A LETTER TO MY ONE YEAR OLD GRANDSON, A SAINT IN THE MAKING

 A Letter to my one year old grandson, a saint in the making.

Dear Jacob,

You just turned one year old.  You are remarkable.  God has gifted you with so many abilities already.  You are ready to take your first step.  You enjoy banging on the piano, but some times touch it ever so softly.  You can use your own spoon and bowl, but you like to play with your food.  You love watermelon.  It is so much fun getting to know you and seeing you grow!

One day you will be old enough to recognize that some people are different.  We call them saints.  Your dad and mom are saints.  So is your grammy.  You will likely become a saint too.  When you accept Jesus into your heart and life, you begin your journey as a saint in the making.

Some day you will have your own personal mission and ministry.  Life is ministry. From your spiritual heritage you will discover that the mission of The Salvation Army is to  save souls, grow saints, and serve suffering humanity.  This mission corresponds to John Wesley’s continuum of grace (Via Salutis) that runs from justifying grace, to sanctifying and glorifying grace.  Once a person has repented of sin, confessed their faith in Christ, and been reconciled with God in Christ, growing of a saint begins.  You may be a saint.  But what is a saint and what does growth in grace look like?

 

As a saint you become a follower of Christ maturing in the faith with a heart purified by the Holy Spirit so that your head, heart, and life together reflect holiness, Christ-likeness.  As you grow to know Christ, love Christ, and live Christ, your maturity and purity of heart will become the marks of you as a saint.  

The exercise of growing as a saint is the making of a disciple.  It involves God helping you to bring your thinking, feeling, and living together over time so that at the intersection of the three (head, heart, and life) your growth as a saint is made possible.  When we think of head, heart, and life, psychologist call these three areas of your life cognitive, affective, and behavioral.  Theologians say ortho (straight, right)doxy(thinking), orthopathy(right passion, or feeling), and orthopraxy (straight practice or living).  Its how you think, feel, and live in ways that are increasingly right and good because they are guided by scripture and pleasing to God.

Think of Jesus as the perfect one who is the complete overlapping of the three 

spheres of head, heart, and life.  Christ is your example and becoming like him is the goal.  The more integrated and overlapping the three circles of your head, heart, and life, the stronger you become as a Christ-following disciple-saint.  Count on it.  You can grow to be increasingly like of Jesus.  In the words of the Apostle Peter, you can increasingly participate in God's divine nature (2 Peter 1: 4).  

Growing saints is a process of sanctification.  As you become more and more like Jesus along the way, God will  encounter you.  Those encounters are positive crises of illumination (“I am a sinner in need of forgiveness and cleansing”), of compassion and strength to love others, and of cleansing and infilling with all the fullness of God and his love.  Then there will be more growing to be more and more like Jesus.  Being a saint is the most natural thing in the world when you stay close to God and follow Jesus every step of the way. 

As you grow up, we will talk about these things in ways you can understand at each stage of your spiritual journey.  You have a wonderful journey ahead of you.  My prayer is that you get to know Jesus more and more and grow to be more and more like him all the days of your life.

I love you Jacob my saint in the making,

Grandpa

HOLINESS AND THE BULL

". . . renew a right spirit within me . . ."  Psalm 53:10

What does holiness and bull-riding have to do with one another?  Is this a penetrating question on your heart and mind these days? :-)   Actually, I never thought about it until reading Hubert Harriman and Bary Callen’s Color Me Holy (Aldersgate Press, 2013, p.55).  Unlike many Christian writers who use sports metaphors for illustrations to  underscore their points, Harriman and Callen bypass football, baseball and golf and go straight for rodeo and with good result in regard to teaching the idea of holiness of heart and life.  Here’s what they say . . .

 “One of the wildest things we know is watching a rodeo, especially the bull-riding contest.  The attempts to throw off the rider are incredible.  How different this is from the steer-lassoing contest where the horse thinks only of working for its master.  The difference is in submission.  The horse could be fully trained because it had submitted its will to the owner’s will – something unlike those bulls.”

Harriman and Callen hit the proverbial nail on the head.  Discipling believers is especially difficult with Christians who are inclined to kick.  When their will is pre-eminent and when they resist God’s leading they buck against learning and growth.  They dig in to being “the bucking bull or bronco of the rodeo with no surrender.”  In contrast, when there is full surrender to the will and ways of God, amazing things happen.  This is what happened when Abraham obeyed God, when Moses followed God’s direction, when Gideon took obedient steps of faith, and when David prayed “Restore me to the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:12).

When we stop kicking, let the bull go, and surrender ourselves to the will of God, amazing things happen.  Holiness is possible, because holiness thrives on a willing spirit.  Create in me that willing spirit, O Lord!

HOLY & RIGHTEOUS: So what’s the difference?

Holy and righteous are not words commonly spoken these days.  Well, that’s not completely true.  Holy gets a workout as in “holy cow, holy mackerel, holy #%@*” as an expletive of surprise. 

Recently, I’ve noticed an up-tick in the use of both ideas (holiness and righteousness) by young people.  There is an emergent interest among in late teens and early twenties in matters of justice.  They show a longing for something higher, better, more pure, whole, and honorable.  They want to do right especially as it relates to righting the wrongs they observe in the world.  They seek to actively respond to injustice.  Having been a college professor and university president over the past 40 years, I had the privileged position of being with four decades of young people who peak in their idealism between 20 and 25 years of age.  I am convinced that there is a difference in today’s generation, different from their parents in this matter of holiness and righteousness.

Holiness and righteousness are two sides of a coin.  Holiness is all about sanctity, godliness, being devout and devoted to a standard of purity and perfection of the heart.  In the Wesleyan theological tradition, holiness is entire sanctification, perfection that is neither more nor less than pure love expelling sin and governing both the heart and life of a child of God.*  Holiness speaks to who we are, our being and essence. It is the essence of God in us, His indwelling nature resident in our hearts and lives.  Holiness is holy love permeating our being through the presence within us of a Holy God whose nature is pure love.  Holiness is where daily knowing Christ, loving Christ, and living Christ come together more and more.

 While holiness is the nature of our being, righteous is the nature of our doing.  It is the characteristic of our actions flowing out of our being.  Righteousness reflects our morality, decency, honesty, and our orientation to justice.  While holiness reflects who we are in Christ, righteousness speaks to what then we do, the moral living out of our nature and calling.  They are two sides of a coin, the being and the doing, the heart and the life.  Young people are interested in righteousness, in justice and addressing injustice.  What is needed is the appreciation of the interaction of holiness and righteousness, the understanding that righteousness uncoupled from holiness will lead eventually to self-righteousness.  Addressing matters of injustice must be grounded in the purity of one’s heart and the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.

This then brings up the “So what?” question.  What’s the point here?  Young people are tuned into these things, especially righteousness and injustice.  It is time they have a chance to see that the foundation of righteous living is purity of heart, the indwelling Holy Spirit, holy love which comes from the fullness of God in the human heart.  This then is a call for more teaching, preaching, writing, and conversation about holiness and righteousness.  These are two old words that still hold power and promise for young people whose interests call for understanding and action.

*Posted on the wall of the SEEDBED office at Asbury Theological Seminary.

BLOOD & FIRE: GHASTLY OR GLORIOUS

“Ooo, ghastly!” was the response from a colleague when I hosted a faculty retreat at The Salvation Army’s Waioli Tea Room in Honolulu years ago.  I was a young professor at the University of Hawaii just working hard to be accepted by my peers. I arranged for the Army’s tea room/restaurant as the venue for a faculty development day for the

faculty of the Graduate School of Public Health.  After lunch, I gave a walking tour of the Army’s beautiful Manoa Valley campus.  We arrived at the Hawaii Division’s headquarters. Above the entrance was a large crest with the words, Blood and Fire.  For faculty members whose lives were devoted to health promotion and disease prevention, this was a shock.  It was also an opportunity to witness to a group composed mostly of agnostics.  I was able to share the heart of the Army’s mission and ministry and my own experience of Christ’s marvelous gift of a full salvation.

The blood of Jesus Christ and the gift (fire) of the Holy Spirit were God’s two amazing works of grace. The crest made it clear that the heart of the Army and its motivation for ministry was spiritual.  In a very personal way, it was a public “coming out” moment as a Christian and as a Salvationist for me with my faculty colleagues .  I didn’t know how my colleagues would respond in the days and years ahead, but looking back I now realize that my stock relationally with them rose that day because of the straightforward witness to God through the SA crest.   The idea of grace was something new to them, but they were familiar to the idea of compassion and they gave me a dignified, gracious hearing.

As followers of Christ, we are to be bold and courageous, to seize the opportunities as they arise to witness to the grace of God and his work of full salvation.  To do otherwise is to miss opportunities to lift up Christ so that others may see Him in all his glory.  We are called to live in such a way that others see our good works, hear our testimony, and glorify God.  

Lord, thank your for the cross and the gift of your Spirit.  By your Holy Spirit, help us to recognize every opportunity to witness to your amazing grace and to seize the moment to share with others your love. Amen!

Blood and Fire, ghastly?  No glorious!