Naked God

09.12.12

1 John 1.2 2 The one who gives life appeared! We saw it happen, and we are witnesses to what we have seen. Now we are telling you about this eternal life that was with the Father and appeared to us. CEV

Seen anything lately? John explained in the first part of his letter that he saw Jesus. But not just that he saw Jesus, but he saw Jesus for who He is: the eternal life. John called Him the One who gives life. John had an entirely different perspective than most people. John walked and talked with Jesus. John ate with and slept in the same place as the Lord. And John saw Him for who He was: Naked God in the flesh.

God the Father is invisible to man (see 1 Timothy 1.17). The Scripture says no man can see God and live. Well, if He’s invisible, how can we see Him? The only way to see God is through Jesus Christ. All roads lead to Jesus but only Jesus leads to the Father. The only way to witness for Him and about Him is through fellowship with Him. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, is the exact representation of God the Father. Jesus is Naked God – God Exposed.

Now, lest I conjure up too many images in your mind about Naked God, let’s consider a few things about Nakedness and God. God is clothed in majesty and righteousness; God is loving and true. But God is invisible to us and so Jesus came as the exact representation of God in human flesh. What was invisible became visible to us pathetic blind creatures through Jesus.

Jesus is confirmed in Scripture and in history. Jesus was a real man who walked upon this real earth and lived a real life within the areas of ancient Judea and Samaria. And Jesus came insisting He was here doing what the Father had sent Him to do: be the visible representation of the Father to us humans. Jesus isn’t made real by our faith, He is real. Our faith makes Him really visible to us today as we walk in the manner He walked and obey His commands.

God can be shrouded in mystery – the Lord works in mysterious ways. They aren’t mysterious to Him, but they sure are to us since God doesn’t check in with us to see if He can get our approval to do whatever it is He’s doing. But the mystery is removed in Jesus. In Jesus we have God in the flesh showing us how to walk in a manner that is pleasing to the Father who is and remains unseen.

Nowadays, the Naked Christ is visible in the acts of His brethren – the Church. Not the buildings we call churches, but the people who meet in church buildings. The eyes and ears of Christ are His people. The hands of Christ are His people. The love of Christ is His people and we are to be sharing all of who He is and does by living our lives for Him on this earth. That is the Life of which John spoke and wrote. That is the Naked God we represent today…if… we have fellowship with Him.

My relationship with God the Father is through the Naked God, Christ the Son who is the embodiment of and the exact representation of God Almighty. Jesus came and lived as we do so that we can live and someday be where He is forever – naked and bare, whole and complete, joyful in the presence of God forever with no darkness in us at all… gimme soma dat!

Defeat Won

09.11.12

1 John 5.4 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. NLT

This morning I watched the news for a few brief moments – just long enough to see that indeed our world is evil. Ahmedinajad is vowing to annihilate Israel and keeps marching toward the development of nuclear weapons with which to do so. There were at least two brutal killing reported in the Portland (Oregon) area. Teachers have gone on strike in Chicago. And that doesn’t scratch the surface of what is going on all around us everywhere else.

There are many evils in this world: there is oppression, aggression; there is depression, and regression. There is poverty, sickness, starvation; there is financial difficulty, corruption, greed, and the list goes on and on. You don’t have to wait very long or look very hard to see just how evil our world truly is. But as bad as it is, the chiefest of all sins is this: unbelief. Of all the things man can do (and has done) to himself and his neighbor the worst of the worst is this: he doesn’t believe in God. Unbelief is the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, but unbelief is the root of all evil.

When man is a god unto himself, watch out – he’s dangerous; when man has no moral compass, watch out – who knows where he’ll end up. And when man has no belief in God, watch out – his arrogance will drive him to do almost anything. We’ve seem that a starving person will do anything – including cannibalism – to survive. Man’s unbelieving arrogance is to blame for all of the evil ever done upon this globe. Every act of violence and disobedience can be traced to the arrogance of man wanting his own way.

The Apostle John says there is a cure for such evil; there is a remedy for such behavior: faith in God. Faith is the only cure for unbelief. (Unbelief is the only unpardonable sin.) And faith in God through Christ His Son is the faith that frees a man from the unbridled evil of this world in its compass-less moral morass. If we are to ever escape what goes on around us the only way to do it is by faith in God through Christ. The battle against the world always is and has always been – the battle against unbelief.

The victory is a moral compass – the knowledge of right and wrong and the power to do right. The victory is love (again, not that sappy, syrupy, sentimental crap); true love elevates others in their need above our own. True love, true care, true fellowship, true companionship. It is all found in the victory of faith in God through Jesus Christ. It was under attack in John’s day and it is still under attack in ours. But the alternative is to give in to the pressure to conform to this world and all the evil it has to offer.

My faith and yours, if rightly placed and properly founded, is the way to defeat this world with all of its creative cleverness and dreadful dealings with one another. Rightly placed faith is faith in the Almighty. Properly founded faith is that which is built on the Life and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. All other ground is sinking sand…

Seeing Beyond the Chains

09.10.12

1 John 4.7-8 7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. NLT

It’s hard to do, but to accept people just for who they are is probably about the best way to get along with them. It’s even harder to do, but to love them for who they are is the best way to relate to them. Biblical love always puts the interests of others above our own and seeks the highest good for someone else. That is hard to do especially when the interests of others may include taking advantage of me.

The Serenity Prayer states, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. One thing I have learned is this: I cannot change people. But 1 John tells me I’m to love them; I’m to put their interests above my own and I’m to seek their highest good.

Love is not just romance. Love is not just affection. Love – Biblical love – is more like one guy in chains telling another guy in chains how to get free. Not cynicism, but hope. We live in a mostly hopeless world. People have a hard time seeing past themselves and their circumstance. And then when someone comes along and “loves” them they tend to take it suspiciously or they try to take advantage of it. One thing we all have in common here is: let me just get free from whatever is bothering me. If we see even a glimmer of a chance of that happening, most folks will try to take it.

But hope is based on truth and though truth seems to be fleeting to most, when someone comes along and shares their love – their true love – it is something most people have never seen. We cannot factor out the Holy Spirit because it is He who empowers such love. That’s why John said in (what we call) 1 John 4.13: And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. The Spirit of God empowers love and enables love. True love. The Spirit is who makes the claims of one in chains to another in chains believable. The Spirit’s presence is what brings proof to the claims of hope we have. It doesn’t happen any other way.

To love someone the way the Bible spells out love, takes power that can only come from heaven; it doesn’t come naturally on earth. So Biblical love stands out and Biblical love loves the unlovely. And John makes the case that if I’m not loving (verb tense) in that manner, I need to find out why.

1 John is all about contrasts and comparisons – separating what is true from what is acceptable. And true love is the hallmark of the saved. True love looks to give away what the Master has given without any thought of getting anything back. (Usually the give back is soddened with selfishness but how are the selfish ever supposed to get free if they are never exposed to true love?)

Father, may I love with Your love today and live in Your love today – through Jesus, amen.

How Much

09.09.12

1 John 3.1 See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. NLT

I’m not sure how many folks apprehend what is really being said here: God calls us – we weak, pathetic, selfish, petty, fickle, unreliable, lying, cheating, adulterous, dishonest, apathetic people who claim we believe in Him – His children. (I didn’t even mention disgusting, murderous, evil, and wicked.) Today, after years of reading 1 John 3, I think I just might be beginning to get it: being called God’s child is as infinite and marvelous as calling God, God. It doesn’t mean I am infinite – only He is - it means I have access to all He is for all I do.

Now, before we drive the bus off the cliff with that last statement, I mean not that all I do is what is important – no, all that He does is important, but He avails Himself to His children to do all He has in mind for them. Big difference. We focus on production – God focuses on being. We focus on benchmarks and steps and progression; God focuses on just being with us and our being with Him. Relationship with God, in my mind, is perfectly (well, adequately) pictured in the human institution of marriage (although we humans have screwed that up royally as well).

God calls us His children because He desires a deep and lasting relationship with His sons and daughters – we are precious to Him. We are precious to Him as we are but also because of what rubs off on us as we rightly relate to Him. And rightly relating is even a stretch for the best of us. We are so fallen, but if we glimpse (or get a glimpse) of who He really is and what He is really accomplishing in us, then life on this earth, as good as we think it may be, doesn’t even enter the arena of what might be the worst day in heaven. Heaven is that good, but for as good as it is, being with God is even better. Nothing compares to being with the One who calls us His sons and daughters.

We are lazy and God calls us to so much more. We are easily tired and distracted (kinda like little babies) but God calls us to maturity on a level that we can’t comprehend because we’ve never been there; but He promises it is way beyond what we can think, imagine, or hope for. And all along the way, He calls us His children.

John says the world cannot recognize who we are because they don’t know God. I understand that. I know that a knowledge of God is essential for every human being and that where they go with that knowledge makes the difference between life and death. I understand that. What I don’t understand is how much my God loves me that He would call me, Paul Turk, His son. That I don’t understand. I think I know Paul Turk pretty well and at best, I think he’s tolerable. But God says, no, he’s way more than that – he is my son. That I don’t understand… but I do accept. As best I can, I accept sonship from God because the more I live in this world with all its glitz, glamor, and value – I need something more than the best, or most sought, that this world has to offer. Today, I accept I am God’s son and He loves me enough to call me that.

How much does God love us? He calls us His children – that’s how much!

Yard Sale

09.08.12

1 John 2.14b-15 14 b …I have written to you who are young in the faith because you are strong. God’s word lives in your hearts, and you have won your battle with the evil one.

15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. NLT

Of course when it was written 1 John 2 wasn’t 1 John 2 – it was just a passage in a letter written to some believers in Asia Minor so that they would be encouraged and helped to withstand the arrogance and ridicule leveled against them, and the clever lies concocted to argue against the simplicity of their faith in Christ and the deity of Jesus Christ. It’s been going on for centuries.

What partly caught my attention this morning was the part of the passage that says: God’s word lives in your hearts, and you have won your battle with the evil one. The battle was belief – they won because they believed. Belief is what separates liars and truth-ers. And to live “in the truth” one has to have God’s word living in them. That means knowing God’s word and living by it. Reading the Bible is one thing – living it is another thing altogether.

But in order to have God’s word living in us, we need to have room in our hearts for His word and an accompanying faith that it is vital for His word to live there in the first place. So in order to have God’s word living in our hearts, we need to shed our love of this world and the things offered to us by the world which compete for room in our hearts. Remember, the world first offers arrogance, ridicule and clever lies leveled against our faith in Christ – you don’t need it – and the deity of Christ – it ain’t true.

I think it remarkable but only fitting that 1 John 2.14b precedes 1 John 2.15. We cannot have God’s word living in us – actively making its difference in us – if there is crowded competition for the things the world offers in place of the presence of His word. The initial battle with the evil one is won by belief. The subsequent daily battles are won by living according to the Word that lives in us. Those battles are the ones that determine where our love lies: in truth, or in the world.

Across the street today is a yard sale going on. Two folks have entered into (what I believe is) their second marriages. And now they’re shedding what stuff they don’t have room for since they’ve combined their households. (Ain’t it amazing the crap we collect over the years…?) The tangible truth for me today is I’ve accumulated so much crap from the world that I need to get rid of it to make room for the truth in my heart. (Trust me – or examine my life) I’ve off-loaded a bunch over the years; and I’ve come to realize how much I need God’s word living in my heart so that I can continue to win the battles over the place of my love. The world is damned creative at coming up with more and more clever ways to steal my devotion from the simplicity of my faith and the deity of Christ. (His deity is a settle fact with me, but the lure of the world is constant in its offer of what it thinks I need for true happiness.)

The love of the world crowds out the Word of God and nullifies the love of God. Where is my True Love? Where does it reside – on the pages of Holy writ or written upon a holy heart?