Giving Sight to the Blind

There is no doubt about Saul of Tarsus and his blindness; but his was the blindness of his very religious zeal, his zeal for God, his zeal for tradition, his zeal for historic religion, his zeal for the established and accepted thing in the religious world. It was a blind zeal about which afterward he had to say, "I verily thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 26:9). "I thought I ought." What a tremendous turn round it was when he discovered that the things which he thought, and passionately thought he ought to do, in order to please God and to satisfy his own conscience, were utterly and diametrically opposed to God and the way of right and truth. What blindness! Surely he stands as an abiding warning to us all that zeal for anything is not necessarily a proof that the thing is right, and that we are on the right road. Our very zeal as a thing in itself may be a blinding thing, our devotion to tradition may be our blindness.

I think eyes have a very large place in Paul’s life. When his eyes spiritually were opened, his eyes naturally were blinded, and you can use that as a metaphor. The using of natural eyes religiously too strongly may be just the indication of how blind we are, and it may be that, when those natural eyes religiously are blinded, we will see something, and not until they are do we see something. For a lot of people, the thing that is in the way of their real seeing is that they see too much and see in the wrong way. They are seeing with natural senses, natural faculties of reason and intellect and learning, and all that is in the way.

Paul stands to tell us that sometimes, in order really to see, it is necessary to be blinded. Evidently that left its mark upon him, just as the finger of the Lord left its mark upon Jacob, for the rest of his days. He went into Galatia and later wrote the Letter to the Galatians; and you remember he said, "I bear you witness, that, if possible, ye would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me" (4:15); meaning that they noted his affliction, they were aware of that mark which had lasted from the Damascus road, and so felt for him, that if they could have done so, they would have plucked out their very eyes for him. But it is wonderful that the commission which came when he was naturally blinded on the Damascus road was all about eyes. He was blind, and they led him by the hand into Damascus; but the Lord had said in that hour, "to whom I send thee to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God".
Rich

Adopting A Christian Life

A Lost Impact

We are going to be occupied with the meaning of Christ. Before we come immediately into touch with that matter, there are a few preliminary words that I want to say, and they have to do with something of which we are all conscious, a matter which is troubling, I think I can say, the majority of real Christians. It is the matter of the lost impact of Christ, of the Gospel, of Christianity. We are suffering from a handicap, and that handicap is tradition.

Christianity has become that - a tradition so largely, something handed down from generation to generation. It has become a theology, a set of doctrines, of statements about God, about Christ, about the Holy Spirit, and many other things, and as such it has passed very largely into the mental realm - a thing to be worked out in thought, a matter of reason. It has also become a great mystical cult. It has passed into the realm of art, and music, so that you can accept Christianity on that basis and be a Christian along that line, and yet that it shall stand completely out of relation to your inner life. Think of all that goes to make up Christianity as it is known today, of the external, the soulish appreciation; and it has no impact. There is the great need, surely, - and this is what we are seeking to come to at this time.

The great need is to get back to the real meaning of Christ, so that a new impact may come upon ourselves, and there shall come a new impact upon the world through us.

Rich

Elementary My Dear Watson

We know that line from Sherlock Holmes as he once again effortlessly cuts through what seems to be utterly impossible to understand by any normal person to his side kick, Watson. Elementary!
In seeing but the basic principles of the doctrine of Christ, things redundantly played before our eyes like flash cards is it any wonder we have seen much ado about “churchianity” and very little to do with God visibly being seen in His church, us flesh and blood people?

Let’s look at what our brother Paul lays down as a divine challenge or as I like to say, “provoking us unto love and good works.’
“So come on, let's leave the preschool finger painting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on "salvation by self-help" and turning in trust toward God; baptismal instructions; laying on of hands; resurrection of the dead; eternal judgment. God helping us, we'll stay true to all that. But there's so much more. Let's get on with it!”

I had to laugh listening to the last pod cast “learning To Fly” from the God Journey where Wayne and Brad were engrossed in a conversation revolving around Amy (one of) Wayne and Sara’s grand children that Wayne was teaching to fly, using a very sophisticated soft ware flight simulator program.


As long as Wayne did everything for Amy she might have the flying principles and doctrine down pat, but in not being permitted to slowly take control of “the controls” she will not become air borne except possibly in her imagination.

As Wayne shared this story he slowly gave Amy much more latitude to venture out on her own, Wayne of course being right there with Amy on his lap prepared to augment any needed course adjustments, but as her inner confidence began to soar, she and Grandpa discovered that flying wasn’t just for the birds!
I am always attracted to anything pretty much dealing with flying as my earthly dad was a bush pilot, aircraft engineer and one who made flying look so elementary. I still remember in a flight I took with him that glorious day he relinquished the controls to me, and I was flying that plane.
For interest sake, I was eleven months old when I first flew with my dad…oh God how I miss him.

Our rehearsed theory, of conceptual principles of what it means to be air born, soaring in the heavens will at best keep us earth bound, without hearing and seeing modeled before us someone like Wayne toward Amy with a tenacious confidence in His life in us, to live out what they see as being so elementary.

Rich

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sun ward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

A Passion for Truth

Do you share in this same passion of desiring with all of your heart, a longing to know what/who the truth is. Remember that there is no ability to know the ‘truth’ apart from the person who declares he IS the ‘truth,’ God’s son Jesus Christ.
It’s out of the generosity of his spirit we are invited to pursue the one who has been pursuing us from before the foundations of the world. Hopefully we can be as generous with one another as we share our experiences of how the truth of who’s we are and what it means to be loved and to live loved. What an opportunity to see so much more of who He is, the Truth.

There’s a couple of things I want to point out here in a way of trying to see things a bit more objectively in our journey of discovering the truth, take a peak at this from Barb over at ‘A Former Leader’s Journey’-Same God-New Covenant: Speaking to the Church, and over at The Free Believers Network with Darin Hufford in the pod cast, “Tradition.”


The traditions and teachings of men have according to Jesus made the word of God of none affect.
As Barb so clearly pointed out in her thoughts, there was a time when God spoke to people within a group, or as a nation, it was a uniform blanket, and one size fits all sort of thing. The door that Jesus opened up to us within this dispensation of grace, has moved us away from the group dynamic speak. It is a personal one on one engagement between Him the Father of our spirit and the individual believer, knowing and experiencing Him personally.

To borrow a quote from Albert Camus, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that our very act of existence is an act of rebellion.”
It was and is for freedom that Christ set us free. The offer he extends is totally available to us in this hour no more or less than it was 2000 years ago, “If you continue in this relationship I have called you to be engaged in, you will know the truth, and the truth will make/set you free.

Father I pray you will apply the saving, keeping, delivering caustic grace and love we stand in need of to strip away from within us those traditions that are lifeless and have stolen our heart affections from you our living Hope!

Rich