Father's Day - A Day of Grace

How are you remembering Father's Day? 

Everyone has a father and a corresponding story because of the man we call dad. For some it is a blissful story of excited recall of pleasant memories but for others a painful recollection of hurts and sorrows. Often, whether it is a positive or negative memory can be summoned up in the fact that your dad was either "for you" or "for himself."  But why was the man we call dad who he was? It all comes down to character expression, good or evil. So what made dad who he was and then how should we remember him or Father’s Day? Is Father’s Day a "report card of performance" or a day of grace? Do you view your dad on Father’s Day based on his performance of character expression and how good he was or wasn't toward you? How should "Father’s Day" be remembered? Is it based solely on the positive or negative memories of the man we call dad? Regardless of how flawed or flawless the man we call father was or is, Father’s Day can and should be a day of remembering the heritage that our Heavenly Father has given to all of us. Father's Day is a day of grace.  No man has the ability to be a loving dad apart from a relationship with his Heavenly Father.

Pictured

Four generations of Burzynski, left to right, Don, Ralph, Blake and Donald.

 

All true fathers have learned what it means to be called dad by encountering an intimate relationship with Abba (daddy) Father. HE, not our talents, not our effects, not our successes or failures, not our unique journey or story becomes our heritage and legacy as we choose to embrace His love for us. Fatherhood as God designed is the "outlived life" of our Abba Father. As we take His lead and allow for His graceful character expression to be manifest through us then and only then can we be the fathers God intended us to be. As you celebrate Father’s Day honoring your dad or laminating the father you never had, never lose sight of your FATHER.  How are you remembering Father’s Day? Today is a day of Grace. You are loved with an everlasting love of your Father.  "Look around you: Everything you see is God’s—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that’s you!—out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing" The Message Bible Deuteronomy 10:14-18. 

Don Burzynski is the Director of CrossLife Counseling in Vero Beach, Florida and is the father of eight children and four grandchildren. www.cross-life.org 

 

To Tithe or Not to Tithe?

Believe it or not, a local pastor was preaching on the importance of “tithing” telling his congregation that tithing was old covenant teaching. (Some of his people had begun to understand grace and that tithing was not a New Covenant teaching.) He asked, “What would you rather have to give 10% (Old Covenant) or have to give it all, 100% (New Covenant)? His logic for suggesting this was that Jesus asked the rich young ruler to “sell everything,” to give it all, 100%.

Imagine the confusion this congregation is experiencing. Not only a distorted understanding of covenant teaching but the promotion of the lie of independence – that it is okay for you to decide what to do with your money or your life apart from who you are in Christ.

So what about tithing? Tithing is never mentioned in the New Covenant and is not a New Testament concept. In the old covenant tithes were levied or taxed to support the priesthood, but in the New Covenant every Christian is a priest (I Peter 2:9). Christians are not under obligation of Old Testament laws including tithes! “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” Romans 10:4.

Religious leaders who are honest enough to admit that tithing is not a Christian obligation are quick to suggest that we have a responsibility or duty to give.  They want their members to feel a sense of guilt, a sense of "you should" or "you ought to," pay the expenses of the instructional church. So they refer to a “new law of giving," which is defined as “love-offerings."

It is sometimes even proposed that Christians are to "pay God back” and He will then “payback” you, “a give and it shall be given you.” This concept is more of an invest idea than true giving which has no thought of getting something in return.  Once again this is performance minded rather than grace initiated.

What is a Christian’s attitude toward giving?  "God loves a cheerful giver." In 2 Corinthians 9:7 the Greek word for "cheerful" means "hilarious." A Christian understanding of giving is to simply participate “hilariously” with Christ as our life, which is to truly give ourselves to God’s intended desire for us and through us to the glory of Himself. It is not a matter of percentage, 10% vs. 100% but the joyful privilege of experiencing Christ.  God is our provision and as a result our incentive is to give our all, not just our money but our lives as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2).

Religion is always focusing on man’s performance to please and appease God. Religionists have traditionally regarded wealth and prosperity as a sign of God’s blessing and approval. Jesus however challenged religionist to follow Him, which meant they would have to surrender their independent perspective and choose to function dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ and discover the true Kingdom of Heaven within. When performance and possessions are the priority it is impossible to understand our basic functional design which is to derive all from the indwelling presence of God. Until a man is willing to “sell all” that he thinks he has and come to the One who is Savior, Lord and Life, he will experience the “ministry of death” and “ministry of condemnation” that Paul referred to in 2 Cor. 2:7, 9.  

The gospel is the message of God’s grace which allows us to be “made safe” from the dysfunction of humanity “doing things” on our own and allows us to participate with the Saving Life of Jesus Christ deriving all from Him.

Paul testified to the Philippians in 1:21 “For to me, to live is Christ.” And wrote the Corinthians reminding them who they were in Christ, 1 Corinthians 7:23 “All of you, slave and free both, were once held hostage in a sinful society. Then a huge sum was paid out for your ransom. So please don’t, out of old habit, slip back into being or doing what everyone else tells you. Friends, stay where you were called to be. God is there. Hold the high ground with him at your side” (Message Bible).

God never intended giving to become a numbers game of percentages where man could maintain control but desired that we experience the truth of Acts 20:35 “…remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” 

Don Burzynski  

www.cross-life.org 

© Copyright 2013  

How free are you Christian?

The Apostle Paul declared in Galatians 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free”.

As a Christian, under New Covenant Grace, do you have the freedom to do anything you want, and yet not sin?

It depends on how you answer the question. 

Does God or man have absolute freedom? No! Neither God nor man has absolute freedom. God cannot do whatever He wants! You might say, “Blasphemy!” But consider that all freedom has a context, even God’s. Although God can do whatever He wants (“with God nothing is impossible”), yet what He does is always consistent with who He is; and He therefore always acts consistent with His character for He can do nothing contrary to His own character.

God is a Free Being. God is an Independent Self. God has Free-will. God is absolute. His character is that of absolute holiness and purity. He acts consistent with His perfect character. God is absolute but He will not, He cannot, act contrary to His character. The context of His freedom is always Love. God is free to be who He is; God is Love and therefore always consistent with His character. Absolute freedom would imply that God could do something inconsistent with His loving character, and thus deny Himself.

What about man? God did not create us to be like Him. He created us to receive from Him. In order for man to understand who he is and how he was intended to live and function as God designed, we must always start with God. He is always to be man’s point of reference.

Does man have freedom to do whatever he wants? Yes and No! If you answer the question from an either/or mindset –you would be wrong to answer “yes.” However, if you answer the question from a both/and perspective and answered “yes,” you would be correct. As we have seen, freedom always has a context, both for God and man. What is the context of freedom as God intended man to be?

We could say that freedom has responsibility. Please don’t misrepresent the word ‘responsibility’ as something you have to do. We might say that, a person who is responsible has responded to an ability, “response-ability.” Freedom is responding to His ability. Christian ‘responsibility’ is our faith response to God’s ability. Faith is our receptivity to God’s activity.  A responsible Christian only does or acts in freedom when he or she acts in harmony with what the dynamic life of Christ is initiating in them.  Anything more or less would be sin or license. 

I can hear someone ask at this point; well what will this kind of freedom look like in real life? I am often asked, “How do I live like that?”

My answer is usually, “I don’t have any idea.” However one thing I can say with certainty is that it will look unpredictable, as unpredictable as God Himself.

Any behavioral expression outside of God’s functional design for man is not freedom but license. Many Christians have never understood their intended functional design. Christian religionists have taught that man was responsible to try to live the Christian life with the help of God. Their primary focus has been on the performance of obedience, devotion of love or service “for” God.

However, God’s purpose from the beginning, as seen in Adam, was the indwelling presence of God’s “breath of Life”.  God’s highest purpose for man was “the outlived life of God”. For man to choose to live in loving dependence on God, deriving all that man needed from God, in a beautiful experience and expression of the “abundant life” of God in/as/through man. God’s purpose for man was to experience and enjoy the fullness of the dynamic Life of God through His grace activity through man trusting and believing day by day.

Christians are volitionally free, but not free “to do” anything that comes to their mind if they are to function in the freedom that God designed for man. Religion often views freedom predominantly as freedom from something but Christian freedom is the freedom to love and serve others.

The context of freedom always loves because God is love, and our behavior as Christians is to be a loving expression of His loving character through us. God is “for others” and therefore the attitude of freedom is never focused on oneself but others.

Too often the focus of man has been on performance rather than function. God’s functional design was that man would be receptive, which is what faith is, receptive to all that God had planned and purposed for him even before the foundation of the world. It is the very life of the risen Lord Jesus living and reigning in the Christian that allows him to experience the freedom of grace that God had desired for man. Freedom is never found or experienced outside functionality as God intended.

The Christian therefore can choose to do whatever he or she wants, and not sin as long as the expression of character or behavior has been initiated by Christ as one’s life.  So Christian, you are as free as Christ has made you to be.  “Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God,” 1 Peter 2:16.

Don Burzynski © 2013

Christian living – Function vs. Behavior

People’s lives are full of challenges and problems i.e. Dysfunction. Often they look for solutions to solve their troubles, believing that if they find the right answers, things will be “fixed” or will at least get better.  

Behavioral modification is the popular belief of our day secular and sacred.  The truth is God is not a problem solver, a “spiritual bellboy” or even the answer! There is no formula, method or Biblical principle for living the Christian life, there is however a purpose or “function” for living in Christ as God designed!

What is God’s functional design for man?

Christian living must always begin with God (our point of reference). We are totally dependent on God and the only way to experience God is by deriving everything from God.  It is impossible for man to “live like God” and in fact that was the lie that Satan suggested to Adam.  “The Being and character” of God is demonstrated in Christ’s functioning as a man dependent and derivate by the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to manifest Himself and to function as God, intended man to be or live. To do so, Jesus, “emptied Himself” (Phil. 2:7) of functioning as God, and functioned as a man 100% dependent upon the Spirit of God in Him.  For thirty-three years Jesus never did His own initiative (John 5:30; 8:28; John 8:42; 10:18; 14:10) but only did what He saw the Father doing in Him. Jesus,” was never less than God, but never more than man and as such the Savior of the world.

Man needed a savior because man had no life (Romans 8:2; 5:10) and a functional death (Hebrews 2:14). Salvation is not just deliverance from sin but to be made safe from the dysfunction of human activity which is a result of man’s spiritual condition, by birth (John 3:6; Rom. 5:12; 15).  

It is only as man is born anew or born again (John 3:3) that the Saving Life of Jesus Christ indwells man (Rom. 8:9) and man can then participate with Christ’s life which makes us safe from dysfunction.