Urban Reformation

Iceberg Christianity has become a topic of our Sunday School class at Faith Community, where we often discuss the polished visible outside, and how to get beyond it. There are relatively few times in which in Western Christianity throws off the distractions, vanities, and busy of our society to dive deep into such community, relationships and fellowship knowing with any true depth those that we fellowship with on Sunday mornings.

The 10 % above the water represents your polished outer surface, this is what you see when you go to church Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings for a meeting with brothers and sisters in Christ for two hours a week. You may be eager to share those good qualities of yourself, and those things which make you look good to others.

The 90% dark portion of iceberg below is the larger and more real part of you, which you do not readily share. Perhaps you do not share these for practical reasons of time, and relationship, or perhaps you do not trust others, or perhaps the voice of the flesh is too busy in our own life to listen to the needs and the uglies of others. I pray that the waters begin to recede for all of us as we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

Our Pastor of Biblical Counseling Jack Colwell wrote this piece he titled, “The Flesh Unmasked” or “The Voice of the Flesh.” He spoke of it in a sermon he called, “A Call to Repent of our Goodness.” I must say after I read it I and meditated upon it, it showed me once again my absolute need of a savior in Jesus Christ and that this voice of the flesh must continue to be put to death, Luke 9:23-25. I’ve read over this for repentance sake, that I might recognize it when it’s coming out of me. It assaults the Pharisism in us and helps us to see our own sinfulness if we listen. I now share it with you.

Read this as the Voice of the Flesh speaking without its mask.

When you talk to me, I won’t admit it to you or myself, but my flesh always has an agenda. This agenda will poison any attempts at Christ honoring discourse, but I will always blame you for this break-down. My agenda is to maintain a hypocritical, pharisaical façade (to look good). To this end, I must control and manipulate you, so that my selfishness and hypocrisy is not exposed. I will polish the tip of my iceberg to give myself the permission and status to carve on the tip of yours. This keeps all attention on the tips and demonstrates how mine is more refined and godly than yours-so that I can keep giving myself permission to carve on yours. Because of this agenda:

• If you will submit yourself to my agenda I will “love” you. If you refuse I will “hate” you. I will love you and hate you intermittently moment by moment and day by day. (But it will always be your fault).

• I will have all kinds of other emotions while dealing with you. Often times I will be swamped by my emotion. You will make me mad, happy, disgusted, sad, excited, frustrated, indignant etc… depending upon how much you submit yourself to my agenda (make me look good) and do not inconvenience me. (But any problems will always be your fault).

• I will not really listen to you with the goal of understanding you- because I don’t really care about you! You are only a means to the end of my agenda. I will listen to you only long enough to get a feeling about how what you are saying (or doing) complements or clashes with my agenda. Either way, as soon as you take a breath I will hi-jack whatever you were saying into my agenda.

• I am not above using the Bible to serve my agenda; in fact it is a great tool for serving my agenda. Once I discover what a great tool it is, I will become a devoted student of the Bible. I will constantly find within its pages the precise tools I need to justify myself, (polish the tip of my iceberg) and condemn and control you (carve on the tip of your iceberg so that you serve my agenda).

• I can be very religious and a zealous follower of the God of the Bible if I discover that that it suits my agenda and will give me power over you. But in the end, this God and His Bible would to expose my hypocrisy and my flesh will scream out; “crucify Him.”

• I find that assassinating your character and impugning you behind your back serves my agenda well (makes me look good by making you look bad). I can control you and carve on you by getting others to judge you in the same way I do. Even if I am reduced to assailing details as petty as your hair cut, clothing style, personal preferences etc… “It’s all good” to serve my agenda. It is extremely easy to get other ‘religious’ people to join in on my chorus of judging you, because it serves their agenda as well. Once I become religiously sophisticated I will use “prayer requests” and concerned ‘religious’ conversation to do this.

You are human so your flesh has this agenda also. If our agenda’s serve each other well, we can have a “nice relationship,” in other words, if the way you carve on the tip of my iceberg (and the way I carve on yours) complements one another’s agenda, we can be “friends.” If the agenda’s don’t match we will constantly clash. We may stay in relationship even while we clash if, while we fight, argue and carve one another we are both serving our own agenda. The manner I wish to portray myself for example may be as a victim of you, so that it gives me an excuse and salve for what my conscience knows lurks in my heart, just below the surface.

If this causes you to mourn over the sinfulness of your sin; look upon Christ a hundred times for every one time you look upon your sin! If it doesn’t, you probably didn’t finish reading it because it was shining the light of truth below the surface and until you know yourself better you will care very little to really know Christ.
In your quite moments, when you are not hiding among the busyness of life, you have a reoccurring thought that haunts your mind and heart. You have always been told and believed that a constant influx of large quantities of biblical knowledge is the key to consistent Christ-like Christian living. At the same time; you hear of Christians, both now and in the past, that live and die (some times rapidly as martyrs) faithful, Christ magnifying lives. Yet, you know that they had access to only a precious thimble of Bible to live and die by. You know you could spray thousands of such Christians down, as with a fire hydrant of biblical knowledge that you possess. From your bright moments of honesty and anguish you cry out:

“Does not faith come by hearing the Word of Christ; do I not know much more of the Word of Christ than a thousand such martyrs for Christ? Why then does my faith seem weak and lifeless compared to theirs?”

My child, faith does come by hearing, but it is not hearing Christ’s Word pronounced and recorded in your memory for later recall and reciting to impress your friends or manipulate others. Faith comes from HEARING Christ’s Word as the internal conversation of your heart and mind that intermingles with and interprets all of life circumstances and events. This does not require quantity!
My child; put the insanity of western “iceberg” Christianity aside for a moment and try real hard to focus and consider:

• When you beheld My sun casting the dawn of a new day upon you; did you acknowledge afresh the newness that My Son brings to your soul?

• When you heard the first bird singing My praises, did your soul within erupt into uncontrollable thankfulness and elation as you joined in it’s chorus?

• Did your pride spontaneously melt away into abandoned adoration as My air passed over your lips and into your lungs, providing the breath of life for the next few moments?

• Were you driven afresh to the cross of My precious Son as you considered anew your endless need of My provision for life and His forgiveness for Life?

• Did you tremble with delight as you considered My Word, holding the cosmos together through the darkness of the night; as I hide My champion, the sun, and allow you glimpse out into the endless sea of my glorious declaration?

• Did you consider this heavenly declaration of glory pressing upon the whole earth as I carefully redeem for myself worshipers with every tongue, every appearance and every culture?

• Were you then overwhelmed with an unconditional love for others as you considered that the glory of the grace of my Son is wrapped up in redeeming lost, repugnant sinners such as you were and they are?

• Did it dawn on you afresh that My sovereign goodness presses upon you, conforming you to the image of My Son through the very people and circumstances that your fleshly pride bristles against and wants to fix, manipulate or get even with?

• Do you see Me sovereignly “speaking” into your life through challenging circumstances and people bringing you true illumination to My Word?

• Through the love of Christ toward others, can you take off earthly trappings of appearance and don the slave’s towel? Can you humbly kneel at others filthy feet; stained with the godless perspectives, attitudes, words and deeds from the open sewage of this world and their flesh? Can you allow yourself to touch it, smell it and feel the deadness of their sin without reacting to it?

• Can you humbly do this in order to show forth what their sin has blinded them to; Christ’ afflictions on their behalf?

When you see, interpret and respond to life’s circumstances that I bring to you in this way, you will live in a Christ magnifying manner that will manifest the Fruit of the Spirit. Study My Word as if your life depended upon it, because it does! But refuse to layer ever increasing biblical knowledge over fleshly hypocrisy; you will only make those you deal with into twice as much a son of hell.

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