James Notes (1)

Consider It All Joy!

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4).

I learned this passage many years ago,  and I have recited it to others and have been encouraged when others have recited it to me, for it is our Father’s promise that not only is no sorrow or trial in life wasted, but that He will use them to transform us into the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10–11).

This is the Way of Jesus, for in Hebrews 5:8–9 we read, “Although He [Jesus] was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.” 

When James says that we are to “count it all joy,” he means that this is the way we are to view trials, this is how we are to respond. We offer our trials and temptations to our Father, trusting Him to be with us and work in us and to mature us in in our Lord Jesus. 

Therefore, our first response to trial is obedience, and that obedience is in our initial response, and that initial response is a joyful recognition that God is working in us. Our natural response is to want the situation changed, but our obedient response is to be joy and a willingness for God to change us. As our Father changes us into the image of Jesus, the situation may or may not be changed, we must trust our heavenly Father in these things. 

This joy is sacrificial. That is, it makes no sense to be joyful in trials, at least to our natural thinking. Nevertheless, we “offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips giving thanks to His name” (Hebrews 13:15). 

Peter writes that we “greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, we have been distressed by various trials” (1 Peter 1:6). 

Counting our trials as “joy” is an act of the will, it is offering ourselves to God as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1–2). This is not a denial of the reality of trials and challenges, but rather a declaration that God is greater than what we are facing and that He will work His transformational purpose within us for His glory. 

But note that we must “let endurance have its perfect result.” Again we have an act of the will, for we must submit to God’s work of endurance within us, we submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Do we believe that God is the Potter and we are the clay? If so, then let us trust our all-wise heavenly Potter to form us into the image of His Firstborn Son. 

When we take control then we mar the work of the Potter, and we will likely be given another opportunity for submission and learning and growth…let us hope so. Let us learn not to waste the challenges that our Father allows into our lives. 

As I heard long ago, “God fixes a fix to fix you, but if you fix the fix that God fixed to fix you, then God has to make another fix to fix you.” 

This is one pithy saying that actually has some truth to it. 

Jacob spent much of his life conniving to get his way, and conniving to escape from things he had done. He avoided permanent and transformational change until he was brought to the end of his own strength in wrestling with God (Genesis 32:24–32). The sooner we learn to submit to the working of our Father, to trust Him, and to consider trials and challenges "joy,” the better for us and for those around us. The sooner we can be the blessings that God has called us to be.

In one sense we may never know why certain things transpire in our lives, but in another sense we can always know that, whatever we are experiencing, our Father desires to reveal more of Himself to us than we have ever seen before. We know that our Lord Jesus wants us to have a deeper friendship with Him, and a greater experience in the Holy Spirit. 

O dear friends, this life is important for sure, it is to have eternal meaning and significance. We are not accidents looking for a place to happen, but women and men and young people made in the image of God, an image restored in Jesus Christ. Let us learn to see as our Father sees, and to trust His incredible love for us. In doing so, we can consider it all joy when we face challenges, and we can expectantly look for the appearing of our Lord Jesus in the fires of trial and uncertainty – for He is always certain, and His love is always sure. 

Let us have a joyful day in Jesus!

Mark Notes (5)

Come and Die – A Call of Freedom, An Invitation to Destiny

Mark 8:34 – 38

I was sitting on the concrete platform that was the base of our flagpole at Western High School in Washington, D.C., reading my pocket New Testament and Psalms. It was spring and my life was changing, I was coming to know Jesus. Most family and friends didn’t know what to think. After all, during the summer of 1965, after somehow completing the 9th grade, I ran away from home in Maryland to New York City. Now here I was, less than a year later, reading the Bible and telling others about Jesus. 

My Dad, with whom I went to live after my New York excursion, didn’t know what to think. My Mom, in Maryland, didn’t know what to think but probably had the sense to know that reading the Bible was better than reading the train schedule from D.C. to N.Y.C. My great-great-Aunt Martha, who loved me dearly didn’t know what to think but did say, “You’ll get over this.” This was one of the few times she was wrong. 

My teachers didn’t know what to think, but likely thought that I was better off reading the Bible than disrupting classes, and indeed the entire school. As a result of my participating in a protest movement, the vice-principle of boys once called my father at work and said, “Mr. Withers, your son is disrupting the entire school.” (A notable but unlikely feat, even for me). To which my erudite father replied, “Not my boy. You can go to hell,” and hung up the phone.

As I was reading my New Testament at the base of the flagpole, Frank, one of my best friends, came up to me and knocked the New Testament from my hands onto the ground while uttering words of disgust at the direction my life had taken. I don’t recall what he said, nor did I ever discover the underlying reason for his anger. I calmly retrieved the Book as he stormed away and continued reading. 

I don’t recall what I was reading at the time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Mark 8:34–38, for that passage was being burned into my soul during those early months in 1966. I can still see the red letters of that New Testament, I can see the words of Jesus, I can hear them, I can them then and I can hear them now. That’s the thing about the Voice of Jesus, we hear Him now, we hear Him speaking to us from times past, and we hear Him calling us from the future, from eternity. His Voice surrounds us. 

Now if you are relatively young, what I’ve just written may not mean much to you, but I am almost 75 years old and they are a great assurance to me, for I am closer to the finish line today than I was yesterday. It is 5:00 A.M. as I write this, and it may be the last 5:00 A.M. I ever know; while it probably won’t be, since you never know, if I go to the grocery store today I will purchase ripe bananas. Yes? 

Mark 8:34–38 is the call of Jesus Christ to follow Him. We must deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow Him, this is what Jesus says. We are to lose our lives for His sake and the Gospels, this is what Jesus says. We are to tell others about Him, not being ashamed of Him. This is what Jesus says. Does this matter to us?

Jesus is always asking questions in the Gospels, and He asks some bottom-line questions in this passage: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Do you understand why we don’t ask these questions along with Jesus? 

I have often thought that all businesspeople ought to be followers of Jesus as a result of common sense. Why? 

When I am in a conference room in which financial statements are handed out for review, every person in the room will do the same thing. They will immediately go to the last page of the income statement and look at the bottom line, then they will go back to page one and work through the statement to see how the bottom line was arrived at. 

What is the bottom line of life? This is the commonsense question, and yet as Pascal noted, we spend our lives avoiding it. Pascal tells us that the primary advantage that the rich have over the poor is that the rich are able to spend money to divert their attention from this question. Aren’t we a group of idiots? 

I have recited Mark 8:34–38 to congregations and individuals more than any other extended passage of Scripture, for it is the call of Jesus to us, His invitation to us to true freedom and our true destiny – in Him, always in Him. I never tried to memorize this passage; it simply was planted in me in my process of coming to know Him. 

Note that just preceding this call of Jesus, Peter attempts to spare Jesus from going to the Cross (Mark 8:31 – 33). Jesus rebukes Peter with the words, “Get behind me Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” Ouch!

Then Jesus summons the crowd and issues His call to discipleship. It is as if Jesus is saying to Peter, "Peter, not only am I going to the Cross, but you and all who follow Me are also going to the Cross.” 

What do we think about that? 

It seems that we much prefer the role of Peter in that context than the call of Jesus. It seems that much of our teaching and preaching and church marketing is about avoiding the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross. 

There has been much in the news lately about the decline in church attendance. Honestly, if we had something to say maybe folks would see something worth listening to and participating in. A message that requires nothing is worth nothing. 

Not long after I came to know Jesus I was introduced to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some things you only have to read once for them to be planted in your soul, such as, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Doesn’t this encapsulate Mark 8:34–38? What do you think about this statement? 

Later in life I would absorb Jim Elliot’s bottom-line statement, “He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” (This framed statement hangs in our home, a gift from a friend years ago.)

O dear friends, we are called to follow Jesus and call others to Jesus. Not to a particular worldview (including a “Christian” worldview), not to our “best lives now,” not to social, political, economic, or nationalistic agendas, not even to the religious equivalents of Moses and Elijah (see Mark 9:2 – 8) – but to Jesus, always to Jesus.

The great thing about all that I have written is that Jesus’s call to us in wrapped within His amazing love and grace and mercy for us. He doesn’t expect us to follow Him based on our own willpower or ability, He knows we can’t, and the sooner we realize that the better. 

What Jesus is doing is calling us to live in deep relationship with Him, allowing Him to live within us as we learn to live within Him…and with one another (see John 15:1–17). Jesus is calling us into an incredible freedom and destiny. 

In Him we are free from the fear of death (Hebrews 2:9–18), from guilt and sin, from condemnation, from alienation from God (2 Cor. 5:14–21; Rom. 8:1–39). In Him we are called to the freedom of the love of God, as sons and daughters of God, forever and always loved. In Him we find our eternal destiny, a destiny entered through the portal of the Cross, a destiny of resurrection and glorious life beyond comprehension (Revelation chapters 21 – 22; 1 John 3:1–3).

And here is the thing, it is never too late to return to the call of Jesus, or to hear His call for the first time, or to renew our hearing of the call. Our Father is always watching for our return, always prepared to run to us and embrace us and throw a party for us. Again and again Jesus assures us of the love of the Father, His Father and our Father. Again and again Jesus stretches out His arms for us. 

But let us not be so foolish as to ignore the call of Jesus in Mark 8:34 – 38, let us not be so foolish as to think that anything else can possibly be the call of Jesus. This call of Jesus is what we are called to conform to, and to conform to His Call, is to conform to the Cross. It is what we call “cruciform living.” 

“I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and give Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). 

It is my prayer that today will be the best day of your life…and that all of your tomorrows will be even better. 

Mark Notes - (4)

One Way or Another Faith

Mark 2:1-12

I love the story of the four friends who not only carried their paralyzed friend to Jesus, but who carried him up on the roof, made a hole in the roof, and then lowered their friend through the roof into the room where Jesus was. 

“And Jesus seeing their faith” (verse 5). This is really faith in action, these friends really believed that Jesus was going to heal their friend, and I suppose the friend believed it too…or did he? Well, we don’t know. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he trusted the belief that his four friends had in Jesus. In a sense the paralyzed man put his life in the hands of the friends who carried him. In turn the four friends put the life of their paralyzed friend in the hands of Jesus. 

How did he feel when he was being carried up on the roof? How did he feel when he was being let down through the roof? 

Most of us are familiar with the story of footprints in the sand, but perhaps we lose sight of the fact that there are times Jesus uses His Presence within others to carry us, as He did with the paralytic and his four friends. O how we need one another. Community is elusive in our individualistic society and in our churches. Whether a congregation is large or small, true koinonia is elusive. Programs are poor substitutes for relationships.

Programs are not going to produce friendships that result in four friends carrying another friend up on a roof, through a roof, and down to see Jesus. 

I don’t know whether these five men were discouraged as they approached the house where Jesus was and saw the crowd, they may have thought, “We’ll never make it through the crowd, we’ll never get to see Jesus.” If they did have such a thought it didn’t last long, for they were determined to get to Jesus, one way or another. 

I think Jesus encourages and honors “one way or another” faith. This is a faith that defies convention, including religious convention, and wants to get to Jesus no matter what, one way or another. 

We see similar determination in the woman of Mark 5:21–34, one way or another she is going to make it through the crowd, as sick as she is, as drained of energy as she is, she is going to touch Jesus. She is thinking (5:28), “If I just touch His garments, I will get well.” 

Lots of people were making contact with Jesus physically (5:31), but only the woman was actually “touching” Jesus, and Jesus sensed that touch, He sensed that transfer of Divine Life and healing. 

Then there is blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46 – 52. As he is sitting by the road he senses a large crowd. When he asks what the commotion is about and is told that Jesus is passing by he starts crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” When people tell him to shut up he cries out even louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

Jesus stops and says, “Call him here.” Bartimaeus throws aside his cloak, jumps up, and comes to Jesus. 

No one, and no set of circumstances, was going to stop the four friends from getting their paralyzed friend to Jesus. No crowd was going to prove a barrier to the terribly sick woman touching Jesus. No amount of telling him to “Shut up” was gong to quiet Bartimaeus’s crying out to Jesus.

These are three examples of “whatever it takes” and “one way or another” faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s take note, that in each case Jesus was there for these people, in each case Jesus responded to them, in each case Jesus acknowledged, affirmed, and honored their faith. 

“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Well friends, how can we exercise our “one way or another” faith today? Who can we carry to Jesus? Who can we help touch Jesus? 

And what do we need to bring to Jesus in our own lives? What are our own burdens? Our questions? Our struggles? 

He will never turn us away, never, ever, not ever. 

Let’s go through the roof, let’s push through the crowd, let’s keep crying out to Jesus…because we can be assured that He is here for us.