I was on my way to the Philippines for work. Eleven hours trapped in this middle seat in coach – at least I’m in an exit row. But this guy next to me smells – different bathing practices than me. Strolling the aisle – plane full of faces, but no one familiar.
Finally arriving in Tokyo – three-hour layover, and gratefully able to stretch my achy legs. Wandering through the airport full of other travelers. Sure would be fun to see someone I know, but no luck.
Next plane and five more hours to Manila. Plane packed full, but at least I have an aisle seat. Still no familiar faces.
Manila airport; I’m all alone in a sea of people.
But I’m never truly alone. Sitting next to my stinky neighbor, the Holy Spirit is with me. Walking through Tokyo airport, the Holy Spirit is with me. The entire trip, the Holy Spirit is within me. Whenever I feel alone, I look to the Spirit of Jesus within me. And He’s always here. I’m never alone. And I’m so grateful.
Currently at work, trapped in an all-day meeting on export compliance regulations. Why am I here? Other than I’m required by the company I work for, I have no idea why I’m here.
I’m bored!!! Thankfully, this boring meeting gives me the time to frequently drift away and see in my mind’s eye the Holy Spirit of God within me. And even some time to now write this post.
Oh dear Jesus, thank you so much for being here with me. Thank you for lowering yourself from the glories of heaven to share my life in this messy, painful, and sometimes boring world. You left behind the peace, joy, freedom, and love of heaven, to have your Spirit live with us here in our broken world. Yet, you brought with you the treasures of heaven, the peace, the joy, and the love. All I need do is look inside, to you, and I too can share in heaven. Heaven on earth, within me. Thank you so much dear Jesus. Love, CJ
As Jesus said, “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)
Jesus said if we believe in Him, we could look forward to an eternal life in heaven (John 3:16). I once thought that all I had to do was say the words, “I believe in Jesus,” and eternal life was mine. Yet, why would my relationship with Jesus be different from any other relationship I have? A healthy and meaningful relationship takes more than words.
As usual, Tom sat quietly during the first part of our small group bible study, just listening and thinking. Eventually, Tom would start talking, and what he had to say was always well thought-out, inspiring, and intriguing. I looked forward to the moment when Tom decided to join the conversation. But on this night, he shocked me with, “I just know I’m not going to heaven. I’ve done too many bad things in my life. God can’t love me. I’m just not good enough.”
Tom is a victim of a scam of guilt promoted by some churches. Though Tom would accept that God doesn’t hate sinners, he and others like him have difficulty in believing that God can in fact love them; they just don’t feel good enough. Does God love only good people?
First, the “goodness” Tom believes he lacks does not come from behavior, but from faith: “This righteousness (goodness) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:22-23) It’s not the amount of goodness or badness that matters – it’s what you believe.
God doesn’t care about our past; He cares about now. No matter how dark your past may be, where are you now? Do you feel distressed about past sins? Do you wish you could erase the sins of yesterday, and resist the sins of today? I know Tom does; he said so. To such a show of repentance Jesus would say, “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” (Luke 15:7)
A dear friend once said to me, “I see so many different Christian churches, which I’m okay with, but they all have different messages. What should I believe?”
What we see as Christianity today looks like a bicycle wheel. Jesus is the hub, the center. Each church is like a spoke, and by the time Jesus’ original message gets to the outside end of the spoke, it’s filled with manmade modifications. Traveling around the outside of this wheel called Christianity can be a bumpy ride, as my friend discovered.
I don’t want to criticize churches who customize Jesus’ message. I think it’s natural, given our pride-filled human nature. Pride drives people to put their personal mark on things. My purpose with this post is to point to the truth, which you will find only at the center of the wheel, at Jesus.
And Jesus is easy to find. You will find His truth in the bible, in your prayers, and in your heart – for that is where the Holy Spirit of God lives.
I was reading some results from a Barna Group study of “churchless” in the USA. In the past decade, the number of churchless people has increased 30%. About 75% of the churchless attended church at one time… Barna calls them “de-churched.”
I have a theory: people are leaving churches because of a lack of truth. Many churches replace Jesus’ truth with their own ideas. Yet manmade theology does not have the power to affect people’s lives in a positive way. Only the truth of Jesus and the presence of His Spirit can do that. Without the truth and Holy Spirit, people give up and leave.
Pride is my self-imposed prison. Pride ties me up with strict rules and expectations. Pride wraps me in a straightjacket of stress when things don’t go MY way. Pride pushes my heart, soul, and mind to me, rather than God.
Pride is misery.
Yet Jesus has set me free from my prison. He has opened the door and shown me the path to humility… and love… and others… and our Father. There are still traces of pride clinging to me, but it’s not the prison it once was.
And the Holy Spirit within holds onto me, stopping me from returning to my familiar prison cell. And I’m so grateful.
Over the past several months, many people have commented on the brevity of my posts. It seems that they find fewer words are more powerful and helpful. So I thought I’d share with you two things that inspire my pithy writing.
First is the book “On Writing Well,” by William Zinsser, where he stresses the benefits of brevity.
Yet for me, my most important inspiration comes from God… “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?” (Ecclesiastes 6:11)
Ferguson Missouri. There is pain on all sides. There is suffering on all sides. There is anger scattered throughout. It mixed and boiled over last night.
It makes me sad, to see all the anger. I think it makes God sad too, looking at His children behave this way. But it’s part of who we are; broken, self-centered, childish children of God. Yes, I think God cried last night. Pain may have filled God’s heart, seeing the pain of His children.
What’s the answer? What can our society do as a group to fix what caused the pain and anger in Ferguson? I don’t know. But I know what each of us can do as individuals. Seek a close, intimate relationship with our Father God. In that relationship, we will find peace. And this peace from God can overflow us, and spill onto those around us.
The solution to the Ferguson syndrome comes from God, not man.
(warning: what follows is the attempt of a non-poet to be poetic… proceed with caution)
Pushed up through the virgin crust by tectonic forces. Millennia go by. Seeds appear from nothing. Or was it the tree that came first? Chicken or egg? Oh well. Life spread. Trees covering the lower slopes. Snow came and went. The river carved it’s way along the valley floor. Then fish. Then animals crawled out of the river and lakes and made home with the dry ground. And then early man arrived… from nothing?
And finally modern man is here. My vacation. Hiking. Marveling at the mountains. Rafting down the aged river. Enjoying visits by the moose and elk. And all this happened by chance? All this happened without any special guidance or planning or boost from above? All this happened without a God? I just can’t believe that. I don’t have faith that strong.
After six years of sporadic writing, I finally finished revision 10 of the book I’m working on with God; working title, His Truth Will Set You Free. It seemed to me that rev 10 was final draft quality, so I decided to get copies printed and ask my family to read it. This has been a huge moment for me, since my main reason for writing this book has been to offer the truth of Christianity to people I love who currently do not know Jesus.
Anyway, I now find myself in a very weird place. I feel a bit meaningless. After six years of getting up long before the sun, just so I can get in some writing time before work, it now feels like I have nothing to do with my time. Maybe I’m feeling a bit of temporary post-partum depression, or something like that.
Well, this morning, while sitting in writing limbo, I started re-reading one of my favorite books, The Power of the Spirit, by William Law. Talk about power – Law doesn’t give you a chance to get warmed up. A powerful message of the truth of the Holy Spirit erupts from the very first pages. And he affirmed for me a truth that has kept me writing for six years; anything good that may appear in me, truly comes from the Spirit of God within me. For all good comes from God.
Anything good within the book I’m writing comes from God, not me. I’m just His pen. And I’m so grateful.
All of us have a choice for how to respond to Jesus Christ. We can ignore Him, accept Him, or seek Him. We can pretend that He is not who He claimed to be, the Son of God. Or, we can accept His claim as fact, and thereby claim for ourselves the title “Christian.” Or, we can go beyond accepting, and seek an intimate and personal relationship with Jesus.
The purpose for this blog, and the book I’m co-authoring, is to seek and proclaim the truth about Jesus and His church. I hope to help give people a chance to make their own decision about Jesus based on truth, rather than misconceptions.
Look, there are lots of wrong ideas about Jesus and Christianity floating around in this world. I just want to scrape away the dross of deceptions so people can clearly see the truth that lies just below the surface.
I came across a blog post that asks; if my blog site could hand out treats, what would it be? I’d like to hand out hugs; nice, warm, sincere, compassionate, and gentle hugs. There is power in a gentle touch.
In the gospel of Luke, there is a story about a man suffering from leprosy. “While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’” (Luke 5:12)
Who knows how long he had the disease, but we know those stricken with leprosy were outcasts. Everyone avoided them. So this man, covered with the soars of the nerve-killing illness, had not touched or been touched by another human being for possibly many years. No one had hugged him, no hand had touched his, and no arm had gone around his shoulders in a moment of comfort – until Jesus came along.
“Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean,” he said to Jesus. The man had the faith, yet his sense of kindness in others had been lost in the years of isolation. He doubted not Jesus’ ability, only His willingness to be kind. It had been that long since this man had felt compassion from another. What did Jesus do next? We know from other stories that He could have healed him right off. Yet Jesus did something better. He first gave the man what he needed most. Out of love and compassion, “Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.” (verse 13) For the first time in perhaps years, another person reached out and touched this lonely, leprous human being.
In the midst of the emotion that may have begun to swell within the man, Jesus then said, “I am willing. Be clean.” And the leprosy left him.
So now I’d like to give you a virtual hug … nope, just doesn’t cute it. Oh well. I hope you have a great Halloween Friday.
We make our decisions based on what we know and believe. If what you believe to be true is a lie, then that lie becomes the foundation for your decisions.
We all have the chance to decide if we will believe in Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t it be nice to be free to make that decision based on truth?
Yet some people aren’t interested in the truth, as Paul said, “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” (2 Thessalonians 2:10) Some may be more interested in their self-made delusions than the truth. So before someone can decide how they will respond to Jesus, they first must decide how they will respond to the truth.
The truth is freedom – from worry, fear, doubt, uncertainty, stress, guilt, and the control of lies. As Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.” (Luke 4:18) Yet, is there a dungeon door that separates you from the truth? Jesus is knocking on your door… and His truth will set you free.
Many Christians believe that making the gospel relevant for our times will attract people to the church. Trying to “meet people where they live” is just what Jesus did, so this should be a good approach. Yet, judging by the dwindling numbers of those attending church, there must be something wrong with the drive for relevance.
The flaw of the relevance approach is when they change the message to meet the needs of the day. This takes the focus off the truth of Jesus. His message is eternal, in that it always meets the needs of the day, no matter what day it is. We always need love, always need faith, and always need hope. This is what Jesus has to offer, and it’s always relevant.
What people need is not a customized message for the day, which will loose power as conditions change. It’s not relevance that’s needed, but truth.
Yesterday coffee with the usual Wednesday morning guys. Rick brought up the stuff happening in Ferguson, Mo.: The agitators from outside the community, and even outside the state, stirring up trouble. The celebrities, like Al Sharpton, also feeding the anger. And the store owners, staying up all night guarding their shops, trying to protect their livelihood from looters. Then Rick asked a question that was hard to consider, especially since I had barely started drinking my coffee: “As Christians, what should be our response to all this?”
It would be so easy to get sucked into the anger, and lash out at one side or the other. But I really don’t think that’s what Jesus wants me to do. Look, everyone involved is just a normal, broken human being. We are all messed up, full of sin and selfishness. Things like compassion don’t seem to come naturally. It’s the ugly responses, the judgment and harsh words, that seem to naturally ooze out of us. What should be my Christian response? I choose compassion and love. For how could I judge those who are no different from me – a typical screwed up person?
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Oh, I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.” It’s often Christians who push people away from Christianity. That’s why I stayed away for much of my life – what I saw didn’t appeal to me. I initially rejected Jesus because of Christians who were not a good reflection of His truth.
National surveys show Christianity declining in the United States. The published reasons are varied, but they all point to this: Christianity is crumbling because of a lack of truth. Truth is healthy and strong; untruth is sick and weak.
My first stepfather sexually abused me when I was 7 years old. A typical situation, I suppose – he threatened harm if I told anyone. Fortunately, there were other problems with the marriage, and my mom divorced him after only a year together. But we all had scars from that experience.
My scars fed my strong desire for revenge. As I grew older and came to understand what he had done to me, I grew angrier. In my late teens, I fantasized about running into him someday. I planned each move, the first being a fully energized kick square in the source of my suffering, sending him to his knees. There were times when I even dreamed of killing him. The hate was strong and painful.
About 20 years later, I met Jesus Christ and He started teaching me about love and forgiveness. It’s taken me a long time to learn the lesson, but I finally let go of the hate. I wholeheartedly forgive my stepfather. I feel sorry for him, for he was a very troubled person. And I’m now free of my own troubles – free from the pain of hate and memories, freed by forgiveness. Thanks to the love and forgiveness of Jesus.
Sometimes I rant about the dealings of the Catholic Church. I truly apologize if I have offended anyone. But I have seen the effects of the shortcomings of the Catholic Church up close. I know many wounded Catholics, those who had belonged to the Catholic Church, maybe even since birth, yet left with bad experiences. My stepfather, stepbrother, and many close friends are among them.
Yet in the case of my stepfather, he didn’t leave by choice; he was kicked out because of the sin of his divorce from his first wife. It distresses me that though Jesus has forgiven my stepfather, the Catholic Church cannot.
My heart breaks for those wounded Catholics, like my stepfather, who are not able to find their way to another church. All his life my stepfather was told that the Catholic Church is the only one, true church. And when that church failed him, where can he go? He has gone nowhere, and remains lost.
If you are a “wounded” Catholic, having given up on the Catholic Church, please don’t give up on Jesus. He still loves you, and always will. God, as our ultimate and perfect Father, loves all His children, no matter what church they may go to.
CJ Penn's Online Writing Hangout 