Father Abraham

“Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you. So let’s just praise the Lord.” The kids at camp love singing that fun little ditty, without even a clue of what it means to be a son of Abraham. Abraham is considered the Father of Faith. It is said of him that “he believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.” With Abraham, the seed of grace was planted – God clearly revealed that justification was based on belief, not on merit. What is the mark, or the distinguishing characteristic, of Abraham’s belief?

After taking a long contemplative look at Abraham’s story with a group of men I came to this conclusion: The measure of faith is belief, not compliance. And the heart of belief is surrender, first, not obedience.

The measure of faith is belief. Belief that is much deeper than mere head-knowledge or token acknowledgment. (For even Satan believes God, but he is not a “righteous one”.) Abraham-type belief is marked by surrender. We cannot measure faith by compliance. The religious leaders, in Jesus’ day, did a pretty good job of that. And many church-goers today fit that mold, and don’t know otherwise.

Abraham was counted righteous for believing. Stop and realize that he lived a long time before God gave the law to obey. So, what did Abraham believe? He believed God when He told him to move his entire entourage from his homeland of Ur and go to Canaan, a place that God mysteriously called a “promised land”. And he believed God when He told him that He wanted to make a great nation of him, even though he did not have a son. So much so that he bore Ishmael, and twice lied about Sarah being his sister, not his wife, intending to keep God’s promise alive. If you were to ask Abraham about his faith he might say, “God got my attention such that I totally believed him. From then on I lived in total surrender to his directives. Yes, I suppose you could call it obedience, but for me, I never even had a sense of compliance, it was just surrender – totally, and always.  And what an adventure we had together, God and me.”

One man I know even called Abraham a “wimp”. But however presumptuous he may have been, one thing is sure, God counted him as righteous. Don’t forget, at the pinnacle of his life of faith, he believed God beyond reason, as he hiked up Mount Moriah to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, the promised heir.

Belief requires constant relationship with the person whom you trust, whereas compliance and obedience focus on a code, a code which is usually self-manipulated and self-managed. We think it is pleasing to God to focus on avoiding sin. But if we are so focused on sin-management, self-righteousness, and hiding our failures, then we will never totally surrender and trust God.

Here is how we bring God glory, by presenting our life to him as a living sacrifice, surrendering to him in so many more ways than just avoiding sin. This is our act of worship – surrender, not compliance. We glorify God by stepping out of our comfort zone, by surrendering to the Spirit of God as he leads us to do unsettling acts of love and service, much more than by keeping a checklist of spiritual disciplines that I must observe. Belief inspires us to greatness, greatness that glorifies God.  Compliance reduces us to minions -- self-righteous, holy wanabees.

What would happen if we viewed our relationship with Jesus through the lens of surrender, rather than obedience?  Not the “lift your hands, close your eyes, sway to the music” type of showy surrender, but “hard core, all in, here’s my heart on the altar” type of surrender. What would it look like – in your life, in my life?

God wants us to love him with everything that is a part of our being – our heart, soul, mind, and actions (Mark 12:30). We can sit at the table and count our cards or we can put it all on the altar –“all in”.

All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him, in his presence daily live.

Living Water

There are two types of wealth – original wealth and redistributed wealth. It is original wealth that builds up a family, or a community, or a nation, and makes them prosper.  Original wealth comes from sources such as mining, farming, forestry, oil, renewable energy, and inventions. As that wealth gets redistributed, others prosper.  Most peoples’ wealth comes as wages or secondary income, from industries such as shipping, restaurants, entertainment, dot.com, or service. These industries do not create wealth, though they might like to think so, but only redistribute wealth.

The same is true in information and communication. I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of communicators. There are those who speak thoughtfully, perhaps infrequently, usually generating new ideas, fresh concepts, or personal insights. Then there are those who babble on and on, repeating whatever someone else has said, giving very little thought to the purpose or the validity of their comments. They parrot others, usually careful to cite sources, as if that's important. There are generators, and there are repeaters.

I have a very strong feeling that we are dumbing down our thinking, our creativity, our very intelligence as we move further and further into the age of the internet and social media. We think we are doing something important to find a quote, a comment, a picture, a video, and pass it on. We hit the “like” button, or post a link. Christians think they are addressing social injustice and overcoming evil merely by bandying about other’s insights. They think they are advancing the kingdom of God by posting links to comments on social and political causes. The repeater thinks that preaching to the choir is important stuff, I guess.

It’s more alarming when the person repeating another’s information is the spiritual leaders who we expect to be searching the mind of God, to be in tune with the Spirit of God, to come out of the tent of meeting with a fresh and encouraging insight. Instead we merely hear them parroting each other, not even realizing that there is very little substance in the ideas, and the truth has not yet been filtered through the grid of real life.

The living water flows from a large cave five miles up the hill. In that cave the keeper of the spring meets and converses with whoever is willing to make the trek. Most people never think of going to the source, they just get out of their car by the highway bridge, walk down to the creek, and get a drink in the pool where everyone else gathers. But that water is stagnant, polluted, and corrupted. They think they are drinking water that will give them life, but instead they remain in their pain, sick and unhealthy, not even aware.

There is a world of difference between living water and stagnant cisterns. I mean, who really wants to drink murky, moldy water? It may look refreshing, but it’s probably full of parasites and bacteria.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.  By this Jesus meant the Spirit, whom those who believe in him were later to receive.”  (John 7:37-39)