It's a Long Way Down to the Top
A Book for the Comfortable Christian
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Perhaps it is not the experience of all believing Christians, but the striking conviction of how far Jesus calls His followers to go when He asks them to leave the life they had been living up to the point of rebirth has always been, for me, one of the most powerful influences of the Holy Spirit. To be sure, this has not been a pleasant experience in many ways, but the other powerful influences springing from the enormous nature of the One who calls lessen any harshness or tendency to retreat to the temporary ease of the world. What is our frame of reference surrounding our view of what’s carnal and what’s spiritual in our lives? Is it our personal lives since we first believed? Is it life since conception? Is it the church age? Is it Noah to 2012? Is it Genesis 1:2 up to and beyond Revelation 22:6? Is it what other Christians think? Is it the writings of the church fathers? Is it what we’ve verified in the Bible? The focus of this book is to form and encourage a frame of reference, a viewpoint for comparison rooted in the garden of Eden and the kingdom of heaven. Though the difference between the here and now and the ends (the garden and heaven) is drastic, this viewpoint can counter our tendency to alter righteous guidelines, even biblical doctrine, in favor of a less-than-pure compromise. Are we willing to live uncompromised lives all the way to the edge, all the way to the very framework, the boundaries of our viewpoint?
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About the Book
Enter into rest. Where do you come to rest internally? The heart of flesh pumps blood, and the heart of the spirit resides in the mind. True rest must first be in the mind and the heart for the whole person and the whole life to rest. Activity and rest of the body, soul, and spirit are life. In His image the Lord made our life in perfection of purpose, intent, and craftsmanship. Where do you come to rest—in His presence with the extra ingredient of your purpose, intent, and craftsmanship? How do you enter activity—in Him or in you? Are you a citizen of heaven in yearning confident expectation, or an earthling putting down roots? “… as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7).
About the Author
After thirty years as a chef, I was very glad to become Christ’s own possession at age fifty. The strongest and deepest of all statements that Jesus revealed to me personally was when I read that a disciple of Christ must be willing to “forsake his own life” (Luke 14:26). My prayer was that this would occur. Eight years later, I began what has become four years as a participant and now a live-in chaplain at a rescue mission in California. My significant transformation as a member of a new family and now as a friend and brother to the broken-hearted and the forgotten has opened my eyes and my pen. I have spent my last few years teaching, counseling, encouraging, and comforting those people who are God’s gifts to me, as well as attending Bible college and being grandpa and father to my children and granddaughter, which includes a few Chanterelle trips in the winter and fishing trips in the summer.