jesus a wine bibber and a glutton, others accused Him of being the illicit child of an immoral mother. He wasn’t from the right tribe, the right town, or the right school; he didn’t have the right doctrine as far as they were concerned. Jesus had no shortage of critics.

The Pharisees criticized Jesus for both eating with and receiving tax collectors and sinners. Jesus responded by telling the story of a shepherd who had 100 sheep, and one of them ran off. Jesus assumed each of the Pharisees should leave the 99 for the 1 by saying, “What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?” -- thereby identifying both himself and the Pharisees as shepherds, a despised occupation in their culture.
This parable doesn’t only locate the darkness in the hearts of the Pharisees, it identifies some in my heart as well. Most business men would cut their 1% loss and rejoice over still having 99% on hand. That would be my own business sense because that’s good business: it’s just not love, and certainly not the heart of God!
So far, what has Jesus done in just a few short sentences? Concluded that the Pharisees should identify with shepherds; revealed their self-centeredness and pride; and reframed their personal responsibility as ministers. Can anyone say “Ouch?”

Jesus also assumed some responsibility for the one sheep’s condition… “if he [the shepherd] loses one” (Luke 15:3). That’s a different approach than placing all the blame on the sheep for having run off!
Jesus said that a good shepherd would find the sheep and lay it on his shoulders, rejoicing. That’s not the normal response He knew to be present in the Hebrew culture, nor in ours today. I have heard (and others have taught) that the reason the shepherd put the sheep on his shoulders and carried him home was because the norm was for the shepherd to break the lamb’s leg for running off, to teach him a lesson. If we did the same with our children we would be put in jail or the Department of Social Services would come get our children! He put him on His shoulders because lost sheep are often paralyzed with fear and the only hope of getting home would be if someone picked them up and carried them. Jesus said a good shepherd would do so ‘rejoicing’!

Heaven’s joy is based on the returning of lost sheep to their true home, the shepherd’s house. Heaven rejoices more over one returning lamb than ninety-nine who need no repentance. Too bad there are no such ninety-nine who need no repentance. No one needs 'no repentance'. We all have needed to repent at one time or another, or maybe even more than that.

God is a good businessman. He knows the way to secure the hearts of the ninety-nine is leave them for love of the one. That one could have been you or me. In so doing He builds a house of love and honor that has the potential to shake the world and reveal the heart of God. The heart of God is thus revealed in this short four-verse parable. It begins to fulfill the prayer of Jesus in a dynamic way; “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” That's our calling. That's our challenge. That's our joy.

(For insights and inspiration I offer much gratitude to Kenneth E. Bailey and his book: The Cross and the Prodigal: Luke 15 Through the Eyes of Middle East Peasants.)