Examining Our Hearts

One of the the things I mentioned in the sermon yesterday is how hard it is to examine the depths of our own hearts. We are afraid of what we will find there; that if we are honest about our real brokenness and sin, we will despair.

It reminded me of a passage from Bob Munger, in his classic sermon 'My Heart, Christ's Home'. In it he writes:

There is just one more matter that I might share with you. One day I found Him waiting for me at the door. An arresting look was in His eye. As I entered, He said to me, "There is a peculiar odor in the house. There is something dead around here. It's upstairs. I think it is in the hall closet." As soon as He said this, I knew what He was talking about. Yes, there was a small closet up there on the landing, just a few feet square, and in that closet, behind lock and key, I had one or two little personal things that I did not want anyone to know about and certainly I did not want Christ to see them. I knew they were dead and rotting things left over from the old life. And yet I loved them, and I wanted them so for myself that I was afraid to admit they were there. Reluctantly, I went up with Him, and as we mounted the stairs the odor became stronger and stronger. He pointed at the door. "It's in there! Some dead thing!"
I was angry. That's the only way I can put it. I had given Him access to the library, the dining room, the living room, the workroom, the playroom, and now He was asking me about a little two-by-four closet. I said to myself, "This is too much. I am not going to give Him the key."
"Well," He said, reading my thoughts, "if you think I'm going to stay up here on the second floor with this odor, you are mistaken. I will take my bed out on the back porch. I'm certainly not going to put up with that." Then I saw Him start down the stairs.

When you have come to know and love Christ, the worst thing that can happen is to sense His fellowship retreating from you. I had to surrender. "I'll give You the key," I said sadly, "but You'll have to open the closet and clean it out. I haven't the strength to do it."

"I know," He said. "I know you haven't. Just give me the key. Just authorize me to take care of that closet and I will." So with trembling fingers I passed the key to Him. He took it from my hand, walked over to the door, opened it, entered it, took out all the putrefying stuff that was rotting there, and threw it away. Then He cleaned the closet and painted it, fixed it up, doing it all in a moment's time. Oh, what victory and release to have that dead thing out of my life!

We also talked about hell last night. I know this is a topic about which there is much confusion. It's been in the news recently because of some recent books and controversy. Here is the best article I have read on the issue: Tim Keller on the Importance of Hell.

The Difficult Path

After hearing Larry's sermon on Sunday, and reflecting on Mark 8:34 all last week, the question that keeps bouncing in my head is this: Is following Jesus difficult or easy?

Throughout the history the church has swung between a 'difficult' vision of discipleship and an 'easy' one. In the early church, martyrdom meant that following Christ was clearly a difficult life choice. But as Christianity became accepted and eventually enshrined as the state religion after Emperor Constantine, many found following Christ to be convenient. In reaction to this, the ascetic movement arose and the Desert Fathers and Mothers voluntarily gave up everything to find Christ in the difficult desert - as a rebuke to comfortable religion in the mainstream. Ever since then, the church has swung between crushing obligation, and what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called 'cheap grace'.

Jesus teaches the true difficulty of following him. It is not a difficulty of trying harder, working harder or being better. It is the difficulty of following him and trusting in his words. Peter followed Jesus every step, until the moment of the cross. And then he abandoned Jesus. We may like much of what Jesus has to say, but the real test comes when what Jesus calls us to feels offensive to us. That's the moment of denying ourselves and taking up our cross.

That's going to mean different things for different people. For some of us it will mean turning the other cheek when we would rather fight. For some of us it will mean entering into a difficult conversation when we would rather run away. For some of us it will mean praying rather than working, For some of us, it will mean working for others when we would rather be indulging ourselves.

The crucial issue is trust. Do we trust Jesus more than we trust ourselves? It means dying to complete understanding and taking up the burden of not know everything - living by trust. It means dying to my judgment of others and taking up the burden of forgiveness. It means dying to my identity and taking up the burden of the church community. It means dying to my comfort and taking up the needs of the city/world. It means dying to my freedom and taking up obedience It means dying to my intellectual pride and taking up the shaming burden of Jesus' name. It means dying to my moral pride and taking up the shaming burden of Jesus' grace.

That's what I am wrestling with today.