The process of forming meekness in any of us usually involves a series of stages, with some of them almost inevitably traumatic. I have long been convinced that only God knows the true identity and destiny of any given individual. Only God (or those who speak with an understanding of His opinion) can communicate to a person with the necessary authority to establish them in settled truth concerning who they are. If it were our natural inclination to listen to Him and receive His opinions as real and true, the journey to meekness and power would be less troublesome.
However, for most of us the process of discovery is shot through with trouble. We have this inclination to try to make something of ourselves, to prove something to God and everyone else. We want to be great apart from relationship with Him, and the simple fact is that it does not work. The only way to lasting greatness is the way of Jesus, and sooner or later we must choose that way.
Someone might consider the options and decide that ruling their own life apart from God is still preferable to submitting to Him. A famous man once stated “I would rather rule in hell than serve in Heaven.” It is a stunning admission of the self-centered rebellion that characterizes the fallen human soul, but frankly that sentiment is not uncommon. The tragic deception is this: no one will be ruling in hell, not even Satan. The Biblical presentation is that hell is a lake of fire where there is nothing but eternal and excruciating torment for those who choose to go there. Make no mistake: Satan and all those who choose his way will be in a literal place of eternal torment by their own choice. There is no life and no authority apart from God, only agony.
So, as I said, sooner or later we must choose God’s way. Most of us choose it later rather than sooner. And because God is the patient Father that He is, He allows us the choices that invariably leave Him out, at least at the beginning. So we try to become “Somebody” and often find ourselves hating what we’ve become. Or we succeed for a time, and then cannot figure out why everything crashes down around us. Or perhaps we reach the pinnacle of the mountain we were trying to climb, only to find that satisfaction has eluded us, and we are no more fulfilled than we were at the beginning of the journey.
You see, we can never genuinely serve people until we come into agreement with God’s way of doing things. We must become convinced that God will honor and reward those who are meek, who use their strength to serve and bless rather than to control. Until we believe that the meek will inherit the earth, we will either strive to gain control of our world by the exertion of our own strength, or we will give up and decide that power and authority are beyond our reach.
God’s purpose in these issues of life is that the frustration of our attempts to fulfill our goals should bring us to the place of calling out to Him for help. He knows that we can never reach our power potential without His input, because having designed us and made us, He holds the secrets of our identity and destiny. But He will never impose that knowledge on us. His desire is that we choose Him and seek for Him as a child would seek after their father, or as a lover would seek after their Beloved.
Some people, in the foolishness and stupidity of their own pride, keep banging their heads against the wall of self-discovery, thinking that they can keep doing the same old routine and maybe this time there will be a different result. It’s really insanity in action! Those folks will never know who they are, where they came from, where they’re going, and the authority that is theirs for the asking. They are stuck in their foolishness, and as long as they persist in it nothing will change. Others give up in hopelessness, tired of striving but too disappointed to trust God anymore. They roll over and die inside, convinced that God is powerless, or worse – cruel and uncaring. They say this: “He will use me, but He won’t answer my prayers.”
Still others, however, whom the Scriptures call wise, learn to call upon the Lord in their times of distress. Consider this representative list of steps that characterize those that are coming to the place of meekness:
• Having seen that apart from God they do not have what it takes to attain the greatness for which they were made, they begin to acknowledge their poverty.
• Having faced the rebellion in their own hearts toward God and His Son Jesus, they begin to grieve and mourn over their own sin and the pain it has caused Him.
• They begin to pray, to ask God’s forgiveness for their self-centered rebellion.
• They begin to search the Bible for clues about their existence.
• They begin to hang out with people who are discovering that identity and destiny are rooted in what God says about you, and that apart from that reality there can be no fulfillment in life.
• They begin to spend large amounts of time just thinking about the person of Jesus, reading about His life in the Bible, and asking the Holy Spirit to help them become like Him.
• They learn to worship God and thank Him for the way He has led them to Himself, and for the blessings that He has in store for them as they follow His ways.
• They begin to serve one another as Jesus served the people around Him.
The wondrous thing is that as we give ourselves to activities like these, God begins to reveal the truth concerning who we are and what we are about. Our sense of destiny begins to emerge, along with the authority we need to come into our full inheritance of power, both here and in the coming age. This change happens super-naturally from God. Little by little, from one level of glory to the next, we begin to look and sound and act like Jesus. The more we become like Him – treating people like He did, serving instead of demanding to be served – the more we step into our own place of authority. The more we taste of this life, the more we hunger and thirst after it. Having become meek, we begin to inherit the earth.
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Powerful People Are Meek
How does the idea of meekness fit in your mind with reaching your power potential? For most of us, the word “meekness” conjures up an image that would seem on the other end of the spectrum from the idea of power. So what do we do with the fact that Jesus puts the term “meekness” in the same breath with inheriting the earth!? Surely there are interesting and exciting things for us to discover as we look into this Beatitude.
The twelve men who were the closest followers of Jesus were in for a real shock as they came into the room that had been prepared for them to eat the Passover meal. They had become convinced (with the probable exception of Judas) that Jesus was indeed who He claimed to be – the Son of God in the flesh, the Messiah who would one day receive the authority written about through all the Hebrew Scriptures, and promised to Him by His Father.
As Jesus had done so consistently through His life, He was once again about to demonstrate His authority in a most unusual way. When the disciples entered what has been called “the Upper Room,” they were met at the door by one dressed in the garments of a servant, who began to wash their feet. It was a common courtesy in that day to have one of the servants wash the feet of guests. Though it was a gracious gesture on the host’s part that brought refreshment to the weary and communicated value to those on the receiving end, it was nevertheless a most menial task for the servant to whom it was assigned.
The startling thing about this encounter was that it was Jesus who had clothed Himself in the servant’s garb, and who proceeded to minister to them in that most basic way. The first teaching He gave them that evening wasn’t with eloquent words or profound thought; rather, it was a demonstration of tender love that showed them the power and authority of true leadership. Their comfort zones were shaken and the hidden motives of their hearts exposed as Jesus began His task. You see, there had been a long-standing dispute among the disciples about which of them was the greatest, and which of them would get the privilege of being close to Jesus in the fullness of His coming Kingdom. None of them would have given the least thought to taking the role of foot-washer, and the idea of Jesus doing that task was simply incomprehensible. But there He was, and the shallow pettiness of their argument was being laid bare before them without a word being spoken.
The thing that captures me about this story, recorded for us in the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel, is the utterly unexpected foundation of Jesus’ act of servanthood that is given to us in verses two through five:
And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
Try to get your mind around what we are being told in these few words. Jesus is already aware that one of His closest friends is going to sell Him out to the Jewish officials for the sake of personal gain. He is aware that every one of these men is going to abandon Him within just a few hours, as He is taken to His trial and crucifixion. Each of them, in their own way, is going to deny their love for Jesus and leave Him to die alone and abandoned.
But Jesus had a resource that enabled Him, the greatest and most powerful human being who ever lived, to take the low place of serving those who wanted to be great because He had created them to be great. Here’s how He did it: first, the text says that Jesus knew that “the Father had given all things into His hands.” Because of His intimacy with His Father, Jesus understood that by God’s own promise He had authority over everything, both in that moment and in the coming age of God’s Kingdom that will be established on the earth. Further, we’re told that Jesus knew “that He had come from God, and that He was going to God.” In other words, His sense of identity and His sense of destiny were fully established in His heart and mind. He knew who He was, He knew where He was going, and He knew His place of power. Therefore, He chose to exercise that power in the loving activity of serving His friends, even to the ultimate service of giving His life for their redemption. He would pour His own life out for them in anticipation of the day to come when His power and authority would be established in fact before all people.
It is this posture of serving others from a place of strength that the Bible calls “meekness.” The term literally means “gentleness,” but not in the way most of us think about being gentle. At best we think of meekness and gentleness as a quality of temperament that has more to with one’s natural personality than something that has been developed in one’s character over time. But frankly, we perceive meekness and gentleness to be associated more with weakness than with strength. We envision meekness in a person who is trying to make the best out of a hopeless situation, exercised by one who has no power options and is trying to get along by being nice.
The meekness that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 5:5 and models in John 13:1-5 is not primarily about being nice. It is a character quality that chooses humility because humility is God’s way. Meekness causes someone to do the right thing because it is right, but with a gentle style rooted in true strength. It is strength under discipline, a gentleness built upon the solid foundation of understanding one’s revealed identity and destiny rooted in the sovereign love of God. Meekness is not a trait that many are born with, but rather one that is developed through years of forming and shaping by the Spirit of God. It is not an optional character trait, but one that is essential in coming to possess true power, for Jesus promised that the earth itself will be given as an inheritance to the meek ones.
What we must come to understand in our journey to reach our power potential is that Jesus’ value system is really the way things are going to be established at the end of the day. All other strategies for power will fail, and only His methods will be found to be true. Therefore, to pursue power with wisdom and the certainty of attaining it is to pursue it in the way Jesus promises to give it. Power will be given as an inheritance to those who embrace His character and His methods, and that includes the character trait of meekness.
The twelve men who were the closest followers of Jesus were in for a real shock as they came into the room that had been prepared for them to eat the Passover meal. They had become convinced (with the probable exception of Judas) that Jesus was indeed who He claimed to be – the Son of God in the flesh, the Messiah who would one day receive the authority written about through all the Hebrew Scriptures, and promised to Him by His Father.
As Jesus had done so consistently through His life, He was once again about to demonstrate His authority in a most unusual way. When the disciples entered what has been called “the Upper Room,” they were met at the door by one dressed in the garments of a servant, who began to wash their feet. It was a common courtesy in that day to have one of the servants wash the feet of guests. Though it was a gracious gesture on the host’s part that brought refreshment to the weary and communicated value to those on the receiving end, it was nevertheless a most menial task for the servant to whom it was assigned.
The startling thing about this encounter was that it was Jesus who had clothed Himself in the servant’s garb, and who proceeded to minister to them in that most basic way. The first teaching He gave them that evening wasn’t with eloquent words or profound thought; rather, it was a demonstration of tender love that showed them the power and authority of true leadership. Their comfort zones were shaken and the hidden motives of their hearts exposed as Jesus began His task. You see, there had been a long-standing dispute among the disciples about which of them was the greatest, and which of them would get the privilege of being close to Jesus in the fullness of His coming Kingdom. None of them would have given the least thought to taking the role of foot-washer, and the idea of Jesus doing that task was simply incomprehensible. But there He was, and the shallow pettiness of their argument was being laid bare before them without a word being spoken.
The thing that captures me about this story, recorded for us in the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel, is the utterly unexpected foundation of Jesus’ act of servanthood that is given to us in verses two through five:
And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
Try to get your mind around what we are being told in these few words. Jesus is already aware that one of His closest friends is going to sell Him out to the Jewish officials for the sake of personal gain. He is aware that every one of these men is going to abandon Him within just a few hours, as He is taken to His trial and crucifixion. Each of them, in their own way, is going to deny their love for Jesus and leave Him to die alone and abandoned.
But Jesus had a resource that enabled Him, the greatest and most powerful human being who ever lived, to take the low place of serving those who wanted to be great because He had created them to be great. Here’s how He did it: first, the text says that Jesus knew that “the Father had given all things into His hands.” Because of His intimacy with His Father, Jesus understood that by God’s own promise He had authority over everything, both in that moment and in the coming age of God’s Kingdom that will be established on the earth. Further, we’re told that Jesus knew “that He had come from God, and that He was going to God.” In other words, His sense of identity and His sense of destiny were fully established in His heart and mind. He knew who He was, He knew where He was going, and He knew His place of power. Therefore, He chose to exercise that power in the loving activity of serving His friends, even to the ultimate service of giving His life for their redemption. He would pour His own life out for them in anticipation of the day to come when His power and authority would be established in fact before all people.
It is this posture of serving others from a place of strength that the Bible calls “meekness.” The term literally means “gentleness,” but not in the way most of us think about being gentle. At best we think of meekness and gentleness as a quality of temperament that has more to with one’s natural personality than something that has been developed in one’s character over time. But frankly, we perceive meekness and gentleness to be associated more with weakness than with strength. We envision meekness in a person who is trying to make the best out of a hopeless situation, exercised by one who has no power options and is trying to get along by being nice.
The meekness that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 5:5 and models in John 13:1-5 is not primarily about being nice. It is a character quality that chooses humility because humility is God’s way. Meekness causes someone to do the right thing because it is right, but with a gentle style rooted in true strength. It is strength under discipline, a gentleness built upon the solid foundation of understanding one’s revealed identity and destiny rooted in the sovereign love of God. Meekness is not a trait that many are born with, but rather one that is developed through years of forming and shaping by the Spirit of God. It is not an optional character trait, but one that is essential in coming to possess true power, for Jesus promised that the earth itself will be given as an inheritance to the meek ones.
What we must come to understand in our journey to reach our power potential is that Jesus’ value system is really the way things are going to be established at the end of the day. All other strategies for power will fail, and only His methods will be found to be true. Therefore, to pursue power with wisdom and the certainty of attaining it is to pursue it in the way Jesus promises to give it. Power will be given as an inheritance to those who embrace His character and His methods, and that includes the character trait of meekness.
Gary Wiens
Friday, July 5, 2019
Mourning in the Experience of Jesus
Mourning in the Experience of Jesus
It is in the person of Jesus that the fullness of this prophetic picture comes into focus. Several times in the Old Testament God speaks of His desire to have a man who would join with His heart, feeling God’s pain, and standing with Him in the ministry of intercessory prayer. If He could find such a man to share in His agony, He would relent from His judgments and release mercy instead.
Therefore, when the man Jesus – perfect in obedience, intimate in relationship with God – presented Himself to the Father as the ultimate intercessor, God poured out the fullness of wrath upon His own Son and the fullness of mercy upon all who would respond to His love.
It is a profound thing to consider that God desires to have human partners who will join Him in the expression of His emotions, whether positive or negative. We can scarcely imagine a God with such emotion, let alone one who desires to share that emotion with human beings. But if we can begin to see that this is where Jesus stood, and that God’s desire is to have the same kind of relationship with us, we can begin to be open to the touch of the Holy Spirit that communicates His emotions to us.
This is precisely what was in Jesus’ mind when He asked His three best friends – Peter, James, and John – to accompany Him to Gethsemane on the night of His trial and crucifixion. Jesus was headed to the dark night of desolation and sacrifice. The experience, borne entirely in His body as a human being, was going to be desperately difficult and painful. The sufferings of Jesus would involve mourning at the deepest level as He bore the sin of humanity. Here’s the amazing reality: Jesus was looking for friends with whom He could share this mournful experience, whose partnership with Him in this dark night would strengthen Him and enable them to have courage as well.
This dimension of mourning is called “blessed” by Jesus. Those who will come into identification with His sorrows are those who will receive the most profound recompense – being comforted and rewarded by God Himself. The promise of comfort to Jesus is articulated in Isaiah 53, where the prophet declares the blessing that will come to God’s suffering servant:
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
(Isaiah 53:10-12, NKJV)
The mourning of Jesus was precisely a fulfillment of this passage. In His humanity, Jesus presented Himself to the Father as one who would willingly share the agony of God’s heart, as well as bear the punishment due to the human race for their sin. Jesus said in effect “Father, You sought for a man to stand in the gap with you. Here I am! I will join with You, I will obey You in this, that Your heart might be comforted and satisfied.”
Isaiah’s prophetic promise over the life of Jesus is that when His soul is made an offering for sin, the pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand, and He shall be satisfied with the labor of His soul. In other words, He will be comforted by receiving the full reward of His suffering. That reward is nothing less than human beings fully redeemed from sin who are made able to live in a relationship of intimacy and shared authority with Him forever.
What Does This Mean For Us?
When you and I begin to understand this, we will see that God invites us into an experience of mourning with Him. It will have these two dimensions to it: the awareness of our own brokenness and need for healing, and the awareness of God’s heart that is in anguish for the broken of the earth. As we draw closer to Him in prayer, desiring deeper intimacy with Him as our Father and with His Son as our Bridegroom, God will touch us with this essential dimension of His will for us. We will be invited to mourn over our own condition, and to experience His emotions over the condition of His people. As we give ourselves to mourning, we can be sure that the reward of real comfort will be ours.
It is in the person of Jesus that the fullness of this prophetic picture comes into focus. Several times in the Old Testament God speaks of His desire to have a man who would join with His heart, feeling God’s pain, and standing with Him in the ministry of intercessory prayer. If He could find such a man to share in His agony, He would relent from His judgments and release mercy instead.
Therefore, when the man Jesus – perfect in obedience, intimate in relationship with God – presented Himself to the Father as the ultimate intercessor, God poured out the fullness of wrath upon His own Son and the fullness of mercy upon all who would respond to His love.
It is a profound thing to consider that God desires to have human partners who will join Him in the expression of His emotions, whether positive or negative. We can scarcely imagine a God with such emotion, let alone one who desires to share that emotion with human beings. But if we can begin to see that this is where Jesus stood, and that God’s desire is to have the same kind of relationship with us, we can begin to be open to the touch of the Holy Spirit that communicates His emotions to us.
This is precisely what was in Jesus’ mind when He asked His three best friends – Peter, James, and John – to accompany Him to Gethsemane on the night of His trial and crucifixion. Jesus was headed to the dark night of desolation and sacrifice. The experience, borne entirely in His body as a human being, was going to be desperately difficult and painful. The sufferings of Jesus would involve mourning at the deepest level as He bore the sin of humanity. Here’s the amazing reality: Jesus was looking for friends with whom He could share this mournful experience, whose partnership with Him in this dark night would strengthen Him and enable them to have courage as well.
This dimension of mourning is called “blessed” by Jesus. Those who will come into identification with His sorrows are those who will receive the most profound recompense – being comforted and rewarded by God Himself. The promise of comfort to Jesus is articulated in Isaiah 53, where the prophet declares the blessing that will come to God’s suffering servant:
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
(Isaiah 53:10-12, NKJV)
The mourning of Jesus was precisely a fulfillment of this passage. In His humanity, Jesus presented Himself to the Father as one who would willingly share the agony of God’s heart, as well as bear the punishment due to the human race for their sin. Jesus said in effect “Father, You sought for a man to stand in the gap with you. Here I am! I will join with You, I will obey You in this, that Your heart might be comforted and satisfied.”
Isaiah’s prophetic promise over the life of Jesus is that when His soul is made an offering for sin, the pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand, and He shall be satisfied with the labor of His soul. In other words, He will be comforted by receiving the full reward of His suffering. That reward is nothing less than human beings fully redeemed from sin who are made able to live in a relationship of intimacy and shared authority with Him forever.
What Does This Mean For Us?
When you and I begin to understand this, we will see that God invites us into an experience of mourning with Him. It will have these two dimensions to it: the awareness of our own brokenness and need for healing, and the awareness of God’s heart that is in anguish for the broken of the earth. As we draw closer to Him in prayer, desiring deeper intimacy with Him as our Father and with His Son as our Bridegroom, God will touch us with this essential dimension of His will for us. We will be invited to mourn over our own condition, and to experience His emotions over the condition of His people. As we give ourselves to mourning, we can be sure that the reward of real comfort will be ours.
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