Ecclesiastes 9:10 - "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going."

A thought to carry with us as we go about our daily life, as we go to work wondering why we have to seemingly toil and labor for what is meaningless. According to the author of Ecclesiastes (King Solomon purportedly) our life here is to be enjoyed in the sense of our work - our doctrine of vocation - the thing for which we are particularly gifted by God to do or perform. This gift is our ability to produce or serve productively those around us with our gift, and that we find fulfillment in during our days in this world.

The interesting eternal perspective on this verse is how we figure our "vocation" in a heavenly sense. Some think that heaven will be floating around on clouds, playing harps, and generally being bored. How about another perspective? Perhaps in heaven it will be the same as it is on earth - that we have a God-given vocation for which we are singularly equipped with our skills, talents, and inclinations. Do we respond to the calling for which we are gifted? If so, it is my thought that through the obedience of knowing and following our gifting, we are in the fulfillment of that gifting, we are fulfilling a tasking that God has given us, and in so doing through obedience to His calling in our life, we give our worship to the Lord. In and through this obedience we find fulfillment not only physically (hard work seems so much more fulfilling than a month full of desk time), but also mentally, and more importantly spiritually.

My point in the eternal perspective is that a reading of this verse could lead one to understand based on the reverse of what is described as "Sheol" that heaven will be a place of "activity (and) planning (and) knowledge (and) wisdom", whereas there we will find our fulfillment in the gifting that we are specially created for and that we find our deepest fulfillment - which is in Christ Jesus - but as an extension of that we were created for His pleasure, and conversely we find our greatest pleasure and fulfillment in the Lord. In the outworking of our gifting, we not only find fullfillment - but also our act of worship flows from our exercise of our gifting in service to the Lord - serving Him by using our gift for which we have been created.

The negative side of the eternal perspective? In hell, there is no fulfillment, our gift for which God created us was not only potentially squandered on earth in that life, but is now eternally squandered as none of the things that we find fulfillment in is available or possible in hell. There those who find themselves at that destination will have lost their gift, lost their fulfillment and joy which is found their communion with the Creator of their souls - Jesus. The eternal separation from God severs their ability to use their gift in service to their Lord. Instead, they will now suffer for eternity apart from God, and in the company of those fallen angelic beings (now demons) and Satan - also their gifts lost and corrupted for all eternity, for which they also cannot find fulfillment, if such beings find fulfillment in the exercising of their gift from God.

Bottom line? Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.

Find Christ - find fulfillment in Him by applying your gift with all your might and being satisfied in the knowledge that you are serving Him when you are serving others through love for the Creator.

What If God Called?

Following the post from yesterday, I would pose that there were other passages that should be taken into consideration when thinking about this generation, or previous generations, living prodigally in regards to our Christian riches.

I had in mind the passage from Matthew's gospel when as he finishes letting John the Baptizer's disciples know that He indeed was the Messiah, He rebukes of the cities that had rejected Him (chapter 11:20-24). In this passage in the NKJV (New King James Version) it describes the miracles done as "most of His mighty works". These cities were being rebuked for rejecting Him in spite of the miracles He had performed in them, and that if these same miracles had been performed in Sodom even, it would have remained until His day.

This echoes the passage that the Jews did not know the day of visitation when the Lord had come for a season in their midst (Luke 19:41-44), and yet as they were blind spiritually to His presence, so too were they blind to the many clues that He gave them as to His true identity as given by the prophets of old (now known as the Old Testament prophets).

Yet, even today, as we have this abundance of spiritual wealth as Christians that seemingly we have squandered, and have need to come to the Lord repenting corporately as a church, as the Body of Christ, seeking restoration as the son did with his father. We know that we will be received as our Lord will rejoice at our returning as we who were lost (perhaps some entirely so, and just now realizing their true spiritual state?) are now found, and are welcomed home.

The point of the posting today, and it's title "what if God called?" is about the idea that God called to His people in His day, and they ignored Him at best, and at worst they just didn't hear Him. Do we hear His call to us today? Can we hear Him calling us to return to Him, and to serve Him in our generation? Are we preparing the next generation for hearing His call? Or are we endangering them by coddling them to the point that their faith is meaningless and irrelevant because they can't see the applicability and meaning of their faith in their daily lives? I am not sure; but I know that the Lord does still call us today, not on our cell phones, not by writing messages in the clouds, but by luring and drawing us with His Holy Spirit, and speaking to us in our dreams, and by those who are around us not knowing that the very words they speak at times can be done in a manner that is done by the will of God without their even knowing their purpose for telling you what has been said.

Are we listening? Please pray that our ears would be opened for hearing the voice of God today!
Soli Deo Gloria~

Prodigal Living...

Who knows that the term "prodigal" is actually another term for "wasteful"? The story that Jesus relates in Luke chapter 15 is about the "prodigal son". We often hear this as being about someone who is separated from his father who eventually finds their way home after realizing what they had and lost. I have even read of this being understood in terms of a Christian being represented by the older brother with a jealous attitude towards those who are newly come into the kingdom, and feeling the father's extravagant love.

Truly the context is more to do with the understanding of God's desire for all of those separate from Him to find their way home, and that He will be looking for them as they come over the hill and he rushes out to welcome them home showering them lavishly with His boundless love, no matter that it is not deserved.

Yet, here is another look at the passage. If you get the chance read Luke 15:11-19. It tells of two sons; the one who appears as you read all the way through to be one who is faithful to his father, though somewhat ungrateful as to what he has always had though he didn't apparently realize it; and the son who was given his share of the riches and took them and squandered them living carelessly in a foreign (strange) land. Only after his riches were all spent did he realize what it was he had had and had wasted. This "wasted" living or "prodigal" living caused him to want to return home and live as one of his father's servants since he knew that while he nothing to eat where he was feeding the pigs for someone else, at least at home his father's servants lived better than he was living.

Stop for a moment and think of how this sounds if you rearrange the application. This is not meant to take away the context of the passage, but rather how you take the principle of Christ's teachings, and see how this same message can be applied in your life (or the corporate life of a church, community, nation). I want to have you close your eyes and think with me as I lay out the story in another way that will hopefully cause you to shudder and cry out to the Lord for revival and repentance.

The wasteful son - could there be a better metaphorical illustration of the church in America today? We have been blessed by God with so many riches (spiritually, materially, physically) and yet the evangelical church over the past generation has squandered (i.e., wasted, lived prodigally) our spiritual wealth through "riotous living". We have gone along to get along with the culture, abandoning the culture to the world, to the pagans, to those of other religions (to include the secular humanists, though they will not admit to being a "religion") when we have been given the command to "take every thought captive". In our quest for relevance, of our desire to be considered "hip and cool", we have let our Father's riches slip through our hands as we busy ourselves playing "church" on Sunday morning, and never give it another thought until the next Sunday morning. Our anemic prayer lives, spiritual power (real spiritual power, not these carnival freak shows that pass as some kind of "Jesus is my cosmic genie" kind of spiritual power); all are due to the lifestyle that we as Christians in this generation in America have come to expect as the "normal way to do church".

We are like the prodigal son who after squandering his father's riches (notice they are not his by having earned them, but rather they are given to him as his inheritance, as ours is as Christians, we can't earn our heavenly riches, but are given access to them by our Heavenly Father through Christ Jesus) finds employment feeding pigs. My friends we are like this in our culture, we are feeding the pigs! We are with the pigs down in the slop and we wallow in our misery, moaning about how things aren't like they used to be in the "good old days" when church was really church. Instead, as we have now begun to (hopefully) realize that we are truly hungry for spiritual food, all that we find that we have left now is the slop that the pigs eat, and our spiritual bodies can't or won't digest it, leaving us even hungrier than before.

What happens next is where I hope that our prayers will lead us - the desire to return home. Home to our Father's house; where there his "servants have food to spare" (Luke 15:17a). And yet here we are starving to death, and yet we have lost our moral bearings as we compromise the truth, and accept the garbage that we are fed by the culture, government, and those spiritually opposed to our Lord's message. I pray that you will stop this madness in this generation, and cry out to God for a return to "the old ways", the preaching of the gospel, not just to the healthy, but to the truly sick in a way that is bold and fearless of men, knowing that they can only kill the body, but cannot touch the soul!

We must become like the prodigal son who upon realizing his spiritual poverty and the famine that he found himself in desired to go to his Father's house and beg forgiveness, and just live as a servant in His house. We know that our Father in heaven would not take us as a servant but will be waiting on the hill from afar looking for us to come home; and will run out to meet us as we turn to home! He will tell the servants to kill the fatted calf, and to clothe us in Christ's righteous garments, and to throw away our garments of self-righteousness. We will be loved and we will love! But we must shred and shed this image of who the church has become in America, and return the our Father's house in His power, and in His Name!

For tonight, I close with this thought from Acts 13:36 - "For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed." Ask yourself if you have served God's purpose for your generation. You have not fallen asleep yet; and there is still time to turn to God and seek His face with all your heart, and in that day He will be found.

Soli Deo Gloria!

After Death...A New Beginning

1 Corinthians 15:35-41
But someone will say, "How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?" You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and other flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies, and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly one is one, and the glory of the earthly one is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

1 Corinthians 15:42-49
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living soul." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.

What are the purposes for church? Why are we what we are, and what are we supposed to be doing here? These are questions for which I think many people in the church pews from week to week wonder. There is this thought that - "is this all that there is?" - often crosses the minds of those who are sitting and absorbing the teaching for the week.

Is there more? Are you satisfied with just the status quo of church as we experience it in the western hemisphere today? In North America today? Am I proposing or suggesting that something is broken in need of fixing? God's church is not broken, but what man has made of it is certainly not only broken but in sad need of repair!

Are you willing to follow the vision that God gives in the Word on what church is supposed to be? Then let's begin an adventure - one that just might spark a revolution!

Free Indeed!

Are we truly free? What is holding us back? Why don't we just make the decision to do what we will; not considering the consequences? What does it mean to be free? Free to choose from the dollar menu at McDonalds? Free to choose the career field into which you will commit yourself for between 20 and 40 years? (if you are truly luck these days...or is that really luck?) Or is true freedom that which frees us ultimately from the bondage that keeps all men (and women) from experiencing a revolutionizing and all encompassing freedom? Where can this freedom be found? How do we know that it will last? By turning to the One from Whom all truth flows.

Jesus said, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Who is this that can by simply saying the word can make men free? How deep does this freedom flow? Is it freedom from the daily cares and worries of this world? Is it deep enough to satisfy the hidden, but powerful longing in our souls to know the depth of life and what the future holds? Yes, and more!

Again Jesus said, "Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." Are you ready to begin exploring this kind of freedom? Are you ready to follow the One who can promise the kind of spiritual freedom that can only exist and can only be given by the One who not only created us, but the cosmos as well? The trail begins with something as small as a mustard seed...faith.

Faith, Disbelief, and Disobedience

Recently, I have had the opportunity to share messages from the Gospel of Mark in the context of understanding the works of God all around us, and how it impacts our lives and sometimes "rattles our cage". We too often in the West especially are comfortable in our faith, and that we don't want to believe in anything that smacks of "supernatural", so that we tend to dismiss or even discount anything that borders on the strange, mysterious, or (God forbid) the miraculous. But as I shared in a message lately, the evidence is all around us that it would appear that God is moving in a mighty way in the world around us.

We don't see much of it in the culture that we surround ourselves with here in America, and even Western Europe because of our spiritual blindness. We are too sophisticated to recognize these kinds of miracles or workings of God in our midst. The signs and wonders of God that accompany the preaching of the Gospel often came (and come) to validate the message being preached. There are many cultures in which this is received and gives God a powerful witness as His people come in power of not only message but in the ability to show through prayer and healing the power of God to do miraculous things in the midst of people even today.

I recently had someone ask me why we still need "signs and wonders" in our culture. I responded that due to the overwhelming disbelief that runs rampant in our culture, it would seem that only the signs from God would gain the attention of those in this culture. However, upon further reflection, I am afraid the answer isn't even that hopeful. We may indeed today be in the mindset that the Israelites found themselves in during Jesus' day. When the Pharisees asked for a sign, Jesus responded with, "There will be no sign for this generation." There reason for wanting a sign was selfish, and in the interest of entertainment (sort of), and that today if we were to see miracles in our midst, we would as a culture treat them with disbelief, and completely disregard the reason that we were given the sign.

More thoughts later...