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~
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
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!
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!
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