A New Year’s Resolution

Redefining Purpose:

I’ve been very neglectful of this blog over the past year. There are innumerable reasons for that, among them, a great deal of tragedy and suffering and the ministry related to it, but also family, travel, and a major focus on completing my latest novel. It’s that focus that has to change in the coming year.

A while back I read Bruce Wilkerson’s excellent advice in his great book, “The Dream Giver.” A truth lies in that book that I have struggled with ever since I finished reading it. The truth it revealed to me is the principle of the New Testament tithe, a principle that is well and intentionally misunderstood by the church, who conveniently adopt the old testament tithe of ten percent. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t represent the call of Christ that we are to die to self, so we might “live as Christ.” (Ref. Mark 12:41-44)

In the New Testament there are many examples of the principle Wilkerson suggests. Overall, the clear message from Jesus to His disciples is what I call, “The Change.” The change is a paradigm shift, announced by John the Baptist, whom Jesus referred to as the “Greatest of Prophets,” a change that says we cannot be constrained by the law alone, living only for the flesh. History, and the record of the Old Testament have proven Him right again and again. Jesus teaches us that, what is important to God is not so much our behavior, as our motivation. God would prefer that we be motivated by our love for Him, more than our fear of the law and its consequences. Jesus led a selfless life in just that way, by loving God more than He loved Himself.

Again and again, He made a point of the priority of spirit over flesh. For example, in Mat. 5:27, 28, Jesus tells us that Moses has said, “do not commit adultery. But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (And ladies, you are not pardoned from this charge.) Also, as example, in the case of Annanias and Saphira, beyond their lie and at its root, is the selfish motivation of their hearts.

In conclusion, the only way for us to be changed is to die to self, as we symbolically represented in our baptism. The challenge to us all, following that symbolic commitment, is the requirement for our intentional effort to accomplish it, to “pick up our cross, daily, and follow Him.”

So the tithe is no longer ten percent, but our willing sacrifice of the whole check, placing it before Him as our voluntary offering, motivated by our love for Him, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us from there, asking only for “our daily bread” in return. In the same way as that symbolic check, we must also place our dreams, that thing we perhaps covet, we must place it on the Alter of God, for His determination.

In “The Dream Giver,” Wilkerson puts it this way, “When your relationship with God deepens into a genuine trust in His character, you will be ready for the final invitation. … Now God will ask you to consecrate yourself to Him — and surrender your dream.”

That’s the threshold I stand on today. Having completed the first draft of the manuscript for my next novel, the time has come for me to take my dream of being a novelist, and surrender it to Him. I do so with a trembling heart and the knowledge that I must trust Him in every area of my life. I must commit myself now to prayer and meditation on His word, to discipleship, worship, ministry, fellowship and to sowing the seed of His Truth, while I wait for His determination in my life.

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