“Hey, Ed. Are you sure you’re okay? I mean, you’ve been a little over the top lately.”

Over the top?

Top of what?

Over the top of the vanilla offer of the tamed Jesus most Christians are told to settle for?

Over the top of the “hold a little back from your devotion to the Lord Jesus, I mean, what will people think of you” mentality of suburban evangoculture?

Over the top of the hilltop of legalism so I can get to the high country of freedom in Christ?

Over the top of saying I’m not going to do the stuff that doesn’t matter any more?

Okay, I’m over the top.

Anyone want to come along?

All-Out for Jesus!

Nothing excites me more than to hear someone say that they want to live all-out for the Lord Jesus. My pastoral heart moves toward them and Judy and I start pouring our lives into them. (The New Testament calls this discipleship.)

There’s always some initial excitement and a lot of marvelous reports concerning God’s powerful movement in everyday life.

“You wouldn’t believe what’s happening at work. I’ve only been praying for this guy for two days. Out of nowhere he said, ‘Tell me about your church.’”

“We had no idea how we would survive if we gave what we felt God was telling us to give to the church. But we did it. The next day my boss came in to tell me that she was so pleased with my work that he had decided to give me a promotion.”

Even as the reports bubble out I’m always praying for them because I know what’s coming.

God is going to test their faith.

They’ve been living at that precipice of the Christian life that God insists upon if we want to experience His power. The precipice of radical trust, that place we live where we know that if He doesn’t show up, we’re sunk.

Some shrink back from that radical edge of life to the safety of their comfort zone, and it’s tragic. Soon they will be wondering what happened, why their Christian life isn’t as exhilarating as it use to be.

Others will keep on trusting Him, pass the test, and move on to the live they always wanted, the life Jesus wanted them to live and their redeemed heart longs for.

How about you? Is God asking you to trust Him for something big? Something that intimidates you? Something that doesn’t make sense to your friends? Something that will make you look stupid if He doesn’t show up?

Do it!

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

Question: What has been your experience when you’ve faced the faith precipices of life?

Why So Negative?

With all my talk about how the megachurch has eroded the Great Commission to make disciples and my deep mistrust of their the plans to “rethink church growth,” I’ve probably gone over the edge of healthy criticism to negativity.

It’s always been a problem for me when I feel something so deeply. You have to understand that those of us from the Jesus Movement started our dance with the megachurch movement decades ago.

We were some of its greatest advocates. We got it that church had to change and threw ourselves into anything that seemed to offer hope to the millions who just weren’t interested in doing “church in the 40′s.”

It feels like…

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We Were Pilgrims

I met Jesus in the 60s.

Before the idea that some Christian moral majority could make people behave right so that we could live comfortably in this world.

During the Jesus Movement we knew our status: We were pilgrims living as aliens in a hostile land.

I remember times in classes at the University of California when we Christians spoke up. The venomous wrath of the professors and our fellow students let is know they didn’t think we belonged there.

What’s Changed?

That was okay with us, because we knew they were right.

We didn’t belong there.

Still don’t.

None of us do.

We’re aliens, living for a while in a place we don’t belong and longing for home.

And along the way, experiencing the full measure of His grace and peace (1 Peter 1:1-2).

Holy or Hypocritical?

Every time I talk or write about legalists, church folk get uneasy…even testy. Their charge is always the same, “But these people are good Christians, just a little narrow.”

Really?

That’s not what Jesus said. When the legalists of His day confronted Him for not “following the tradition of the elders,” He called them hypocrites (Mark 7:7-8).

Why did He call these sincere followers of their religious traditions and expectations hypocrites? Two reasons:

Wrong Source of Authority

In my last blog I introduced you to Dr. Tom Constable’s definition of legalism: “Legalism means making laws that God has not made and treating them as equally authoritative as God’s Word.”

Tom didn’t think of this, Jesus did. In Mark 7:8-13, He excoriated the legalists for replacing the Word of God with the traditions of men as the source of authority in their lives.

How can anyone conclude that people who replace God’s Word with their own traditions are holy?!

They’re not, they do violence to the Word of God so that they can manipulate people with their rules and regulations.

Wrong Definition of Righteousness

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The Unkind, Impatient, Intolerant Jesus

As I read the accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, I’m impressed by His amazing kindness, patience, and tolerance toward all types of people: children, fishermen, businessmen, lepers, rulers of synagogues, tax-collectors, occupying Roman soldiers, prostitutes, political traitors, adulteresses, zealous political patriots, rich, poor, Jew, and even Gentile.

He lets people say the most inane things about Him or His Father, and gently asks them clarifying questions or offers insightful guidance. He listens before He speaks, or sometimes doesn’t say anything at all.

Except for one type of person, one group of people, one crowd He meets. Every time He meets them, every conversation He has with them, every circumstance and occasion when their paths cross, Jesus aggressively confronts them. And the names He calls them–a bunch of snakes, whitewashed graves, hypocrites and heretics.

To these people He is surprisingly unkind, impatient, and intolerant.

Meet the Legalists!

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40 Years Ago

Almost forty years ago, a man named Keith sat with me on a curb in Bakersfield, California and explained the grace of God to me. I took Christ at His word, believed in Him, and received Him as my Savior.

A few years ago, Judy and I reconnected with another couple from those Jesus Movement years in Bakersfield. Like Judy and me, Keith had touched their lives for Christ.

Since then, Judy and I have raised a Christian family and pastored three churches. God has privileged us with opportunity to equip many saints who have had worldwide impact for the Lord Jesus. The scope of our friends’ service for the Lord Jesus is enormous. Millions have been introduced to the grace of God through their ministry.

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