David Sliker's Blog, page 3

Meekness: the Key to Fullness

Meekness is the key to our full inheritance in Christ.  It is imparted by grace and grows through a life of prayer.  It is the key to our future because this attitude of the heart happens to be the antidote to the fires of lust that burn within us.  This raging fire of the heart is expressed through our compulsive desire to shape the world around us to serve the cause of our comfort.  It also looks like fear-based control that imposes our will to change the people around us.  These are the “advanced” symptoms of a heart filled with unbelief, fear, and selfish ambition.  Meekness is one of the most powerful weapons God gives us in our war to love Him, and those around us, well.

It takes trust and confidence in the leadership of the Lord to walk in true meekness.  To strategically and intentionally “not do” when it seems like our voice or our strength could be helpful.  The heart that is growing in meekness chooses the restrained way forward – the way of a heart at rest in Christ – and not trying to force a solution in our own wisdom and timing.

Meekness, then,  means exercising restrained focus on our small assignment while seeing “more God” as the necessary solution to the bigger problems around us.  Every passing moment in this life is an invitation to connect with the heart of Jesus.  Meekness prioritizes pursuing and experiencing more of the love of Jesus over acting on opinions and impulses.

What Makes America Beautiful?

America has a glorious calling from God in these darkening hours of history.  She is, presently, coming short of that calling.  Why? The first step to solving the problems that are hindering your calling in God is admitting that you have a problem.  Secondly, it takes help from God to rightly identify the problem.  Once we have clarity on the real issues, we can ask the Lord to work on our behalf to help us, heal us, and deliver us.  It is hard to find any disagreement about the fact that our country is in crisis and in great need of the gospel of Jesus Christ with power.  However, it is not clear why our nation is in crisis or how we as a nation can move forward.

The condition of our nation is directly related to the condition of our church.  The focus of the prayers of the apostles in the New Testament was primarily the New Testament church.  It is shocking how rarely they prayed for the lost, or for salvation, or for the Roman Empire.  They prayed for each other.  They prayed that the believers in a city would be “filled with the spirit of wisdom and revelation”.  They prayed that the believers in a city would be “filled with the fullness” of the love of Jesus.  They prayed that the love of every believer “would abound still more and more”.

Their goal was to see more activity of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, producing  biblical mindsets, value systems, and discernment.  The fruit of these encounters must be loving what Jesus loves and hating what He hates.  Another word for this is, “holiness”.  The apostles understood that the church was one of the primary vehicles for the glory, power, and love of God to shine forth to the nations of the earth.  When the church is weak, a nation is weak.  “Righteousness exalts a nation”, Proverbs 14:34 tells us, but the righteousness of a nation is found primarily within the lives of the saints, not primarily in its laws.

I’ve had a growing concern that the energy around every recent election is knit to preserving things that Jesus is committed to either removing or renewing.  In other words, there seems to be a desire to keep up a way of life, which Peter identified in 2 Peter 3 as a “mocking” or a “scoffing spirit”.  He spoke of self-deception or a delusion that imagines tomorrow will and can be just like today – or that we can go back to the way things were before.  I don’t want to maintain, preserve, or go backwards.  I want tomorrow to be nothing like today.  I want Jesus to come home, and for all things to be restored and renewed. I want that which cannot be renewed to be removed.

What is certain is that nothing can stay the same.  We cannot imagine that any political philosophy or party possesses any solution will ultimately help us.  The inherent weakness of conservatism lies in its desire to preserve things that should be removed so that justice can be done. The inherent weakness of progressivism is that is seeks justice defined by humanistic sentiment and arrogance not the way of the Sermon on the Mount. The inherent weakness of libertarianism is that it diminishes the value of righteous legislation & the role of politics in setting culture.  The governmental standard of God’s kingdom is a praying church contending for the zealous involvement of Jesus in the affairs of our nation – that the power of the Holy Spirit would turn the hearts of the disobedient to the “wisdom of the just” (Luke 1:18), that repentance would come to the church and flow out to a nation, and that “times of refreshing would come from His hand” (Acts 3:19) – revival.

 We need revival in America.  We need the in-breaking of the power of God like we’ve never seen before.  This nation is in need of a Third Great Awakening that shifts our nation dramatically and “makes ready a people ready for the Lord” and His return.  Are we ready for His return? Are we thinking about it? Do we want Jesus to come back and change everything or do we want to pin our hopes yet again on weak and broken human beings to kick against the goads of a broken system birthed from a hurting world filled with sin? Only the Man Jesus can deliver us – there is a greater solution filled with the power of His Holy Spirit turning cities upside down by the power of the gospel.

According to Peter in Acts 3:19, we will not see the kind of in-breaking of the Holy Spirit in power, in conviction of sin, in the mass transformation of thousands of hearts until we repent.  Until we are honest with God and one another that weak, broken, lost men and women that do not know Jesus are not the problem.  Winston Churchill called our political system the worst one “except for all the others that have been tried”.  There is no better political system.  There is no human idea, no human ingenuity, and no human effort that can save our nation.  Repentance – turning from sin, shame, rebellion, and shortsightedness; turning to the incredible, unspeakable, unimaginable love of Jesus that has power to deliver us from sinful desires and fill us with godly desires – repentance is the beginning of the only solution that can shift our nation.

It is time for the church to come clean – to confess, to come into the light, to yearn to live free from shame and bondage – from compromise – that is killing our families and wounding our children.  There is a place of freedom and joy in the love of Christ that is meant to lead to engagement with the Holy Spirit night and day.  Our part in salvation, now, is to wake up thinking about and loving Jesus the first thing in the morning.  Our part is for Jesus to be the last thing on our minds and hearts when we go to bed at night.  We want to reach for a life in Christ in which Jesus fills our dreams at night and define our hopes during the day.

We were made to soar in the love of Jesus – yet sin and compromise are robbing us.  They are leaving us barren: leaving our families and our relationships broken, and leaving our hearts dull and unresponsive to His leadership and the pure fun of following Him and walking with Him.  The church that walks in fellowship with God through His Holy Spirit is a church that provokes and shakes and disrupts the lives of unbelievers who are longing for the confidence, identity, stability, and joy that only the love of Jesus can bring.   Our nation is longing for a church filled with fiery families that worship together and love one another and fight for one another without insecurity, or shame, or compromise.

The solution to our nation’s crisis is right before us, in prayer rooms and prayer meetings across America today.  “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.  Peter said it boldly in Acts 3: “healing our land” doesn’t mean maintaining what is or going back to the way things were – it means fighting for revival that moves us that much closer to the return of Jesus.  He is coming, and wants to come – but He wants to come home to a Bride that has “made herself ready” for His return.

What do you think? Are you optimistic about our nation’s future? Does this nation have a calling from God, and if so, how can we lay hold of it together?

What Makes God Beautiful?

The splendor and greatness of God’s power and majesty is not diminished by His tenderness towards mankind.  It is the same as a father not being diminished in authority when he allows his child to pin him down as they play together. 

Everyone watching knows who the greater power is, and who is ultimately in charge.

Yet the father who allows his toddler to pin him down is something more than just, “powerful”.  He is someone who is not defined by his power or his authority, but by his love.

The Secret of Success

Having a bridal perspective of the kingdom of God changes the way evangelists preach salvation, pastors counsel people in difficulty, teachers teach the Bible, forerunners prophesy or apostles build churches.  It affects how we view people and preach on salvation, holiness or judgment. We are saved “from something” terrible and “to something” glorious. We need salvation to escape hell as well as to qualify and empower us to engage in a deep eternal relationship with God (1 Cor. 1:9).

- Mike Bickle, “The Bridal Paradigm of the Kingdom”

What does true success look like?

We tend to, by nature, have a very short-sighted view of success.  We think of success in terms of the quality of our life now.  Have we achieved our goals? Are we living the way that we want to? Are we happy? Often, subjective measurements determine short-sighted definitions of success.  Jesus has a very different view of success – one related to the quality of our lives over billions of years, not simply mere decades.  The question of success, therefore, becomes even bigger: what makes us successful both today, and for ages to come?

The answer is found in what Jesus considers true wealth, or what He called, “treasures in heaven”.  What are they?

The primary “currency” in eternity is love formed in our hearts by God in this life.  Love experienced (from Jesus) is the only way to see love expressed (back to Jesus and to others).  Success in this life depends on the continual fight to experience more of the love of God.  This is why we fight for purity and holiness – to clear away the obstacles that make experiencing the love of Jesus more difficult.  This is why we fight to serve, give, and forgive others when they wound us – family and ministry relationships are the arena that presses us to grow in love.

Is “success” defined by how much we grow in love? Or, is it defined by how much we produce, how much we do, or how high we ascend on a ladder of recognition and influence? If the answer, by the grace of God, is about love, then we must approach life in an entirely different way.  A different formula must determine the redefinition of our motives, goals, and pursuits.  Everything changes when life is all about growing in love.

How to Not Quit: When You Feel Powerless

“Islam is a religion of success.  Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death.”- Karen Armstrong

Everyone hates feeling powerless.  Nothing reveals what’s really going on inside of us like that feeling of utter helplessness.  Hidden anger, opinions, fears, and pain all erupt when we feel completely incapable of changing our situation and impotent in the face of real pressure.  Powerlessness robs us of sleep, plays with our emotions, creates real unrest in our soul, and leaves us tired and discouraged at the end of each day.  Few things tempt us to quit like powerlessness.

The good news for the powerless today is that God intimately understands the emotional dynamics of powerlessness.  God subjected Himself to powerlessness willingly when He became a man to save the human race.  The human race subjected itself to powerlessness willingly when we rejected God’s love and care in a garden long ago.  So much of our lives revolve around the subject of power.  This is, in part, because one of the greatest longings of our heart is for power to change ourselves and our circumstances for the better.

Yet the human dilemma is that, apart from God, we are absolutely powerless to overcome sin, deficiencies of character, or the complexities of a fallen world and the societies that it builds.  It is this raw powerlessness that confronts us every day.  Our culture has romanticized the power of the human will to overcome obstacles and lay hold of greatness.  However, that form of greatness is often revealed to be a shallow, superficial goal unworthy of the lofty heights God dreams about for His special creation.  True greatness is found in the power to be loved by God and to love Him back.  The details of life effectively work against defining true greatness in that way as well as working against prioritizing that goal.

The human dilemma is that, even with God, we are still absolutely powerless apart from communion with Him.  (Jn. 15:5)  We are often tempted to solve, press, fight, and force things to happen when we desire our change in our circumstances.  These very moments expose  our powerlessness.  Our solutions aren’t that great.  Our ideas aren’t that inspiring.  Our plans and our ability to follow through on them are so surprisingly weak.  The most frustrating form of powerlessness is our utter inability to compel other people to act, choose, and behave in a way contrary to their frame.  Nothing exposes the depths of our powerlessness like other proud and willful comrades.

The answer to our helplessness is not the answer that immediately comforts us.  The answer is found in connecting with the heart of Jesus, talking to the Holy Spirit, and waiting on the Father to help us.  In other words, we connect with and lean on God in various ways, all of which work together to bolster our faith and help us in the waiting.  It is excruciating at times when you feel as if control is slipping away.  It feels as if the waiting and the weakness are making the problems worse.  It feels like you’re about to be trapped and something worse will be your reward.

It is in those very moments that God often delays His answers to our restless reach.  Our yearning for resolution is answered by a deeper yearning birthed in the fire of His desires.  It is answered by His yearning for relationship.  We want closure.  He wants connection.  We want finality.  He delights in infinity.  Having solved our greatest problem through the work of the cross, He is content to use pressure to draw us closer.  He is patient and more than willing to use powerlessness to introduce us to true power: His love that frees us from fear.

It takes a transformation of our perspective on what power really is.  Is power the ability to change things around us, to make our world better and more comfortable? Or is true power found in freedom – freedom to love, freedom to trust, and freedom to rest when human wisdom says that rest is another “missed opportunity”?  The answer to our powerlessness is to connect again with real power: the love of Christ poured out on our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).  There we find the power of confidence in God and His love for us.  We find the most power in life in the eyes of the One who fights for us like no one else can.  We find the most peace when we understand the depths of His commitment to our future.

He has a great future in mind for us, and we have a great life to enjoy with Him.  The secret of human powerlessness is to find the narrow way life that few find: the way of true rest and joy in His transcendent love.

 

How to Not Quit: What Quitting Really Looks Like

Very few people quit something in the absolute sense.  They may quit a job, but that is very different than quitting on the dream that motivated them to take the job in the first place.  If we don’t have a clear definition of “quitting”, how do we know if we’re being tempted to do it?

Very few people “quit” their jobs.  They “transition” to something with more potential.  Something potentially more fulfilling, lucrative, or challenging.  In other words, they may be leaving a job, but their primary dream is still alive as they move on to the next thing.

That’s really where most people quit.  Few Christians ever leave the faith fully and renounce Christ.  Dreamers rarely abandon their dreams completely.  Quitting most often looks like something far more subtle than abandonment.

The most common and deadly form of quitting is the loss of passion.  It’s those quiet moments when we surrender in small ways to settle for something less than we signed up for.

It’s deciding we don’t want to find out how far the grace of God can take us.

This is the kind of “quit” that terrifies me the most.  That deadly seductress that masquerades as your friend.  The voice that tells me that comfort is okay to settle for.  The justifications that become stronger and more convincing if we let them.  Quitting rarely feels wrong in the moment.  It feels right.  It even feels noble.  It’s something that’s surprisingly easy to talk ourselves into.  We think we’ll be sad on the day that we quit.  We’re often surprisingly relieved.

That moment of relief is the seduction, the big lie.  It buys us a season of peace without telling us we are signing up for a lifetime of regret.

We have to decide, now, that by the grace of God we will never make peace with that temptation.  That, with His help, we will fight for all that we can have and experience in Him all the days of our lives.

What has quitting looked like for you?

How to Not Quit: Renewed Perspective

If you’ve ever wanted something noble that felt completely beyond your ability to lay hold of, then you’ve also struggled with the overwhelming desire to quit.  You know the feeling well: it’s the nagging, anxious moment in which letting go of your dream seems far more appealing than the reward that awaits if you press on.  Inadequacy pulls at your emotions.  The finish line, once an obtainable ideal, now seems reduced to mere fantasy.  Insecurities that you did not know you had explode from your soul unexpectedly.  The worst part about that moment, for me, is the feeling of powerlessness that causes real anger and frustration to take root in my heart.

The most common place these feelings rise up within us are in a pioneering context.  We attempted something new: new job, new business, new ministry, new relationships.  At other times, we are reaching for something even higher: a desire to be more committed to a biblical lifestyle, a commitment to lay hold of our calling in Christ in a new way.  Whatever the context, staying with a lofty dream that we are pursuing for a long time is one of the hardest things to do.

How do we stay with it? How do we not quit?

I find that the first thing that happens to me when I want to quit, just before that wave of inadequacy hits, is that I suddenly lose perspective.  Emotions always follow belief.  Therefore, when I feel like I can’t do it, that my goal is unreachable, it’s almost always because hidden insecurity and fear crept in and changed my goal.  What seemed like a good idea that was going to work suddenly becomes a terrible idea that has no chance of working.  What seemed like the most important thing suddenly decreases in importance compared to a newly alluring option of comfort and risk avoidance.

One of the most important ways we can stay in the fight long-term is to continually refresh our perspective.  Our end goal has to be clear and the value of that goal for our quality of life has to stay prominent in our thinking.  I’ve found that those moments of fear, insecurity, and inadequacy are best conquered through wrestling in prayer.  As I talk to the Lord, I thank Him for His leadership over my life and ask Him to speak to me again about my future and what I am reaching for.  I ask Him to renew me in more than the “what” of my goals, but the “why” of them.  That is the most important part of the wrestling match for right perspective.  If I can get clear again about why I am doing what I am doing – not just what I am doing – then I can actually settle down the traffic in my soul and press on.

I’ve found that right emotions almost always follow right perspective.  I’ve also found the value of fighting for that perspective connected to the heart of Jesus in prayer versus trying to find it on my own.

How have you renewed perspective in your journey? Do you have stories about finding it again in prayer?

How to Inherit the Earth: Matthew 5.5

Jesus spoke plainly:

The meek are blessed because they will inherit the earth.

If the earth is the prize for becoming meek, what is it and how to we become it?

What does it take to lay hold of meekness?

It is imperative that we do not perceive “meekness” as a personality trait but a necessary attitude of the heart.  This attitude should be pursued and cultivated with much work and struggle. The quiet introverted one does not have an advantage over the boisterous extroverted one in this fight. We are warring with our own prideful, independent, stubborn nature to walk in authentic meekness. God will help us in this if we ask. He will give us grace to do the thing, which is inherently unpleasant for us. He will give us power through His Holy Spirit to win the fight and grow in meekness. The victory will come only if we continue to fight for meekness in the years that it is greatly frustrating and unpleasant to do so. The victory comes when, over time, He changes our hearts to grow to enjoy meekness and the manner in which it attracts His favor.

Meekness is different from humility in that one is a response to what others start while the other involves how we view and perceive ourselves and those around us. True humility makes it easier to walk in true meekness. Yet while we are lacking in humility we must still fight to respond rightly to that which God and men do to us and around us. The common definition of meekness is “strength under control”, but I find that an incomplete definition. There is an inherent gentleness and submission to true meekness that goes beyond our own ability to govern our passions and desires and translates into true submission to the dealings of God that break our self-will and self-sufficiency. We shift radically from independent to dependent as we come into a true heart attitude of meekness.

The bride of the Song of Solomon embodies true meekness, emerging from the wilderness of testing and trial “leaning on her beloved” (Song 8:5). She loves her Bridegroom wholeheartedly, thus she wisely leans against Him, for she has acquired a “limp” in her journeys to find and cleave to Him. The “limp” is the necessary shattering of our own power and strength (Dan. 12:7) in a way that leaves us fully dependent on God as our only source of life and strength. Israel, who is the subject of the Daniel 12 passage, enters into this reality involuntarily in the dealings of a jealous God, who is zealous to bring her into the fullness of what He has purposed for her. The believer enters into this journey voluntarily. The measure to which we submit and surrender to the dealings of God is the measure to which we cultivate by grace true meekness within our heart.

It is to that measure that God determines our inheritance, as it relates to this specific promise: leadership of the earth itself.

The Most Overlooked Promise of the Bible: Matthew 5.5

One of the most overlooked promises in the Bible is the promise that the “meek shall inherit the earth.” It’s too incredible of an idea to ponder the implications of inheriting the earth.

It is still important, however, that we understand what makes up one of the most critical phrases in the entire Bible. This phrase, that God delights in meekness to the extent that He would give the planet to the man or woman who walks in it, then becomes our window into an otherworldly value system. It punctuates what our Father in heaven believes is the most critical thing to have on a “global leadership” resume. What qualifies a man to rule before the Sovereign King of the Universe? What makes us  worthy to receive such an incredible gift from Him?

The critical point that some may miss is that God is more than an initiator in the events and lives of the peoples of the earth. Many have been content to leave their life in God at that, always waiting for God to do His part – yet never sure why He seemingly does not and growing bitter and disillusioned over the years in the waiting. There is much delay in the leadership of God, but much of their waiting for God stems from the reality that God is waiting for them. God is both initiator and, in His stunning humility and tenderness towards us, He dignifies our lives by also acting as a responder. He does not respond to a “passive waiting” for something to happen, He responds to an aggressive, “spiritually violent” (Matt. 11:12) posture of waiting.  This kind of waiting looks like a believer that is fully given to the day in, day out fight to obey the will of God “until”.

He qualifies us, but at the same time we have to value this attitude of the heart and ask Him for help to grow in it.

In the waiting, I am ever seeking to cultivate. My heart is like a garden. Only God can make it grow, but I can in the meantime care for it by feeding it the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. So I “feed” on the word of God (Job 23:12); but Jesus said that proper diet for the heart included obedience as well (Jn. 4:34) – “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me…” The lifestyle embodied by the Sermon on the Mount is the necessary diet of the believer that cultivates the heart attitudes that the Father longs for us to lay hold of. To those who honor God by walking out His will, He is a responder who will hear the cry of our hearts and give us what we seek (Matt. 7:7). We have not because we ask not (Jas. 4:2).