The Father's Freedom

The Father wants our freedom



He was tall and thin and pale and had the bushiest--shockingly bushy--eyebrows I had ever seen.  Walter was a retired school teacher who drove up the mountain to camp every day to run the zipline over the lake for the boys who wanted to soar out over the water.  

He slowly carried the two heavy pulleys down the road, haul them up the tower with himself, and then yell out in his southern baritone, "Let the HIGH WIRE FLY!"  


This was the signal for the boy, held up only by the strength of his hands, who would launch himself over the flat water 20 feet below and gather speed as he raced to the shallows near the opposite bank.  Soaked and exhilarated, the boy would then unfasten the pulley and lug it back along the road.  


It wasn't so much Walter's age nor his physical characteristics that resonate with the mental picture I have of God the Father:  it was instead his pure delight in seeing boys free and joyful and delighted.  He would chuckle as they launched themselves out into into space.  He was patient and encouraging "That a boy--you can do it--look how strong you are!"  as the child half-dragged the the 12 pound piece of metal back to the tower for another launch into the air.  He took such obvious joy in our freedom--that moment when we overcame the limits of gravity and set out on a wind-ripping adventure. 


Walter knew this joy himself because, old though he was, he was a child of our heavenly Father.  Every time he gave a testimony at campfire or Sunday service he sparkling eyes would begin to weep almost unbecomingly as he told us of the Father's love.  He recounted the story of the leper who came to Jesus saying, "Lord if you will, you can make me clean."  and how Jesus touched him and said, "I will, be clean."  


The leper's freedom from disease had become Walter's freedom from sin and guilt.  The leper's joy in knowing the love of God had become Walters joy in knowing himself to be a child of the Father.  The way he exhorted the boys to drag the weight to him, how he did the heavy lifting, it was all in keeping with Jesus who said, "come to me you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you, take my yoke upon you." 

Jesus is the most free man ever to live.  Never was there a man so free of need, anxiety or attachment.  Never was there a man so free from soul crushing affects of the disapproval of others, nor so free from the need to please.  Never was there a man so able to go “as the wind blows.”  Yet his whole life was centered on obeying his Father.  In his active ministry he ordered his steps with military precision achieving goal after goal undeterred by any outside concern...but he always had time to bless little children. 

This is the Father's heart:  our freedom from sin; our knowledge of his love.  This is his yoke.

Father you delight in my freedom.  You are the most free being in the universe and your delight is that I become like you.  You have delivered me from sin and death in your Son Jesus.  You have placed my burden upon him and now the weight of guilt, the iron of the nails of the cross, are fashioned in his hands into an instrument of flight.  Help me to understand that true freedom is doing your will and that you will that I be separated from the bondage of my past.  Complete the work you have begun in me.  Let me soar with Jesus unshackled by the world, the flesh, and the devil.  Give me grace to walk with you all the days of my life.  

Restored as Sons

Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they? (Matt 6:26)

Just because George Muller was in seminary and training to become a pastor, it didn't mean he was following God.  He had spent his youth fulfilling his own desires--desires that none of his earthly father's riches (and they were substantial) could satisfy.  He was a wealthy seminary student on the way to becoming a pastor of a large and comfortable congregation when he heard the call of Jesus to give up a life centered on pleasing himself.  


When George came to understand his identity as a son of his heavenly Father, it was his natural father who opposed him on the grounds that he couldn’t make a good living unless he looked after himself.  Then came almost continuous disappointments as he left his homeland for England where he was to prepare for a life of gospel with Jews in Persia.  After disagreements with the missions board had been overcome he was forced to withdraw due to his health.  He began to preach and pastor in England instead and there his life began to prove the truth of Jesus' words--that he had a loving Father in heaven. 


Muller's work was characterized by almost continuous self emptying:  he took no regular salary in order that church members give from love of God rather than duty; he and his new wife sold her trousseau and gave the money for the gospel; he forbade pew rents in the church as it scandalously favored the rich over the poor.  And all of this was of a piece with what he later became known for:  opening his home to orphans.  He and Mary opened their lives to 30 children.  

Then they built homes for 130 then almost 2000.  By the time he died he had clothed, fed, educated, and housed over 10,000 orphans.  But the most miraculous thing about the Muller’s ministry is that God the Father provided for all these children without George or Mary ever asking any human for anything.  “Your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask,” Jesus said.  Muller believed this, and took his requests only to Him.  “I want the people of England to know that they really do have a heavenly Father so I resolved never to ask for our needs from men”

     When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases like the gentiles     do for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this, “Our Father…”(Matt 6:7-9)

“Our Father:” while perhaps no two other of Jesus’ words are as easily recognized as coming from him, it is more certain that no two others are as ignored.  And although ignored, none have the power to change us like these.  He puts these two little words in our mouth to radically reorient us from estrangement to sonship, death to life, and darkness to light.  “Father” is a word of personal address, a word of family relationship, and a word of love.   This one simple word identifies us as sons and is a token of the special audience we are granted with the master and creator of the universe.  Though God is worthy of all praise, Jesus did not teach us to flatter him.  This would be manipulation.  Instead, Jesus has us address God person to Person, child to Parent. 

Though we had become estranged from God, Jesus rebuilds our relationship to him stone by stone starting at the foundation:  trust.  On the human level, we see broken trust all the time; interestingly, it is most often the one who broke trust who has the hardest time entering back into the relationship and becoming reconciled. And it is so often left to the one who was betrayed to work on the rebuilding.  It is just so with God and man.  Though God had done nothing to destroy our relationship with him, he takes action to restore it by teaching us, the betrayers, how to trust him again.  As a token of his trust and a pledge of his love, he sends his Only Son to live among us, the rebels.  Emptying himself of divine prerogatives (glory, perfect freedom and power and health) and becoming a servant, his Son Jesus shows us God’s love simply by his life among us. And as prayer is the medium by which we relate to God person to Person, it is here that Jesus takes care to instruct us how to trust: he teaches us to pray to the God who is our Father.  

This writer notes with embarrassment his former lack of understanding concerning the Father’s love and the reality of joyful interaction and intimacy with Him.  Though I knew my heavenly Father as a child, I lost this simple awareness as a young adult.  Searching the scriptures to find out the character of my heavenly Father has been more valuable than anything else in my restoration to a joyful walk with Him.   The gospels of Matthew and John are particularly helpful in this respect for in them the words of Jesus concerning the Father show us his very heart.  Both books are, among other things, sustained meditations on what it means to be a son by adoption of our Creator.  As sons, our needs are known[i], we can talk to our Father[ii]; and we are loved[iii]; provided for[iv], and seen and heard and rewarded by him[v]. God values us so much that he offers the greatest gifts we could possibly be given, fellowship with the Himself in the Persons of the Trinity—with the Father and the Son[vi] and the Holy Spirit[vii]. 

As we come to know him as Father, we become like him[viii].  The family resemblance begins to show as we grow more mature.  Jesus is the measure of this likeness.  The church has been given to us as a school until we reach mature manhood (and womanhood), until we grow up into “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ[ix]”  What a gift he gives us when he makes us his sons! 

 

Father of Jesus, our Father:  thank you for sending your Son to teach me who I am in you.  Thank you for re-establishing me as a member of your family and teaching me to trust you in Jesus.   Continue this work of restoration in me that my words in prayer to you, "our Father," might not be in vain but find fulfillment through your grace.  Help me live into my identity as a son who you love.  Where I have doubted your love, I ask your forgiveness; where I have pretended to be my own provider and protector, I ask your pardon.  You want me to grow so that I look like you; I give you myself.  Let me know the length and the breadth and the height and the depth of your love through your Son Jesus.  In his name I pray, Amen.

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[i] (Matt 6:8)

[ii] (Matt 6:9)

[iii] (John 16:27; 17:26)

[iv] (Matt 6:8)

[v] (Matt 5:16; 6:6)

[vi] (John 14:23)

[vii] (Matt10:20)

[viii] (Matt 5:45, 48) 

[ix] (Ephesians 4:11-13)

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As Jesus Suffered, So Shall We

Felicitas, a young Christian mother to be in Carthage, was accused of worshipping strange gods.  Ordered to offer sacrifice Caesar, she refused and was thrown in prison to be used as sport with the lions.  While giving birth in the cell beneath the Coliseum, she cried out in agony.  Her guard questioned her, “If you can’t handle the pain of childbirth, how will you stand up against the lions?”  Thinking of the curse given to mortals as a result of our sinfulness--specifically the pain given women in childbearing--she replied, “Today I suffer the consequences of my own sinfulness.  Tomorrow I won’t suffer alone, but Christ will suffer in me.”

A defeated, powerless Christian is an oxymoron.  Not because he is righteous on his own, nor because he has the strength in himself to overcome sin, death, and the devil, but because Jesus has won the victory on Calvary and works it into him as he suffers with Christ dying daily to himself and daily finding new life in him.  This is no “pie in the sky” overcoming (“everything will be good when you finally die”) or a willful suppression of the difficult facts of our existence (“everything is just rosy in my life”).  Our victory happens now, in time; it is costly and deals with our sins honestly.

We would like victory without suffering, but it can’t be so.  We would like to coast into God’s heaven having hardly broken a sweat, but Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me[i].”  A victorious life is one of suffering because it is one of constant struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. 

Victory comes through combat.  Combat implies pain.  Christ suffered and said that we would too.  St. Peter wrote about this to churches in Asia Minor, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God”(1 Peter 4:1-2). This is the battle—for whom are we living?  For whom are we fighting?

When St. Paul exhorted his protégé Timothy to “fight the good fight,” he twice used the word from which we get the word “agony.”  There is no victory without suffering because it hurts to say no to the temptations of the flesh.  It is not easy to choose the narrow path of obedience over the attractive offers of the world and the devil.  

But to do so in the power of Christ is to participate in his victory.  Note the identification of the believer with his Lord.  Since he suffered, so will you.  We’d rather stress the vicarious nature of our salvation story - “Since he did it, I don’t need to.”  It’s become an article of faith in the weakened Protestantism of today: since we are saved by grace through faith, we had better not attempt to do anything.  This, of course, uses the means of our salvation (Christ’s totally gracious self-offering for us undeserving sinners) as a screen for ignoring the divine command to live a life like Jesus.  No, we can’t earn the merits of the blood of the lamb no matter how perfectly we begin to live.  As Archbishop Cranmer put it so comprehensively, Jesus on the cross “made there by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.”  But Jesus himself expects us to participate in his life in such a way that the very life of God’s overcoming and victorious power will be made manifest in us:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” shows us that he expects our suffering and eventual victory.  “I am with you always to the end of the ages,[ii]” shows that he is with us working his victory out in our lives.

Are you victorious over sin?  Do you care so much for the new life of God in you that you will honor it at all costs—even at the expense of your body?  Why are exposed as weaklings and cowards in comparison to servant girls in Roman times?  The Christian life should be one of training for, reckoning on, and arming ourselves for battle and fighting the fight.  Could it be that the world is not evangelized because we have not armed ourselves?  Because we have not accepted the suffering to which all disciples are called? 

Father God, giver of all virtue and strength, give us grace like Felicitas to hold on to the victory of Christ even while suffering.  Let no fear dissuade us, no pain prevent us, and no memory of past sin hinder us in our struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil.  As Christ became like me and suffered the death I deserve, let me become like him a son who knows obedience through pain that you might be glorified in me; all this we ask through him who lives in us, even Jesus.

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[i] Luke 9:23

[ii] Mt 28:20

The Fight and Jesus’ power

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”(Gal 2:20).

Joseph was fleeing the war in Rwanda while genocide began.  But he was not afraid of death:  God had rescued Joseph physically and spiritually. Shelled by mortar fire and buried in the earth by the explosion, hunted like an animal, facing danger on many sides, he had come to the end of himself while meeting Jesus.  He pledged his life to share the joy and truth of the gospel for the one who died for him.  So although they were refugees themselves, Joseph and his parents, who were also Christians, hid and fed two women who were running two days ahead of a murderous posse.  

   Hearing that the killers were closing in, Joseph sent them on their way just in time.  “Where are the women the people say you have?” they demanded.  “What women?” He answered.  The men left with threats and a reminder that Joseph and his family would be killed if they helped anyone from the hunted tribe.   

That week he was called to preach to the local Anglican Church.  He chose as his text the story of creation from the book of Genesis.  He preached forcefully that the killing was wrong; that in God’s eyes we are one people with the same blood; that they should help the fleeing tribe; and that murderers, without God’s grace, would go to a fiery hell for destroying the children of God made in his image.  

He said all this in a culture that had become filled with the fear of death, where the gangs were using this fear to force others to join them and to silence all who opposed them.  Though Joseph didn’t know it, the head of the posse was in the congregation as he preached.  This man heard the word of God and was convicted of his sin.  He cried out, 
           “I am a murderer:  I have killed eight people!”  
The congregation surrounded him, prayed for him, and counseled him.  Joseph told him to share the message of Jesus with those in the posse.  He did.  The posse disbanded and many refugees were allowed to escape the country because the killers were changed from the inside out.   Joseph was not afraid of death; what could they do to a man who had been “crucified with Christ,” who had already died to his old way of life and was now living out of the power of Jesus?

From the moment we wake up to reality, we are being attacked, bullied, and besieged by forces that want to keep us from what is true, good and beautiful.  Most of all, these forces want to keep us separated from God.  We awake to life in war.  Worse yet, this war is even inside us--at the gates of our hearts.  

  

Acknowledging the inner nature of the conflict, Paul writes,

        I delight in the law of God in my inmost being, but I see in my members another     law waging war against the law of my mind…” (Rom 7:22-23)

The consequences are even more enormous than we think:  what seemed like a threat to his physical life was for Joseph a fight over the destiny of his soul and the souls of those around him.  Who does he belong to?  Whom will he follow? Though it would, on some level, have been easier to give in to the devil who “prowls around like a roaring lion seeking some one to devour,” the Holy Spirit speaking through St. Peter charged Joseph and all Christians to “resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8-9).  Why is suffering required?  The logic of our suffering with Christ begins at the cross.  There Jesus suffered and died with and for us emptying himself[i] and becoming a sin offering[ii].  He identifies himself with us dying the death we deserve so that we could be identified with him in the life he lived:  a life of overcoming sin, flesh and the devil.  How do we overcome?  We do it in the power of Jesus. Maybe it would be better to say that he does it in us. Paul, summing up both our death to sin and our new life of victory writes the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.[iii]” How far on this road of suffering are we called to walk?  To the end.  The book of Revelation gives us a view of the saints who have made it to the end:

       And they have conquered [the devil] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (Rev 12:11).

What happens when fear the fear of death is taken away from a believer?  He perseveres until the end.  And in life or death, in victory or defeat, the life of Jesus is manifest in him. 

Almighty God and Father, whose love is so great that you sent your son Jesus to die for us; enlighten the eyes of my heart that I may see Jesus victorious over sin and death, grant me grace to understand that I have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him in his resurrection, and give me such freedom from the fear of death that I might confess his name before all rulers of the earth and join him in triumph before you.

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[i] Phil 2:7

[ii] Rom 3:25

[iii] Galatians 2:20