The Wayback Machine: February
Some things just get better with age. “The Wayback Machine” posts occur at the end of every month and reference the best posts of that month in years past. My hope is to provide a good jumping on point for readers who have never been to Pursuing Glory.
2009
Back in 2009, my good friend Dick Speight rolled out the first of many books that the Lord has put in him. He offered me the great joy of writing a foreword for the book. So when the book hit the shelves in February, I gave a little background on Dick and shared my recommendation for the book. It’s still a great book that will help many draw away and experience Jesus’ love. I encourage you not just to read the post but to think about picking up a copy.
2007
The House Church We’ve All Been Waiting For
This post was more of a report about what was going on in our house church during its very early stages. You can tell we’ve definitely progressed beyond some of the issues listed here, but the point is that we were actually meeting God like we intended to. Check this post out for a glimpse into the good and the bad of what we were early on.
This post was a short attempt to sum up where I was feeling the Lord take us three weeks in to our house church. Four years later, much has changed but so much is still the same. It’s clear looking back, I wasn’t just trying to start a house church, I was hoping for true apostolic Christianity to emerge. We’re still contending for that to this day.
On Sonship (Part V)
The last few weeks we’ve been discussing the implications of sonship on our walk with Christ. If you’re interested, you can check out the previous posts in the series here:
On Sonship (Part I)
On Sonship (Part II)
On Sonship (Part III)
On Sonship (Part IV)
God fathers us Himself.
God has always been a father. He was the father of our Lord Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world (Colossians 1:2-3, John 17:24), He was a father to Israel (Hosea 11:1), and He has been a father to the church of every generation. God has designed the world so that even though children are born without fathers (or born with terrible fathers), He will be a father to the fatherless. Psalms 68:5-6 describes how God protects the orphan and sets the lonely in families. This is something God does because He is a father.
We see this play out specifically when a man or a woman turns from their sin and accepts Christ as the leader of his or her life. At that point God gives us “the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15). This radical adoption breaks off every form of fear and abandonment and it is God’s answer to the harsh reality that not everyone has a good dad to call their own.
This Spirit of adoption is not just a warm, fuzzy love feeling, it’s much more practical than that. I know of one brother who really had very little fathering growing up. When he became a believer, he found himself totally unable to do simple things that a father usually teaches a son. His testimony is he held on to the promise that the Lord would be a father to him and God literally fathered him into adulthood. God would actually speak to him things a father would teach his son. But even if you’ve grown up knowing how to function in life, a father gives more than just instructions. His fathering presence frees us from the fear and insecurity that plagues mankind and stops us from every really achieving anything significant. Do not minimize the impact of being fathered by the One who created the role Himself.
When we come to know Christ, we gain access to God as our father. But like we started this series off saying, many people come to know Christ but never transition out of the orphan mindset. There are several major reasons for this, but one main reason is we were designed to relate to beings with skin. God hasn’t left us alone in that arena. He’s even prepared for that. We’ll look at that next time…
Photo Credit: Father and Daughter by apdk
On Sonship (Part IV)
The last few weeks we’ve been discussing the implications of sonship on our walk with Christ. You can catch up by reading Part I, Part II, and Part III.
We’ve been discussing for the last few weeks what it means to operate out of an orphan spirit. However, it’s not enough just realize there is a problem. We have flesh out how a person goes from living as an orphan to being a legitimized son of the Kingdom. God has designed the human experience so that no matter what your situation, you can experience the love of a Father and a family.
Most of us believe God creates sons only one way. In fact there are several major ways, all designed to reinforce and strengthen a person’s identity as a child of God. Since this love comes to us from different sources, each has a different degree of impact if we miss it. If we understand the ways in which the love a father creates true sons, then we can better address the orphan mentality that is so prevalent in our day. So how does God make us true sons?
God creates son in three main ways: God gives us natural parents, God fathers us Himself, and God gives us spiritual fathers.
God gives us natural fathers*.
Most of us enter the planet with this as the governing reality of our lives. In the ideal situation, our fathers loved us, disciplined us, pursued our hearts, and helped us become functioning adults. This reality is so prevalent that Jesus would point to unredeemed fathers and use them to showcase the heart of God (Luke 11:11-13).
The reality however is that not every child is born into a family with a father. Some fathers chose to walk out of the lives of their kids. Other children have their fathers taken from them by disease, violence, or war. Still other children have fathers in their lives, but they are emotionally absent or worse.
The point is while every child has a biological father, not every child receives the benefit of having one in their lives. Thankfully, God has other modes of raising children. We’ll look at those next week.
Here’s the question for this week’s post: How has your natural father raised you as a legitimate son? Not everyone has had this experience, so if you have, share a little bit of your reality in the comment section.
Photo Credit: It Takes a Long Time to Grow Young by Nattu
* This is not to deny the need for natural mothers. Mothers are also absolutely essential. The lack of a godly mother has a similarly significant effect on the lives of children. However, for the purpose of this post, we will focus primarily on the impact of natural fathers.
Cluster Map
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