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dr. greg austin

~ . . . a Bridge Between Two Worlds

dr. greg austin

Monthly Archives: October 2014

One Thing, In A World Filled With Options

25 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by dr.gregaustin in Discipleship

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Our modern and sophisticated world is filled with an almost unlimited number of choices: Choices of where we will live, what we will do, what we will eat and wear and what kind and color of car will deliver us to a variety of shops that offer every color, texture, convenience and feature imaginable. We live, simply put, in a world of options. OneThing The ability to multi-task has never been so valuable in our world of instant communication through assorted means – the telephone has become almost extinct as a communication aid as Twitter and Facebook and social networking and microblogging and video sharing and podcasting and electronic tablets and cell phones make it possible for us to stay in touch, conduct our business, check on family, visit with friends and fill our grocery cart, all at the same time. There was a time when these were limited, often nonexistent, and some of us pine for that simpler, more unobtrusive time. Dr. Alan Weiss has entitled his most recent book, “Complexity Can Paralyze Us.” Weiss writes, “We are lost in a world of choice.” Indeed, we are often overwhelmed to the point of the loss of our natural mental judgment (“common sense”) by the choices presented to us. We agonize over which grocery store to visit and once there, we wrestle with which brand to purchase with what ingredients and regular size, family size or super size for what price. Take me into Baskin-Robbins for ice cream and I freeze like the 31 flavors offered there. We finally get a break and determine to dine at a quiet restaurant and relax a bit until we are confronted with a dizzying array of menu options – and in our stressed out condition, can’t decide which entrée to order. Some enjoy the smorgasbord; they love variety of choice and endless options. When it comes to eternal matters they embrace an “all roads lead to heaven” approach. What does it matter, they insinuate, if we follow Buddha or Lord Krishna, or Jehovah or Allah. After all, the only thing that truly counts is sincerity, isn’t it? I mean, if I am sincere in my belief, if I truly believe in whatever god or deity or way or system of religious creed does it matter what that belief is, so long as I am honest and sincere? Simple logic would demand that it does matter, even as it matters if one intends to travel in a northerly direction but drives due south: Whatever destination one has in mind will never be found no matter how sincere one believes that driving south will lead him north. Some cry, “foul!” We want a God who gives us more options, more choices. It’s not fair, we contend that He makes the way so narrow and the options so restricted. Can’t we have a choice of who we will worship? Of which tree will provide our sustenance? Those choices didn’t work out well for our first parents: They surely won’t work better for us. In this chaotic and frenetic world of options, choices and preferences, when it comes to the state and the future of our eternal souls, options are severely limited, and for that I am abundantly glad. The Holy Scriptures declare that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” than the name of Jesus. Those same Scriptures instruct us, “Jesus said . . . I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” “There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” The Apostle Paul made it forever clear and settled when he wrote to the church at Ephesus,

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

There we have it: No options, no choices, no multiplicity of preference: If we want to see God the Father, if we want to spend eternity in heaven, if we want to be sure and convinced of our election and our position with Him forever, He has made it simple and plain: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” I may not understand all the depths and the mysterious nuances of theology; I may not speak or read or write in the original languages of the Bible, but I can understand simple things, and the simplest of things was made known and available to us in Jesus Christ, “believe” and we are “saved.” One of the greatest theologians to have grace our planet, Dr. Karl Barth was asked during a 1962 tour of the United States, what had been the most momentous theological discovery of his long life. His answer was ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'” Plumbing the depths of available options and offerings, Dr. Barth (rightly) concluded it’s as simple as this: “Jesus Christ, who loves me and who is God’s only begotten Son is the only way to obtain eternal life.” Believe, and be saved. It’s just that simple. I may not have made the perfect choice in the clothing I wear or the car I drive or the computer I use or the phone that connects me to the friends I’ve chosen, but this I can be assured of: When we talk about faith and the future and where we will go when we leave this earth and this life, there is One Thing that is certain: Only one thing will admit us into heaven: Belief on the name and in the veracity of the claim of one man: The Man, Jesus Christ. I’m glad when it comes to eternal life, the options are limited, the choices are minimized and standing before us, with nail-scarred and open hands is One Man: And that Man, the Lord Jesus Christ bids us open the door of our heart and let Him enter in.

The Hiding Place

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by dr.gregaustin in Discipleship

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Faithfulness of God, fear, peace

What do you do when the dark shadow of impending doom obscures your world, when darkness steals the light and threatens to undo all that you have built, acquired, cultivated?

I grew up in tornado country, where radio and TV stations broadcast frequent watches and warnings. We developed a good sense of atmospheric awareness when tornadic conditions were developing and with that awareness we also developed a “ho hum” attitude towards these twisting destroyers. We believed that we were impervious to the black funnel clouds that ripped through other communities, other cities in other states. We were sure of it: no tornado would ever threaten or visit our home.

Something horrible had happened in the night, and I had no way of knowing what scenes would greet me on my arrival home.

But once, after concluding a business meeting in Houston I was driving north on Interstate 35 when I picked up a radio station signal from my hometown. The news was bad: A tornado had thrashed through my city in the night hours. Specific information was unavailable. I only knew that destruction had come in spite of my certainty of our invulnerability. There was nothing I could do except drive and pray.

I prayed for my family and my neighbors. This calamity happened years before the advent of the cell phone and so I stopped at every gas station I saw looking for the then ubiquitous phone booth. I dialed the numbers only to learn that telephone lines were down, preventing me from knowing about casualties or damage. Something horrible had happened in the night, and I had no way of knowing what scenes would greet me on my arrival home.

As it turned out we were blessed as a city and as a family. Although there was much property damage the fierce winds caused few injuries.

Planet earth is reeling as 2014 draws towards its conclusion. Catastrophic and terrible events jostle for attention as the media attempts to quantify and qualify accelerating and intensifying tragic incidences. We are bombarded 24 hours a day with tragedy and calamity, with dread and with portents of doom.

Words that never existed in our vocabulary are now spoken by the least informed among us: “Ebola,” “ISIS,” “Al Qaeda,” “Al Shabab” have become household names. Fears of economic catastrophe, wild, unpredictable and devastating weather events jockey for our attention and threaten to upset our lives and our livelihoods. For believers in Jesus, persecution grows each day from a hazy, distant recognition of possibility to real, potential intimidation.

Satan’s goal . . . destabilize, disrupt, demoralize

Jesus’ prediction of a time when men’s hearts would fail them “from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth” seems to have arrived amidst our generation. Then, He said, “the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

Satan’s goal, if he cannot overwhelm the people of God is to destabilize, to disrupt and to demoralize Christ’s followers until they either fold in fear or scatter in confusion.

Two thousand years ago, when the cross had been shorn of its burden of death and when Jesus’ body had been removed and relocated to its apparent resting place, the disciples of Jesus seemed to be followers no more. History records that these disappeared from public view. Hiding away during those hours between the lordship of death and the Lord of resurrection, “men’s hearts” failed them from fear and the expectation of those things which were coming on the earth.”

During the three days between crucifixion and resurrection, “the powers of the heavens” were indeed “shaken.”

The strongest of the disciples hid “for fear of the Jews.” The disciples were “afar off,” putting distance between themselves and the One who hung on the cross. They had been with Him, had been seen with Him, what if they were next to die as He had died?

Hiding-Place

Scripture records “He appeared to them.” “He stood in their midst.” “Although the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them: Peace be with you.”

Have you locked your doors to the infiltrations of the world? Have you hidden away “for fear” of the enemies of God? Do portents of evil debilitate and drain away your strength? If so, be prepared for Jesus to “appear” to you, to stand in your midst in spite of locked doors and amplified fears and to speak to you the words of life, “Peace be with you.”

It was He, the Prince of Peace who said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

His word to us on this day in 2014 is the same as it was to His followers two thousand years ago: “… in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Heaven’s message to God’s children resonates in the midst of an atmosphere of growing dread: “Have patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations, and endure.” “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble” and He will give we who are troubled rest when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.”

And if you can receive it, Jesus is revealed today, in this moment, as your eyes read these words and as your spirit awakens to His presence. And as He appears, peace flows out, surrounding and comforting and encouraging you to rest in the arms of the Prince of Peace.

This world will be shaken to its very foundation. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, but those who have established their lives and their futures on the Rock of Jesus Himself shall never be shaken and shall never fall. The One who upholds all things by the word of His power, Himself guarantees it.

 

The Perfect Storm and Perfect Peace

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by dr.gregaustin in Discipleship

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perfect-stormThere are days, times, sometimes long seasons we might describe as producing “The press of life.”

Unanswered prayers, long nights of anxiety or sorrow, fear or negative anticipation, circumstances that seem to intentionally assemble to create a “perfect storm” of trials and troubles threaten to overwhelm and defeat us. When these are coupled with silence from heaven, our resolve and our faith, our very confidence in God is tested and tried: We are shaken.

And then, heaping guilt onto the growing mountain of contrariness, we sometimes are aware that we have failed those tests. Miserably.

Mark records (ch 4) Jesus speaking about the good seed of the word of God being scattered among thorns “and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”

“The cares of this world,” that’s what leaps out to many of us. Imagine what those cares would have been in the first Century world. Without television, internet, cell phones, without all the modern means of the transport of communications, those cares might seem miniscule in comparison with our world.

We get caught up by the threats of Ebola and ISIS and the looming specter of a worldwide economic collapse. We’re told that the poles are melting while we brace for colder and more hostile winters than we’ve known. Republicans warn us of Democrats while Democrats warn us of evil Republican agendas. Our borders are open to the entry of who knows who carrying who knows what. Food prices escalate, fuel prices do the same. The cares of this world compete against and threaten to silence the still, small voice of the promises of God in His word and by His Spirit.

The Cares of This World initiate The Press of Life as round and round and round we run, getting nowhere while looking for peace while listening to tumult.

Yet there is a quiet place, there is a place of certain peace; indeed, a peace that passes all understanding. That place is “in Christ” and the avenue that leads there is called “Grace.”

If the cares of this world shout, demanding your full attention, take just a moment, thank God for His grace and allow His peace to fill you, to overflow you, to inundate your heart and your soul. I cannot promise that your circumstances will change; you may well find yourself still surrounded by stormy and shark filled seas, but the ship of grace will hold you and the Captain of that ship will keep you in perfect peace as your mind is settled and focused upon Him. Isaiah knew it;“You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.”

The old song says it well and simply, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.”

The Divine Balance

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by dr.gregaustin in Discipleship

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When I was a child, I spent many nights with my grandfather. Afflicted with polio before his first birthday, he lived with great disability but he lived as though he were as whole as any man. It is understatement to say that a book could be written on my grandfather’s life as encouragement for anybody who suffers limitation or infirmity.

Grandpa had an ancient school clock hanging on his living room wall. I can still hear the tick and the chime of that grand old clock, which now hangs in my mother’s home.

Sometimes in the night I would awaken after the sounds of neighborhood life had stilled and the night had laid down its blanket of peaceful quiet and I would lie in my bed listening to the steady “tick, tock, tick, tock” of Grandpa’s clock. Now and then I could tell that the clock had been bumped and was now ticking irregularly. Tilted too much to the right or too much to the left, the imperfect tempo was unsettling to me and I would go to the living room and move the clock until my ear was satisfied that the “ticking” and the “tocking” matched in perfect rhythm.

Everything in existence, all of the components that comprise our universe, all of it moves according to divine rhythm and balance. Day is balanced against night; hot balances against cold. The opposite of “up” is “down.” All of God’s creation moves in perfect synchronized balance and order.

This balance, this divine equilibrium is lost when man misrepresents or misinterprets God’s character and His word.

Within the church currently exists a growing “all or none” distortion of God’s meanings concerning grace and work. This perversion is visible in the “all grace” or the “no grace” camps. Both extreme views are flawed. The “works” faction complains that the “grace people” lack reverence and respect for God; that they believe they can get away with sin since God’s grace covers every error man might commit, either willfully or ignorantly. Extreme “Grace people” argue that it’s all grace or no grace; that either we rest fully in grace and ignore any effort, works or labor or we must put all our trust in the works we do for God.

James understood the conflict and observed simply; “faith without works is dead.” Both faith and works are required components of divine balance. Works do not negate faith and faith does not exclude works – that is, so long as these are divinely balanced.

Colossians 3 provides the “works” of those “who have been raised with Christ”:

Seek those things where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 

Put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Put off: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language. Do not lie to one another,

And then, “as the elect of God, holy and beloved,”

 Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering;

Bear with one another,

Forgive one another,

Put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

“Seek” and “set.” “Put to death” and “put off.” “Put on” and “bear,” “forgive” and once more, “put on.”

If the collective Body of Christ would engage in these works, God would provide the balance. James, the “works” guy also wrote, “He giveth more grace.”

A young boy lay in his bed in the middle of the night, listening to his grandfather’s clock “tick, tock, tick tock” in perfect rhythm; and he closed his eyes in sleep, and he rested.

A Mystery Of The Kingdom

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by dr.gregaustin in Discipleship, Uncategorized

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Fruit of the Spirit, Growth, Rest, Trust

In the Divine Movement within the Kingdom of God there are moments of strong, violent activity. These times are often identified as “revival.” There also are seasons of stillness, times of quiet, periods of solitude and waiting and rest. The temptation is to believe that the periods of great Kingdom activity are far, more essential to the life and health of the body of Christ than are the seasons of stillness.

Temptation often leads to error.

The effort-laden mind of man inclines itself to industry, doing things for one’s self, by one’s self. Victory and success, it is supposed may be obtained with the application of sufficient performance and perspiration. Labor, man assumes is the prerequisite to harvest. It is not so.

Does the cherry or apple or peach tree exhaust itself with activity in order to bring forth good fruit? Do crops appear by the mystery of seed and soil or do they emerge by the effort of man? The cherry tree is planted, set into the soil where roots explore subterranean pathways, establishing once and forever the geo-location of the tree. Apple trees do not migrate with the changing of seasons. Peach trees are immobile, fixed, still.

Yet as temperature and moisture and time and dirt combine with hidden inner life, the cherry and the apple and the peach appear, effortlessly, naturally: Perfectly.

Winds may buffet and blow; barren limbs simply bend and wait for calmer weather before returning to their original and natural condition. Heat and cold, rain and snow, ice and hail and unrelenting sun all form a procession of assaults against the anticipated harvest. Yet through all these, the cherry and the apple and the peach tree remain unmoved, indifferent, expectant.

So it is that divine life within the redeemed soul produces, without effort the fruit of the Spirit that indicates life in Christ and Christ in a life. “Christ in us, the hope of glory” is the fundamental result of heaven’s mystery and not the fruit of man’s determinations and pseudo-holy exertions.

Laboring to achieve what only The Mystery can produce is vanity, foolishness and empty industry. These efforts of the flesh appear as commendable on resumes of accomplishment, but like the wood, hay and stubble of other fleshly works, these also shall be burned with the fire of His disapproval.

It is in abiding and nothing more that the mystery of the Kingdom works its way through root and fiber and stalk and branch to eventuate in the ripened fruit of the good harvest.

When Kingdom shakes earth, move with the shaking. When silence and inactivity attend His way, wait, rest, trust, for we who cannot add a single hour to our span of life cannot know or determine the mystery of His ways or the inscrutability of His purposes.

CherryJohn Sammis gave good direction in 1887 when he quoted a young man who had attended a meeting with D.L. Moody. He wrote, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.”

Image

In The Hall Of His Righteous Judgment

02 Thursday Oct 2014

Tags

Authenticity, Judge, Justice, Love of God, Mercy, Righteousness

On That Day, on That Great Day when we all shall give an account, we will not be confronted by or seated before regal and officious legions of men, false judges whose opinions are based upon faulty logic, incomplete information, bent by predisposition or tradition or prejudicial bias. Rather . . .

The One whose flesh was battered, torn and pierced and whose blood coursed from ripped veins onto sullen soil, demonstrating such love as no man ever had known or given will on That Day sit beside the Father who sent the Son to die in our stead.

Seeing then that the Righteous and Loving One shall hear our case and know our cause and then shall rule in mercy, why should we give even momentary ear to the cacophony of garbled judgments issuing forth from cracked and broken lips of clay? My Judge is my Lord, my Magistrate is my Master, my Sovereign is my Savior who does all things well. On That Day, it is He who shall issue the only opinion that matters.GavelJudge

As children of Light then, let us not identify ourselves by how others see us, but by who we know ourselves to be in Christ. We can recapture who we were created to be if we can close ourselves off to the voices that shout and accuse, and learn to lean in to hear the whispers of the still, small Voice who loves and affirms us in our true identity. I am crucified with Christ, and yet… I live! I’m walking, learning, and yearning to RUN.

Posted by dr.gregaustin | Filed under Discipleship

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