September 22, 2014
Barefooting It
A few weeks ago the President
took criticism for showing up at a press conference without a necktie. His casual
swagger was un-presidential and inappropriate for the seriousness of the situation
being addressed. Yesterday I attended yet another church where the worship
leader, or a member of the team, was barefoot. I really don’t get it. These folks
didn’t come to church without wearing shoes, so they are removing them before
taking their place on the platform. I suppose they could be having a God-to-Moses
type conversation. “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals,
for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Ex 3:5 NIV).
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Gail;
-----You are probably very close to right. People who know the Lord are people who desire righteousness and call out to Him for it. We know this in the more common terms of calling out for salvation. But what is salvation? It is a complete return to a system of everything being right where God makes right all those He saved from this unholy, temporal life. Righteousness is the perfected relationship with the Lord operating in all processes of our being. That is not possible here. This is the place where God is true and every man is false. So what we have here is a yearning for the righteousness unto which we have been saved and a hope that soon our bodies will be perfected at physical death to join the perfection our spirits have enjoyed since our decision to partake in death to sin with Him.
-----We try hard to do what we yearn for. But this unrighteousness we live in is a pretty thick soup. We’ve all heard of the onion and all its layers. We know what that’s about - the metaphor reminding us that we always have more error within us to remove than we will be able to peel away before going Home. From longing for righteousness within the midst of this onion, we have needs to see evidences that we are indeed engaged with the One who will make us wholly holy through and through. We need confirming experiences. And the more intensely we thirst after righteousness, the more intense is that need.
-----The mind and emotions are always gluttons for tricks, and not just for cheap tricks. The more our minds are corrected through prayer and practiced at living in Him, the more sophisticated must be the tricks for which they will fall. The cheap ones fail, but as human minds and emotions are indeed prone to falsehood, the more expensive tricks get them to bite. Thus, we have a propensity to identify things as holy through certain ways of knowing or feeling them, whether God meant them holy or not. When we do or engage these things, our minds perceive us to be involved in a holy venture of righteousness. And oh! That makes us feel good about transcending our own onion!
-----So it is very easy for me to see the barefoot saint standing in her own mind before God in front of His congregation on what she thinks to be holy ground, though it be truly a platform of two-by-fours and plywood in front of a bunch of people trying to be a lot better than they really are. You would think God would want to spank her for such arrogance, and the rest of them, too. And if their “holy experience” is about how wonderful and holy and righteous they are! -He will, in His own way, at His own time, by the consequences of their own errors. But if she is caught up in how wonderful and holy and righteous is this situation of everyone nearby proclaiming their worship of God that she must remove her shoes, then as Paul indicates at Romans 14, God will accept her sentiments about holy ground and bare feet maybe even more pleasurably than if she put off her shoes at His actual demand.
-----We will remain false until the day He redeems our physical bodies too. But the depths of love and heights of power He brings into this blessed relationship with us who desire righteousness makes even our errors useful through His mercy. For this we are continually thankful because the remaining layers of our onions are flawed in ways beyond our perception. “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col 3:17) "It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand...Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Rom 14:4b,5b)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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