That Place of Confidence in Christ Alone

This morning I sat with my coffee, and quite out of the blue, the quiet, strong confidence of Christ welled up and consumed me. It settled in and emanated a joy so quiet—and yet loud; restorative—and yet jubilant. 

This confidence is ironic in that, in it, I abhor any thought of self-boast about it (wondering, even, if I can put into words the conveyance of its being completely unbidden by me, uncreated in any way by me, and solely the gifting of the indwelling Spirit, supplying what I acknowledge I have lacked). 

I describe it as the meeting of a dire need, a supernatural imparting of an unequivocal knowing that this confidence of Christ is where I want—-need—-to be, but haven’t consistently been, and where I desire to stay and live out the rest of my days.

In this confidence, the world—and all that swirls in it—along with my own human feelings and discombobulations, including the struggles of the hour, don’t matter in the sense that any reliance upon the state of their circumstances is moot: any rassling I would attempt in these matters only morphs them into enormous illusions and undue heaviness, taking me farther adrift from Christ. 

This is why I cannot boast. Because too many times, I have resisted this confidence. 

Today, it arrives as a surprise visit from a dearly beloved.

Jesus said, in Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:31:  

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  

Jesus is including all of us here. And we make ourselves more diseased by ingesting—insanely at times—the placebo of worldliness, inner feelings, pride and discouragement. 

Even on a good day, we have a pre-existing condition of being sick and in need of a Savior, and the absolute crazy truth is that Jesus “doctors” us in His comfort, teaching, correction, guidance, and His hearing and enduring reassurance—every minute, hour and day.

Christ is confidence and thus imparts confidence because He only does and speaks what His Father in heaven tells Him.

In John 5:19b-23 Jesus says, 

“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent Him.”

Jesus goes on to say,

“By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30).

“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say” (John 12:49-50).

And now, at this time, Jesus is advocating for us at the right hand of our Father, God. Advocating, I say! Nobody does that for us on a 24-hour basis! No earthy advocate even comes near to Christ’s perfect advocacy. 

“But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:55-56).

“Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:18-23).

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).

Even when we fail, even when we try to wrest the reigns of our life away from Christ, rejecting the help of His Spirit in us, Christ is right here with us up there next to God. 

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

     ‘For your sake we face death all day long; 

      we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’

No, in all these things we are conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

That is where this place of confidence arrived from this morning as I sat, with my coffee, in my own little corner of the world. It came from Christ alone, as He advocates at the right hand of our Father God in heaven. 

Amen.

Copyright Barb Harwood

A Defensive Heart is a Hardened Heart

I have come to understand God’s way of peace through reconciliation. 

First, Salvation is being reconciled through faith in God in Christ through Christ’s death for us on the Cross (and not by our works: sola fide). 

God says that we are also to be reconciled to each other (2 Corinthians 5:18; Matthew 18:21-22; James 3:14-18)). 

And He also says we are to be reconciled to our self (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).

Through the utter coming to the end of myself, I, thankfully, count myself among the Christians who have experienced all three instances of reconciliation.

I am reconciled to God in Christ.

I am reconciled to and with myself in Christ.

I am mutually reconciled to some people in Christ.

I say “some” because I am not mutually reconciled to others. However, after many years, I have  become reconciled with myself and God in regards to those people.

And now I understand Christ’s tears over those who “would not” (Matthew 23:37): those who wanted nothing to do with His reconciliation.

This is a marvel, since Jesus never did anything to cause their “would nots.”

But I have. 

I have caused others to not want to have anything to do with me. 

I have caused others to hurt.

I have caused people to wince and roll their eyes.

I have caused embarrassment—knowingly or ignorantly—participated in one-upmanship, used the silent treatment out of self-righteous anger and put my foot in my mouth too many times to count…..

In short, I have been the cause of the need to be reconciled with people in the first place!

And so have all of us (if we think we haven’t, then we need to go back to the first reconciliation—that with God through and in Christ).

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

No one is righteous or good in and of themselves (Romans 3:9-20).

So it’s not surprising to me to have an offer of reconciliation met with sarcasm, skepticism, resentment, disbelief, incredulousness and “you gotta be kidding me’s.”

But the offer for reconciliation, in order to continue on in sanctification with Christ, must at some point be made. 

And God will allow us to finally submit that offer when we give the circumstances entirely over to Him via full-on agreement with His full estimation of the situation and our, and others, roll in it. 

I praise God that that reconciliation has come, face to face, one-on-one, over coffee or in an exchange of letters or emails, with some people. 

In this, I have experienced forgiveness. 

More importantly, for true reconciliation to take place, I have received their acceptance of my fallenness, my sin and my selfish pride. The reconciliation took place because they owned my faults with me and didn’t deny me in this. They didn’t try to brush off their own discomfort by saying “Oh, don’t worry about it,” or “You didn’t do anything wrong,” or “I know you’re a good person.”

Because comments like that leave the person who is saying them going away usually thinking and believing the total opposite: 

“What a jerk. They think they can just apologize and everything is okay?” Or “It was nice that they attempted to own up to their mistakes, but seriously, why did they make that stupid mistake in the first place?” 

Do you see how this form of  “reconciliation” is a surface level parody? The only thing it breeds is more resentment, while the person who has apologized is thinking everything’s swell when it’s not.

True reconciliation takes place like this:

In honest, genuine contrition, we admit our sin and ask forgiveness. We lay the groundwork for this to happen by inviting the person to come into our life one-on-one so we can begin the dialogue. 

This is what we have with Christ. We invite Him in in utmost contrition, convinced, finally, that we are fallen and can’t remove our own sin from our selves or our life, and we cannot remove it from others. 

And Christ continues this relationship with us here, although we are yet sinners, and perfectly, in eternity. 

Reconciliation with ourselves happens next. Finally understanding that we don’t--and can’t--save ourselves, or reconcile ourself to ourself, we accept Christ’s gift to face into who we were, who we are now in Christ, and who we can and are, becoming in Christ. 

This is something that is now safe to do because Christ, via His Holy Spirit, does it in us.

Ultimately, we do this with others by inviting them out for coffee. By telling them we love them in spite of differences. By reminding them that, although things may have been dicey between us, we have not forgotten them. 

And we actively hope and pray that they will take us up on our invitation. We desire that, just as we knocked and Christ opened the door, they will walk through the door we’ve opened for them (but if they have never walked through Christ’s door, this might yet be impossible for them).

But it is up to them to walk. They have to want to accept the invitation. They have to desire to face into an honest assessment of the situation, the relationship, our self and their self. 

Christ does not force anyone. And neither do we.

In tears Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and lamented that they would not let themselves know the truth (Luke 19:41, Matthew 23:37). 

And they would not because of hearts hardened by defensiveness. 

People do not understand the concept of pride as a negative. 

In our society, just as in Bible times, people were raised to take pride in themselves, their family line, their occupation, their wealth, their beauty, their passions, their intellect, and their independence. 

So when confronted with the truth about themselves, which Christ revealed—and still does to us today in His Word—they wanted to stone, chase out of town and malign Him and His followers and refute and corrupt His teaching. 

They were in full protective mode of their hearts that could not bear the threat that He and His followers, and His wisdom, posed. 

They sensed that if they listened to this Man they would no longer be in control of themselves or others. They would no longer be the pride of their own life. They could no longer maintain the high regard for themselves, their lineage, their education, their marriage into a respected family, their income, their self-righteousness. They could no longer deny an honest assessment of their actual condition.

Therefore, they defended themselves and their thoughts, feelings and opinions at all costs.

In favor of a hardened heart, they paid the ultimate price and forfeited new life with Christ, His forgiveness and peace, and reconciliation with our Father God.

I have sent invites; many of us have. 

I have said, “I love you in spite of our troubles.” I have affirmed that “I have not forgotten you but recall you fondly.” 

For some, as it would have been for me at one time, this is just too much to ask, again, especially if we have at times been the one pushing or pulling away. 

Just because healing has taken place for us through Christ (and it may have taken many years), does not mean others are ready, especially if they do not have the understanding of what true reconciliation is because they have not yet been reconciled to God through Christ and thus, have not been reconciled with themselves.

But we can still be reconciled to them before God.

God says,

 “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18). 

We can sleep like a baby, and finally experience the deep and lasting joy of having—in all contrition, sincerity and hope—sent the invitation to reconciliation. 

Our burden no longer exists, knowing that, from our end, the door remains open and will remain open. And that this time, it is real, not an “ought to” (although it may start as that, and that’s okay because we are at least beginning with obedience, which often opens the door to greater insight and knowledge about God’s processes).” 

The reconciliation we then have even with those who stubbornly refuse it is still reconciliation because our hearts, through the power of Christ and His Spirit alone, and through our repeated requests to God, have been cleansed of all unrighteousness towards these individuals (Psalm 51:10). 

And that, as cousin Eddy says in the comedy movie Christmas Vacation, “Is the gift that keeps on giving.”

If rejected or ignored, our invite remains an unconditional offer:  without  pushing, pulling, forcing, guilting, cajoling or enabling. 

We graciously leave them to themselves in our love, going on in their lives at a distance in the peace of Christ, and in gratitude for and embracing of the reconciliation that has occurred, and confident that only Christ can soften a hardened, defensive heart. 

We know that because He softened ours. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Self-Condemnation of Self Righteousness

If ever there were a message for our time, it is the Biblical Book of Titus. This compact revelation of God to man is a concise summing up of, and warning to, people of all generations. 

And if, like so many who claim that simply because a book is “old” it therefore offers nothing to those alive today, we are tempted to scoff that the Bible’s context could ever be relevant to our own, look no further than Titus to bust that bubble of nonsense. 

(And I say nonsense, because most, if not all people, who condemn Scripture simply because it is old, have never actually read it, or have never read it with the Spirit of the Holy Spirit guiding them into the truth of it).

Let’s see if the words of Titus don’t portray today’s climate of chattering heads on television “talk” news programs, political ads, Facebook, and at office coffee depots, local watering holes and even, unfortunately, Thanksgiving gatherings:

“For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers…” (1:10)

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (3:3).

You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.” (3:11)

There we have it. 

Mere (some translations say “empty” or “meaningless”) talk and deception (i.e. outright lies).

Why? Why have people worked themselves into malicious, envious hate in order to drive home their political, social and personal-identity agendas? 

Titus provides the answer: because the motivations of fomented individuals are rebellious and disobedient, resulting in the foolish chatter all around that deceives and divides, envies and hates. These motivations derive from enslavement to warped, malicious and sinful passions and pleasures. 

And yet, the joke is on the mere talkers and deceivers. Because Titus informs unequivocally that, “in all these ways we condemn ourselves" (Titus 3:11).

When the intent is to condemn the other party, organization, football player, team, corporation, people group, public servant, etc., the condemnation is, in fact, brought onto us alone!

We condemn ourself. 

We are not victims. 

When conducting ourselves in the above manner, I condemn me and you condemn you. 

Now, the dilemma is that people of the world will never see their motivations as being self-condemning, because they operate out of self-righteousness. If we had to name a motivation behind the motivations, it would be self-righteousness. 

That is the root of rebelliousness that leads, in the end, to self-condemnation.

dictionary.com defines self-righteous as:

“Confident of one’s own righteousness, especially when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behaviors of others.”

We must also define intolerant:

“Not respecting beliefs, opinions, usages, manners, etc. different from one’s own…unable or unwilling to endure…”

So while the world defines tolerance to mean “fully accept and embrace,” tolerate means no such thing. 

If intolerance means lack of respect, then tolerance means to respect.

To respect the liberty of others to form and live out beliefs, opinions, usages, manners, etc. different from one’s own (within the law and constitution, of course).

Respect does not mean one must accept.

It does not mean one has to accept or condone a choice, mannerism, word usage, or lifestyle of someone else, and it does not mean I must accept it for myself. Respect lives and lets live, within the law and constitution. 

As Christians, it means we stop expecting non-Christians to act as Christians, or to even begin to understand our worldview.  

Respect, however, does not mean we have to re-write or re-interpret Scripture so as to tolerate others. 

Respect simply means that we live in peace with one another, as much as it is up to us (Romans 12:17-21), and we do that by loving others through the respect that they were created by God, just as we were. 

Living at peace with one another does not mean we are to enable, condescend to, adopt, or endorse anything which forfeits Gospel Truth for universalism, relativism, or a forgery of “love” which demands that one person can be who they are but nobody can be a Biblical Christian. 

Respect is what the Bible calls for. It is what Jesus did. But Jesus also advised his apostles to not waste their breath:

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet” (Matthew 10:14).

Yes, Jesus left people to themselves who were not interested in living in His light but who preferred instead to live in their darkness (John 3:19).

He wiped the dust off His feet and left. 

He did not character assassinate. He did not go on "talk radio” (the public courtyard) and self-defensively misconstrue and make false or exaggerated accusations against those who disagreed with Him, or who ignored Him, or who overtly scoffed at Him. 

He moved on to engage people who were receptive to Him, and even then, a lot of what Jesus said was in question, not telling, form! I mean, check it out…Jesus spoke in parables and questions. Yes, he also laid out commands. He made things clear. But He left it up to each and every individual to do as they chose without deception, or stretching the truth, or publicly slamming an opponent. 

He respected people’s choice to the point of tears (Luke 19:41-42), and when He knew He had reached a dead end with His gentle influence and Truth, He didn’t force anything (Mark 6:5-6; Matthew 13:58). 

Those who are yet worldly—and this can include Christians—have fused their inner personal self-righteousness with their personally-perceived and self-defined sense of justice. 

And they take that “sense of justice” onto Facebook and other public and social places, and proselytize their soundbites no different than a fire and brimstone street preacher, never slowing down long enough to wipe away the prolific sweat they are breaking into in order to check what is being said against facts, or to see their opponent as a fellow human being. 

They never 

Turn. 

Off. 

The. 

Noise. 

And they condemn themselves. 

We, if at any time this is us, condemn ourselves. 

I hope to continue this post on Titus in the coming days.

Copyright Barb Harwood