Live Your Divine Calling!

L.D. Turner

I am always amazed when I hear people talking about a belief in the random nature of the universe; how everything sort evolved by accident or through some sort of cosmic game of pin the tail on the comet. From my perspective, this is an exercise in absurdity. Every aspect of the universe, not to mention our own bodies, are functioning in a highly intricate and perfectly balanced manner. To think this all happened by accident or chance is beyond the realm of reason.

Considering all this, I just don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

The same principle applies to our lives. As we looked at earlier, God not only created the universe with a finely tuned balance and rhythm, he also planned our lives around a finely tuned purpose. God has a plan and, as an integral and intricate part of the plan, he created a unique plan for each of us.

One of the greatest gifts of God to each of us is the placing of this divine plan for our lives deep within us. God has his generalized plan for humanity and a personal plan or mission for each of us. You, me, the butcher, baker, and even the candlestick maker have a divine purpose scripted on our hearts by the Creator and it is a plan just for us. More incredible is the fact that God has equipped us to carry that plan out and in so doing, help establish his kingdom right here on earth and bring great glory to his being. What a wonder! What a blessing! What a responsibility!

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you have been, and what you have done. That divine purpose still exists inside you and with a little effort and a lot of faith, you can discover it. Start with prayer, asking God through the Holy Spirit to reveal his divine plan for your life. Be persistent in your asking; be vigilant in waiting for an answer; and be confident that the answer will come.

Also, keep in mind that it is never too late to get started on the dreams God has for you. God created you to accomplish extraordinary things and no matter how old you are, how sinful you have been, or whatever afflictions you may suffer from, God can and will use you because that is one of the primary purposes you were created in the first place. Listen as Jim Graff speaks clearly to this issue:

God uses ordinary people – with all their flaws and problems – to accomplish extraordinary dreams. You and I don’t have to wait until we have it all together, achieve a certain degree of fame, earn a specified amount of money, get a better job, or meet the right person. Instead, we can start today to embrace who we are and how God made us, knowing that he will use us. From this knowledge, wellsprings of confidence water our hearts. That confidence allows us to see our dreams and visions as God’s road maps to significant lives.

A significant life – that is what God created you for. Make a consecrated commitment right now to lead a life of excellence in cooperation and divine partnership with the Holy Spirit. The life of excellence is what Jesus demonstrated for us and it is that same kind of life to which each of us is called. Sure, we may foul up things from time to time, but God is right there with us offering a hand to pick us up, dust us off, and send us on our divinely appointed way.

As said earlier, it matters not where you have been. In fact, past failures and problems may be part of your qualification for the task God has for you to perform. I worked for many years in the field of addiction prevention and treatment. The most effective professionals ministering to those suffering from addiction were those people who were former addicts themselves. It is this foundational philosophy upon which Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are built.

Whenever I explore scripture I am consistently amazed at the cast of characters that God selected to carry forth major projects on his behalf. We see in both the Old and New Testaments that God repeatedly chose people that seemed completely incapable of doing what he was calling upon them to do. God didn’t go out in search of heroes to carry our his important missions. Instead, he looked for seemingly insignificant, weak-kneed characters in need of major character overhaul. Erwin Raphael McManus speaks cogently about this in his book Uprising:

The history of God’s people is not a record of God searching for courageous men and women who could handle the task, but God transforming the hearts of cowards and calling them to live courageous lives. Adam and Eve hid; Abraham lied; Moses ran; David deceived; Esther was uncertain; Elijah contemplated suicide; John the Baptist doubted; Peter denied; Judas betrayed. And these are just some of the leading characters.

Looking through the pages of scripture and seeing how God goes about staffing his major kingdom projects gives credible hope to even a misfit like me.

If you think your past sin(s) prevents you from carrying out your purpose for God, you have been lied to by the Master of Deceit himself. Satan would like nothing more than for you to continue walking around half-alive, depressed, despondent, and spiritually paralyzed. That’s why that little voice tells you time and time again that there is no way God will ever use you.

Listen my friend – God saved you and God will use you. He is not a God of wasted effort. God never does anything without a reason and a purpose. If you are saved, you are to be used. You are destined to be God’s instrument for something special.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Books That Bless: Saving Jesus From the Church (Part One)

L.D. Turner

If you are a heavy reader like I am, you will fully understand what I mean when I say that I recently read one of “those books.” One of “those books” is a book that I needed to read at exactly the time that I read it. The Holy Spirit, knowing me better than I know myself, put this book in my path at just the right time, then opened my heart and mind to the message contained within its pages. As a result, I came away from my experience with that book a changed person.

The book I am speaking of is Robin Meyer’s “Saving Jesus from the Church.” The sub-title is even more telling: “How to Stop Worshipping Christ and Start Following Jesus.” If that doesn’t grab your interest, perhaps the picture on the cover will. It is a head shot of Jesus with eyes almost closed and a strip of duct tape across his mouth. Given the book’s title and cover, I expected that this just might be a book that would both challenge me and, at the same time, make me think. Meyers delivered and delivered well on both counts.

A professor of philosophy at Oklahoma City University, Meyers is also a nationally syndicated columnist and pastor of Mayflower Congregational Church. In the book, the author explores a variety of themes that I find highly pertinent to the survival of the Christian faith. A self-proclaimed liberal, certainly much of what Meyers has to say will sit side-saddle in the mouths of those of a fundamentalist bent. Although there are several key points where I part company with the liberal wing of the faith, I can say the same about the more conservative side of Christianity as well. For these reasons, I have learned to have an open mind and perhaps it is also for these reasons that I find a book like this one so stimulating and thought-provoking.

I should also say at this point that this is not a standard “book review” or anything like that. Instead, it is just what it actually is – a blog entry. I hope, however, to be able to give my readers at least a glimpse of the importance of Meyers’ book and perhaps whet their appetites enough to motivate them to read the book and reflect on its content. I will do this by sharing several lengthy quotations from Meyers’ book, the first from near the front and the final one from the epilogue. I have selected these quotations because I think they give a generally vivid picture of Meyers’ take on the problems the contemporary Christian faith faces and possible solutions to those problems.
Near the beginning of the book (on page 10 actually) Meyers throws down the gauntlet:

“In the beginning, the call of God was not propositional. It was experiential. It was as palpable as wine and wineskins, lost coins and frightened servants, corrupting leaven and a tearful father. Now we argue over the Trinity, the true identity of the beast in the book of Revelation, and the exact number of people who will make it into heaven. Students who once learned by following the teacher became true believers who confuse certainty with faith.”

“We have a sacred story that has been stolen from us, and in our time, the thief is what passes for orthodoxy itself (right belief instead of right worship). Arguing over the metaphysics of Christ only divides us. But agreeing to follow the essential teachings of Jesus could unite us. We could become imitators, not believers.”

“Two roads that ‘diverged in a yellow wood’ so long ago looked equally fair, but now one is well worn. It is the road of the Fall and redemption, original sin, and the Savior. The other is the road of enlightenment, wisdom, creation-centered spirituality, and a nearly forgotten object of discipleship: transformation. This is the road less traveled. It seeks not to save our souls, but rather to restore them.”

If you have followed this blog for any length of time or read my writings in other venues, you should be well aware of my feelings about the whole “Fall-Redemption/Original Sin/Blood Sacrifice/Atonement” schemata and all that travels in its wake. Along with the whole “Faith vs. Works” issue, these doctrines have ripped the very guts out of the true gospel and have made transformational Christianity virtually impossible. I won’t go into that diatribe right now, for this is not the time nor the place. Suffice to say, Meyers is of the same opinion and fortunately, so are an increasing number of thoughtful followers of Christ.
Meyers goes on to say that if the church is to find healing, it must go back to that fork in the road and, as did Robert Frost, take the road less traveled. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the very heart of the faith. According to Meyers, we must go beyond the attempts to maintain the status quo on the one hand, and the quest to “demythologize Jesus” on the other. Instead, our task is to:

“…let the breath of the Galilean sage fall on the neck of the church again. First, we have to listen not to formulas of salvation but to a gospel that is all but forgotten. After centuries of being told that “Jesus saves,” the time has come to save Jesus from the church….If any priest tells us we cannot sing this new son, we will sing it louder, invite others to sing it with us, and raise our voices in unison across all the boundaries of human existence – until this joyful chorus is heard in every corner of the world, and the church itself is raised from the dead.”

To be continued……

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

Wise Words for Personal Reflection

Image by theroamincatholic via Flickr

Jesus forms a movement of people who trust him and believe his message. They believe that they don’t have to wait for this or that to happen, but rather that they can begin living in a new and better way now, a way of life Jesus conveys by the pregnant phrase “kingdom of God.” Life for them now is about an interactive relationship – reconciled to lives as an opportunity to make the beautiful music of God’s kingdom so that more and more people will be drawn into it, and so the world will be changed by their growing influence. Everyone can have a role in this expanding kingdom – women and men, masters and servants, powerful and powerless, old and young, urban and rural, white collar and blue collar, previously religious and previously irreligious. Each life can add beauty to the secret message of Jesus. Each person can be a secret agent of the secret kingdom.

Brian McLaren

(from The Secret Message of Jesus)

You All for God's All

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L.D. Turner

I particularly love the following words by David Platt:

…..I invite you simply to let your heart be gripped, maybe for the first time, by the biblical prospect that God has designed a radically global purpose for your life….I invite you to throw aside the gospel-less reasoning that might prevent you from accomplishing that purpose. I invite you to consider with me what it would mean for all of us – pastors and church members, businessmen and businesswomen, lawyers and doctors, consultants and construction workers, teachers and students, on-the-go professionals and stay-at-home moms – to spend all of our lives for the sake of all God’s glory in all the world…..It sounds idealistic, I know. Impact the world. But doesn’t it also sound biblical? God has created us to accomplish a radically global, supremely God-exalting purpose with our lives. The formal definition of impact is “a forcible contact between two things,” and God has designed our lives for a collision course with the world.

My friends, if these words indeed seem idealistic to you, I submit the following for your consideration. You may have unwittingly imbibed too deeply the world’s value system. You may have bought, hook, line and sinker, our culture’s definition of what is realistic and what is pie-in-the-sky, dream-in-your-eye fantasy.

The fact is my friend, when Christ entered the scene all those years ago in the Holy Land, he set about turning the existing status quo on its head. What the world considered realistic, practical, and the right way to do things largely went out the window in Christ’s teaching. In the collection of teachings known to us as the “Sermon on the Mount,” the Master often prefaced his remarks by saying, “You have heard it said…but I say to you.”

Again, I submit to you that if you think that God’s call on your life – the call to give your all for God’s all – is too idealistic, perhaps the stain of our culture’s reasoning, no matter how sacred, hallowed, or closely held, has gone far too deeply into your being.
At some point we all are faced with a choice: do we accept the beliefs and values of our culture, or do we follow the teachings of the Master, even if they sound like an idealistic dream?

I conclude with these words from the great scholar Houston Smith. I encourage you to reflect deeply on what these words say to you:

…we have heard Jesus’ teachings so often that their edges have been worn smooth, dulling their glaring subversiveness. If we could recover their original impact, we too would be startled. Their beauty would not paper over the fact that they are “hard sayings,” presenting a scheme of values so counter to the usual as to shake us like the seismic collision of tectonic plates…We are told that we are not to resist evil but to turn the other cheek. The world assumes that evil must be resisted by every means available. We are told to love our enemies and bless those who curse us. The world assumes that friends are to be loved and enemies hated. We are told that the sun rises on the just and the unjust alike. The world considers this to be indiscriminating; it would like to see dark clouds withholding sunshine from evil people. We are told that outcasts and harlots enter the kingdom of God before many who are perfunctorily righteous. Unfair, we protest; respectable people should head the procession. We are told that the gate to salvation is narrow. The world would prefer it to be wide. We are told to be as carefree as birds and flowers. The world counsels prudence. We are told that it is more difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye. The world honors wealth. We are told that the happy people are those who are meek, who weep, who are merciful and pure in heart. The world assumes that it is the rich, the powerful, and the wellborn who should be happy. In all, a wind of freedom blows through these teachings that frightens the world and makes us want to deflect their effect by postponement – not yet, not yet! H.G. Wells was evidently right: either there was something mad about this man, or our hearts are still too small for his message.

Think about it.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Personal Reflection

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In faith, there is a “gotcha” moment, when Jesus gets you for life. The gotcha moment may take millions of minutes or just one. But when Jesus gets you for life, you begin to live out of Jesus-love. When we present ourselves as “living offerings” to Christ, suddenly questions of what to do and what not to do take on a whole new meaning. Once we are truly sharing our lives with Christ and learning to live in His love, then truly Charitas Christi urget nos; “The love of Christ constrains us.”
It is not the commandments and the laws that control our behavior. It is the presence of the indwelling Christ and Jesus-love that both restrains and releases us. A relational Christ ethic is why Paul said Christians don’t have sex with prostitutes. Since Christ is living His resurrected life in and through you, would you want Jesus to share that purchase of lust with you? Would Jesus treat any woman like a purchase? The commandments are paper handcuffs compared to Jesus’ love strands. It is “the love of Christ” that impels, compels, and propels us – a love that is so captivating we become free to do it all . . . in love, with love, for love.

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola
(from Jesus Manifesto)