Concerns versus Callings – Jim Robbins

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Jim Robbins is a former pastor, turned writer, who writes for those who are hungry for more –wanting restoration of heart and life — and aren’t satisfied with pop Christianity. It’s not about morality (as good as that is) or right behavior and sin management. It’s about something else. A restored heart. Learn more about Jim and his writings at www.robbinswritings.com

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He Lives…He Speaks…He’s Not Locked In A Building…He’s Everywhere and in Everything

This week I heard Jesus speak again in the most unlikely place — church….and this post is going to seem to contradict this acknowledgement and support it all at the same time.  Stay with me.

This Easter, we sang a song that we’ve been singing for years, in fact, I believe I can accurately say that since I was a baby, and for the last 40 years of my life, we’ve sang this song every year. It’s a hymn titled, “He Lives”.

Now, many of you know this hymn, have sang it, and probably know the words by heart. I bet a lot of you probably know the fingering for the notes of a trumpet because you’ve seen (or even played) the trumpets do it so many times.

I’ve got to tell you – the Easter songs – I’m on automatic. I know the words, I know the tunes.  I can mail these suckers in with the best of them, and this Easter, I was ready to sing through the motions again, except something changed for me this year. I no longer had a “book smarts” concept of this song. I had more!  I wasn’t just reciting words from memory and spitting them out.  For the first time in 40 years, I realized I was living and experiencing the words of this song.

I serve a risen Savior,
He’s in the world today;
I know that He is living,
Whatever men may say;
I see His hand of mercy,
I hear His voice of cheer,
And just the time I need Him
He’s always near.

Chorus:

He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and He talks with me
Along life’s narrow way.
He lives, He live, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives:
He lives within my heart.

Here’s what the song spoke to me about based on what I’ve lived and experienced this year:

This year that I realized that Jesus is living person, not just a historical man from the Bible that once lived and died for my sins.  I serve a real man, a real Savior, and a real God – I do not serve a church or a Bible.  I serve a God-man who is living, and he doesn’t park his deity in a church building.  He lives IN MY HEART.  And he lives in my wife’s heart, my kid’s heart, my friend’s heart, and millions of believer’s hearts.

If anyone tells you, preaches to you, or claims that God’s home is the church building, they are wrong.  The Bible is CLEAR – HE (Jesus Christ) LIVES WITHIN MY HEART.  (1st John is full of beautiful language that describes this, as well as Jesus intimate talk with his disciples in John 14-17).

I’ve also learned this year that God reveals himself in THOUSANDS of ways to me, not just through the Bible or a Sunday sermon about the Bible. The God I thought I knew was narrowly defined based on what I knew from Genesis to Revelation.  I must admit that at times, I’m furious of what I’ve missed over the years.  If I had just been listening, I could have been hearing him clearly through my wife, my parents, my kids, the radio, through books, in movies, while running (and walking), through night dreams, through day dreams, through conversations at a coffee shop, at weddings, at funerals, at the chiropractor’s office, in staff meetings, sitting alone quietly, watching TV, sitting in an airplane — I could go on, but these are all places I’ve heard him in the past year that I never did before.

When I heard the voice of Papa speak to me as I was walking one day last fall, it changed my life forever. So when I sang “he walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way” I was swept with so much joy in that moment I could not hide my smile.  It was amazing because I witnessed this! It happened to me, and I could sing that line with conviction.  I lived the song!

I’m not looking to rattle anyone’s cage who love their church and love the Bible.  I’m not against them, I attend church and I read the Bible.  But if you only allow God to speak to you in church those couple hours a week, you’re missing a lot.  If you only allow him to speak to you when reading a Bible passage and a devotion book, you risk just knowing about him, rather knowing HIM personally.

He speaks often, and you can hear it too if you listen.

Here’s something I’ve tried, and it’s worked countless times….

Ask Papa to simply speak to you in a surprising way.  Don’t go into some long prayer and get emotional and try to butter him up.  Just ask him for this like you’d ask a parent. Then just relax.  You don’t have to conjure anything up, or do anything spiritual to make it happen.  At some point during the day or later in the week, when you least expect it, he will speak to you in some way.  It might be a song on the radio, a call from a friend, a blog post, a TV clip, a line in a book, a sermon, an audidble voice, a quiet whisper to your heart — but he will speak, because he’s a perfect Daddy.  A good daddy will not ignore his child, and this is not a selfish request from a son or daughter.  A son is expected to hear from his dad, a daughter can expect her mom to talk.

He’ll do it.  Expect it!

Let God out of the box.  Let him show you how big He is. Let him show you how much he’s part of this creation and how much he’s a part of your life. He’s in everything, and there’s not a road he’d ignore to find his way into your heart and show his love you.  Let him do it!

Please – comment here or on Facebook. What do you think?

Till next time….

P.S. Be sure to listen to our semi-regular radio show tomorrow, April 7, or check out iTunes for the podcast download.  We’re going to tackle, “Can A Good Christian Be A Good Business Person?”   And don’t miss next week Monday, April 12 when we’ll interview Darin Hufford, author of The Misunderstood God.

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Receiving Answers from the Presence

This morning, I sat down to seek the Lord this morning about the same thing. Again. For some reason, I just hadn’t received the direction needed. Why, I wasn’t quite sure. He, the Living Word tells us in the book of James that we are to ask for wisdom in faith, without any doubting and He’ll liberally give us His wisdom. 1 Corinthians 1:30 says that Jesus IS our wisdom from God. And, here I was again.

This time, however, I could tell that I was about to hear the answer. There was that “pregnant pause”, that alertness and awareness in the spirit that I was about to receive a download. And I did.

So, what was the difference this time when I hadn’t gotten the answer previously? I’ve come to realize that the Lord doesn’t want to just give us commands, “Do this”, or “Do that”, “Go there”, but He delights in His children understanding His ways. We learn, not only from what He tells us to do, but the process by which He communicates with us.

I’ve also come to realize that our hearts have to be properly prepared to hear the Lord. Too often we still wait for His orders as obedient servants waiting to carry them out. What’s wrong with that? Plenty, once you realize that we are to serve the Lord as heirs and ambassadors, not merely purchased slaves. We’re family, not staff. To carry these responsibilities properly, we’re being “renewed to a true knowledge” in the very core of our being, learning in experience the very heart and nature of our Father.

So, when we seek the Lord’s will, despite our admirable intentions to please the Lord, there is often still much self-reliance lurking within us, with self-condemnation waiting in the wings to point out any imperfection in our efforts. Self-reliance is a breach within our being, an undesirable disconnect from God’s presence and power. In this disposition of heart, any answer received from him, quickly becomes a command that we run off with, trying to please the Lord by becoming successful in the new endeavour.

Seeking the Lord for direction is to be with the awareness of what we need from Him, but not in neediness. Neediness, that sense of anxious clamoring within us, produces begging, pleading in our seeking, and is usually full of confusion. Neediness is evidence that some performance-based fear still lurks within: surely God has some high expectations that we had better meet if we are to receive the “Well done”. What a misunderstanding of His character! Seeking the Lord is to be done with complete trust in His being everything we need and His grace that gives it all to us.

The answers and direction we seek from the Lord are closer than our breath or a million miles away, depending on our just being able to peacefully, expectantly receive from Him. Wisdom is in the presence of the one who has understanding, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth. (Prov. 17:24)  Again, self-reliance creates distance between ourselves and the Lord, dragging the weight of a sin-consciousness that should no longer exist.

What I have experienced from the Lord is the suspension of the answers I seek until my heart is properly prepared to hear Him. The arena He communicates in is the clear communion of faith, devoid of condemnation and performance-orientation. He does not scold or upbraid for our not being all that we think we should have been thus far. In any direction He gives us, He wants us to embark on His plans together.  Him working through us.  Adventures in God. Enjoying life in the perfect law of liberty.

That answer I was looking to the Lord for? He pointed to one of the items in my hand, the “staff of Moses” if you will. It was so simple, but I wouldn’t have known which stick to choose without His direction. As usual, the answer was there all the time, waiting to be accessed by simple faith.

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Delaine Allen is a passionate preacher of God’s Word, stirring the hearers to press on to know Him, who is the Living Word. Knowing that God, “in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things”, Delaine sees all the blessings of the eternal Kingdom as available through living in the fulness of Christ.

Read more from Delaine at www.lifestreammin.org

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