HELPFUL & NECESSARY REDUNDANCIES

As a kid growing up, I remember mumbling the phrase, “That’s redundant.”  By that I meant  “You don’t have to keep repeating yourself.  I got it.  Now shut it.”  As you might imagine, I would only mumble such a response under my breath.  My frustration was usually in response to an older person (brother, parent, coach) micro-managing my behavior at the time.  For years I thought “redundant” was a negative word implying words and deeds that were unnecessarily repetitive.  This orientation likely peaked in my early adolescence when I naturally thought that I was smarter than my parents and when hubris was just to be accepted as a well deserved reality.  Looking back I can see how at age fourteen I thought my parents were rather dull and lacking in understanding about life.  By age twenty-one I was surprised how much wisdom they had accrued in a short period of time.

With greater maturity over the years, I came to appreciate how wise and smart my parents really were and how their redundancies were really helpful and necessary to my development.  One in particular was reading the Bible as a family at the dinner table every night finishing with prayer.  My father called this redundancy "returning thanks."  Whoa to us if we left the table early and skipped this redundant practice.

You may remember the old joke that goes like this: a visitor to New York City asks an old virtuoso musician for directions: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall.”  The old fellow replies, “Practice, practice, practice.”   I love that story, because it is so true broadly in life.  Not everything is like learning to ride a bike in that once you learn you don’t have to learn twice.  This is particularly true in human relationships and spiritual formation.   There redundancies are necessary and helpful if relationships are to grow into intimacy.

William Booth, co-founder in 1865 of The Salvation Army, was known to say from time to time, “The tendency of fire is to go out.”  What he meant was that our spiritual relationship with God will die out unless the fire of that relationship is redundantly stoked, fed fuel, and continually attended to.  In other words, there is a necessary and helpful redundancy to any relationship (friendship, marriage, business, and spiritual journey).  The fire of a relationship must receive attention and care whether it is to be blazing as in a steel mill or just giving warmth and light in the hearth of a home.

Spiritually speaking, to grow in grace and intimacy with God, it is helpful and necessary to daily practice what John Wesley called the means of grace: prayer, reading Scripture, meditation, fellowship with other believers, worship, reading wholesome literature, giving thanks and praise to God always as testimony to his grace and provision, and all the other ways we remain open to God’s presence and appreciate His identity.  To paraphrase the Carnegie Hall joke,  “How do I get to being “filled to the measure of the fullness of God?” (Christ-likeness, Holiness, intimacy with God)  Answer:  Helpful and necessary redundancy of the means of grace are required.  This is not because the means are ends in themselves.  They remain God’s means.  They are his ways in which God draws near and speaks to us revealing his love and guiding us in the journey with Him.

A good place to start with helpful and necessary redundancy is between an appreciation of Thanksgiving and the glory of Christmas.  Try thirty days of verbally articulating thanks and praise (affirmation) to those to whom you are close.   Watch how it spills over into your spiritual life.  You will discover its salutary impact on all your relationships.  You will also discover how God will use your thanks and praise to draw you even closer to Him throughout this special holiday season.  Thanks and praise be to God for the possibilities of helpful and necessary redundancies!

SALVATION FROM, TO, AND FOR

Why do so many Christians mistake the start of the race with the finish line?  It’s what I call bus stop religion and it’s not enough.  What I mean is that too many Christians’ orientation to the Christian life is “Get Saved. Go to Heaven.”  Salvation is a kind of fire insurance.  Take out the policy and hope for the best.  In other words, buy the ticket to heaven and just wait for the glory bus.  Not sadly, but happily there’s so much more.  Our salvation is much bigger.  It’s a much more glorious reality.

To start with, salvation only from sin is magnificent, but it is not enough.  It’s like being satisfied with only a third of a loaf.  God’s plan is a full salvation.  We are saved not only from, but also saved to, and saved for.  It’s straight forward and easy to grasp.  We are from somewhere, going to somewhere, and for a purpose.  Where we’ve gone from is a life of sin, estrangement, and alienation from God.  We’ve gone on to redemption by God, and reconciliation with God.  It’s then possible to go on to restoration to God’s likeness, purity of heart, holiness.  At least that’s the gospel plan of a full salvation.  Sin separates us from God and there is nothing we can do about it.  It is in our nature. Our Father God does not desire to leave us to our own devices in the mess which our sin occasions.  He saves us FROM our sin.  His redemptive act through the death and resurrection of Jesus His Son paid the penalty for our sin and established a new relationship for us with Him.  Accept it.  Believe it.  Receive it as a free gift of grace.  It can't be earned. By God’s grace through our faith in him, we are redeemed through the blood sacrifice of Christ on the cross and our relationship with God is reconciled. It is a new beginning making it possible for us to continue to grow in the grace.   By God’s grace through our faith we are being saved (restored) TO his likeness in holiness and righteousness.  He saves us not only for our own good, but FOR a purpose.  The purpose is found in the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:36-40) and Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20).  So a full salvation is from, to and for.

Sadly, so many Christians are only oriented to a partial salvation.  Some embrace only the first part, saved from sin.  Their idea of the gospel is limited to “get saved, go to heaven.”  They accept Christ as savior and it’s “one and done.”  What God intends as a commencement they understand to be the finish line.  It’s like buying all the right clothes and equipment to climb a mountain, getting completely outfitted, getting to where the path starts and then sitting down on a bench never to begin the journey.  Or it is like buying a ticket for a bus trip from coast to coast and never getting on the bus.  They are saved from, but miss out on the fullness of God’s salvation.

Still others begin to climb the mountain or get on the bus to enjoy the journey personally with hope of a positive life experience.  Along the way they grow, mature, learn a great deal, have great fellowship with others and with God.  The whole journey is wholesome, exciting, and beneficial.  It means encountering challenges, being tempted to get off the path or be diverted along the way, but their obedient faith and perseverance makes it possible for them to experience mountain tops of holiness, greater intimacy with God, and real joy in the life.  They are saved to greater things God intends for them, but live a life which might be understood as a kind of holy narcissism.  This is because they think their salvation (restoration to holiness and its fruit) is for their sole benefit. 

Dean Hinson in an article published this month in Word & Deed (Nov. , 2014)

makes it clear that our restoration and experience of God’s fullness (holiness), our full salvation, is for a purpose.  He puts it this way.  “What is important is ‘faith expressing itself in love.’ (Galatians 5:6) When the Holy Spirit controls our lives (and desires) and these fruits are being produced, we will feed the hungry, give the thirsty a drink, invite the stranger into our home, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison.  Jesus will say to us, “I tell you the truth when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.’ ”  

(Matthew 25:40). 

Salvation is from sin (disobedience, iniquity, trespasses, transgression, etc.), to Christ-likeness (holiness), and beyond for the purpose of obedient faith expressed in love to God and others in service.  Thanks be to God.  God's full salvation is by His grace.  It is always more than enough.

NOT EVERYONE'S CUP RUNNETH OVER

NOT EVERYONE'S RUNNETH OVER

My parents were Salvation Army officers.  All six kids in the family grew up “volunteering” in various ways throughout the Army's annual Christmas effort.  My father, Frank Raymond Sr., died in 1970 at the age of 47, but until then he had a talent for public relations and marketing the compassion of The Salvation Army.  In the mid-nineteen-fifties, he created a PR pitch during Christmas time with the picture of a Salvation Army shield on a coffee mug.  The pitch simply said, “Not everyone’s runneth over!”  It pricked the conscience of the community toward the poorest of the poor.  Today the Army’s mug says “Doing the Most Good.”  I like my father’s creativity, because it kept the focus on those others who needed “the most good.”

       Praying over Thanksgiving dinner in a poor family's home

 A friend of mine, retired Salvation Army officer, Major Patricia Davis, writes:

“I just finished taking applications this morning. My last application was a young mother with 5 children.....some of her request for "gifts" for her young children were: a blanket for his bed, twin sheets for a few others, Christmas dresses....a few toys...but mostly necessities.  I thought my heart would break and it was all I could do not to cry in front of her (I do tend to get emotional) .... It sure puts things in perspective, especially when some people are a bit more extravagant in their requests.

I did break down after she left...leaving my poor husband and other volunteers dismayed as to why I was falling apart.....bless them.  Tonight when I snuggle under my warm blanket I know I will be thinking of those dear children. And we are putting some of those necessities together now and I will deliver them.” 

Making the last drop count

Thousands of Salvation Army personnel this Christmas season have a compassionate appreciation that not everyone’s cup runneth over and so it is their heart after the likeness of God’s own heart that moves them to do the most good and to do it in Jesus’ name.  Unless we too are moved with compassion, then what?

GLORY TO GOD . . . ALWAYS!

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with

praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.

-Psalm 100:4

Glory to God in the Highest!

Luke 2:14

Nothing gives more joy than the expression of gratitude. Joy is the experience of both the giver and the receiver.  The holiday calendar from November to the new year resonates with joy beginning with the giving of thanks.  The Psalmist unknowingly captures the temporal sequence of today’s calendar perfectly:  In Psalm 100:4 the gates of thanksgiving always preceded the courts of praise, and so it is for us between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Glory in the highest.  The Psalmist reflects the sequence of worship by Pilgrims to Jerusalem singing psalms of thanks to God for his provision and salvation.  Entering the temple with thanks, their joy spilled over into praise.  So does our joy from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  But then it may spill over into and throughout the New Year.

While thanksgiving and praise during Advent characterizes the season, it can be more.  We may develop the habit of giving thanks and praise to the Lord year round.  Every time God pours grace into our lives, he waits for a response.  We acknowledge his great gift of a Savior at Christmas and Easter.  Glory to God!  But God's grace is not restricted to the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The joy of thanks and praise can be habits of the heart year round in response to his year round grace.  We need only let the joy of the Lord spill over into our New Year resolutions with a commitment to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4).  Thanks and glory be to God . . .  always!

Be joyful always

1 Thessalonians 5:16