Held by Him – Called to Speak and Follow - Purity 914
Purity 914 12/14/2022 Purity 914 Podcast
Purity 914 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s original work of art of a shack-like tower
and an old dead tree in the foreground of what appears to be the fading light
of day over a lake comes to us from the artistic imaginations of our brother
and friend in the UK, Philip Hand.
Philip sent me this back on November 30th via FB messenger,
and I was surprised to see that He didn’t share it on his FB page. So I hope he
will forgive me for sharing what he sent to me privately in such a public forum. However, I’m sure he will and on contrary, I
believe he will be pleased that I share his work on the blog today as he has
expressed to me that I have the freedom to do so in the past.
Well, It’s Wednesday again and as we approach the
midpoint of another work week, I felt that Philip’s “fishing tower” situated in
the middle of this landscape was “good enough” to visually represent our
arrival at hump day. Also my using Philip’s work today is a way to draw close
to the safety of a friend who understands the pain of loss and feeling low,. I am in reflective mood this morning as a
part of me feels burdened because I have a heavy heart over the sudden and tragic death of a friend, which I
wrote about yesterday, but I also have the pain of being rebuked by someone I
respect for the manner in which I wrote about it.
I stand by what I wrote, and always will, but I was
reminded that my words could cause additional pain to others grieving the loss,
because I reflected on the not so wholesome circumstances surrounding my friend’s
death. If I caused additional pain or
offense by what I wrote yesterday, I humbly apologize and ask you for your
forgiveness.
Just last night in my presentation of
Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, Lesson 18, I made comments about how in our modern
age, church discipline seems to be a thing of the past, only to discover that
while I was making those comments, a friend in the body of Christ was privately
reaching out to me via text to rebuke me for being thoughtless of the pain that
my words could possibly cause to my departed friend’s family. In truth, I didn’t consider how my musings
over different aspects of my friend’s death could hurt his loved ones and my
intention in discussing them was to point out the duality of man, the way we
are perceived by others, and the importance of a continued walk of faith and
having a good testimony.
I feel the sting of the rebuke
because I respect the messenger and it challenged me with the basic principles
of wise speaking. In essence the message asked me if I asked the three
questions we must ask ourselves before we speak:
·
Does this need to be said?
·
Does this need to be said by me?
·
Does this need to be said by
me now?
And
as much as I am pained in my spirit at the thought that my writing could have
caused additional pain to the grieving, I have to honestly say that the answer
to all three of these questions would be: yes.
The
messages I produce on a semi daily basis to share my experience of life and to
encourage others to live a life of faith are not planned out in advance, I share
what’s on my heart and what I feel will encourage others to put their faith in
Christ and to follow Him.
Does
any of what I say “need” to be said? By
me? Ever? - You could easily make a case
that, little old me with my track record of a broken life of 38 prior to coming
to Christ, shouldn’t say ANYTHING, TO ANYONE? EVER?
Who
am I to speak on matters of faith? Who I am to speak about other people’s lives?
Who am I to “judge” people?
I am
an imperfect person who found hope, freedom, love, peace, and victory over the
darkness because of my faith in Jesus Christ and because of Him never letting
me go. I am held by Him. And I am sharing on the blog, another drawing
of Philip Hand’s that highlights the fact that we need to be held by Christ:
In
His Hands, we are loved. Because of Christ alone, we are forgiven and
free. Because of Him, and the desperate
need that the world has for Jesus Christ, I speak, and I will continue to
speak.
When
you produce a semi daily message on the fly like I do, you don’t always know
what you will say from one day to the next, and because I try to base my
writings on the wisdom of God’s word, I often cringe over the things I write
because I know that the truths that I am pointing out exposes our failures to
follow God’s word.
I don’t
like to be rebuked. I don’t like to be thought of in a negative light. I want
to be loved and accepted by all. So when
I get criticism, it hurts. I don’t like
confrontation and I never want to feel that I have done anything to cause someone
pain or offense.
However,
everything I produce is intended to encourage others to follow the Lord and
unfortunately because of the brokenness of this world corrupted by sin and
shrouded in darkness, the light of God’s word is not welcomed and even
Christians will encourage us not to shine a light on the dark places because
they are too ugly or too painful to consider.
But
this is the message, I believe the Lord has directed me to continue to share:
follow the Lord, repent of your worldly ways, and follow Him.
So,
do I “need to say all this”, nearly every day?, really?, I believe I have been called to encourage
people to “keep walking and talking with God”.
I don’t know how long this “calling” will last but until I am convinced
by scripture or the Holy Spirit that I should stop, I will persist in trying to
be a voice to encourage people to follow the Lord in Spirit and in truth, even
if what I see and report on, isn’t something that you want to share in the
polite society of the corporate gathering on Sunday morning.
So, if
I haven’t offended you thus far, let me encourage you to follow the Lord only,
and to develop a daily spiritual practice of “walking and talking with Him” via
prayer, Bible study, and trying to do what God’s word says.
Also,
I would encourage you to consider those three questions before you speak, but
if you read the New Testament, you might be shocked at the things that Jesus
said to the polite society of his day. I
can only imagine the pain and offense that He caused when he called respected members
of the community “vipers”, but He said it anyway because He wanted to expose
the darkness that was hidden in the systems that looked good on the outside but
were sick, corrupted, and dead on the inside.
So
try to be kind and compassionate in your dealings, but if you feel lead to
speak, speak, but know that you may be rebuked, you may be hated, and you may be
persecuted for saying it: all of which, Christ
said would happen to you if you follow Him.
So,
while I appreciate the care and concerns of others over what I say and, am sensitive
to the possibility of causing offense in my messages, I am still going to say them because I feel
that the Lord has called me to do so. And I would rather obey God than remain
silent. Because I have been set free by
Jesus and am held by Him, I can do no other but to be faithful to encourage
others to seek Him.
He
has led me through the fire and out of the darkness, and so I will follow Him,
come what may.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Isaiah 58:10-11 (NLT2)
10 Feed the hungry, and help
those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the
darkness around you will be as bright as noon.
11 The LORD will guide you continually, giving
you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a
well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.
Today’s verses encourage us to help others and to let our light
shine, knowing that the Lord will guide us and restore us when we are
drained.
So, there is our call to action! Feed the hungry and help others
in trouble and to let our light shine out from the darkness. So out of the intention to help others, to
learn from my own and others mistakes from walking in darkness, I shine a light
to expose our deeds and to illuminate the word of God to encourage people in
the way that God’s word tells us to go.
As we do this in a world that rejects the Lord, we will suffer and
we won’t always know if we are doing everything right but as I have attempted
to follow the Lord, I have discovered that when you walk in the Spirit, God
will guide you and restore your strength. This path I have taken, I wouldn’t
pursue if it wasn’t for the guidance and strength I receive from doing so. And
trust me, I don’t just keep “plugging along” out of some sense of self-righteousness. I humbly and continually go to the Lord in
prayer to receive guidance and from the direction that my life has taken, I
have to believe that I am following His path for me because my journey has
progressively and increasingly led to good things and new opportunities to
serve his kingdom: to help those in trouble.
So be wise and discerning, seek His guidance and ask for His strength, because I know that when you are walking and talking with God you will be restored “like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.”
___________________________________________
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
“Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
The
Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship
Chapter Eleven
The
Visible Church-Community, continues
The word of the
apostles’ preaching is the same Word which has borne in his body the sins of
the whole world; it is Christ present in the Holy Spirit. Christ in his
church-community is what sums up the “teaching of the apostles,” the apostolic
preaching. This teaching never makes itself superfluous. Rather, it creates by
itself a church-community which remains constantly faithful to this teaching, a
community that has been accepted by the Word, and is confirmed in this faith
daily. This teaching creates by itself a visible church-community. Moreover,
the body of Christ takes on visible form not only in the preaching of the word
but also in baptism and the Lord’s Supper,
both of which emanate from the true humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. In both,
Christ encounters us bodily and makes us participants in the community of his
body. Both sacraments must be accompanied by the proclamation of the Word. In
baptism as well as in the Lord’s Supper the content of that proclamation is the
death of Christ for us (Rom. 6:3ff.; 1 Cor. 11:26). The gift we receive in both
sacraments is the body of Christ. In baptism we are made members of Christ’s
body. In the Lord’s Supper we receive the gift of bodily community (κοινωνία)
with the body of the Lord, and through it bodily community with the members of
this body. In receiving the gifts of Christ’s body, we become, thereby, one
body with him. Neither the gift of baptism nor the gift of the Lord’s Supper is
fully understood if we interpret them only in terms of the forgiveness of sin.
The gift of the body conferred in the sacraments presents us with the Lord in
bodily form dwelling in his church-community.[14] Forgiveness of sin
is indeed a part of this gift of the body of Christ as church-community. This
explains why, in direct contrast to our contemporary practice, baptism and the
Lord’s Supper were originally not tied to the office of apostolic preaching,
but were instead administered by the church-community itself (1 Cor. 1:1 and
14ff.; 11:17ff.). Baptism and the Lord’s Supper belong solely to the community
of the body of Christ. Whereas the word of proclamation is addressed to
believers and unbelievers alike, the sacraments have been given solely to the
church-community. The Christian community is thus essentially the community gathered
to celebrate baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and only then is it the community
gathered to hear the word proclaimed.
That the community of
Jesus Christ claims a space in this
world for its proclamation is now
clear. The body of Christ becomes visible in the church-community that gathers
around word and sacrament.
This community is a
differentiated whole. The body of Christ as church-community includes both
differentiation and a common order. These are characteristics essential to the
body itself. A body lacking differentiation is in the process of decomposition.
According to Paul’s teaching, the form of the living body of Christ is that of
differentiated members (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12ff.). In this case it is
impossible to make a distinction between content and form, essence and
appearance. To make it would mean a denial of the body of Christ, that is, of
the Christ who became flesh (1 John 4:3). Thus the body of Christ, in claiming
a space for proclamation, at the same
time claims a space for the order of the
church-community.
The order of the
church-community is of divine origin and character, though it is, of course,
intended to serve and not to rule. The offices of the church-community are
“ministries” (διακονίαι) (1 Cor. 12:4). They are appointed by God (1 Cor.
12:28), by Christ (Eph. 4:11), by the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28) within but not by the church-community. Even where the church-community itself
assigns offices, it does so in complete submission to the guidance of the Holy
Spirit (Acts 13:2 et passim). Both
office and church-community have their origin in the triune God. The offices
exist to serve the church-community; they can be justified spiritually only
through this service. That is why different congregations require different
offices or ministries. For example, the congregation in Jerusalem demanded
different offices or ministries than those required in Paul’s mission churches.
To be sure, the ordering as such is given by God, but its specific form is open
to change, and to be determined only by the spiritual judgment of the
church-community itself as it appoints its members for service. Even the
charisms which the Holy Spirit confers upon individuals are in the same sense
strictly subject to the discipline of serving the church-community, for God is
not a God of disorder but of peace (1 Cor. 14:32f.). The Holy Spirit becomes
visibly present (φανέρωσιζ, 1 Cor. 12:7) in the fact that everything is done for
the benefit of the church-community. Apostles, prophets, teachers, overseers
(bishops), deacons, elders, presiding officers, and leaders (1 Cor. 12:28ff.;
Eph. 2:20 and 4:11) are all servants of the church-community, the body of
Christ. Appointed to serve the church-community, their office is of divine
origin and character. Only the church-community can release them from their
service. Therefore, although the church-community is at liberty to modify the
form of its order according to its needs, any tampering with the church’s order
from the outside is an infringement on the visible form of Christ’s body
itself.
Of special importance
among the offices of the church-community in every age is the untainted
administration of word and sacrament. Here the following must be considered.
Proclamation will always vary and differ according to the commission and gifts
of the preachers. However, whether it be the proclamation of Paul, or of Peter,
or of Apollos, or of Christ, the one indivisible Christ must be recognized in
them all (1 Cor. 1:11ff.). All are to work hand in hand (1 Cor. 3:6). The
emergence of different schools of thought leads to divisive bickering, in which
all involved promote their own self-interest (1 Tim. 6:5 and 6:20; 2 Tim. 2:16;
3:8; Titus 1:10). Here it is all too easy for ‘godliness’ to be mistaken for
earthly gain, whether it be gain in honor, power, or wealth. The tendency to
pose problems for the sake of posing problems also will blossom and divert
people from the clear and simple truth (2 Tim. 3:7). It will lure into
self-centered intransigence and disobedience toward God’s command. In contrast
to this, genuine proclamation will always aim at a teaching which is sound and
salutary (2 Tim. 4:3; 1 Tim. 1:10; 4:16; 6:1; Titus 1:9 and 1:13; 2:1; 3:8),
and for safeguarding proper church order and unity.
It is not always easy
to recognize where a legitimate theological interpretation ends and heresy
begins. One congregation may still accept a particular teaching as legitimate,
while another has already rejected it as heresy (Rev. 2:6 and 2:15ff.).
However, once heresy has been identified, it must be rejected without
compromise. The heretical teacher is cast out of the Christian community, and
is excluded from any personal community with its members (Gal. 1:8; 1 Cor.
16:22; Titus 3:10; 2 John 10ff.). The word of authentic proclamation must
therefore create both unity and separation in a visible way. It thus becomes
clear that space for proclamation and for
the order of the church-community are divinely ordained necessities.
We must now ask
whether spaces of proclamation and order are already sufficient to describe the
visible form of the community of the body of Christ, or whether this community
claims yet another space in the world. The answer of the New Testament is
unambiguous. It holds that the church-community claims a physical space here on
earth not only for its worship and its order, but also for the daily life of
its members. That is why we must now speak of the living space [Lebensraum] of the visible church-community.[1]
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tomorrow------------------------
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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship,
ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 228–232.
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