When we refer to God as FATHER, many of us think first of his high expectations for us. Perhaps the image of God we've had since childhood is one that stresses how much he has done for us and how little we have done for him. We've been trained that falling short of expectations makes Daddy very disappointed.
When our primary vision of our relationship with God is about constantly striving to appease a father who can never be satisfied, no matter how good we may be, our efforts at righteous living can become little more than codependent striving. A recent session where Denise and I were counseling an outwardly highly successful person reminded me that even in adulthood, too many of us continue to be more afraid of God than in love with him.
The Bible does tell us to fear God, but not because of his high expectations. Interestingly, it tells us to fear his love. King David explained: "The friendship of the LORD if for those who fear him" (Psalm 25:14). This is no ordinary friend we have! He will not tell us only those things we want to hear. This friend will take us places we never saw ourselves going; he will give us passion for things that we weren't formerly passionate about. This friend will certainly be hard to control.
A few short hours before Jesus was arrested and crucified, he told his disciples, "I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father" (John 15:15). I wonder what went through their minds. Were they surprised? Honored? Confused? They were certainly not his peers, and neither are we, so it does mystify us that Jesus would identify us as his friends.
Servants simply do their jobs. Maybe it would be easier, clearer and much less demanding to remain servants! Friendship is frequently confusing and mysterious; it requires a great deal of trust, and it is all too easy to get burned along the way. I think the greatest challenge in friendship is learning how to give and receive in relation to someone else. In friendship we learn to serve each other.
The Creator of heaven and earth demonstrated his great love for us in the passion of Christ on the cross. When we believe that this Friend was dying to love us, then we can begin to believe there is something worth loving in ourselves. Once we trust our lives to this Sacred Friendship, we can begin to set free our other friends and family members from trying to provide the wellspring of genuine love only a Savior can offer. Human hearts are simply not deep enough.
Having freed our loved ones from the burden of loving us as only a Savior can, we will begin to delight in them as God's beautiful blessings in our lives!
What a health-giving privilege to know the Friendship of the LORD!
With love and friendship,
Duff Gorle
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
A Spirituality of Joy
The ultimate purpose of Christian spirituality is to fall deeply in love with God. What good is an ever-increasing sophistication in the principles and practice of the faith unless there is an accompanying passion
The goal of a healthy spirituality should not be merely our own personal development. Such a focus would preoccupy us with our self and our perceived progress or lack thereof. But if our goal is to love God, we preoccupy ourselves with him and the things that are the passions of his heart
When the Samaritan woman met Jesus at the well and caught a glimpse of who he was and the passion of his heart to bring living water to desperately thirsty people, she ran back to town and excitedly communicated: "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" (John 4:29.
When we encounter Jesus we cannot help but echo her excitement as we run joyfully alongside her. We too have been found by One who knows us--who knows everything we have ever done--and yet, in mercy, kindness and love gives us the Holy Spirit who helps us become who we are; beloved sons and daughters of God
David reflected on God's strong hand of protection over him, and he responded by praying: "I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love" (Psalm 31:7). To exult is to be overwhelmed with more joy than our bodies can contain. When we experience this exulting type of joy, we simply must leap to our feet and scream, "Alleluia!"--or something like that.
We talk about this love of God in worship all the time, but we don't always see a lot of exulting. Time and again we encounter the Word of God offering a sacred "I love you." How can anyone hear these amazing words and think, "I know God loves me. Why does the pastor keep saying that?"
In India, the fable is told of a tiger cub that lost his mother and was adopted by a family of goats (See Frederich Buechner's "The Magnificent Defeat"). The goats raised the tiger to speak their language, adopt their ways, and eat their food. Soon the tiger believed he was just a funny-looking goat. One day a king tiger appeared, and all the goats scattered in fear. The young tiger was left alone, feeling afraid, yet somehow unafraid. The king tiger asked him what was meant by this masquerade? All the young tiger could do was bleat nervously and eat grass. So the king carried him to a pool and forced the young tiger to look their reflected images. Side by side, the truth was made clear in what they saw mirrored in the water. Lashing his tail and digging his claws in the ground, the young beast raised his head high, and the jungle trembled at the sound of his exultant roar.
Jesus restores our dignity by forgiving us for all those ways we have settled for being the goat, so that we can spend the rest of life expressing gratitude and roaring with delight!
Thanks for our joyful journey together to God's heart!
Duff Gorle
The goal of a healthy spirituality should not be merely our own personal development. Such a focus would preoccupy us with our self and our perceived progress or lack thereof. But if our goal is to love God, we preoccupy ourselves with him and the things that are the passions of his heart
When the Samaritan woman met Jesus at the well and caught a glimpse of who he was and the passion of his heart to bring living water to desperately thirsty people, she ran back to town and excitedly communicated: "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" (John 4:29.
When we encounter Jesus we cannot help but echo her excitement as we run joyfully alongside her. We too have been found by One who knows us--who knows everything we have ever done--and yet, in mercy, kindness and love gives us the Holy Spirit who helps us become who we are; beloved sons and daughters of God
David reflected on God's strong hand of protection over him, and he responded by praying: "I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love" (Psalm 31:7). To exult is to be overwhelmed with more joy than our bodies can contain. When we experience this exulting type of joy, we simply must leap to our feet and scream, "Alleluia!"--or something like that.
We talk about this love of God in worship all the time, but we don't always see a lot of exulting. Time and again we encounter the Word of God offering a sacred "I love you." How can anyone hear these amazing words and think, "I know God loves me. Why does the pastor keep saying that?"
In India, the fable is told of a tiger cub that lost his mother and was adopted by a family of goats (See Frederich Buechner's "The Magnificent Defeat"). The goats raised the tiger to speak their language, adopt their ways, and eat their food. Soon the tiger believed he was just a funny-looking goat. One day a king tiger appeared, and all the goats scattered in fear. The young tiger was left alone, feeling afraid, yet somehow unafraid. The king tiger asked him what was meant by this masquerade? All the young tiger could do was bleat nervously and eat grass. So the king carried him to a pool and forced the young tiger to look their reflected images. Side by side, the truth was made clear in what they saw mirrored in the water. Lashing his tail and digging his claws in the ground, the young beast raised his head high, and the jungle trembled at the sound of his exultant roar.
Jesus restores our dignity by forgiving us for all those ways we have settled for being the goat, so that we can spend the rest of life expressing gratitude and roaring with delight!
Thanks for our joyful journey together to God's heart!
Duff Gorle
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Inspirational Thought
Dear Friend,
Our church's mission statement is: "Connecting People to God and Each Other Through Jesus Christ." The desire of our collective heart is to know God intimately through Christ, and to help others know God intimately through Christ, in the context of our loving community of faith.
It is difficult to get to know someone whom you cannot see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or intuit. Through these six senses we take-in information from the universe around us that helps us know reality. In the case of Jesus Christ, how do we get to know and feel personally connected to someone who lived two thousand years ago, and hasn't been seen since?
An agnostic found himself in trouble, and a friend suggested he pray. "How can I pray when I do not know whether or not there is a God?" he asked. "If you are lost in the forest," his friend replied, "you do not wait until you find someone before shouting for help."
Earnest seekers have asked for centuries: "How can we meet, personally connect with, and truly know Jesus?" I'd like to bring forth a few thoughts based in Scripture that suggest how we can come to know God.
1. God initiates our meeting Him. We can notice evidence of God's presence in nature and within our own heart and conscience. John 3:16 states that God sent his Son so that we would know God's love and salvation. John 6:44 notes that God the Father draws us to Himself. 1 John 4:10 tells how God lovingly takes the initiative to establish a relationship with us.
2. Those who want to find God can. Scripture suggests God provides some points of light that are visible to those who choose to look and see. As we've mentioned, there is the light of nature (Romans 1:18-20), and the light of conscience (Romans 2:12-16). There is also the light of Scripture that points to the greatest light, Jesus Himself (1 John 1:7).
3. God is not limited to what is visible. The second of the Ten Commandments tries to help us find God by forbidding us to think of him in visual terms (Exodus 20:4). It forbids us to use images as representations of the divine being. Jesus said, "No one has ever seen the Father." He also said, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (John 20:29). Dallas Willard notes how God's spiritual invasions into human life "seem by their very gentleness almost to invite us to explain them away, even while soberly reminding us that to be obsessed and ruled by the visible is death but that to give one's self over to the spiritual is life and peace (Rom. 8:6)."
God is not insensitive to our problem of overcoming the power of the visible world. He invades the visible.
Spiritual people, and particularly people touched by God's Holy Spirit, are those who draw their life from an intimate relationship with God. We do not live our lives merely in terms of the human order in the visible world; we have "a life beyond."
4. The "still, small voice"--the interior or inner voice--seems to be held up by Scripture as the most valuable form of individualized communication for God's purposes. In contrast to the noise and frenzy of the so-called "real world of the visible" the spiritual world whispers to us ever so gently. Generally speaking, God will not compete for our attention.
When we seek God earnestly and are prepared to examine every possible thing that might be his overture to us--including the most obvious things like Bible verses or our own thoughts--then he promises to be found (Jer. 29:13). We will find God only if we honestly believe that God will address us in ways suitable to his purpose in our life.
May we be attentive as God continually, gently, mysteriously guides us into a deeper knowledge of himself.
In His Love,
Pastor Duff Gorle
Our church's mission statement is: "Connecting People to God and Each Other Through Jesus Christ." The desire of our collective heart is to know God intimately through Christ, and to help others know God intimately through Christ, in the context of our loving community of faith.
It is difficult to get to know someone whom you cannot see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or intuit. Through these six senses we take-in information from the universe around us that helps us know reality. In the case of Jesus Christ, how do we get to know and feel personally connected to someone who lived two thousand years ago, and hasn't been seen since?
An agnostic found himself in trouble, and a friend suggested he pray. "How can I pray when I do not know whether or not there is a God?" he asked. "If you are lost in the forest," his friend replied, "you do not wait until you find someone before shouting for help."
Earnest seekers have asked for centuries: "How can we meet, personally connect with, and truly know Jesus?" I'd like to bring forth a few thoughts based in Scripture that suggest how we can come to know God.
1. God initiates our meeting Him. We can notice evidence of God's presence in nature and within our own heart and conscience. John 3:16 states that God sent his Son so that we would know God's love and salvation. John 6:44 notes that God the Father draws us to Himself. 1 John 4:10 tells how God lovingly takes the initiative to establish a relationship with us.
2. Those who want to find God can. Scripture suggests God provides some points of light that are visible to those who choose to look and see. As we've mentioned, there is the light of nature (Romans 1:18-20), and the light of conscience (Romans 2:12-16). There is also the light of Scripture that points to the greatest light, Jesus Himself (1 John 1:7).
3. God is not limited to what is visible. The second of the Ten Commandments tries to help us find God by forbidding us to think of him in visual terms (Exodus 20:4). It forbids us to use images as representations of the divine being. Jesus said, "No one has ever seen the Father." He also said, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (John 20:29). Dallas Willard notes how God's spiritual invasions into human life "seem by their very gentleness almost to invite us to explain them away, even while soberly reminding us that to be obsessed and ruled by the visible is death but that to give one's self over to the spiritual is life and peace (Rom. 8:6)."
God is not insensitive to our problem of overcoming the power of the visible world. He invades the visible.
Spiritual people, and particularly people touched by God's Holy Spirit, are those who draw their life from an intimate relationship with God. We do not live our lives merely in terms of the human order in the visible world; we have "a life beyond."
4. The "still, small voice"--the interior or inner voice--seems to be held up by Scripture as the most valuable form of individualized communication for God's purposes. In contrast to the noise and frenzy of the so-called "real world of the visible" the spiritual world whispers to us ever so gently. Generally speaking, God will not compete for our attention.
When we seek God earnestly and are prepared to examine every possible thing that might be his overture to us--including the most obvious things like Bible verses or our own thoughts--then he promises to be found (Jer. 29:13). We will find God only if we honestly believe that God will address us in ways suitable to his purpose in our life.
May we be attentive as God continually, gently, mysteriously guides us into a deeper knowledge of himself.
In His Love,
Pastor Duff Gorle
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