On Eagles Wings!

The Dual Humility of our Savior!

2006-11-30T16:24:00.000-05:00

My Current Reading: "The Calvary Road" by Roy Hession

It's always interesting how we can study a text of Scripture, and even preach on it, and then come back to it later on and have the Lord give us yet a new and fresh perspective on His Word. This is the case for me with Philippians 2:5-11 which speaks to the humility of Christ and how he made himself of no reputation and took upon himself our sins. Roy Hession writes,

"For this reason, we are not likely to be broken except at the cross of Jesus. The willingness of Jesus to be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken too. We see him, who is in the form of God, counting not equality with God a prize to be grasped at and hung on to, but letting it go for us and taking upon Him the form of a Servant - God's Servant, man's Servant. We see Him willing to have no rights of His own, willing to let men revile Him and not revile again, willing to let men tread on Him and not retaliate or defend Himself." (pp. 23-24; emphasis mine)

I have often thought of Jesus' humility from a human perspective. That is, that He humbled Himself to become a man and a servant of men. He surrendered His rights as a man and was crucified by the very hands He created. But from God the Father's perspective Christ also humbled Himself. He surrendered His Divine rights as well. He surrendered His right to call down the legions of angels to come to His rescue. He surrendered Himself to do the will of His Father in heaven. He did so with complete humility. Jesus truly had no rights of His own, and "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him." (Is. 53:10)

This kind of brokenness is our example as well. To be humble and broken, surrendered to do whatever God asks us to do, to go where He wants us to go, to be used wherever, whenever, and however He so chooses. To give up any right we may think we have to live our lives the way we want to and to yield ourselves to live the way He wants us to: that takes brokenness.

But there is yet another side to being broken. That is, to surrender ourselves to our fellow man. To give up our wants and desires, to look past how others may hurt us, trample us, ridicule us, and give us grief. This too, takes great humility and brokenness of heart. To be able, after being slapped in the cheek, to graciously and humbly turn the other to quite possibly be slapped again, and to do so harboring no rights of our own, and with no bitterness in our hearts: this takes true humility and brokenness.

This is part of the type of dying that we are to do everyday as we seek to die to our "self" and to truly "live" in Christ. May the Spirit of God break my heart and yours and allow us to live humbly in the presence of our God and also our fellow man.

Spiritual Battles and Learning to Trust the Lord

2006-07-13T11:39:00.000-04:00

Wow!! During the past two weeks I have experienced some of the most discouraging days that I can remember in a LONG time. Without going into the details, I'll just say that I have been on the brink of quitting more than once over these past several days. As I find myself praying and fighting through these times the Lord just continues to remind me that we are involved in a spiritual war and that one of the weapons that is thrown against us is discouragement. To be completely honest I'm really struggling with where the discouragement has been coming from. It really has been baffling me and I constantly have to do attitude checks in order to keep a proper perspective on everything. But, nonetheless, discouragement has a way of killing any sort of positive spiritual momentum in our lives. It destroys vision and passion for pursuing the Lord and the things of the Lord. It hinders us from pursuing the will of God for our lives. I guess my problem is that I often try to fight a spiritual war with worldly weapons. I try to use my own human reason to try to figure out what God may or may not be doing or saying through my circumstances. I'm finding that this is a dangerous approach (especially if it's our only approach!)that really only leads to more confusion. So I'm resolved to do battle on my knees in prayer, asking for the Lord to make sense of it all, and even if He doesn't, asking Him to help me trust Him in spite of my limited ability to understand His ways. So I'm driven to my knees, where quite frankly, I need to spend A LOT more time anyways!

On a different note and amazingly enough, Robin and I have had two VERY encouraging meetings with Churches this week. These two meetings have really helped to reaffirm what the Lord has called us to do and to continue inspite of other "things" we don't always understand. Last night we were at a church in Ocala presenting our ministry to Australia. Right before the service began I sensed the Lord wanted me to preach something different than what I had planned. My message was only going to be about 10 to 15 minutes and of course being the long winded type I have very few messages that actually would fit into that time frame. So I began to panic a little. As the service started I was drawn to Romans 10:14ff. While I'm quickly reading through that passage I'm thinking "Lord, You can't want me to preach this text. I've never preached it before!" Well I started to jot a few notes down just in case the Lord was serious. Robin and I gave our testimonies and during our video I was in a full panic because I knew the Lord wanted me to speak on Romans 10:14 and following and I only had a small notion of what I might say in this "mystery" message. As our video is winding down, I'm looking at the message I had brought with me, the one I was actually PREPARED to preach and thinking I'm just gonna preach this one and not worry about it. Well I stood in the pulpit at a crossroads in my mind and I began to comment on a few things from our video when all of a sudden I found myself saying "please turn in your Bibles to Romans 10". At that moment, incredibly enough, I wasn't nervous or in a panic at all. The Lord gave me peace and I trust the Holy Spirit used me to proclaim the truth of His word. Yet another lesson in learning to trust the Lord and let Him do the work!! Maybe, it's not really all about me afterall!!

"I never made a sacrifice"

2006-05-10T13:11:00.000-04:00

You may sometimes hear missionaries refer to the "great sacrifices" of going to the mission field. While, humanly speaking, there are "sacrifices" that are made by people to take the gospel to "the ends of the earth", the Lord has recently challenged my thinking on this line of thought. I don't think I'm the kind of person who sits and dwells on the "costs" of going to the mission field or mourning all that we've supposedly given up to move our family to Australia. Again humanly speaking, I know full well that there are others who have paid and are currently paying a much greater price to reach the unreached than God will likely ever require of me. I say that with hesitation, because Divinely speaking, God requires the same from all of His children: a complete daily dying to self and surrender to follow after Him. However the consequences of complete surrender are different for each of us. Yet the entire line of thinking that we have "sacrificed" to take the gospel to the masses seems to be in opposition to the Scriptures. Once again, John Piper has challenged my thinking.

In Desiring God, Piper writes, "The response of Jesus indicates that the way to think about self-denial is to deny yourself only a lesser good for a greater good. You deny yourself one mother in order to get one hundred mothers. In other words, Jesus wants us to think about sacrifice in a way that rules out all self-pity. This is, in fact, just what the texts on self-denial teach.

'If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.' (Mark 8:34-35)

The argument is inescapably hedonistic. Saint Augustine captured the paradox in these words:

'If you love your soul, there is danger of its being destroyed. Therefore you may not love it, since you do not want it to be destroyed. But in not wanting it to be destroyed you love it.'

Jesus knew this. It was the basis of his argument. He does not ask us to be indifferent to whether we are destroyed. On the contrary, he assumes that the very longing for true life (1 Peter 3:10) will move us to deny ourselves all the lesser pleasures and comforts of life. If we were indifferent to the value of God's gift of life, we would dishonor it. The measure of your longing for life is the amount of comfort you are willing to give up to get it. The gift of eternal life in God's presence is glorified if we are willing to 'hate our lives in this world' in order to get it (John 12:25). Therein lies the God-centered value of self-denial." (Desiring God, pg. 202-203; emphasis added)

For us to speak of "sacrificing" anything for the sake of Christ and the gospel is simply an untruth when we weigh it against the promise of Christ found in His response to Peter in Mark 10:28-30.

"Then Peter began to say unto him (Jesus), 'Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.' And Jesus answered and said, 'Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life."

In light of Jesus' rebuke of Peter's dwelling on the thought of all he and the other disciples had sacrificed or "left" let us commit ourselves to the Holy Spirit for the renewing of our minds on this issue of self-sacrifice and self-denial. In light of all that Christ gave on our behalf and all that he promises to restore to those who choose to lose their lives for his sake and the gospel's, the truth of the matter is that we have not sacrificed! As the writer of Hebrews reminds us in light of the complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." (Hebrews 12:4)

I close with the words of David Livingstone, the pioneer missionary to Africa, who wrote the following in December, 1857:

"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa...Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice." (emphasis added)

I encourage you to join me in committing our lives to the cause of Christ and to the advance of the gospel: without a mention of our pitiful "sacrifices."

The NBA - What's wrong with America!

2006-04-19T15:30:00.000-04:00

I'm gonna love this blogging thing...it gives me a place to jump on my soap box! So here goes...In my humble opinion the National Basketball Association represents what is most wrong with American culture today. Now let me say at the outset I'm not lumping all NBA players in with one another. That would be quite unfair. However, there seems to be this attitude that emminates from certain NBA superstars that says, "I'm gonna get mine...and that's all that matters!" I grew up loving NBA basketball...Believe it or not I was a huge fan of the Detroit Pistons back in the "bad boy" days of the late 80's. Somebody may be chuckling right about now since I'm ranting about the attitude of the NBA and formerly loved the so-called "bad boys." But there seems to be this "I'm in this for myself and don't get in my way" philosophy from many NBA players today. There is very little emphasis on teamwork or teamplay. It seems that the NBA has chosen to highlight individualism over the team concept. Ironically, it's the Detroit Pistons of today that everyone looks to as the poster-children for teamwork. Look at how the NBA markets its matchups: it's almost always "Kobe vs. Shaq" or "Mello vs. Wade". This whole individualistic approach just rubs me the wrong way. But that's the nature of American culture. "It's all about me and what I want. It doesn't matter how my actions might affect others, afterall I'm an island unto myself. I don't need anybody around me to accomplish what I want to accomplish." We can't allow this kind of attitude to permeate Christianity, the Church, or our missions efforts. I've been in full time church ministry and trust me when I say that pastor's need people and the people of God need each other to accomplish the great commission. The mission field is also not the place for individualism and self-dependence. If we are to accomplish the task the Lord has given to us then we need to first realize our dependence on Him and then our dependence on one another. God certainly didn't call me to the ministry to go it alone and to thump my chest the whole way yelling at the world "hey, look at me! Look how I'm conquering the world!" We need the spirit of John the Baptist that said, "He (Christ) must increase, but I must decrease." John 3:30 Let's shun this individualistic approach to living and declare our complete dependence on Christ and begin to encourage one another by our actions and attitudes.

The Death that Leads to Life...

2006-04-16T17:50:00.000-04:00

The death of Jesus Christ is the great paradox of this world. We owe all of who we are and what we have to the crucifixion of the Savior. It is through His death that we have our only chance at true life. It is the death of Christ that brings to human beings the only hope that we have of ever living in the presence of God. This weekend we believers especially remember the death of our Savior Jesus Christ. We remember it not in and of itself...for if Christ had only died what would we have to celebrate? A dead Savior is not much of a Savior at all. However, we know the end of the matter...Christ is no longer held by death...He is alive! We can remember and even celebrate the fact that Jesus laid down His life for the human race only because on the third day He took His life back again. That is truly the cause for celebration! Our Savior is alive! The question we believers may want to consider is: Now that He's alive in us, how are we living for Him? If you've not asked Christ to forgive and save you from your sins click the link to see how you too can have this confidence of knowing for sure you have eternal life. Blessings!

Welcome!

2006-04-15T19:44:00.000-04:00

Welcome to On Eagles Wings! I'm Jeff Malin. My family and I are currently raising prayer and financial support and on our way to the country of Australia. I will be posting some of my thoughts and experiences on this blog to hopefully encourage you and stir your heart to draw closer to Jesus Christ. Thanks for stopping by! I hope you'll visit often.