Hunger and Thirst for God’s Perfect Design

Our hope is that the reader is beginning to grasp the natural and necessary flow of the Beatitudes. Awareness of our poverty leads us to mourn our condition. As we grieve over what has been lost and over the impact our brokenness has on God’s heart and ours, He comes to comfort us. Part of that comfort is the further revelation of who we really are in His heart, and of His commitment to bring us to that fullness if we will trust Him and embrace His ways.

The more we see of what God has for us, the more we begin to desire it. The more we are frustrated in our own attempts to produce by strength what He would give us by grace, the more we cast ourselves on Him in utter dependence. As He speaks to our hearts concerning His plans for our lives, the deeper our hunger grows to have these things established in our lives. The more we consider the person of Jesus and open our hearts to fall in love with Him, the more He touches us with His own desires for our fullness. He tenderly comforts us in our pain by awakening our hearts to deeply desire what He deeply desires. In other words, He answers our longings by giving us greater longings, taking us to the place where we are famished and parched for want of His reality.

You see, that is what righteousness is. It is the fullness of God’s design being realized in practical reality, all things being conformed to His desire and design. We have mistakenly thought that righteousness is merely the patterns of our external behavior, when in fact righteousness refers to conformity to God’s nature and design. Righteousness is first of all an internal conformity to God’s character that gets expressed in behavior that arises out of the internal reality. Righteousness is everything operating as it was designed to, in line at every level with God’s pattern and purpose.

When Jesus declares that He is looking for those who hunger and thirst for the reality of righteousness, He is telling us that He desires people whose greatest longing is to think, feel and act like He does. His promise to that group is that they will be satisfied, satiated with righteousness to a degree greater than they can fathom.

This matter of hungering and thirsting for righteousness is central to the purposes of God being realized on the earth. We believe that this fourth Beatitude is the pivot point in the list of character traits that Jesus outlines in Matthew 5. The first three Beatitudes lead up to it, and the final four proceed from it. From this point on, they begin to move into the positive expressions of Christ’s character, and so as the satisfaction of this hunger and thirst begins to come, other qualities begin to emerge as a natural result of that desire.

Gary Wiens

Standing In Meekness

Meekness is a fascinating term, perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts in our vocabulary. Originally, it is defined as “gentle,” in the sense that describes a wild and powerful horse that has been trained to respond to its master, and therefore has become useful. Meekness is strength under discipline, and has several key components that must be understood.

To stand in meekness implies that we recognize that the lordship of our lives belongs to someone other than oneself. There is One who created me for His own pleasure, and who redeemed me from the clutches of Satan, and so by the dual right of creation and redemption my life belongs to Him. Since God is the one who “thought me up” in the first place, it is only He who can define me. Only He can tell me who I truly am, and only He can impart the grace to me to become that which He sees.

Meekness is the quality of steadiness, peace, and patience that emerges out of accepting what God says about me, and standing in that definition regardless of the situations and contrary reports that we encounter. The constant effort of Satan is to convince us that we cannot trust God to give us what He has promised, and what we desire. The enemy does not care if we come to despair over this issue and simply give up in hopelessness and shame, or if we take the other extreme and set our wills to achieve our destiny by the strength of our own resources. Either extreme keeps us from the grace of God that produces in us what He requires. Satan’s greatest fear is that there will be a group of people whose hearts embrace what God has declared concerning them, who will receive God’s definition of their lives, and by grace through faith appropriate His power to step into that definition in the reality of daily existence.

The promise of God to those who are meek is that they will inherit the earth. Once again, the things we crave at the deepest levels are promised to those who will acknowledge their need for God and live life by His power according to His definitions and parameters. The inheritance that comes from God is not given to those who seize the day by dint of will and force of personality, who strategize the best or are the most creative in marketing.  Though they may seem to have the edge for a season, the fact is that the meek will inherit the earth, and the wisdom of their choices will be vindicated and demonstrated when the Kingdom of God is established here on this planet.

Gary Wiens

Power Through The Grace Of Mourning

When we hit the wall of our own poverty, our inability to produce what we long for, we find ourselves facing an even more difficult step of humility – that of mourning over the condition in which we find ourselves. We’ll say this again in subsequent postings, but mourning over our brokenness is really a lost art in our culture. Because we want to have positive feelings about ourselves, we tend to avoid the deep self-examination that faces us with our own poverty, our inability to move forward on our own. We would rather try again by making a career change or altering our marital status. We’d rather read a new self-help book (maybe someone has discovered the magic formula!), try a new church, or perhaps medicate ourselves in some deeper and more damaging way.

But Jesus has given us the way forward, and it requires a significant choice for humility on our part. We must come to the place of mourning, grieving over our condition. This mourning requires a season of reflection, considering the things we have missed out on, the relationships we have lost, the opportunities that have passed us by. We must face the reality of our own choices that have irreparably damaged us and those around us. Most significantly, we must face the anguish that we have brought to God, who created us for His own great pleasure, but to whom we have brought nothing but pain.

Though this is a difficult posture to take, the reward is proportional to the cost. Those who mourn will be comforted. In other words, the pain that we all feel when we consider the broken condition of our lives will be assuaged, and we will know the comfort of the one who has the authority to give it at the deepest possible levels.

Power Through Spiritual Poverty

Every human being knows – unless that knowledge has been blunted by circumstances – that he or she ought to be someone important, that others ought to take notice, and that their life should mean something beyond the mundane realities of daily existence. Greatness is in our design, having been built into us by the Designer Himself, our Father God.

The surprising thing is that the path to greatness is opposite of what is intuitive to our fallen human nature. We think greatness comes by effort, by good planning, and by being willing to do whatever it takes to overcome the obstacles in our way. In God’s Kingdom economy, however, there is a different path. It begins with poverty of spirit.

In Matthew 5, Jesus lays out the Kingdom way to greatness, and begins with this phrase: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Spoken at the very beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus then proceeds to live out this principle all through His time on the earth by living in complete dependence upon His Father in Heaven through the power of the Holy Spirit.

He takes the posture of a servant (see Mark 9:35; Philippians 2:7), does nothing without seeing and hearing what the Father is doing (see John 5:19-20; 8:28), and lays down His life for His friends in love (see John 15:13). In other words, Jesus comes to greatness by being fully dependent on the Father’s will and direction by the Holy Spirit.

The basic issue for us is that we find it hard to believe that the Father wants greatness for us, and that He will bring us to greatness if we will follow His lead by the Spirit. Instead, we tend to take over our own situations because we think we know best, and find ourselves grasping in futility for the very thing He promises to give by grace.

Here’s my prayer today: Father, I want to live a powerful life today, but I can do nothing without Your presence and power in my life. Lead me by Your Spirit into the situations You have prepared for me, give me Your words of wisdom, Your strategies for serving, and grant me the courage to trust Your ways, just as Jesus did.

Amen.

Reaching Your Power Potential, Part One: Your Drive to Power

Deep within the heart of every human being is the longing for significance, to have a meaningful destiny. It is the yearning to be taken seriously, to make some sort of difference, to have a life that matters somehow. The aching desire in the soul to be recognized, to be deemed important is a dominant factor for most of us. This is often expressed in a strong desire to exercise power in our life situation. We have an intense motivation to control the environment around us, to influence our circumstances for the better, at least “better” as far as we are concerned. Termed by some students of human nature as “the drive to power,” this desire can be found anywhere from the nursery school to the boardroom, from the playground to the professional sports arena. It’s a desire that pays no attention to gender or age, and gives little heed to personality styles or economic standing. The simple, easily observable fact is that from the time we are toddlers we want to have things our way, to control the situations around us for our benefit, and be able to tell somebody – anybody! – what to do.

As obvious as this “drive to power” is in the human soul, it is just as apparent that most people live with this desire frustrated and squelched, at least to some degree. Hemmed in by life situations completely beyond our control, we do the best we can “under the circumstances.” We fight for recognition, striving to be seen as valuable. We hope that someone will notice that we have important things to say and that we too have a destiny that deserves to be realized. Many of us have experienced such devastating blows to our identity that any hope of feeling significant or powerful is simply unrealistic. Any hope of significance seems like a wispy dream in the violent storm of real life. Some respond to these cataclysmic blows by setting their body, soul, mind and strength to the pursuit of power, determined to never be hurt again. Others simply roll over and die, with any potential for significance stripped from them and crushed in the trampling of other people’s lusts.

At the same time that we feel this longing to have power and influence, we feel a certain ambivalence about it, a double-mindedness that tells us that such things as “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s as though the human race has this negative condition that is common to everyone, a condition that we cannot deny or live without, yet one that is so toxic that corruption is the inevitable end to the pursuit of power. Therefore, we try to build all sorts of checks and balances into our systems of control. We strive to protect ourselves against the corruption of the drive to power, only to find ourselves manipulating and evading the very systems we set in place so that we might gain more influence or have more control over our situations. In other words, we cheat if we think it will help us.

We could cite thousands of examples of dishonest and abusive behavior taken from every strata of human life. It’s not only the politically or economically powerful person who grasps for more power. It’s the pastor who abuses his spiritual authority to raise money. It’s the guy who cheats at golf, or the woman who crosses the line in using her sexuality to gain an advantage over the competition. It’s the road-rage nut who guns the engine to pass everyone he can, and it’s the teen-age girl with an eating disorder resolutely controlling her food intake, even though her strategy for power may eventually kill her. The drive to power is immense within us, and is a reality that must be examined and understood from God’s perspective if we are to deal with it successfully.

Over the next weeks, I will explore the only appropriate way to pursue power and fulfillment, the way given to us through Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5. I hope you’ll follow along!

Establishing Righteous Justice Through Worship

“Righteousness and justice are the foundations of (God’s) throne” – Psalm 97:2

“You (God) are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel” – Psalm 22:3

There is much conversation in our time about the matter of justice – who deserves to get what, and the processes by which that justice will be employed. But justice will never be established by legislation, and neither will it be established by the good intentions of well-meaning people. Justice can only be established in one way – in tandem with righteousness, for these twin realities can only come in proportion to the establishment of God’s Kingdom on the earth.

Let me attempt to give a somewhat simple definition of these terms: in my mind, I see righteousness as being aligned with God’s perfect design and plan. Wickedness, on the other hand, is the distortion of that design that comes by cooperation with the enemy’s plan. The Pope, in his recent declaration that a homosexual could love himself because God made him that way, is simply wrong. Distortion comes by agreement with the destroyer; righteousness comes by the empowering of the Holy Spirit in agreement with God’s design. And by the way, all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, not just those in the gay community. Every individual needs the saving and transforming power of the Holy Spirit to bring us to our true design, which is righteousness in the image of Jesus Christ.

Justice, then, is to me the process of bringing all things into alignment with God’s righteous plan. Justice is not merely a social strategy; rather, it is the result of righteousness being established in every relationship, as we receive the Father’s transforming love, and then relate to one another in that love by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our primary responsibility in bringing righteousness and justice to the earth is to worship Jesus in a spirit of humility and unity. As the Bride of Christ comes together in unity and true worship, the throne of God and its foundations of righteousness and justice are established in the atmosphere. Things begin to change in society as a byproduct of the Kingdom of God coming closer, even as we wait for the full establishment of that Kingdom at the triumphal return of Jesus.

So with the writer of Psalm 67 I say this:

“Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For You shall judge the people righteously, and govern the nations on earth.”

Gary Wiens

The Lord’s Voice Through the Voice of a Friend

Psalm 17:4 With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent.

In the life of David, who would become king over Israel, there were key moments when the pressures of daily life stressed him to the point of ungodly action. How many of us can relate to that!!

This verse in Psalm 17 was possibly written in the aftermath of an encounter that would press David, and tempt him to take vengeance for the sake of his own reputation. In 1 Samuel 25 we read about a  fool named Nabal who refused to give David and his men assistance when they were in need, and who had also derided David as a worthless man. David’s response was to move to strike this man, and to kill him and all his servants.

Nabal’s wife, Abigail, was sensitive to the Spirit of God, and recognized God’s hand on David, so she moved to intercept him as he was on his way to take revenge. She saw David with God’s eyes, and called him to rise up to the standards of God’s purposes for David. Basically, she said to him “You are better than this! Let God deal with this fool, and you, David, stay true to God’s vision for your life!”

David responded with humility, and God did indeed deliver him and prosper him as a result.

Here’s the key: David heard God’s voice in the words of a courageous woman, and avoided a trap that would have negatively affected him for the rest of his days.

There are two things to consider. One is this – under times of pressure, do we have the humility to hear God’s corrective or directive word through unlikely people? If so, much pain and trouble may be avoided.

Second, do we have the courage to speak to someone else when we perceive by the Holy Spirit that they are headed down a destructive path? It takes a courageous person to be a true friend in those times, especially in an age where we are reluctant to have an opinion on someone else’s choices.

Whether we are on the giving end or the receiving end of such a thing, what is required is a listening ear that is sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is saying. Our Father really does have our best interests at heart, and His word will save us a lot of trouble.

All we need is the humility to listen, and the courage to obey.

Gary Wiens

For My Sake - Jesus

I was reading yesterday from Oswald Chambers’ little volume on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and came across this potent paragraph:

There is a difference between devotion to principles and devotion to a Person. Jesus never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself—For My sake. Discipleship is based not on devotion to abstract ideals, but on devotion to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. . . (P.4).

The words “for My sake” jumped out at me, and some things that had grown fuzzy and unclear over time suddenly crystallized again: the fundamental reason Jesus gives me for obedience, holiness, and faithfulness to Him is simply because I love Him, and He is worthy of my affections. Period.

There are many secondary motivations for living, or attempting to live, “the Christian life.” But the primary and therefore most important reason is because of love for the Son of God. He deserves my love and devotion, and how I live, talk, emote, relate to others, think in my secret heart – all of it affects Him. Jesus is a person in love with me, and how I respond to Him and to the situations of life impacts Him as the lover of my soul.

It’s pretty plain in the Bible – the first and greatest commandment is about loving Him with every part of my human being. My heart, my soul, my mind, and my physical strength are all drawn into this command: Love Me with everything you’ve got!

The message of the Sermon on the Mount is clear. I can’t do this without the Holy Spirit. He is the true Lover of Jesus, and the One who empowers me to love Him the way the Father loves Him.

Because of life’s difficulties that confront us day by day, obedience and faithfulness that is not motivated and empowered by love will soon deteriorate into angry legalism and religious intolerance at best, or at worst an abandonment of faith and hope. Only love for Jesus and love for others for His sake carries the power to keep my heart fresh and soft, my emotions tender, and my life journey on the right path. Only Jesus is worthy of everything, of all my love.

Help me, Holy Spirit – for His sake.

Why The Resurrection Is So Important - Randy Alcorn

It’s Resurrection Weekend, and I want to share this article by Randy Alcorn on the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here is Part One - enjoy!

Why The Resurrection Is So Important – Randy Alcorn

In the late 1990s, a group of scholars assembled to evaluate whether Jesus actually said the things attributed to him by the Gospel writers. Although they employed remarkably subjective criteria in their evaluation of Scripture, members of the self-appointed “Jesus Seminar” were widely quoted by the media as authorities on the Christian faith.

Marcus Borg, a Jesus Seminar leader, said this of Christ’s resurrection: “As a child, I took it for granted that Easter meant that Jesus literally rose from the dead. I now see Easter very differently. For me, it is irrelevant whether or not the tomb was empty. Whether Easter involved something remarkable happening to the physical body of Jesus is irrelevant.”1

As a child, Borg was right. As an adult—though considered a spokesman for Christianity—he couldn’t be more wrong. What Borg calls irrelevant—the physical resurrection of Christ’s body—the apostle Paul considered absolutely essential to the Christian faith. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins... [and] we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).

The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of redemption—both for mankind and for the earth. Indeed, without Christ’s resurrection and what it means—an eternal future for fully restored human beings dwelling on a fully restored Earth—there is no Christianity.

Resurrection Is Physical 

The major Christian creeds state, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” But I have found in many conversations that Christians tend to spiritualize the resurrection of the dead, effectively denying it.† They don’t reject it as a doctrine, but they deny its essential meaning: a permanent return to a physical existence in a physical universe.

Of Americans who believe in a resurrection of the dead, two-thirds believe they will not have bodies after the resurrection.2 But this is self-contradictory. A non-physical resurrection is like a sunless sunrise. There’s no such thing. Resurrection means that we will have bodies. If we didn’t have bodies, we wouldn’t be resurrected!

The biblical doctrine of the resurrection of the dead begins with the human body but extends far beyond it. R. A. Torrey writes, “We will not be disembodied spirits in the world to come, but redeemed spirits, in redeemed bodies, in a redeemed universe.”3 If we don’t get it right on the resurrection of the body, we’ll get nothing else right. It’s therefore critical that we not merely affirm the resurrection of the dead as a point of doctrine but that we understand the meaning of the resurrection we affirm.

Genesis 2:7 says, “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The Hebrew word for “living being” is nephesh, often translated “soul.” The point at which Adam became nephesh is when God joined his body (dust) and spirit (breath) together. Adam was not a living human being until he had both material (physical) and immaterial (spiritual) components. Thus, the essence of humanity is not just spirit, but spirit joined with body. Your body does not merely house the real you—it is as much a part of who you are as your spirit is.

If this idea seems wrong to us, it’s because we have been deeply influenced by Christoplatonism.†† From a christoplatonic perspective, our souls merely occupy our bodies, like a hermit crab inhabits a seashell, and our souls could naturally—or even ideally—live in a disembodied state.

It’s no coincidence that the apostle Paul’s detailed defense of the physical resurrection of the dead was written to the church at Corinth. More than any other New Testament Christians, the Corinthian believers were immersed in the Greek philosophies of Platonism and dualism, which perceived a dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical. The biblical view of human nature, however, is radically different. Scripture indicates that God designed our bodies to be an integral part of our total being. Our physical bodies are an essential aspect of who we are, not just shells for our spirits to inhabit.

Death is an abnormal condition because it tears apart what God created and joined together. God intended for our bodies to last as long as our souls. Those who believe in Platonism or in preexistent spirits see a disembodied soul as natural and even desirable. The Bible sees it as unnatural and undesirable. We are unified beings. That’s why the bodily resurrection of the dead is so vital. And that’s why Job rejoiced that in his flesh he would see God (Job 19:26).

When God sent Jesus to die, it was for our bodies as well as our spirits. He came to redeem not just “the breath of life” (spirit) but also “the dust of the ground” (body). When we die, it isn’t that our real self goes to the intermediate Heaven and our fake self goes to the grave; it’s that part of us goes to the intermediate Heaven and part goes to the grave to await our bodily resurrection. We will never be all that God intended for us to be until body and spirit are again joined in resurrection. (If we do have physical forms in the intermediate state, clearly they will not be our original or ultimate bodies.)

Any views of the afterlife that settle for less than a bodily resurrection—including Christoplatonism, reincarnation, and transmigration of the soul—are explicitly unchristian. The early church waged major doctrinal wars against Gnosticism and Manichaeism, dualistic worldviews that associated God with the spiritual realm of light and Satan with the physical world of darkness. These heresies contradicted the biblical account that says God was pleased with the entire physical realm, all of which he created and called “very good” (Genesis 1:31). The truth of Christ’s resurrection repudiated the philosophies of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Nevertheless, two thousand years later, these persistent heresies have managed to take hostage our modern theology of Heaven.

Our incorrect thinking about bodily resurrection stems from our failure to understand the environment in which resurrected people will live—the New Earth. Anthony Hoekema is right: “Resurrected bodies are not intended just to float in space, or to flit from cloud to cloud. They call for a new earth on which to live and to work, glorifying God. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, in fact, makes no sense whatever apart from the doctrine of the new earth.”4

† For Paul’s exposition of the resurrection of the dead, see 1 Corinthians 15:12-58.

†† The basic principles of Christoplatonism are explained in chapter 6, and a more complex explanation of Christoplatonism’s false assumptions can be found in appendix A.

††† Even if Christ’s resurrection body has capabilities that ours won’t, we know we’ll still be able to stretch the capacities of our perfected human bodies to their fullest, which will probably seem supernatural to us compared to what we’ve known.

1  Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 129-31.

2  Time (March 24, 1997): 75, quoted in Paul Marshall with Lela Gilbert, Heaven Is Not My Home: Learning to Live in God’s Creation(Nashville: Word, 1998), 234.

3  R. A. Torrey, Heaven or Hell (New Kensington, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1985), 68-69.

4  Anthony A. Hoekema, “Heaven: Not Just an Eternal Day Off,” Christianity Today (June 6, 2003), http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/122/54.0.html.

The Transcendent Longing for Home

Over the past couple of months I’ve been involved with a number of senior citizens in my city, driving the bus that takes them on outings, or to the bank, grocery store, or all-in-one places like Target and Walmart. During this brief time, some friendships began to emerge with these seniors, and one of my favorites has been with Glen. Having just turned 84 years old, Glen had some trouble remembering things, but his sweet spirit and lively sense of humor made him a favorite of many at the center where he lived.

In one conversation with Glen, I asked him what he was looking forward to, and his answer was immediate and clear: “I’m looking forward to being home in Heaven.” We began talking about life and faith, and it became clear that Glen had a real and true relationship with Jesus Christ. His statement about “being home” stuck with me, and provoked some deeper thoughts on this final aspect of transcendent longing.

All of us want to be “home.” We yearn for that place, for that setting that feels right, where we are complete and comfortable and safe. We watch programs like “Fixer-Upper” or “My Lottery Dream Home” and feel the tug in our hearts about finding the place to live happily ever after, where our desires are fulfilled, and where peace and contentment rules the day. Every fairy tale has that perfect ending, the culmination of a life journey that leads us home. My favorite worship song at the moment, Hillsong’s “Behold (Then Sings My Soul)” concludes with the phrase “Behold, the Lord our God will lead us home.”

It’s the residue of Eden that is alive in every human heart. It’s the transcendent longing for Heaven, the real and tangible place that is our eternal home. I believe the knowledge of and longing for Heaven has to be squelched and denied if it is not to be believed. Billy Graham looked forward to going home to Heaven, but the tragedy for Stephen Hawking was that he had no home to look forward to. I’m afraid he’s had a rude awakening, although who can predict the mercies of God?

Glen went home yesterday. He went to church with his friend, Linda, and had a heart attack, in his Father’s house. I didn’t know him for long enough, I didn’t know him well enough, but I’m certain of this – the transcendent Home I’m yearning for is the same Home that Glen desired. I’ll see him again, along with all who have gone before, and we will surely live happily ever after – in Heaven, at home.

Gary Wiens

The Transcendent Longing for Beauty

The yearning in our hearts for the Beautiful is perhaps the most difficult longing to put into words. Beauty is the least tangible of the transcendentals, and has become terribly obscured in our time. We have largely removed Beauty from our spiritual consciousness, replacing it with concepts and doctrines on one hand, or with a preoccupation with self-help and comfort on the other. While those realities certainly have their place, by neglecting Beauty we inadvertently sabotage our ability to touch the fullness of those derivative benefits.

In our natural experiences, we have succumbed to the adage that “beauty is only skin deep,” and have therefore overemphasized the external in order to preserve the fleeting illusion of physical “beauty.” We have separated the idea of beauty from the other transcendentals of love, truth, and goodness, and have made an idol out of external attractiveness. By doing so, we have given place to “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” that St. John declares to be from the world system and not from the Father (1 John 2:15-16).

As a result, we celebrate the current fashions of the entertainment industry while conveniently separating them from the ugliness of the narcissism and perversion that characterizes that segment of society. They may be attractive, but because they are not good and true and truly loving, they are not Beautiful.

We are told in Isaiah 4:2 that in the last days of natural human history, “the Branch of the LORD (a reference to Jesus) shall be beautiful and glorious…”. In other words, the Spirit of God will reveal the character of Jesus, His person and work, His attributes and eternal majesty in such a way that will surpass all our comprehension, and we will ultimately be dumbstruck by the overwhelming revelation that He is Beautiful!

We are instructed in Psalm 29:2 to “Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.” We are invited to explore the realm of the LORD that is truly beautiful, that will ultimately satisfy our yearning for Beauty, and we are promised that at the return of Jesus to the earth, His glorious and beautiful Kingdom will be truly and completely established.

And we will be satisfied.

Gary Wiens

The Transcendent Longing for Goodness and Justice - Part B

The cry for justice in current culture is growing louder, even as it becomes more and more apparent that the cultural institutions and the people who comprise them are incapable of producing the goodness and justice that our souls long for. The temptation is to give in to cynicism and even despair under the pressure of failed attempts to produce justice, but that pressure can actually steer our souls toward hope, if we will allow it.

That hope comes from the fact that there is One whose Kingdom is built on righteousness and justice, which are declared to be the foundations of His throne (Psalm 89:14). These two terms – righteousness and justice – are central promises of the Kingdom of God that will be established when Jesus returns to earth as the King of all kings. The promise of Isaiah 42:1-4 is that He will establish justice to the ends of the earth, and that nothing will deter Him in this quest. Our longing for goodness and justice will be satisfied, fully, when He returns.

What do these terms actually mean? Are they merely religious words that have little meaning for us, or can we understand them as the powerful promises they are? In my own study and meditation, I’ve come to the conclusion that righteousness means the perfect alignment and conformity of all things to the design that was in God’s mind when He created everything. To be “righteous” means to live fully in the perfection of God’s design for my life. Therefore, a Kingdom of righteousness (Matthew 6:33) will be the context in which every individual and every institution will live and operate in perfect alignment with the design and will of God. Because of Jesus, we will be everything we were created to be.

Justice, then, is the process of bringing all things, people and institutions, into that perfect alignment. When justice is established, all individuals and entities will relate and operate in perfect coordination and unity. What’s more, for those who live by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, this will not be a coerced reality, externally enforced. Rather, there will be the complete internal transformation into the image of Jesus, where every individual will freely choose to live in perfect alignment with God’s design and purpose. “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness” (Psalm 17:15).

The impact of these truths is astonishing – we do not have to opt for a cynical, despairing outlook in response to our longing for goodness and justice. Those realities are surely coming to the earth. Goodness, righteousness, and justice will be the way of things. The wrongs will be made right, and evil will be done away. Jesus is surely coming!

And, importantly, we do not have to wait until that blessed day to begin to live like that. We can begin, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to seek after righteousness and justice in our own context. We can tune in to the Father’s voice, and receive His perspective on ourselves, on other people, and on situations. We are not forced to choose between objectionable extremes; rather, we can receive understanding from heaven, and wisdom in how to apply that understanding. The Kingdom is here now, through believers, even as we wait for the fullness when Jesus returns.

Let the longing for goodness and justice increase! Let our voices be raised in worship and intercession, calling for the Lord’s return, even as we extend our hands to work for righteousness and justice now.

The Prophet Amos said “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:4). It’s one of our deepest longings, and it will surely come.

Gary Wiens

The Transcendent Longing for Goodness and Justice

Perhaps you can picture the scene as it plays out. It can be among the children at the playground, or as we are experiencing as I write this, among the athletes at the Olympic Games. Whatever the level of skill, the participants are engaged in some sort of competitive activity – who’s the fastest, who’s the smartest, who’s … whatever! And suddenly, it’s apparent that some part of the game has gone awry: a rule has been broken, or maybe one competitor is simply so much better than the others, and you hear the exclamation – “That’s not fair!” Something has gone wrong, someone has experienced a development in the exercise that somehow doesn’t seem right, and the key thing is, we know it when we see it or experience it.

In our day and time, the cry “It’s not fair!” is shouted long and loud from so many different situations and voices. The term “microaggressions” (little annoyances about you that offend me) has become a part of our daily vocabulary, athletes and their coaches are accused of cheating to gain a competitive edge, and countless individuals have raised their voices against rampant abuse and misuse of people in a variety of settings. Our political process is mired in real or imagined scandal, and dirty tricks seem to be an element of every day life.

Why are we so up in arms about all of this? It’s because deep down inside, we know that there is a right way, that there should be goodness and justice in human relationships. Healthy and honest competition should be the rule of the day. People in power should not abuse those around them. Children should not be molested, or murdered in their school rooms. We yearn for Utopia, yet an honest look at “reality” strongly draws us toward a pessimistic reaction – “good luck trying to find that!” The cynical religious joke is “if you find a perfect church, don’t go there, because you’ll ruin it.”

In short, we know that something deeply important – goodness, justice – is broken, not only in our culture, but in every culture. Our problem is not that we know it’s broken – it’s that we can’t fix it, no matter how hard we try. Somehow, we humans seem to always return to our own self-serving motivations, and goodness/justice takes a back seat to our personal desire and felt need, regardless of the impact on others. And when an unjust situation is exposed to the light, the immediate reaction in our soul is that somebody, somewhere, has to pay for this! We want justice!

What faces us here is the same dilemma that arises in every one of these “transcendent longings of the soul.” We yearn for truth, for love, for goodness and justice. We know what should be, but we can’t find it or produce it. We long for perfection, we strive for it, we try to legislate for it, and yet the pursuit always, always falls short or breaks down before we can reach the goal.

Will there ever be justice in the earth? Will goodness ever win out, completely? Will evil and brokenness ever be overcome? I believe there is an answer to that question, and we’ll explore it in the next article. Stay tuned!

Gary Wiens

The Transcendent Longing for Love - Part 2

In considering these “transcendent longings” of the human soul, I am driven again and again to this concept that comes out of the mind of CS Lewis. It goes something like this:

“The fact that a man is hungry does not mean that he will be fed; however, it certainly means that there is food available somewhere.”

When we find ourselves yearning for perfect love, we are ultimately brought to the feet of Jesus, who lived out this love to the fullest extent. Perhaps, like me, you have wished that you could have lived when He did, and walked with Him as one of the disciples, or even as one of the crowd that followed Him, heard His words, and witnessed His miraculous works. What wondrous experiences those people must have had!

But we live now, 2000 years removed from Jesus’ physical presence, so the best we can hope for is to meditate on the stories and wait faithfully until He returns, so that we might be with Him, in person, forever.

Or is it?

Actually, the Scripture gives us a different picture. It records Jesus’ words to His followers that it is actually better for them that He goes away, because then the Holy Spirit can be sent from the Father. Jesus maintains that the promise of the Holy Spirit is actually better than His physical presence – for now – because by the Spirit, His love will actually be poured out into our hearts and souls, that we might experientially know the love that surpasses comprehension.

Romans 8 speaks of the coming of the Spirit of sonship, that will release to us the same kind of relationship with the Father that Jesus has. Ephesians 3 tells us of the Spirit of the Father being given to us, to strengthen our inner man so that we might receive and know the incomprehensible love of Christ. Romans 5 reminds us that the love of God – that perfect, unshakeable, all-inclusive love – has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

In other words, by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, we can access transcendent realities. We can know unknowable things. We can touch the reality of Heaven here and now through the cultivation of intimate friendship with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus told His disciples that when He went away, He would not leave them comfortless, but would send the Comforter Himself, the Holy Spirit, who would minister to us internally, and feed our souls with the transcendent food of His table – His very life.

My prayer for you, and for my own life as well, is that our passions would be focused on this one thing: getting to know the Holy Spirit intimately. He is the One who will sustain us with real food and real drink until the day that Jesus comes again.

Be blessed.
Gary Wiens

The Transcendent God for the Transcendent Longing of the Soul, Part 3 - The Longing for Love

Of all the longings of the human soul, the desire for perfect love is perhaps the most powerful. To be loved – unconditionally, perfectly, without fail or question – is the yearning that simmers deep in the human heart, and drives virtually everything we do, every choice we make. Somehow, deep inside, we KNOW that we should be the object of perfect love, and so we go on the life-long search for “The One” who will love us in the way we ought to be loved.

There is a short passage in the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a) that gives the characteristics of this love that we innately know is there:

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

On top of that, Jesus adds His version of perfect love:

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13

If you’ve spent any time at all in the context of Christian community, you’ve probably heard teaching about these passages. Most of the time that teaching is focused on how we should love like this toward other people. For me, that focus has always been discouraging, because I know myself too well. I’m simply not going to love like that with any kind of consistency, period, end of sentence. And what’s more, I have reasons – good ones! – for falling short of that standard. And most of those reasons have to do with short-comings in the people I’m supposed to love. The reasoning goes like this: “If they were more loving toward me, I would ….”

The dilemma is that we all know that we should be loved perfectly, and we all have reasons why we don’t express love perfectly toward others. So we collide with each other, fully loaded with expectations of being loved perfectly, but knowing that we ourselves can’t meet the challenge. The inevitable result is, again, disappointment, hurt, and eventually disillusionment with the other party. Sooner or later the temptation arises to look elsewhere, because I’ve either gotten involved with the wrong person, or the wrong church, or the wrong job, or whatever.

Here’s the core issue: we’ve set our sights too low. These Scripture passages are talking about God’s kind of love, the perfect love that is His fundamental attribute, and that has been expressed toward us in the Person of Jesus. No one else can love like He does, no one else can meet the ultimate longing for love that boils in my deepest soul. No one else was ever intended to fulfill that yearning.

Perfect love. We know it should be there. We know from experience that no human relationship can meet the standard. We can keep looking to the next relationship or the next situation, or we can fix our gaze on Jesus. There is no other choice.

More on this next time.
Gary Wiens

The Transcendent God for the Transcendent Longing of the Soul - Pt 2 The Longing For Truth

Most of us have had the experience of a conversation with a young child in which the question “Why?” comes from their lips. Perhaps you tried to give an answer, and then your answer was met by another “Why?” So, you answered again, only to hear another “Why?” in response. This cycle went on and on, not until the young inquisitor was satisfied, but until you ran out of ideas, and ended the interaction by saying something like “Because I said so!” Or maybe, being somewhat more secure, you honestly admitted that you don’t know the next level of answer demanded by the basic question – “Why?”

This common, simple (but actually profound) dialogue with a child illustrates in a powerful way the fact that we humans have an innate awareness that there is information “out there somewhere” that surpasses our understanding, our grasp of available knowledge. There is information about why the apple is red or green, or why the moon changes shape, or why the rain feels wet to us (but would it feel wet to a fish?) The fact that we can know things, even if we can’t know them exhaustively, points us beyond ourselves, and gives us a hint that somewhere there must be full knowledge, there must be complete understanding, some entity that must know everything about everything. And since we are personal, and there are many questions about that, this entity “out there” must be personal too.

This longing of the soul to know things, to understand and comprehend our world, our friends and family, the galaxy we inhabit – this longing is common to all human beings. Yet we are also aware that no matter how far we proceed in the search for answers to the basic questions of Who, What, Where, When, How, and of course, Why? we will will never find the full answer within the confines of the natural world around us. There must be something beyond, perhaps Someone, who knows, and who perhaps is willing to communicate Truth to us.

If there is complete knowledge, or Truth (and it is reasonable to think there is), then there must be a Source of that Truth. The Source we seek must be beyond the subjective, relativistic and entirely unsatisfying “your truth” that is spoken of by self-appointed authorities like Oprah Winfrey. There must be objective, eternal Truth that is actually universal, that encompasses all of life, the entire created order, and that is sufficient to answer the questions we have. The seeker of Truth demands something beyond ourselves, beyond our puny perspective, the kind of Truth that has the power to explain and to resolve all the issues that confront us.

The questions that arise in our souls are in reality an invitation to seek after, to pursue the One Who is that Source, the One the Bible reveals to us as God. He is necessarily there, for the presence of the questions demands that there be an Answer somewhere. He has spoken to us, and has told us that His secrets are available to us (Psalm 25:14). His Son Jesus tells us that He Himself is the Truth (John 14:6), and that even though there are things beyond human understanding, that He has given us of His Spirit that we might know the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:9-12).

We are invited by the Spirit of God to seek after Him, that we might know the Truth about Him, about ourselves, and about our world. We can respond to that invitation, or, in the words of one thinker:

“Yet the presence of the divine essence does not ask the question for me; it does not create for me. It provides the crucial datum of incomplete intelligibility that incites me to ask the question—but I do not have to answer this question, I do not have to seek an answer; I don’t even have to ask the question. I can behold incomplete intelligibility, and instead of pursuing its invitation, eat a bon-bon and watch a rerun on television.”

My choice is to be a seeker of Truth for all my days. You are invited as well to join that journey.

Blessings, Gary Wiens

The Transcendent God for the Transcendent Longing of the Soul

People who think and reflect deeply upon the human condition have articulated five realms of desire that are common to human beings, regardless of their nationality, religion, or any other societal factor. These realms of desire, or longing, exert tremendous influence over every individual, and give rise to a seemingly endless variety of attempts to meet these longings within the framework of natural experience. These attempts invariably fall short of the goal of satisfaction, because the reality is that, no matter what we experience in relation to these realms of desire, we instinctively know that there is yet more to be had. In the inner reaches of our souls, we know that we have not fully met the longing we feel, and so we often give in to the temptation of repeating strategies that have failed us, time and time again.

These five realms of desire, or longing, may be summarized in these concepts, often called “the transcendentals.” They are: the longing for Truth, the longing for Love, the longing for Goodness (sometimes called Justice), the longing for Beauty, and the longing for Home. Even a brief reflection on each of these transcendentals awakens that sense of desire, or longing in the human heart. When one takes the time and effort to reflect more deeply, one begins to realize that our repeated attempts to come to satisfaction and fulfillment invariably fall short, and we come to the end of that attempt with the vague and aching knowledge that there is still more, something beyond what we have touched. The awareness of this failure to realize what we seek either drives us to despair and a crippling disillusionment, or it can propel us to deeper seeking, to a positive disillusionment that may lead to the awakening of vision and hope.

In this series of articles, we will explore this reality of desire, or longing, as well as reflecting on each of the five transcendentals that are common to each of us in our own experience. Then, as we consider the reality of the transcendentals, we will also explore the conclusion that the fullness that we seek is found only in the God of the Bible, the Father of the Lord Jesus, and the Giver of the Holy Spirit. There is a familiar quote from the writings of St. Augustine that expresses this journey so well:

“For Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

I hope you’ll follow along on this little journey from week to week. Blessings on you!
Gary Wiens

Human Hypocrisy and the Hunger for Righteousness

It is an interesting thing to observe all the partisan proclamations and denials coming from all sides of the political spectrum these days. Who is fit to govern, why or why not should this or that person be in a place of power and influence, who lied when and to whom … the tumult increases in volume daily. Hypocrisy and inconsistency on all sides make up the order of the day.

At the root of all of it, burning in the deep places of the human soul, is a hunger for righteousness, the innate sense that we ought to be governed by someone who is righteous, fair, without prejudice, perfectly wise, and yes, even loving in their dealings with the people who look to them for leadership. There ought to be prosperity and equity in material matters, freedom to pursue fulfillment in life within reasonable boundaries, protection from enemies, yet grace toward those in need, and even toward those who disagree with our points of view.

All of these things – and many more – are legitimate desires within the souls of normal folks, and yet, we as followers of Jesus continue to make a fundamental mistake in our search for worthy leaders. We continue to set our sights far too low, hoping that some elected individual or group with the right platform is going to provide the solutions needed in our society for the general well-being of all.

The foment, confusion, and even hatred that is vented in the press, on social networks, and in the media all too often draws us into the fray at an entirely ineffective level, and as we get caught up in the swirl of opinions, we lose our perspective on the real issue: what we are looking for is the rule and reign of Jesus as the only one worthy to be trusted with all authority, power, and might.

Instead of arguing with one another over which party or which individual has what it takes, we must get settled in this reality: there is only One found worthy. Our energies must be re-focused on the real battle, the one waged in worship and intercession for the return of the King.

If we continue to give first priority to the political and social issues facing our nation and world, and continue to take sides in the partisan struggle of who is right and who is wrong and who is crazy and who is sane, we will miss the main point. The reality of the struggle is before us in order to draw our gaze to a higher and better Kingdom, and to draw our hearts to long for a greater King.

There is only One King worthy of our attention and affection. He is Jesus, and He is waiting to hear the voice of His people inviting Him to return home and release His righteous Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. This is not fairy tale – it is our only real hope.

Gary Wiens