Immature Saul II

Acts 9:1-31

When Saul was first converted he still carried many of his habits, techniques and assumptions from his past thinking and training. He believed that over-powering arguments were the means to bring truth to other minds. He had always had a religion based on logic, study, facts and irrefutable proofs. Now he simply applied his new insights about Jesus and prophecies to continue his campaign to win everyone over to his viewpoint. Yes, his heart had been awakened by a fresh revelation of God in his vision from Jesus and his initial interactions with disciples in Damascus, but the habits of reasoning and his dependence on force of logic, if not physical force, would take time to undo. This is demonstrated both in Damascus and in Jerusalem much to the intense embarrassment of his former supporters to the point of death threats.

Evidently, from the text, while Saul was busy heating up the frustration and anger of his former close friends and comrades in religion, the leaders of the Christian church were spending time planting a new company in Caesarea and may not have been fully aware of what discontent and opposition Saul was stirring up in Jerusalem with his argumentative style. Saul was in danger of stirring up so much animosity against himself and the church that he was actually creating new zealots to replace the position of persecutor he had just vacated. He did not realize that it was unnecessary to use the tactics of forceful arguing and intimidation to spread truth. He had switched his allegiance but he had much to learn about gentleness and humility to reflect the true Spirit of Jesus in his labors.

The apostles realized the damage that Saul was beginning to induce on the church when they started receiving disturbing reports in Caesarea from Jerusalem and they may have decided to intervene before Saul inadvertently returned the situation to the reign of terror that he himself had so recently presided over. It was simply a problem of maturity, not ill motives. Saul was indeed converted, but his methods and spirit of presentation was sometimes abrasive and unnecessarily blunt.

So acting as mature elders would act, the apostles moved to intervene and brought Saul to Caesarea to where they could counsel with him about his methods and quietly discuss the problem so they could come up with a plan to help him move forward in true maturity and learn more of the true ways of Jesus. After careful consideration and prayer and closer bonding through affirmation it was mutually agreed that it would be best for Saul's growth at this point to allow him to return to his roots, his hometown and allow the Holy Spirit to have time to take him through an experience that would retrain him through the earliest stages of maturity so he would have a solid foundation for his future ministry.

God in a Box

5-13-06

Why was there wind and sound and fire at Pentecost?

Wind to shatter the “box” that religion had kept God inside of for so long.

Wind to fill the sails of the “gospel ship”.

Sound to alert the listening, hungry souls that something new and refreshing was now available.

Fire to melt the frozen chosen – to free them to display the real truth about God.

Fire to burn away the baggage that had been unloaded from their hearts for the past ten days.

Fire of God's passion to burn white-hot with love in eyes newly opened by grace.

Some who criticize others for keeping God in a box simply want to impose their own box in place of other boxes.

Denominations are very obvious and well-defined boxes that most Christians force God into.

Most denominations have multiple subcultures that create even tighter, more restrictive boxes to define God.

What has happened is that we have come to view the box itself as God since it is the definition of God in our minds.

The only container that God has declared suitable for Him to dwell in is a human heart open to receive Him. It cannot contain Him but it can display Him.

Joy is at the heart of God's plan for His beings. God is the happiest being in the universe. - Ortberg

Comet Terror

God closed the door of the ark seven days before the rain began to fall in the days of Noah. There is a good theory that I happen to believe is very possibly true that the major natural cause of the flood was a comet that struck both the earth and the moon and possibly even the sun. If this theory is true then the comet would have been seen approaching the earth closer and closer causing increasing fear and finally panic. It may be that the reason God sealed the door of the ark one week ahead of the beginning of the flood was to prevent anyone from trying to save themselves inside the ark based purely on motives of fear. If the only reason they entered the ark was terror of the approaching comet instead of faith in God's warning and His word, then they would only be a liability and a curse that would perpetuate the condition of overwhelming sin that brought on the flood.

As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be....

Immature Saul

When Saul was converted in Damascus, Ananias argued with Jesus about trusting Saul. When he returned to Jerusalem the same fear was exposed in the apostles and they refused to fellowship with him until one radical believer stepped forward to bridge/stand in the gap.

We piously look at their fear and think we don't have that problem, but our actions and conversations betray us. Our prejudice toward people not of our denomination is a glaring example. And even within our own community our love and acceptance of those around us is based largely on their uniformity with ourselves. We are very reluctant to affirm anyone that has style significantly different than ours. If they don't have a similar level of implicit, blind, unreasoning dependence of SP as we do they are viewed at best with suspicion.

Affirmation of inherent value of others irrespective of their behavior is a concept that usually strikes us as heresy of a dangerous order. Conformity is valued as the most noble character trait and uniformity to our sub-culture in unquestioning obedience to a religious leader's teachings is considered godliness. We insist our children memorize the quotation, “It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thought” (Ed. 17), but then subtly insist they give priority to reflecting our thoughts before they are taught (if ever) to think for themselves.

Saul did not fit in well to the apostles early church style. He was a very immature, highly enthusiastic believer, passionate about his new relationship to Jesus but rather abrasive in his presentation of his current understanding of the gospel. He had not spent the years with Jesus having his rough edges exposed and mellowed as they had done. He had experienced a radical conversion of grace, but had not yet become very graceful himself. He had always been immersed in the strong tradition that winning arguments is the sure sign of being right, and this notion still permeated his thinking as a new Christian. So with his keen, sharp mental prowess and his newly discovered insights and understandings of Scripture coupled with his unbridled passionate first love for his Saviour, he boldly launched into a campaign to convert all the Jews to Christianity not wholly unlike his previous campaign to do just the opposite.

In an interesting sense, Paul was acting like Moses when he killed the Egyptian and then had to flee for his life. Moses had caught a vision of his calling and moved to aunch into it decidedly and with gusto. But he had not learned important lessons about what God is like and how He relates to humans just as most of us have not. So too, Saul had to be sent away to incubate in the wilderness just like Moses to learn lessons of humility, grace, gentleness and true God-likeness before he could emerge as the highly efficient channel communicating God's grace as the apostle Paul that he later became.

So here is this enthusiastic ex-murderer running around town claiming to be a born-again Christian. And all the church establishment leaders suddenly are eclipsed in their level of commitment and consequently have their fears exposed again. Fear seems to always be the foundational problem for all our issues and dysfunctions. We have still not grown in maturity and trust in God to extinguish some deeper level of fear unknown to us previously.

So God creates for us a new dis-comfort zone to expose yet another unstable foundation of fear in our hearts as an opportunity to repent, confess and repair these foundations and fill up the breach with deeper revelations of truth about God Himself. (Isa. 58:12) It is primarily heart work that has to be accomplished, not doctrinal belief systems rearranged. Conforming our arrangement of facts to reflect the particular view of some religious group we ascribe to most often is a pious substitute for allowing true conviction of the real Holy Spirit to take root and break up the hard ground of our hardened, pain-filled hearts. We want to avoid real heart work at all costs because we know it will involve stirring up old buried pains and will challenge our pet beliefs and assumptions. In fact, our very identity will be threatened and subconsciously we are afraid that that will just kill us. So we hide our wounds under the camouflage of systematic theological arguments and well-memorized chains of texts and quotations so we can amass enough ammunition to win any arguments that someone may launch against us.

And this we label as “righteousness” or “holiness” or whatever the preferred terminology is in vogue in our favorite group. We cover over our wounds and ignore the wounded hearts of those around us as we champion our systematical arrangement of bullet-proof beliefs and whip up confidence among our comrades that we are marching in LOCKSTEP to Zion and to victory over sin.

But Barnabas had a different spirit, a free-thinker outside the box. Maybe he had personally been praying for Saul, the arch-enemy of Christians, for a long time as Jesus had taught him to do. He believed it was now time to lay hold on God's answers to their prayers and step out of the comfort zone, step out in faith in God's ability to do the impossibly amazing feat of capturing Saul with His love and grace. It was time to trust God and embrace his former enemy before all his questions were satisfied. He was in tune with the Spirit of God more than all the others and was willing to lay down his fears and in eager anticipation and humble vulnerability be came to Saul to listen to his heart. In doing so he got the scoop on the inside story and was able to be a campaigner of grace and an instrument of reconciliation used personally by God. Paul later taught this very truth – that we are all called to this ministry of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:18)

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Transform me into a Barnabas, a son of encouragement, a reconciler, stepping outside the box and rejecting fear.

(part 2)

Barnabas Attitude

When Saul was converted in Damascus, Ananias argued with Jesus about trusting Saul. When he returned to Jerusalem the same fear was exposed in the apostles and they refused to fellowship with him until one radical believer stepped forward to bridge/stand in the gap.

We piously look at their fear and think we don't have that problem, but our actions and conversations betray us. Our prejudice toward people not of our denomination is a glaring example. And even within our own community our love and acceptance of those around us is based largely on their uniformity with ourselves. We are very reluctant to affirm anyone that has style significantly different than ours. If they don't have a similar level of implicit, blind, unreasoning dependence of SP as we do they are viewed at best with suspicion.

Affirmation of inherent value of others irrespective of their behavior is a concept that usually strikes us as heresy of a dangerous order. Conformity is valued as the most noble character trait and uniformity to our sub-culture in unquestioning obedience to a religious leader's teachings is considered godliness. We insist our children memorize the quotation, “It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thought” (Ed. 17), but then subtly insist they give priority to reflecting our thoughts before they are taught (if ever) to think for themselves.

Saul did not fit in well to the apostles early church style. He was a very immature, highly enthusiastic believer, passionate about his new relationship to Jesus but rather abrasive in his presentation of his current understanding of the gospel. He had not spent the years with Jesus having his rough edges exposed and mellowed as they had done. He had experienced a radical conversion of grace, but had not yet become very graceful himself. He had always been immersed in the strong tradition that winning arguments is the sure sign of being right, and this notion still permeated his thinking as a new Christian. So with his keen, sharp mental prowess and his newly discovered insights and understandings of Scripture coupled with his unbridled passionate first love for his Saviour, he boldly launched into a campaign to convert all the Jews to Christianity not wholly unlike his previous campaign to do just the opposite.

In an interesting sense, Paul was acting like Moses when he killed the Egyptian and then had to flee for his life. Moses had caught a vision of his calling and moved to aunch into it decidedly and with gusto. But he had not learned important lessons about what God is like and how He relates to humans just as most of us have not. So too, Saul had to be sent away to incubate in the wilderness just like Moses to learn lessons of humility, grace, gentleness and true God-likeness before he could emerge as the highly efficient channel communicating God's grace as the apostle Paul that he later became.

So here is this enthusiastic ex-murderer running around town claiming to be a born-again Christian. And all the church establishment leaders suddenly are eclipsed in their level of commitment and consequently have their fears exposed again. Fear seems to always be the foundational problem for all our issues and dysfunctions. We have still not grown in maturity and trust in God to extinguish some deeper level of fear unknown to us previously.

So God creates for us a new dis-comfort zone to expose yet another unstable foundation of fear in our hearts as an opportunity to repent, confess and repair these foundations and fill up the breach with deeper revelations of truth about God Himself. (Isa. 58:12) It is primarily heart work that has to be accomplished, not doctrinal belief systems rearranged. Conforming our arrangement of facts to reflect the particular view of some religious group we ascribe to most often is a pious substitute for allowing true conviction of the real Holy Spirit to take root and break up the hard ground of our hardened, pain-filled hearts. We want to avoid real heart work at all costs because we know it will involve stirring up old buried pains and will challenge our pet beliefs and assumptions. In fact, our very identity will be threatened and subconsciously we are afraid that that will just kill us. So we hide our wounds under the camouflage of systematic theological arguments and well-memorized chains of texts and quotations so we can amass enough ammunition to win any arguments that someone may launch against us.

And this we label as “righteousness” or “holiness” or whatever the preferred terminology is in vogue in our favorite group. We cover over our wounds and ignore the wounded hearts of those around us as we champion our systematical arrangement of bullet-proof beliefs and whip up confidence among our comrades that we are marching in LOCKSTEP to Zion and to victory over sin.

But Barnabas had a different spirit, a free-thinker outside the box. Maybe he had personally been praying for Saul, the arch-enemy of Christians, for a long time as Jesus had taught him to do. He believed it was now time to lay hold on God's answers to their prayers and step out of the comfort zone, step out in faith in God's ability to do the impossibly amazing feat of capturing Saul with His love and grace. It was time to trust God and embrace his former enemy before all his questions were satisfied. He was in tune with the Spirit of God more than all the others and was willing to lay down his fears and in eager anticipation and humble vulnerability be came to Saul to listen to his heart. In doing so he got the scoop on the inside story and was able to be a campaigner of grace and an instrument of reconciliation used personally by God. Paul later taught this very truth – that we are all called to this ministry of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:18)

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Transform me into a Barnabas, a son of encouragement, a reconciler, stepping outside the box and rejecting fear.