The Initiator

Initiative.

It’s a concept so close to our hearts we scarcely realize it’s there, so ingrained in our lifestyle we don’t see it for what it is. And it’s so valued by our culture we look down on those without it. What, in fact, is initiative? Webster tells us it’s “the action of taking the first step or move, responsibility for beginning or originating.”

Ah, that’s the American way! We value those who create from scratch, or take up a worthy cause and rally the troops, or see a need and construct a plan and get the ball rolling. We set those people up as useful and devoutly to be imitated. They are worth something! They are contributing! - unlike the riffraff who loll about taking life as it comes. (And have you noticed that it seems the further north you travel in our great land, the more highly drive and industry seem to be valued? If that’s true, we live in a hotbed of initiative!)

Unfortunately, this lopsided value system permeates our spiritual life as well. As we learned Sunday, too often we go into a relationship with God under the assumption that we have originated the idea of reconciliation with Him. We took the first step, and God responded. That mindset continues to permeate our walk with Christ: we plan great things for Him, and ask Him to respond by blessing it all. We set about reforming our attitudes and actions, and beg His assistance. And when we fail repeatedly, we blame ourselves and muster initiative for yet another attack on the world, the flesh, or the devil.

Theologians have a term that sets us straight and comforts at the same time: prevenient grace. God wants us; God calls us; God softens our hearts; God draws us to Himself; God keeps us there; God changes us into the image of His Son; God will lead us Home. We have to choose to respond and to cooperate… but He initiates and enables everything.

If we are proud and self-reliant (Luciferian qualities, by the way), this truth will humiliate us, will stir up angry resistance within us. But if we are humble (is that why He said we must become as little children?), it will comfort and encourage us. Why? Because salvation and sanctification and glorification no longer rests on our puny shoulders, no longer depends on our trying hard enough or being persistent enough.

Arms exhausted from trying to fan the spiritual flame can relax. Feet aching from frantic service to God can rest. We are not initiators. We are responders. We don’t need to think up a plan to save ourselves or the world. We can’t produce spiritual fruit by our own efforts. And we don’t get extra credit for expending extra energy on self-generated projects for the Kingdom.

We can lay it all down, along with our pride, and wait on the Lord. Wait on His initiative. Listen for the still, small voice of His Spirit.

Then, “whatever He says to you, do it.”

Giving Thanks

Pastor Rick noted Sunday that he only has a limited number of sermons left; therefore my opportunities to respond to them are also limited. I’d like to take this blog, then, to speak for us all and say that (at the risk of sounding like a mutual admiration society) FAC will “thank their God upon every remembrance of you,” too, Pastor Rick and Kathy. In this season of thanksgiving, we want to express our gratitude not only to God but also to both of you:

Thank you.

Thank you for setting a high standard for us all in your conduct and speech and attitudes. Your example has called us higher in all these areas. And when we’ve chosen the low road, we’ve never been able to excuse it away, saying, “I’m just following the leader here.”

Thank you for shepherding all the flock, not just a favorite few or an influential circle. Thank you for genuinely caring about not just the elders and the members with large pockets, but also the seeker on the fringes and the children and the elderly whose years of ministry involvement are largely behind them.

Thank you for your transparency and honesty. We learned you weren’t perfect. We saw you were sometimes struggling. We were thereby able to identify with your various situations, and were comforted in our own troubles with the comfort that you received from God, and passed on to us.

Thank you for your patience. For not becoming totally and irreparably disillusioned with us when we listened to your advice and nodded our heads and went right back out of your office or home and did exactly the opposite. Thank you for not throwing up your hands in despair (or, if you did, Pastor Rick, thank you for not locking your office door and telling Ruth, “No more! I will see no more wayward, balking sheep ever!”).

Thank you for your sermons. For all those hours you researched and prayed and wrote and rewrote and prayed again and wondered if we would get it and if we would remember it and if we would do anything with the truth God was speaking through you. We have remembered, by the way, far more than you realize. And those sermons have made a far greater difference in our individual worlds than you can imagine.

And thank you for your music. For your faithful and excellent ministry on the organ and piano and at the mike. For bringing the sounds of heaven to earth, and directing our praises from earth to heaven.

For some reason, God seldom allows us to see the extent of our influence on others and our fruitfulness for Him. But one day, to be sure, God will show you both. And then I know you will be truly astonished to see how even the dullest days and the smallest acts and the most pointless-seeming steps of obedience were fraught with eternal significance. You will have “an embarrassment of reward.”

That will be true of your years here at FAC – and it will continue as you serve the Erie City Mission. Know that we are sad to see you go, and proud of where you are going. And behind your backs, after you have left the halls of FAC, we will be saying what was said of Oswald Chambers by his wife, Biddy:

For they
So shadowed forth in every look and act
Our Lord, without Whose name they seldom spoke,
One could not live beside them and forget.

The King of Nineveh

It’s been suggested that the real hero in the book of Jonah is… the king of Nineveh. That’s right – the top Ninny himself.

Of course I think honorable mentions should be awarded, first to the sailors who threw Jonah overboard and offered sacrifices and vows to Yahweh. And also to the great fish who apparently endured significant gastrointestinal distress resulting in the upheaval of Jonah’s undigestable carcass. Perhaps even to the worm, who was given the unenviable task of snatching the last remaining comfort from an easily-ticked prophet. I’ll bet that worm snuck out at the crack of dawn, hurriedly assessed the vine at its weakest point, chomped at top speed, and was outta there before Jonah could plant a sandal on him. Courage.

But the king of Nineveh deserves hero status because, as the Bible says, those who humble themselves will be exalted (Lk. 18:14). And the king, when confronted with Jonah’s dire pronouncement of doom, didn’t try to shut Jonah up, call for his arrest, or throw him out of the city. Neither did he try to justify himself and his people or argue with the prophet’s message – or with this God he’d never worshipped and couldn’t even see.

Instead, he got down from his throne and laid aside his kingly robe. He put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes. He refused food and drink, turned from violence and evil, and cried out to God in the hope that He might relent and spare them in His mercy.

Not bad for a Ninny. In fact, he ends up looking a lot better than the prophet who sat down and cried over his success. Who, while the city wailed and repented under the torturous sackcloth, waited in the comfortable shade and hoped desperately that God wouldn’t hear their cries.

Oh that more of us would be ninny-heroes. Would just humbly accept God’s correction and crawl down off our high-horses, forget our own comfort, forsake our wrong pursuits, and bank wholly on God being forgiving and merciful yet again. And oh that we would recognize our responsibility to lead others in the same decision.

Not just once, when we bow to accept Christ as Savior. But again and again, every time the Spirit convicts us of a wrong we ought to make right or a course correction that’s needed. Every time we are confronted with the unpleasant realization that we are not what God wants us to be.

In those moments, the ball is in our kingly court. And we must decide whether dismiss it with a wave of our hand, or go to our knees in repentance and choose to be heroes of God’s grace.

The Land of Beginning Again

With apologies to Louisa Fletcher...

The Land of Beginning Again
Song for the Fish’s Belly

For Jonahs of every age there’s a place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where willful mistakes and stubborn heartaches
Rank rebellion and selfish old pride,
Can be dropped, like a string of seaweed, on the beach,
And never cling to us again.

Perhaps it was something we refused to do,
And we think we’ve repented too late
Of praises unspoken and promises broken,
And multiple lives have been hurt -
Even “Ninevites” who were depending on you
And me to escape judgment’s fate.

But runaway "prophets" like us can return
To the center of His plan.
For the God we ignored, disregarded as Lord,
Is the God of the Second Chance.
He is calling out still from Calvary’s Hill –
That true Land of Beginning Again.

No matter the years and the tears and the fears
Time lost and memories past,
Now is the time, opportunity prime,
To bow down and make it right,
Tell the God we’ve not heeded we’ll do what is needed,
Give obedience willing and fast.

Yes, Jonahs, there is a wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again
Where willful mistakes and stubborn heartaches
Rank rebellion and selfish old pride,
Can be dropped, like a string of seaweed, on the beach,
And never cling to us again.

Deep-Sea Prayer

Isn’t Jonah unbelievable? Referring to himself twenty-six times in an eight-verse prayer? How could anyone be that fixated on himself?

C’mon, let’s be honest. We can relate to prayers like that! I can, at least. It’s biblical, isn’t it? “Pour out your hearts to him,” the Psalmist David urged. But then he went on to add, “for God is our refuge” (Ps. 62:8 NIV).

That’s a very important addition, for the one thing can save our fishbelly prayers from becoming merely a time of venting, of self-expression, of self-fixated monologue, is to see God for Who He is. To recognize Him as loving and welcoming and immense and powerful and wise and the Rock in which we can always, always hide.

So by all means let’s keep pouring our hearts out to God. Let’s use “I,” “me,” myself” and “mine” twenty-six times if we need to. But let’s at some point pause and look around at our refuge, and really see where we are. We’re not just trapped in a crisis, surrounded by the disturbing sounds of ourselves being digested… we’re inside of God! He is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble, He never leaves us or forsakes us, He takes complete responsibility for us, He watches over all that concerns us, He is sovereign over circumstances, He has good plans for us and not evil ones, and He surrounds us on all sides with impenetrable protection and holds us there until deliverance comes. Whew! What a wonderful God He is, and how wonderful is His heart for us!

If Jonah had really, really looked at God, he might have dropped of few “I’s” and “me’s” and added some “Thee’s” and “Thou’s.” He might have seen how unlike God he was and torn his slimy robe in the anguish of genuine repentance for his rebellion. His heart might have been broken with compassion for the people of Nineveh, moving him to obey God out of desire rather than coercion. And it might have changed the way his story ends.

A fresh vision of God. It would have done Jonah a lot of good, and it won’t hurt us any, either.

Preparing for the Whisper

“The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai”…

Lucky Jonah. God never speaks to me, we lament. I need direction, but I don’t hear His voice. I want to get closer to Him, but He seems silent. I’d like to do something for Him, but He never gives me any instructions. Why?

I think it’s sometimes because of His mercy. If He told us clearly what direction He wanted us to go, He knows we would balk. If He drew close to us and whispered the truth He really wanted to say, He foresees our defensive protests. If He assigned us the task He longs give us – the work He’s designed and gifted us for – He know we’d scoot in the other direction, just like Jonah.

He’s sparing us the bad decision and the broken relationship and the consequences… the storm and the sinking and the fish. If He spoke and we didn’t respond, it would only increase the distance between Him and us. Our excuses and rationalizations would harden our hearts.

I don’t know why God spoke to Jonah when He knew the response He would get – except that He loved Nineveh so much He had to let them know. And He had lessons for Jonah – and for us. One lesson is this: Those who hear God’s voice need hearts that are ready to receive what He says, to believe His truth, to accept His guidance, to act on His instructions. Otherwise we are far worse off than we were before. This should not make us afraid to hear from God; it should remind us that His whisper is not to be taken lightly.

Do we long to hear that whisper? Do we want the word of the Lord to come to us? Then we must get our hearts and minds ready. We must ask for receptive and obedient spirits, so that whatever He says to us, we will do – His way, in His time, for His purposes, in the power of His Spirit. Then the word of the Lord can safely come to us… and we will be blessed, others will be helped, and He will be honored and worshipped and glorified.

Keeping Pace

Can two walk together unless they be agreed? (Amos 3:3) A.W. Tozer has pointed out that for two people to walk together there must be agreement on at least a few major points:

They will have to agree whether they want to walk together. There must be some kind of compatibility; they must have something in common.

They must be agreed on the direction. If one man is going north and one is going south it is a physical impossibility that they could walk together.

They must be agreed on their destination. If they were aiming for two different cities, they would have to separate somewhere on their journey.

They must agree on what path they want to take. There might be a dozen paths to where they are going, and if they are going to stay together they are going to have to take the same path.

They will have to agree on the rate of speed. If one walks very rapidly and the other saunters along, they might ultimately get to the same place but they could not go together because they could not agree on the rate of speed.

Tozer’s insights are very helpful to me when I think about keeping pace with the Holy Spirit, walking in step with Him. It helps me realize I need to continually agree with the Spirit that, yes, I want to walk with Him, I want to go in the direction He’s headed, I want to share His ultimate goal for this journey, I want to follow in the specific path He’s taking to reach that goal, and I want to travel at His pace.

It might seem like an unduly strict discipline, this devoting every second and every step to following His leading. For sure, the enemy will tell us it is unnecessary and impractical and it will stifle our dreams and dry up our potential… but here’s what Satan won’t tell us:

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17). Somehow, in the wonderful, indecipherable way of the Kingdom, when I follow closest, I am freest. When I share the Spirit’s goal, I reach my greatest potential. When I travel at His pace, I accomplish the most. When I agree with His leading, doors open into places I’ve never dreamed of.

When I fall into step with Him, we walk together, in triumph, into glory.