The Essence of Fellowship

I've mentioned a couple times before that Annie and I are part of an awesome small group. This week brought more reminders of the power of fellowship, of what it means to fight for others and to be fought for.

As all this has been going on over the past couple days I've found myself thinking of this quote from the St. Crispian's Day speech in Henry V just before the battle of Agincourt. It sums up perfectly what Christian fellowship is supposed to be about and it only gets more powerful every time I read it.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Fierceness

Well I won't back down, no I won't back down
you could stand me up at the gates of hell
but I won't back down
-Tom Petty

Fierceness. It's not the sort of word we usually associate with Christians, Christianity or Jesus. If you were to ask people to associate words with the name Jesus you'd probably get words like compassionate, merciful, loving, sacrifice, etc. All good, all true, all essential to our faith. But if that's the only side we see of Jesus or of our faith then we're cutting ourselves off at the knees. Because while all those words are true of Jesus they're not the whole truth. He's also a passionate and fierce warrior fighting for our freedom.

Christianity is a fighting faith. We were born into a world at war and we live every day as part of a violent clash between two kingdoms. When Christ came to Earth it was an invasion, an act of war. And what He's fighting for is our hearts, our freedom, His right to restore us to who we were always meant to be.

If you could see the look in Jesus's eyes when He thinks about our freedom it would be a gaze you couldn't possibly meet. It would be so fierce, so devoted, so set, stubborn and determined to do whatever He had to to set us free. In Isaiah 63 God tells us that He is in the field warring for us, fighting so hard that His clothes are literally stained red with the blood of His enemies. No wonder Paul asks, "If God is for us who can be against us?"

We have a role in the battle too. We need to develop that same fierceness, as best we can in this life, as we fight for our own freedom and the freedom of others. It's the type of ferocity reflected in the quote I put at the beginning of this point, the type that says it doesn't matter if I'm backed up against all of hell itself, freedom is worth it and I will not back down even if it kills me.

And hell will come. Not only is our freedom opposed but so is any attempt for us to see God as the warrior fighting for our freedom and calling us to fight alongside Him. To survive this fight we're going to need more than just grace, mercy and love. Those are important but we also need the fierceness of Christ when He went to the cross and tore open the kingdom of darkness.

Now it's our turn to follow Him and fight alongside Him. Our world is at war. The enemy's kingdom is going down but it's not there yet. And in the meantime there are many hearts, including yours and mine, that need to be passionately fought for so we can be free and fully alive. Let's recover our fierceness and fight.

Intimacy With God

I'm going through a time in my life right now where I'm stepping into my calling as never before. Even this week over the past few days I've watched God reveal His mission for me and show me how to begin living it out.

It's a wonderful experience and as it happens I feel His pleasure. But it also reminds me that there is something in the Christian Life that is higher than living out the mission. The more I step into my purpose, the more it leaves me thirsty for intimacy with God and I'm reminded that that is really the point of it all.

Matthew 7 provides a sobering picture for us. In it, Jesus explains that there will many people who will come to Him wanting to tell Him all about the great stuff they did in life. He sends them away saying, "I never knew you."

I'm not suggesting, and I don't believe Jesus is either, that intimacy is a requirement for salvation. What I believe His point is that intimacy is a natural and expected outcome of a heart that has been reconciled to God and is being restored to glory.

All that we do is meant to flow out of this closeness with God and all that we do is meant to drive us back to into it. Intimacy is the hub, the center, of all God means for us to do and experience in the Christian Life. And thank God for that! For as wonderful as stepping into purpose is, it can't satisfy our hearts the way intimacy can. It was never meant to.

Finally, let me say that this is available. This isn't something that's reserved for those who've made ministry their vocation, the very holy or the super spiritual. God intended intimacy with Him to be a normal part of the Christian Life no matter where we're at in that journey. We're not to wait until we have it all figured out. We're to figure out by walking closely with Him, hearing His voice and feeling His presence. Only then will our hearts find the satisfaction they were meant to experience.

Recovering The Spiritual Middle Ground

For the past couple weeks I've been reading Ed Murphy's The Handbook For Spiritual Warfare. Towards the beginning of the book he spends some time looking at spiritual worldviews. He points out that we have a tendency, especially in Western theology, to acknowledge both the spiritual and physical worlds but deny the middle ground where they interact. The result is that while we believe in angels, demons and all the rest we tend not to see that world as having much of an impact on our day to day lives.

I really think he's got a point. We've lost something both in our theology and in practice. The Life that God has for us is fiercely opposed and if we're to find it we're going to have to recover the middle ground between the physical and spiritual worlds where the two interact.

As I've thought about this, I've been rethinking the story of Balaam in Numbers. In case you need a refresher the basic gist of it is this: Israel's enemies hire Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam is on his way to do the job when his donkey stops dead in its tracks. He beats the donkey but it won't move. Then God opens the donkey's mouth and it tells Balaam that there's an angel that's going to kill him if he takes one more step, that God is not about to let him curse His people.

It's a great story. Normally when we hear it our reaction is something like, "that's pretty neat that God made the donkey talk!" And while that is pretty cool, the question I keep asking myself is why did God make the donkey talk? If we live in a world where the physical and spiritual don't meet and mix, where spiritual warfare is the exception not the rule, where curses don't matter, then what possible difference would it make if Balaam went on his mission and cursed Israel?

The implication of the story is that what Balaam did or did not do mattered. He was a man gifted with being able to interact in the spiritual world and the choices he made about how to use that gift had huge ramafications in both the spiritual and physical worlds.

We might be uncomfortable with it in our scientific, "enlightened" era but that is still the reality today. Angels, demons, curses and blessings not only exist they impact our lives in ways we're not even aware of. We are not just physical beings, we are spiritual beings and those two aspects of ourselves are not all that separate. Spiritual warfare is not an option, we live in a spiritual war whether we acknowledge it or not.

There are a lot of heavy implications here and I'm all too aware of how the enemy loves to exploit them for fear. I want to make it clear that while this stuff is true, God's love it truer. The point of recovering the spiritual middle ground isn't fear, it's to wake us up so we can fight the battle and step even deeper into the Life God has for us.