THE GREATEST HABIT OF THE HEART

Is there one habit in that makes possible the truly good life, abundant living, soul prosperity,  ultimate joy, inner strength, wisdom, peace and life satisfaction?  If there is, tell me what it is and I will start to cultivate it.  It sounds more valuable than anything I can think of.  It must be the proverbial pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field that provokes selling all I have to secure it for my own.

It’s not a secret.  It’s not hidden or unknown.  It’s just daily ignored even by the most serious Christians.  It is passed over at this time of year when people assess the past year and make New Years resolutions.  It rarely tops the list of priorities adjusted from the previous year when priorities going forward are reordered and resolved.  It is the greatest habit of the heart loaded with unimaginable possibilities and promise.  It’s been right in front of us for two thousand years.  The tragedy is that it’s been largely ignored as a way of life, a daily practice, an open door to a fuller, more exciting and rewarding life.

Jesus made it very clear when he mentioned it in the middle of his sermon on the mount.  We find it in the gospel of Matthew (6:33).  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”   This simple habit is the priority that trumps all others.  It’s the prime priority that makes unnecessary all others.  We see this in the second part of the statement when Jesus promises that “all these things will be given to you as well.”  If we take this direction and promise of Christ seriously, it means all New Years resolutions are moot.  In habitually, daily, constantly seeking first and solely the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, we receive the values, priorities, and direction that is pleasing to God in all things.  It then is a matter of follow through in obedience to the word and will of God in our lives going forward.  The most amazing result we can anticipate is found in the words of the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:3&4) . . .
mount.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and Godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature . . .”

GOD IS FAITHFUL.  THANKS BE TO GOD.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION: PRIORITY, NOT PRIORITIES

It’s that time of year between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when millions of sincere people resolve to do better in some area(s) of their lives.  The list of resolutions include dropping ten (or 20 or 30) pounds, staying on the diet, exercising regularly, spending more time with family, reading one’s Bible more, having a more disciplined prayer life, drinking less coffee, cutting back on sugar and carbohydrates, and so on.  Some resolutions are more important than others and may even be ranked in value or importance as priorities.  Inevitably, what starts out as rankings of priorities in the New Year succumbs to shifting sands and a shuffling of the priority deck.  What resolve and fidelity there was to a number of priorities gradually surrenders to the expedient realities of daily life.  Most resolution priorities dissipate and resolution amnesia gradually takes over.  Those realities remind us of the the Apostle Paul’s proclamation, “What I will to do I do not do, and that which I will not to do, I do”  (Romans 7:19).

Recently, in a blog daily published on Facebook (seedbed.com/blog/) J.D. Walt makes the point that for authentic Christians there are not priorities, only a single priority.  The Bible captures the sole priority in different ways:  Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be added (Matthew 6:33); Have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5); Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly (Micah 6:8); Walk in love . . . be imitators of Christ (Ephesians 5:1); Be filled to the measure of the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19); Be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:15 & 16) in your conduct.

It is clear that we are God’s priority and His desire is that He be our only priority.  If the Lord God and his Kingdom is our sole priority, life takes a course in which all other things are ordered, all needs are covered, and we are blessed with God’s favor.  There is strength and wisdom for every situation.  We live with a will that reflects the Lord’s will for us.  We grow in the context of God’s presence and grace.  God’s love occasions in us an abundant life that exceeds anything we could ask for or imagine.  A life of obedient faith as an expression of our love for God is an expression of a life based on a sole priority.

Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness

and all these things shall be added unto you.

Matthew 6:33

IT'S THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

We become the company we keep.  It can be our glory or our demise.  The people with whom we spend time can bring health and healing.  And yet some people’s toxicity can be like the slow workings of arsenic poisoning spirit, soul, and body.  The company we seek for friendship and fellowship makes all the difference.  It is a matter of healthy or toxic exposures and encounters.

As this year winds to an end and a new year is upon us, the world is keeping a close eye on the Ebola epidemic in Africa. The preventive measures put in place with the help of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are designed to prevent exposure to active cases of the disease.  The exposures to insidious infectious diseases, especially those with no counter measures of antibiotics and/or antidotes, occasion tragic encounters with death.  Those whose bodies are weak and vulnerable, children and the elderly, are the most at risk.  The disease explodes into an epidemic through social contact with those already infected.  In short, it’s driven by the company people keep, the social exposures and encounters of daily life.

For two years, 1980 & ‘81, I served in an adjunct faculty position at the University of Hawaii while at the same time Chief Administrator of an array of mental health, drug, and alcohol recovery programs.  In the eight programs operated by The Salvation Army on the Island of Oahu, it was the Womens' Way residential program that worked exceptionally well with addicted women and their children to restore them physically, socially, and spiritually to health and wellbeing.  Womens' Way diverted women from the criminal justice system into treatment permitting them to bring their children with them. A woman's stay in the  program was only temporary lasting nine to twelve months.  It was artificial in not being the reality in which they would live for the remainder of their lives.   Eventually the women had to enter back into the real world.  But there would be variations on their real world going foreward depending on the company they chose to keep.  

A major principle of the program was to help the women and their kids eventually become established in a healthy, positive social and spiritual context that would continue the process of healing and lead to complete restoration.  This included avoiding the old life, the old neighborhood, and old toxic friends.  It meant helping them keep company with those who are healthy, loving, kind, generous, and affirming rather than others who were like social/spiritual Ebola, toxic, exploitive, and dangerous .  The company they were to keep going forward would make all the difference.  It would ensure the glory of recovery and restoration or their recidivism, exploitation, and demise.

At the heart of the program was introducing the women and their children to Christian faith communities.  We knew that there were grace filled, Bible believing fellowships on Oahu  who would embrace them, love them, and give the support that would strengthen them in their faith.  The social/spiritual milieu of a church family would help them discover Jesus and accept his loving embrace.  It would nurture and strengthen their faith and help them see the esteem that God has for them.  The company they would keep in such a faith community and the glory of God revealed in their love would be their glory as well.  The women and children who recovered from the trash bins of life would discover the love of Christ in the presence of His company.  His company today is their glory.  It's all about the company they keep!

"Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness
and all life will be added to you."  Matthew 6:33

PREMEDITATED LOVE

The word “premeditated” is almost always used in relation to murder.  Its use is not restricted though. The whole event of Christmas may be viewed as divinely premeditated.  While murder is the taking of life, Christmas is God's gift of everlasting life (John 6:40).  The irony is that man’s premeditated act of Christ’s murder made possible God’s premeditated gift of our salvation.  It was a reality that God envisioned and intended from the very beginning.  "For God so loved the world . . ."

 Christmas is far from a celebration of divine impulse.  Our Father did not make a spur of the moment decision to send Jesus his Son to earth for our salvation.  We see this in God’s premeditated plan for John The Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, to go before Jesus with the message of repentance and the good news of the Messiah’s coming.  Well before that, seven hundred years before, He told the prophet Isaiah about his plans (Isaiah 40:3 & 53).  God’s deep love for us has always been premeditated.  He planned our salvation from the very beginning. 

Over the millennia, our Father God has been faithful.  Now his prevenient grace calls us to respond.  How are we to respond to such lavish love?  We respond in his likeness as a people of intentional, premeditated love in celebration.  In his likeness, filled to the measure of the fullness of God, we arise each morning meditating on and remembering how long, wide, high, and deep is the love of God.  Then we go forward faithfully into his day with anticipatory thanks and praise as celebratory expressions of our love for Him and for all others.   We are a people of hope grounded in the optimism of God’s grace.  Hope anticipates. Hope expects.  Regardless of the circumstances, hope believes that God loves us and is faithful. 

Christmas focuses light on God’s premeditated love.  It calls us to celebrate his never failing love seen in His great gift of His Son and the continuing gift of the Holy Spirit.  Thanks be to God for his premeditated love!

THE KINGDOM OF GOD TAKES CONTROL

Christmas celebrates the point in time when the Kingdom of God grabbed hold of history and exercised control.  It did so quietly,in God's timing, through the Holy Spirit in the lives of a poverty-laden, humble, young couple in a wretched little country from a village that was not even on the map.  Their faithful obedience to God’s direction meant overcoming the scorn and prejudice of their village.  It included a dangerous journey by the couple to another small village days away with the young lady at the end of her third trimester of pregnancy.  The game plan was nothing less that the unprecedented revelation of Almighty God himself in the form of a newborn baby boy.  The event was prophesied for centuries, but at the time of the event it remained inconceivable, beyond anyone’s expectation and belief.  It took place outside the seats of imperial power, outside of wealth and status, and outside the usual trappings of royal ascendancy.  The Son of God, Jesus the Christ, was born and lived life fully human and fully divine.

The following events for The Son's subsequent thirty-three years never varied from God’s long intended plan.  God took control and remained in control through the faithful obedience of his Son even unto and through death.  God remained in control through the resurrection of the Son, the ascension of the Son to the right hand of God the Father, and the fullness of God as the gift of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, followers of the Risen Christ. The Kingdom continues today taking control on earth as it does in heaven. It calls us to the same humility and obedience as the couple two thousand years ago who were poor economically, but rich in their faithful response to God’s calling. Glory to God in the highest!

The Kingdom of God is the be-all and the end-all of repentance, conversion, and the new birth. That is of the utmost importance . . . the most amazing individual and social fact of the universe -- the Kingdom of God.   -   E. Stanley Jones