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Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 28, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Mark 11; focused on 11.12-25

“The next day, as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. From some distance away he saw a fig tree covered with leaves, and hoped to find some fruit on it; but when he came up to it he found nothing but leaves. (It wasn’t yet the season for figs.)

He addressed the tree directly. ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again,’ he said. And his disciples heard.

They came into Jerusalem. Jesus went into the Temple and began to drive out the traders, those who bought and sold in the Temple, and overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of the dove-sellers. He permitted no one to carry any vessel through the Temple. He began to teach: ‘Isn’t this what’s written,’ he said,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the world to share?
But you’ve made it a brigands’ den!’

The chief priests and the legal experts heard, and looked for a way to get rid of him. But they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was astonished at his teaching.

When evening came, they went back out of the city.

As they were returning, early in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from its roots.

‘Look, Teacher!’ said Peter to Jesus, remembering what had happened before. ‘The fig tree you cursed has withered.’

‘Have faith in God,’ replied Jesus. ‘I’m telling you the truth: if anyone says to this mountain, “Be off with you – get yourself thrown into the sea,” if they have no doubt in their heart, but believe that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. That’s why I’m telling you, everything that 1 you request in prayer, everything you ask God for, believe that you receive it, and it will happen for you.

‘And when you are standing there praying, if you have something against someone else, forgive them – so that your father in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.’

Imagine you are standing on a high hill, overlooking a long valley. In the valley are villages, a river, fields and woods, with a network of small roads winding their way between them all. Now imagine that you can see a car, driving much too fast, along one of those winding roads. The driver is obviously hell-bent on getting somewhere quicker than he should. At the same time, you see another car, coming the other way, going about its ordinary business. With horror, you see what’s going to happen. Round one of the corners, any minute now…

Welcome to Mark 11. Jesus has been warning his fellow Jews, up and down the country, that God’s kingdom is coming. But they, for the most part, have preferred their own aspirations, their own agendas. They have been speeding on their way, eager for national liberation of the usual revolutionary sort. Within the society, the rich have been getting richer, and the poor poorer. The self-appointed religious watchdogs have been concentrating on the outward rules and purity regulations rather than on the human heart. The Temple itself, the place where heaven and earth were supposed to meet, where God’s forgiveness was supposed to happen, has been used as a symbol of national pride. They have ignored the warning sign and are heading straight for a sharp bend…where, coming the other way, is Jesus…

…Mark, as we’ve seen elsewhere, writes the story almost like a novelist. He frames Jesus’ action in the Temple (verses 15–18) within the double story of the fig tree. Jesus comes hoping for fruit, but finds none; so he puts a curse on the fig tree (verses 13–14). Then, the day after the Temple incident, there is the tree: withered from its roots (verses 20–21). The point could hardly be clearer. Jesus has come to Jerusalem, has come to the Temple, the holiest point in the Jewish world, looking for the fruit of repentance, of the wisdom, justice, holiness and peace that should be the marks of God’s people. He has found none. His action in the Temple must be seen – certainly this is how Mark and the other gospel writers see it – as an acted parable of God’s judgment. No one will eat fruit from this tree again…
…At the heart of Jesus’ charge against the Temple is the little verse from Isaiah 56.7. God’s house was supposed, in the long run, to be a place of prayer for all the world. All the nation were supposed to look to Jerusalem and see it as a beacon of hope, of the presence of the creator God. Instead, anyone looking would see only a market-place, and worse: a den of brigands (an allusion to Jeremiah 7.11). ‘Brigands’ are more than ‘robbers’ (one of the traditional translations). ‘Brigands’ were, in Jesus’ day, the holy revolutionaries, the terrorists, eager to overthrow pagan rule by violence. The Temple itself has come to symbolize that deep distortion of God’s kingdom. The only word that can now be spoken to it is a word of judgment.

The disciples, watching in amazement, learn another lesson as well. They will be faced with ‘this mountain’ – the mountain where the Temple sits, ruled over by the hardhearted chief priests – in the days to come. They will need to have faith that God will overthrow the system and all that it represents. The lesson goes wider, in line with Jesus’ repeated teaching about prayer and faith. Ask; believe; and it will happen. But remember: while asking, forgive (verse 25). The door that opens to let forgiveness out of your heart towards someone else is the door through which God’s forgiveness will enter.

As you look at today’s world, where are the cars that are speeding much too fast towards the dangerous bends? Where are Jesus’ warnings most badly needed in our world?

Today

Almighty Father, God of judgment and mercy, overthrow the systems that abuse their calling and oppress your people, and set up your rule of grace and peace.

Excerpted from:

Lent for Everyone, Mark, Year B: A Daily Devotional
N.T. Wright
Retail Price: $15.00
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Lent for Everyone, provides readers with a gentle guide through the Lenten season, from Ash Wednesday through the week after Easter. Popular biblical scholar and author N.T. Wright provides his own Scripture translation, brief reflection, and a prayer for each day of the season, helping readers consider how the text is relevant to their lives today.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at Westminster John Knox Press.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 27, 2012

Into the Wilderness

The Illusion of “Sacrifice”

Hosea 6:1—6; Luke 18:9—14

Jesus himself quotes twice from this passage from Hosea in Matthew’s Gospel, both times to defend himself from the “holier than thou” types: “What God wants is merciful people, not heroic sacrifices, God wants you to know how love intimately works, and then you can skip your gestures of self-sacrifice” (my paraphrase based on Hosea’s own descriptions in 2:21ff and 8:11ff).

Jesus popularizes this somewhat neglected phrase in Hosea to defend himself from people who criticize him for consorting with sinners (Matthew 9:13), and again to defend his disciples and himself who are being criticized for not observing the Sabbath and feeding themselves (Matthew 12:7).
Both times he precedes it with a strong imperative or plea: “Go, learn the meaning of these words,” or “If you only understood the meaning of these words.” Well, it is still important that we learn the meaning of these words because much of religion has not. If we can get this, the Gospel of the publican and the Pharisee will quickly explain itself, and you will see that Jesus was an astute teacher, centuries ahead of modern psychology.

The Pharisee is the common heroic “sacrificer.” People do not realize that this gesture largely feeds the ego and one’s sense of self much more than anything else. God does not need it. You need it. Sacrifice is unconsciously an attempt to control God, who does much better without our control. “I fast twice a week, I pay tithes on all I possess…. I am not like the rest of men,” he says. It looks like you are giving to God, country, church, the sports team, so all will undoubtedly admire you for it.

The social payoffs are so ego-inflating, there is no likelihood that “for God and country” thinking will diminish anytime soon. Sacrifice is often good and needed in life to help other people, but too often it is an attempt to build a more positive self-image by distinguishing oneself from others. Note his words, “I give you thanks, God, that I am not like the rest of men, grasping, crooked, and adulterous.” Could the message be much clearer?
Our tax collector friend has apparently “gone and learned the meaning of the words” because from a distance with bowed head “All he did was beat his breast and say, `God, be merciful to me, a sinner.'” And then Jesus delivers his stunning conclusion, still stunning today: “Believe me, this man went home from the temple justified before God, but the other did not.” I hope you have observed that Jesus is never upset at sinners! He is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners. The Pharisee is a public holy man who is not holy at all. The tax collector in Israel is a public sinner, with no credits to his name whatsoever, who ends up being the saint.

Today’s Reading

“Go, learn the meaning of the words, what I want is mercy, not sacrifice, knowledge of God, not burnt offerings in the temple.”
Hosea 6:6

“Jesus spoke this parable addressed to those who believed in their own moral superiority and who held everyone else in contempt. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”
Luke 18:9–10

Starter Prayer

“Merciful God, all I can give you, and all you ever want, is who I really am. This little woman or little man that I am now gives you back my only and true self.”

Excerpted from:

Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent
Richard Rohr
Retail Price: $8.99
CBD Price: $7.19

In Wondrous Encounters, Richard Rohr, one of today’s most prophetic voices, invites us to self-disclosure and to enter the wondrous divine dialogue with clarity, insight and holy desire! These daily meditations for Lent are his gift to us for our transformation into our original “image and likeness,” which is the very image of God.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at Franciscan Media.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 26, 2012

Into the Wilderness

The Two Loves Are Not Separate

Hosea 14:2–10; Mark 12:28–34

Our First Reading is the conclusion of the writings of the prophet Hosea. He taught an intimate, time-tried, and tender relationship with Yahweh, after experiencing God’s own faithfulness to him. He was building on the cycles of give and take, faithfulness and unfaithfulness of his prostitute wife, Gomer—whom God told him to marry! His wife became the image of the soul before God. Think about that for a while. Just knowing Hosea’s biography will allow you to read the text with new sympathy and impact. “I will always heal your disloyalty. I will love you freely with all my heart,” says Yahweh, and that is how Hosea has come to love Gomer. We are not sure which came first, God’s faithful love for Hosea or Hosea’s forgiving love for Gomer.

In today’s compelling Gospel, Jesus is putting together what he sees as the summit and the summary of his own Jewish teaching (from Deuteronomy and Leviticus), plus he might well be echoing a famous rabbi, Hillel, who was his contemporary. Hillel said to an overzealous young rabbinical student in Judea: “What you find hateful do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Now go learn that!” One wonders if we do not still need to quote both Hillel and Jesus to overzealous theology majors and seminarians of all religions, even today!

The new message here is that Jesus combines the quote from Deuteronomy with the quote from Leviticus! The scribe has asked him for the “first and greatest” commandment, and Jesus gives him two commandments yet treats them as one! He connects two disparate passages and makes them one and the same, love of God and love of neighbor: “There is no commandment greater than these!” Matthew’s telling makes it even more explicit, “And the second is just like it! On these two commandments hang everything in the law and in the prophets” (22:39-40). Hosea’s love of Gomer same love. God’s love of Gomer and of Hosea are one and the same love. If it is really Love, it is always One.

Happily, we have an enlightened seminary student in Mark’s version, who not only fully affirms Jesus’ teaching but adds, “This is far more important than any holocaust or sin offering.” When one is being trained in “temple theology” or “priesthood” as a profession, this is all the more amazing and rare. Notice Jesus’ strong validation of such “insight” or “wisdom” beyond his years: “You are not far from the Reign of God,” young man! The passage ends by the crowd being utterly silenced by such clarity and simplicity.

Today’s Reading

“‘Listen, Israel, the Lord your God is One. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And this is the second. ‘You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:29-31

Starter Prayer

“One God, you make all things one. Even my own heart, and even one with the hearts of others, and most unbelievably one with yours.”

Excerpted from:

Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent
Richard Rohr
Retail Price: $8.99
CBD Price: $7.19

In Wondrous Encounters, Richard Rohr, one of today’s most prophetic voices, invites us to self-disclosure and to enter the wondrous divine dialogue with clarity, insight and holy desire! These daily meditations for Lent are his gift to us for our transformation into our original “image and likeness,” which is the very image of God.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at Franciscan Media.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 23, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Crucify Him!

Unfortunately, it is certain that I am also
one of that crowd that doesn’t give much
thought to what happened. I, who am
even able to write these things about the
passion while remaining impassive,
whereas it should only be written about
in tears.
–Raniero Cantalamessa

Reflect

Take the time to silence other sounds today-unplug the phone, put a sign on your door, turn off radios and CD players. In silence, be still and know God speaks to you. Thank Him for meeting you here day after day, never failing.

Ask God to give you the gift of a pure heart. Read the following verses slowly and thoughtfully, letting God shine His light as you evaluate:
Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. For it flatters him in his own eyes concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it. –Psalm 36:1-2 NASB

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. -1 John 1:8 NASB

Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. –Revelation 3:17 NASB

Do you hate sin? Wage wars against the temptations that assail you? Do you view yourself as one who is wretched, poor, and needy? Purity of heart comes from a recognition and acknowledgement of our need. Until we grasp our own potential for sin, we will never fully appreciate Christ’s death. Write a prayer of commitment to seek this kind of heart based on these verses.

Read

All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” –Matthew 27:25 NIV

The clamorous crowd objects when Pilate appears on the Praetorium platform alone. Throughout the morning, rumors of the prisoner’s dangerous past have spread like gangrene. Restless ire now characterizes the growing mob, their eagerness for execution intensifying.

“If you let Him go, you are no friend of Caesar’s.”

“He calls Himself a King–that makes Him an enemy of Caesar!”

Pilate watches their feigned loyalty to the Roman conqueror with amazement. Recognizing the insanity of the farce fills him with resentment. Yet, if word reaches Tiberius that he has befriended an insurrectionist, his entire political career could go up in smoke. Shaking his head, Pilate goes to retrieve the prisoner.

Within minutes Jesus stumbles onto the platform, Herod’s robe now gone. Some of the blood from the scourging has dried, binding His tunic to His back. His face, though bloated and bruised, looks pasty white, His eyes nearly swollen shut.
What must the Christ be thinking now? Does He drift in and out of consciousness, barely aware of the noisy chatter below? Does He dream of a seraph coming to cool His brow or bind His broken body?

Judgment is nigh for the One who will one day judge the world. What does He think of these accusers who stand before Him this day as judge and jury? What does Jesus feel for the procurator who persists in proclaiming His innocence but lacks the courage to make the right choice?

Taking his official seat on the platform, Pilate orders the soldiers to bring the prisoner forward for sentencing. The late morning sun beats down, and a servant hurries to hold an umbrella over Pilate’s head. No shade is offered the Christ, who leans weakly against a soldier’s arm.

“Here is your King!” Pilate taunts the religious leaders.

“Take Him away. Crucify Him!” they cry back.

“What? Shall I crucify your King?”

“We have no king but Caesar,” one priest calls out, the crowd chiming in with a chant-like drone.

Pilate, astonished at their fervor, motions to a guard. The noise dies down as he sets a basin of water before him. Reaching into the bowl, the procurator rinses his hands slowly and methodically as if practicing some ancient ritual. Finally he looks up and announces with authority: “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous Man. See to it yourselves…”

Respond

Hear the words like a chant in your own ears: His blood shall be on us and on our children. What must Jesus have felt when the sound of it filled the air? What might He have wanted to say?

Consider the punishment Jesus is about to undergo. See yourself as morally responsible. Say quietly, “Your blood is upon me… Jesus.”

Read the following verses aloud as a prayer of worship and gratitude:

Your lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your judgments are like a great deep. O LORD, You preserve man and beast. How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; and You give them to drink of the river of Your delights. –Psalm 36:5-8 NASB

Prayer

Oh, Lord, Your blood is on me and my children. I say it with shame. I cannot even look into Your eyes, for the sadness there reopens the wounds of my sinful heart and like an infected sore, they ooze with sordid filth. But I must look- I must, for through the sorrow You invite me to come and be cleansed. And so I will. Let Your blood be on me and in me and over me, and I will be pure, whiter than snow, precious Redeemer.

Excerpted from:

Contemplating the Cross
Tricia McCary Rhodes
Retail Price: $14.99
CBD Price: $8.99

Contemplating the Cross is a 40-day personal pilgrimage that will take you down the dusty roads of Jerusalem to walk in the steps of Jesus’ passion. In these pages, you’ll find scriptures, meditations, and reflective questions along with an introduction to lectio divina, the centuries-old art of slowly, contemplatively praying God’s Word. Contemplating the Cross will transform the way you view the cross as you experience the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of Jesus’ final hours.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at W Publishing Group.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 22, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Final Questioning

Where have your love, your mercy, your
compassion shone out more luminously
than in your wounds, sweet gentle Lord of
mercy? More mercy than this no one has
than that he lay down his life for those
who are doomed to death.

-Bernard of Clairvaux

Reflect

Has the cross become a place of familiar consolation to you yet? Are you beginning to feel a drawing in your soul to reflect often on the mysteries at Calvary? Take a few minutes as you quiet your heart to consider what Jesus’ sufferings mean to you after reflecting on them through the past days or weeks.
John wrote:

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love. -1 John 4:16 NASB

Are you beginning to know God’s love in a deeper way through this journey? Are you coming to a place of truly believing it?

Ponder these things and ask God to do an even deeper work as we draw nearer to Christ’s death.

Read

But they shouted all the more, “Crucify Him!” –Mark 15:14 NASB

The mangled-looking Man barely stands, a sobering symbol of Rome’s power to destroy. Pilate, wanting to leave it all behind and confident the brutal beating will satisfy the crowd’s call for justice, asks once again: “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?”

Before the words are out of his mouth, a loud cry ensues: “Crucify Him! You crucify Him!”

“Me? But I believe He’s innocent. Tell me- what evil has He done? Take Him yourselves and crucify Him- I find no guilt in Him.”

Pilate knows his offer is an empty one, for the power to execute lies with him alone. Try as he might, he cannot extricate himself from this Man’s future.

Jesus struggles to keep His balance. He has lost so much blood, His head at times seems to float about Him. Standing here, He is the only One who really knows the details of how this drama will end. Does He wish He could just speak and be on His way to Golgotha? If this entire mob suddenly stopped to listen to Him, what would He say?

A High priest makes his voice heard above the crowd: “He says He is the Son of God, and by our laws, for this He must die.”

Superstitious fear grips Pilate upon hearing these words. Son of God? He hasn’t heard this charge before. Is this why his wife warned him to steer clear of this Man? Does He have mystical powers? Looking at the broken body beside him, it seems nothing could be farther from the truth.

Turning quickly, Pilate motions for them to bring Jesus back into the palace. He must get to the bottom of this.

“Where do You come from?” Knowing the answer already, Pilate gives Jesus a chance to deny the charges of a claim to Deity.
Jesus looks at him but says nothing…

Respond

Consider the weariness Jesus must have felt as He was constantly passed from one person to another. He allowed Himself to be completely at their mercy. Physically He must have been in torment. Take a few minutes to contemplate the physical and emotional state of Jesus at this time.

On many previous occasions, Jesus could have been arrested or killed, But He escaped (see John 8:59; 10:39). Reflect on the reality that every part of this story is preordained by the Father and chosen by the Son.

Earlier Jesus had prayed: “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life” (John 17:1-2 NASB).

To glorify means to confer honor, to praise, to magnify. Jesus seems to be saying that the Cross is an honor to Him and that through His death, the Father will glorify Him. Ponder this in light of His suffering. Consider this in light of His desire in verse 2–to give you eternal life. Write a prayer in which you glorify Christ–give Him the honor, praise, and worship due Him as He faces the Cross.

Prayer

Do You call this glory, my Lord? I will never comprehend this thing—that You considered the Cross an honor when You could have commanded all heaven and earth to bow down before You. But though You despised the shame, this death You would embrace exalted You to heights I may never completely fathom. Let me see this, my Lord, that I might love Your glory as never before… the gripping glory of redeeming love.

Excerpted from:

Contemplating the Cross
Tricia McCary Rhodes
Retail Price: $14.99
CBD Price: $8.99

Contemplating the Cross is a 40-day personal pilgrimage that will take you down the dusty roads of Jerusalem to walk in the steps of Jesus’ passion. In these pages, you’ll find scriptures, meditations, and reflective questions along with an introduction to lectio divina, the centuries-old art of slowly, contemplatively praying God’s Word. Contemplating the Cross will transform the way you view the cross as you experience the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of Jesus’ final hours.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at W Publishing Group.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 20, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Conversion

When we have completely renounced trying to make something of ourselves–be it a saint or a converted sinner or a cleric (a so-called “priestly figure”), a righteous or unrighteous person, a sick or healthy person (and all this I would call “the here and now,” that is, living in the fullness of tasks, questions, successes, failures, experiences, and feelings of helplessness)–when we have done this, then we completely throw ourselves into God’s arms, take God’s own suffering in the world seriously rather than our own, and keep watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith.
That is conversion, and it is in this way that one becomes a human being, a Christian. How should we triumph because of success or despair because of failure if in this life, here and now, we suffer God’s own suffering? You understand what I mean even if I say it with so few words. I am grateful that I have been permitted to realize this, and I know I could have done so only on the path I have indeed had to take. This is why I think with gratitude and peace of past and present things.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, Tegel Prison, July 21, 1944)

Excerpted from:

Meditations on the Cross
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Retail Price: $17.00
CBD Price: $11.99

The cross and resurrection, suffering and overcoming death were central themes in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological work. Meditations on the Cross contains excerpts from his letters and sermons relating to these topics and makes for insightful reading during Lent or any other devotional time.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at Westminster John Knox Press.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 19, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Cain
Genesis 4:1: Now Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain.

Adam and Eve become the proud creators of new life, a new life which, however, is created in human beings’ obsessive desire for life together and for death; Cain is the first human being born on the ground that is cursed. History begins with Cain, the history of death. Adam, preserved for death and yet consumed by a thirst for life, begets Cain, the murderer. The new element in Cain, Adam’s son, is that he himself, in his being like God, violates human life. He who is not permitted to eat of the tree of life reaches all the more greedily for the fruit of death, the destruction of life. Only the Creator can destroy life. Cain usurps for himself the ultimate right of the Creator, and becomes a murderer. Why does Cain commit murder? Out of hatred toward God. This hatred is great. Cain is great. He is greater than Adam, since his hatred is greater, which means that his obsessive desire for life is greater. The history of death stands under the sign of Cain.

Christ on the cross, the murdered Son of God–that is the end of Cain’s history, and thus the end of all history. It is the last, desperate assault on the gates of paradise. The human race dies under the slashing sword, under the cross. But Christ lives. The trunk of the cross becomes the wood of life, and in the middle of the world life is established anew in the accursed ground. In the center of the world, from the wood of the cross, the fountain of life springs up anew, and all those thirsting for life are called to this water, and whoever has eaten the wood of this life will never again hunger or thirst. A strange paradise, this hill of Golgotha, this cross, this blood, this broken body; a strange tree of life, this trunk on which God himself had to suffer and die- and yet here is bequeathed anew by God in grace: the kingdom of life, of resurrection, an open door of imperishable hope, of waiting, and of patience. Tree of life, cross! of Christ, the center of God’s fallen and preserved world, that is the end of the story of paradise for us.

Today now he unlocks the door
To blessed paradise.
No angel bars it anymore,
To God all honor, glory and praise.

(Text from a lecture series on Genesis 1-3 (and 4:1) Berlin University, Winter Semester 1932/1933)

Excerpted from:

Meditations on the Cross
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Retail Price: $17.00
CBD Price: $11.99

The cross and resurrection, suffering and overcoming death were central themes in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological work. Meditations on the Cross contains excerpts from his letters and sermons relating to these topics and makes for insightful reading during Lent or any other devotional time.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at Westminster John Knox Press.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 16, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Captive Thoughts
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). 

Living in an altar’d state means that flesh is treated as dead. “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin” (Romans 6:11). For years, those words just caused confusion for me. I would read those words and feel frustrated and more like a failure than ever. How could just “considering” it so make it so? And how could I keep considering it so when it was so obviously not so? I read commentaries, and parsed the language, and applied all my intellect to the problem, but could not come to a satisfying understanding. Finally, I just left it alone.

Over the years of working out Scripture in practice and in understanding, I think I have a better grasp of what Paul is saying. Though I wanted the Holy Spirit to make me understand those words, instead He taught me from many other passages and worked it out in experience until I come back to those words and they make sense.
Dead to sin. Count on it. It is a fact. I’m not supposed to make it a fact. Dead—disconnected from life. Unresponsive to any pull. I believe that Paul is talking about sin, the operating power, not sins, the actions and behaviors. I am dead to the power of sin, and the power of sin is dead to me. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). So, how do I count on that and act on it and bring it into my experience?

When I am being enticed into flesh’s realm, and the appeal of my old man’s habits is calling me, it’s time for my will to stand up and choose–life or death? Instead of acting as if I am one with my old man and as if I still desire to sin and now I have to tamp down that desire and deny it, I have to lean in. I have to altar. I have to take that thought captive and hand it over to Jesus, and draw on His life. Let Him speak truth to me: “You don’t really desire that sin any more. You desire to be free from the tyranny of your flesh. Your flesh is lying to you–promising good results. But you know better. Respond to what you know, not what you feel. The flesh is dead. Treat it that way.” Now, most important, let Him turn your heart toward the resurrection that will result from this crucifixion. Celebrate your freedom. Let your mind be consumed with what you’re gaining, not what you are losing.

And, then, recognize how temptation can serve God’s purpose. Line yourself up with what He is doing in this moment and let the enemy’s schemes backfire.

The Anatomy of a Sin

Temptation is not sin. Temptation does not have to lead to sin. However, no sin comes into being without temptation. What is the process by which temptation becomes sin? “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin” (James 1:14-15). In this passage, James is talking about temptation that is successful, or results in sin. He describes for us the process.

Strange as it may seem at first, I am convinced that James is saying, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face temptations of many kinds.” Remember what a productive use God made of the temptations Jesus faced. Is it possible that He could use temptation to our advantage also?

“God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Corinthians 10:13). Who is in charge of what temptation reaches you?
In 1 Corinthians 10:13 we find the same Greek word-root for “tempt” as is found in our passage from James. Look carefully at what the Scripture says about temptation: God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. Do you see that God is in charge of what temptation reaches you? If God is in charge of what temptation reaches you, can temptation have any purpose but good? “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant” (Psalm 25:10). “You are good, and what you do is good” (Psalm 119:68).

God allows temptation in order to isolate, identify, and uproot unrighteousness and expose flesh. Let me backtrack and clarify something. God is not tempting you. He is not the source of temptation. “When tempted, no one should say, `God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (James 1:13). He, however, decides what temptation will be allowed to reach you.

Dragged Away by Desire

“By his own evil desire.” The Greek word translated here as “evil desire” really means strong or intense desire. It does not have a specific meaning of good or bad. In fact, it is the same word Jesus used in Luke 22:15 when He said to His disciples: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

Change the word evil to strong. He has not created you with an inherently wrong desire, but with an intense desire. This strong or intense desire, at its foundation, is built into you by the Creator. He has created you with a deep need for love and acceptance so that you will seek and find love and acceptance in Him. This need is the foundation of every desire. However, our God-created desires become misdirected when we seek to have them met outside of God…

…”Respond harshly and you will feel better.” “Buy one more thing you can’t afford and it will bring you what you are looking for.” “Eat one more thing and you will be fulfilled.” “Take one more drink and your pain will go away” Lies, lies, and more lies.

The stimulus has no power of its own. What tempts one person does not tempt another. The power is not in the object or the occurrence in the world. The stimulus is neutral. Unless it is enticing, it cannot tempt. Its only power is the attraction it holds for you. It is your own misdirected desire dragging you away…

Temptation That Leads to Purity

Temptation can lead to sin, or temptation can lead to purity. Temptation forces choice. Every time we face temptation, we choose where to take our needs. Will we allow God to fulfill them and satisfy our eternal cravings? Or will we take the drive-through fast-food approach? Will we think long-term or quick fix? Will we choose God or will we choose Baal? Every temptation forces us deeper into the heart of the Father or anchors us more securely in the world. It’s time to choose to altar ourselves…

Reflect

If God used temptation to bring His son to full maturity, can He do the same with you? And you are not fighting the battle against sin. You are simply choosing Him and His overcoming life.
 
Excerpted from:

Altar’d: Experience the Power of Resurrection
Jennifer Kennedy Dean
Retail Price: $14.99
CBD Price: $9.99
Buy 36 or more for $9.49 each.
( Available to ship on or about 04/14/12. )

Experience in this 40-day exploration of the Scriptures what it means to live a life alive to the Spirit of God. Author Jennifer Kennedy Dean believes we are created to live in an “altar’d” state-where we surrender our wills and live the life God desires for us. The Altar’d journey is ideal for the Lenten season, as you explore the freedom of dying to self and living in the power of Jesus’ resurrected life.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at New Hope Publishers.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 15, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Transfused With His Eternal Life

“Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, `How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Jesus said to them, `I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him'” (John 6:52—56).

Jesus shocked His listeners with these statements. “On hearing it, many of his disciples said, This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”‘ (John 6:60).

The words are somewhat jarring to our ears, but they were even more so to His Jewish audience. They understood Him to be speaking metaphorically. Such metaphor was a typical teaching device for Jewish rabbis. However, one of the most important injunctions in their religion was, “Don’t eat the blood. The blood is the life.” Here was Jesus, that outrageous teacher, saying, “Drink My blood. My blood is real drink. Unless you drink My blood, you have no life in you.” This was so controversial that it was the beginning of the falling away of many of His followers. “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66).

What did Jesus want us to understand? Why did He make this unsettling statement? He is saying: “My life must be inside you.” His life cannot impart life to us from outside. He must be in us. Drawing the best biological understanding of His times, Jesus drew a graphic word picture of how that which is outside of you can be inside of you: eating and drinking. If He were drawing the picture using twenty-first-century concepts, He might have used the picture of blood transfusion. He wants to transfuse us with His life…

…Just as blood flows through your physical veins, His life flows through your spirit veins. Your physical body is a picture, a shadow, of your spirit. Just as your natural earth body is given life through blood, so your spirit has life through the life of Christ.

When He transfuses His life into us, His life banishes my death. Jesus is the life. Apart from Him, only death, or the “not life,” flows through spirit veins. Remember? He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son has “not life.”

Let me show you a picture. My brother, Roger, died of leukemia when he was 17 years old. Death was in his blood. Instead of carrying life and cleansing from cell to cell and from organ to organ, Roger’s blood carried death and disease. His body had no other source for power and life.
I remember when he was first diagnosed. The very first step in his treatment was to give him a transfusion of healthy blood. A call went out through our community that Roger needed blood. The Red Cross set up a bloodmobile in our church basement and people waited in line for the opportunity to give their healthy blood to replace his diseased blood. Through the miracle of blood transfusion, the very blood that ran through my veins could, temporarily, replace the death-carrying blood that ran through his veins. My life could be in him—just for a moment. And for that short time when my life was in him, it overcame his death. This is what Jesus does. He transfuses His life into you to replace the “not life” that flows through you.

You were born in the line of Adam. Your spirit veins should have been carrying life, but instead they were carrying death. Jesus has opened His veins and poured out His life so that He can flow through you.

In Roger’s case, the blood transfusion was only a stopgap measure. His body continued to produce diseased blood. Only while the healthy blood flowed in his veins were his disease’s effects slowed. Soon the “not life” filled his veins again. But Jesus’ transfusion is different. It is eternal.

Body of Righteousness

Look again at Paul’s word from Romans 6:6–7:

“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”

Paul says that our body of sin, or the body of death (Romans 7:24), has already been done away with. Yet you have the same body now that you had before you were given eternal life. How can Paul speak of the body of sin and the body of death as being done away with? I wrote about this briefly in my book, He Restores My Soul:

He says that when my old self is crucified, “the body of sin” is “done away with.” What is he saying? When he uses the phrase “body of sin,” he means the body (the vehicle through which we perform) that belongs to sin; the body through which the old nature acts. When I enter into the crucifixion of Jesus, I do not get a new earth-body. I look just the same as I did before. But now that same old body has been made new internally. Now it no longer contains death; now it contains life. Think of it like this: my computer is encased in an outer structure. When I look at my computer, I see its casing. That’s how I recognize it as my computer. However, what really makes my computer my computer is its inner workings. If I were to take my computer to a technician and ask him take out the old computer and put in an entirely new computer, but keep the outer structure, when I take the computer home, I now have a brand new computer. It looks the same to my eyes, but it is a brand new creation. It has a new operating system; it runs new programs; it responds to different commands than before. When Christ comes to be my life, my body is no longer a body of sin. It is now a body of righteousness because the body of sin has been done away with.

Paul says that the transformation is so drastic, so radical, that his body, once a container of death, is now a container of life. The “body of death” has been done away with.

Reflect

You no longer live in a body of sin. You commit sins sometimes, and you sometimes step over into flesh, but that is not in line with your new nature. Why, when you sin or act in flesh, does it bother you? Because it doesn’t fit you. Settle in your mind and heart right now that you are a new creation in Christ if you are a Christian.

Excerpted from:

Altar’d: Experience the Power of Resurrection
Jennifer Kennedy Dean
Retail Price: $14.99
CBD Price: $9.99

Experience in this 40-day exploration of the Scriptures what it means to live a life alive to the Spirit of God. Author Jennifer Kennedy Dean believes we are created to live in an “altar’d” state-where we surrender our wills and live the life God desires for us. The Altar’d journey is ideal for the Lenten season, as you explore the freedom of dying to self and living in the power of Jesus’ resurrected life.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at New Hope Publishers.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 14, 2012

Into the Wilderness

God-Saturated Behavior

Read John 14:25-27.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (v. 27).

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-19)

When people ran into Jesus they often had good reason to remember the encounter. Sometimes he infuriated them; sometimes he made perfect sense; and sometimes he did both. Regardless, those who encountered Jesus often left challenged, knowing the possibility of the kind of peace that the world had never offered before.

Jesus’ style of peace entails not simply resting in the presence of God so much as moving forward in the presence of God. Peace requires God-saturated behavior. Peace refers to a state of being more than a state of mind. Peace is an action word. That’s why Jesus said, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” Jesus settles the troubled heart, sometimes by troubling the settled life. 

Dateline Folkestone, England

During a recent trip to England I made a visit to my hometown, where I was born and lived the first nineteen years of my life. Folkestone is on the southern coast of England, a few miles west of Dover in the county of Kent. It’s on the Straits of Dover, as close to France as England gets.

I had just a few hours, so I looked at the breathtaking scenery from the hills, walked around my old neighborhood, and then parked in the town center so I could explore some more. I discovered a new “superstore” downtown, with its own multistory parking garage. The roof offered me a view, looking east toward Dover, that I had never seen before. I thought I knew what the town looked like, but it turns out there is always a new perspective, a fresh orientation, and a more innovative view.

What If?

And so I walked around my old hometown with new eyes, seeing it as if for the very first time, not only with the perspective of a grown man but also with the vision of someone who hadn’t lived there for thirty-four years. I owned a new perspective because I’d never before looked at the town from that particular vantage point, a hundred or so feet above the city center.

This is exactly what I’d like to see us do with Easter. I’d like to see us standing in a new place, somewhere outside the realm of the familiar, taking a look at Jesus’ cross, passion, and resurrection—beholding with new eyes!

Imagine arriving at Palm Sunday (the week before Easter) with your devotional life finely tuned, your daily understanding of God’s grace well-practiced, your walk with Jesus in full stride, and your sense of expectation fully engaged. Consider the implications:
• What if we allowed everything that Jesus achieved and is achieving to impact us as if we had heard it for the very first time?
• What if we’ve been looking at forty days of Lent from the standpoint of tradition rather than living faith?
• What if our understanding of Easter has everything to do with religion and almost nothing to do with a transformational encounter with the living God?
• What if we did something new this year, and all of that changed?
I don’t know what the result would be, I’m just asking the questions. But then again, I’m asking because I already know from personal experience what can happen when someone stands in a new place and asks new questions.

How about you?

Prayer: We all have something to do today that has the potential to be exclusively kingdom-oriented behavior. Guide us in these few quiet moments to listen to your voice, God, and to bring your kind of peace into this anxiety-ridden world. Amen.

Excerpted from:

Reaching Toward Easter: Devotions for Lent
Derek Maul
Retail Price: $16.00
CBD Price: $10.49

Reaching Toward Easter by Derek Maul offers a daily devotional pilgrimage through Lent, using the framework of the Gospel of John as a guide. Features include a suggested scripture reading for each day, prayers for personal devotions, and a leader’s guide for weekly group meetings.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Upper Room Books.