Severe Christianity: The Christian Life beyond the Talk

By David R. Lee

Christian, how satisfied are you with the God you know? Or better, is God satisfied with the level of commitment you have with Him? Severe Christianity dips into the cauldron of what drastic Christianity is designed to be, identifying four stair steps of devotion from slight to saturated on which believers in Jesus have stationed themselves, uncovering what Scripture has divulged God's expectations to be. This book is for those who sincerely want more knowledge and personal dynamic from their relation to God. The culture's antagonism to Christian faith is analyzed and challenged. Much more than what we thought we knew of Him will be considered, and the narrow pathway to the bliss promised is explored with tight-fisted determination to glean the best of our faith in the Christ we love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890430090

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Severe Christianity

The Christian Life beyond the Talk

David R. Lee

ISBN 979-8-89043-008-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89043-009-0 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by David R. Lee

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Why?

Is Belief Reality?

The Chasm between Culture and the Convert

Wholly Saved Means Holy Saved

Four Degrees of Knowing the Lord

The Pedestrian Skim

The Attachment to Activities

The Urge to Dig Deeper

The God-Saturated Life

Is Easy Christianity Real Christianity?

Man Shall Not Live by Blessings Alone

The Student

The Servant

The Soldier

The Saint

Longing for True Christian Substance

Getting Past the God Who Didn't Work

Smart Fools

Learning How to Read

The Bible Is Our Story Too

Times of Prophetic Continuation

The Underdriven Soul

Activities That Speak Barely Louder Than Words

Willingness to Walk the Spiritual Tightrope

How to Dig Deeper to Climb Upward

Relearning our ABCs

When the Willing Won't

The Holy Spirit Is Not a Denomination

If I Aspire for Severe Christianity

The Personal Cross Costs Plenty

Let's End This Polemic

About the Author

My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him.

—Psalm 62:5 (NASB)

The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant.

—Psalm 25:14 (NASB)

Acknowledgments

Advanced examples of the cherished Christian life have been represented by my two sisters and brother and their spouses. I am humbly grateful to Ralph and Carolyn Rinehart, Wayne and Marianne Lee, and David and Marilyn Knighton for their godly contributions to my own growth in our Lord.

Why?

Why?

This book begins with why?

In fact, there are several whys.

Why am I writing this book? Why does it need to be written? Why would anyone want to read it? Why would it make any difference?

This is a book for Christians. It is also a book for those who are not Christians, for the ramifications of unbelief are eternally severe. In its simplest definition, a Christian is one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but the Word of God uses the sense of possession. Belief is having Jesus—that is experiencing His actual Person, receiving Him into one's life. The disciple of Jesus, John, who later became His apostle or ambassador, recorded in his biography of Jesus in chapter 3, verse 36:

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

Belief requires the pursuit of what is to be believed—in this case, actually obeying God by having faith in Him.

The same author in his first letter elaborated further on this very theme:

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life (1 John 5:12)

And the life spoken of is not merely the earthly existence we are presently experiencing but what will eventually occur when we leave here. Life may begin here, but it continues hereafter. The most famous verse of the Bible was penned by John of Jesus's words:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

One more thought clarifies how to believe in and have Jesus inside. John 1:12 reads,

But as many as have received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, that is, to those who believe in His name.

The reason an individual would want to believe is summarized in Romans 3:23:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

That shortfall is reversed by Jesus, who, as was stated above, was sent by God out of His love to eradicate the penalty of God's wrath against us. First Peter 2:24 states,

And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, for by His wounds you were healed.

Romans 6:23 warns:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The most logical reason for wanting to be a Christian is nothing else than to be reconciled to the One who created us to be His forever. This is the reason for not giving up on ourselves due to our flawed moral condition but to giving over of ourselves to the One who has loved us by actually giving Himself up in death that we may have life.

This is severe Christianity. Belief in Jesus is an eternal life or eternal death issue. If you have opened to this page and can grasp what true Christianity entails, friend, decide for Jesus. Confess your sins to Him for forgiveness, and ask to receive Him into your heart. He will genuinely enter you. You will have Him and His eternity. You can then begin to understand what this book seeks to uncover.

The book is titled Severe Christianity. It could have been Caustic Christianity, for what the Bible describes grates against the human heart. People do not want to be lectured on their inadequacies. Sinners do not wish to admit to wrongdoing, failure, or the need to change. They would prefer to cover up and march on. Very few persons desire to have personal misdeeds exposed, and most all long to be able to choose their own path without any interference.

Why am I writing this book? I have no need for notoriety or recognition. I am compelled to share the exuberance of how the Lord has flooded me with favor, extending my natural life, excavating for me the richness from the mine of His grace, and sustaining me through every dire obstacle I have encountered during my lifetime. All this has come since from an early age I have trusted Jesus as my Savior and Lord. Why does it need to be written? The same faith in God through Jesus is applicable to everyone alive. There are some born in our world who will have no rational opportunity to have cognitive alertness to understand the good news of God's saving grace. The Lord God will take care of that issue on His own. Underage deaths, persons with unsolvable brain disorders, or even those who have died without ever hearing of the love of Jesus are not exceptions in the sense of exemptions. They are exceptional—those God especially loves—and because He is always fair and just, He will attend to those people with His unconditional wisdom.

Why would anyone want to read this book? There comes a moment in the life of everyone that makes us stop the world and contemplate, Why am I alive, and what will happen to me in the future? No one can erase those thoughts. We all need to turn ourselves inside out and discover what we are made of in the interior. We question our attachment to the landscape around us. We probe as to how we fit this planet. We try to analyze our purpose. There is a blurry future we want to envision with clarity, and this book looks at us through the eyes of God because we will take God's Word as a microscope and magnify the small cells of our person and lay out the map of where our lives should be. The Bible speaks of the harsh reality of where we stand with God. It fully explains His love and compassion, but we are subject to His holiness and must respond in belief or denial. What is revealed may hurt, but as change is made by having Jesus through genuine faith, the expanse of our heart and soul brightens and unveils a rapturous hope.

Why would it make a difference? Because God is much more in love with us than we could ever be with Him. He wants to share His kind affection with us that we may love Him and our brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, even strangers in the identical manner as His.

During the period of writing this book, I have had two major surgeries and another hospital procedure. Two days ago, I was discharged from the second surgery and am in the throes of recovery at home presently. I had to remain a couple of days longer to wait for my low heart rate to normalize. When I was moved from ICU to a private room, a male and a female, members of the hospital medical team, entered and stood on either side of my bed. I asked what they were doing. They informed me that they were going to examine me for wounds. And examine they did—removing my gown; inspecting every aspect of my torso from toenail to hair follicle on my head; recording every scratch, bruise, bump, mole, skin tag, discoloration that they could find, right side, left side, topside, backside—modesty be gone.

I was regowned, and they departed without explanation. I know that our state has regulations for their regulations so they can regulate, and hospitals have to conform to higher dictates they may not prefer or be cited. They may have wanted to cover all possibilities to avoid lawsuits. I would have wished that such an examination with needles and tubes hanging onto me were to alleviate my personal angst. Whatever the reason, it must have been necessary, thorough, and for my good. This is what Severe Christianity seeks—the total toe-to-crown-of-the-head examination of our spiritual condition. At what level are we trusting God? What is the life we are to live beyond the words that we declare about the Christian faith?

Buckle up. We are going for a ride.

Is Belief Reality?

The room is full of guys. Sometimes a woman or two will show up but usually get outnumbered by male noise and hang out elsewhere. One man covers a recliner completely with arms dangling over the sides and his left leg extending to the floor. Another guy rants at the last call and sloshes some drink from the can in his hand onto the carpet. A couple of others yell, Hey, you're blocking the game. Move your bod! The four men on the sofa squirm and squeeze for a more comfortable position and try to get an angle where they can view the screen around the antsy guys that keep jumping up at bad calls. The Niners are down by three. The visitor rests calmly from an armchair where he cannot actually see the screen. A Niners linebacker grabs a tipped pass and runs a pick-six into the end zone, and the living room explodes. High-fives and hoopla dances circle the furniture, sending a confetti of nachos to various crannies. Alas, the ref whistles the play dead, and the first half is over.

A few scatter for refills and bathroom shots. The heavy dude wearing the red jersey with the name and number almost worn off asks if anyone wants to throw the ball in the street before the game starts. Some return with new hot dogs in their mouths, and football talk continues until Nate speaks.

Hey, Fish. Who's your friend?

Pete Fisher, nicknamed the Fish, singles out the man in the inconspicuous chair and introduces, Guys, this is Jesus. I just met him. Actually, he found me near the beach and told me to come with him. I invited him here. Seems like a cool guy. Jesus, help yourself to the grub.

Andy Blond Hair, brother to the Fish, keeps the conversation alive. What do you do, dude?

Jesus, with the straightest of faces, replies, I am the Son of God. I have come down from heaven to bind up the wounded, heal the sick, and cast out demons. I have come that people could have abundant eternal life. My mission is to die for the sins of everyone in the world. I will do that and then return to life three days later. Everyone who commits to Me in faith and follows Me will receive forgiveness from all sins and will have eternal life.

The men in the room push Pause on the remote, hold the food in their mouths stationary, and freeze their stares. The room itself has become quite icy. Everyone is thinking without words. What? Who? Has the game started yet?

Put yourself in the cottage where the original disciples were lounging. The man Jesus was sitting with them, reclining at the dinner meal, and declaring that God was His Father, that He came to earth from heaven to provide salvation and forgive sins, and that He was the only way to be forgiven by God and be reconciled to Him. Would you believe that person is the Creator of the universe? Do you this moment believe that Jesus the man was also God, and He is the personification of all truth and the one and only way to become a child of the Almighty? Are you without hesitation able to declare with confidence that the man who slept in a boat during a storm and had dinner with some scurrilous tax collectors and put children in his lap made everything and without Him nothing came into being that exists is God?

The human mind cannot prove this to itself. It is beyond the brain. It is outside the realm of credulity that simply by faith a person can live forever. The faith referred to here is not a general nebulous feeling that there must be a force or creature indescribable that causes life to extend past our mortal death experience. Faith, according to the volume of accumulated writings known as the Bible, is very strict and confined. There is no variety of choices in this faith. It is directed to one figure solely, Jesus Christ. All other religious explanations and schemes must be erroneous, irrespective of precepts that may be partially true or promises given beneficial to adherents.

* * * * *

Jeannie and Amanda have become almost sisters as their paths have swathed out a binding friendship. They met at the local pharmacy, both filling prescriptions for their pregnancies. Coincidentally, they landed in the waiting room of the same physician, laughed about it, did lunch, and scheduled a night out together with their husbands on a river cruise. Their cell phones became friends. They continued to update their camaraderie during their birthing although Amanda's delivery was much more beleaguered. Jeannie was kept in a close loop during Amanda's two-day delivery, and the new boy was incubated for three weeks. Later, with newborns in arms and strollers, they chatted in the baby section at Walmart. Jeannie mentioned that God told her that Amanda's little Bret would survive the difficult birth and live a normal life. This was the first time Amanda paused to contemplate that kind of revelation. It would not rock the friendship, but this side of Jeannie was new and seemed odd. God? Is there God? Why then the harrowing episode in maternity? Does He actually talk with people? Could He not have made the delivery standard and safe? Her friend's viewpoint felt a bit drenched with psychic noise.

We ask the same questions in different ways. Do I believe God actually talks to us mortals? How can I be assured it is real directive and truly coming from the throne in heaven? Do I believe God to be this personal, or am I merely juggling my imagination, hoping these acts are the Lord's intentions?

Faith in Jesus is drastic. It is often presented as a lightweight emotional twist of words whereby I didn't believe before, but now I do. See, I am saying so. I am thinking that Jesus is true—at least I never thought about Him as real and someone that I need before this moment. I heard the spiel about Jesus coming from heaven, so I'm in with that. I am a believer.

And none of us can dispute the sincerity of one making this turnaround. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, as James writes in his letter, and man looks on the outside while God examines the heart. The Lord knows all who are in His family and those who may wish they were but are not. Jesus declared in His hillside sermon that not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom. Only those who do the Heavenly Father's will are eligible. Yet many answer yes when they are asked if they are believers in Jesus Christ. Is salvation a tossup? Heads I win, tails you lose? Is the true family of God chosen by a roulette wheel? Is the Christian faith merely swinging the bat in the air until the piñata is struck and the goodies pour out in torrents? Or is everything simply predetermined and without the flexibility of human choice?

The Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas, What must I do to be saved? The jailer was petrified at the prospects of losing all the felons in the cells after an unanticipated earthquake reverberated the cages and the doors had flown open. Was he asking about his life or his soul? And those of us alive at present ask the same question: What must I do to be saved? We are thinking eternity when we ask.

The apostle's reply was the simple, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. So someone declares truthfully, I believe. At this juncture, God knows, but we do not ascertain who are the authentics and who are the wannabees. We sigh a whew and walk away, satisfied that we now have a new sister or brother in the family of God. The seeker signed the paper. Deal done. Five years pass, and our sister or brother is bound by another code. The person cannot be found among church people. The affiliations are mostly with the drug-and-booze-drenched party crowd. The vocabulary is crass, and God's sacred name is viciously profaned among the various mundane sexual slanders. The one we once delighted as our new kin in the faith has pursued other bizarre experimental philosophies considered borderline demonic. How saved is that one now?

We may sit on a rock with fist under chin like Rodin's Thinker and conclude what seems to be a reasonable assessment—the person was never really sincere enough to be saved—or we change our theology from eternal security to temporal insecurity: We can gain it; we can lose it. This disillusionment can bleed over into our own estimation of our personal commitment to Christ. Jesus made a statement that throws us into the water, clinging to the side of the boat with one hand: The one who endures to the end shall be saved. This leaves us at dangerous risk. How much sinning that I still do is enough to cause me to lose the salvation I was given by Jesus? Do I have to ask the Lord repeatedly for salvation all over again? What if I do not have time to beg His forgiveness when I die suddenly?

This book is going to zoom in on the various levels of which those who claim belief in Jesus Christ pursue Him. Is there such a thing as Christianity by degrees? Apparently in the human mind there is, for some merely dabble in faith though genuinely so. Others take it as it comes like it's time for dinner, so let's eat. However, a portion of the truly Christian conglomerate extend themselves to learn more, experience more, and try determinedly to follow what they are taught about the sort of life God expects as recorded in His Bible. To be fair, there are many who do not claim any allegiance to Jesus who behave more Christian than some who are but do not conduct themselves in the manner belief in the Lord requires. Some Christians act more atheistic than believeristic. However, there is a level of redeemed people who are thoroughly saturated with a holy resonance, for their hours are consumed with a faith that drinks of God. They think about the Lord continually, practically shut out the outside world, and are unnaturally absorbed with whether they are pleasing and serving Christ. They are drowned in dedication to Jesus Christ.

And frankly, an unknown number of people claim to be Christians—at least wear the name—but have no real knowledge of what belief actually entails. Jesus spoke those unmerciful words: Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, even though they have done good deeds in Jesus's name or proclaimed a message that sounds like it is part of the Gospel. This book states from the beginning that faith in Jesus goes beyond words. A person cannot sample a new birth just as a newborn fresh from the mother's canal cannot reason, I think I'll try out humanity to see if I like it.

The aim of this writing is to delve into sacred territory beyond what our words express when we declare ourselves to be believers in Jesus Christ and what He accomplished in His visit to earth. Already we are predicting controversial discussion, for many might dispute that they are believing enough already, and God has accepted them into the kingdom without the need for further pursuit. They stay steady in faith and duty and are content to continue the routine they have accepted. Anything more is coercion by zealous opinion, not divine decree. They already get enough in-your-face compulsion from the culture, and they do not need flamingly freakish Jesus-coated people to soak them with their guilt-gushing religious regulations. To insist there is a deeper place to go sets the stage for judgmentalism, an action contrary to scriptural instruction.

That might be someone's mindset, yet we must ask why God's sacred script urges believers to press on toward maturity. Some readers of the apostle's letters in ancient Corinth were withheld the meatier counsel from God because they could only handle the baby stuff. St. Paul in Philippians launched into a personal drive to know Jesus Christ to such an extreme that the power of His resurrection would be his only satisfaction, and he pressed on and upward to the prize of the highest calling of God. In strong terms, he coached to win the contest; and thus, he concludes that he was not shadowboxing in the faith. He fought a vigorous long-term battle, adhered to the precepts of Christian belief, and completed his course. He added,

Not that I have already attained to the understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus so that I experience the meaning of it. But I press on to the prize of God's highest calling for me.

The drive was to go to a higher place with his Lord in the process of digging deeper into the catacombs of commitment.

There was no stagnation in Jeremiah's speaking for the Lord:

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all of your heart.

The believer cannot stop in the journey of belief. It has to continue. I am quite aware that it is useless to write about the greater interior habitation with Christ if I am not willing to continue this trek personally as my fingers peck out the thoughts contained in this treatise. This is a milestone endeavor for all who search wholeheartedly.

There is a notion floating like a bobber on the end of a fishing line that a quantum different exists between the Jesus who came to earth and the one who will be in heaven. It is not so much that Jesus becomes more godlike than He already is, but our fusion to Him will be far superior when we see Him face to face. It cannot be disputed that the infected mortality that we have now will be free of hindrances and we will enjoy the Lord immensely much more than here on earth. We will be changed in the twinkling of an eye at the Lord's return—new bodies—and much of what we are presently needs transforming. We will no longer sin. What a major league relief! Suffering will have disappeared. I can feel it already! The songwriter penned, O that will be glory for me…when by His grace I shall look on His face. But the Lord we know does not change, as Jeremiah records in Lamentations, and His compassions do not fail. The apostle Peter wrote that Jesus is the very same yesterday, today, and eternally.

We will see a Jesus who was as much human being as we are and even more because He encountered every mortal temptation and never yielded to the sin of giving in to them, but we will behold the God Jesus is—every bit as majestic and honorable as the Father and the Holy Spirit, holy and perfectly loving. There is the possibility for every Christian to broaden knowledge of God, to fellowship intimately to a degree not yet experienced, and to delve into a love bond beyond our present comprehension. Is that a level someone might be willing to pursue right this instance, a foretaste of heaven here, and an encounter with the Holy One that can be transported to our eternal haven?

All this teaches us that the life of faith in Jesus is a climb upward by descending downward to the root system of the great Tree of Life.

O the depth of both the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His riches and His ways past discovering.

The upward call digs deeper. This book will attempt to investigate our unchartered territory as millions have pursued. We will expect visions and dreams of our God previously unimagined. This does not imply that we will yield to fantasy and speculation, add to the sacred writ something of our own conjecture. We will review what we have known and perhaps have forgotten, examine the meaning of practices that have become tepid and tasteless, and hopefully be led to pristine insights that the Lord may have reserved for us to absorb.

The Chasm between Culture and the Convert

Followers of Jesus have a significantly different understanding of spiritual matters from those who don't. This leaves no room to brag. If anything, having special knowledge and insight should lower our self-acclaim, for actually being able to access the Lord and gain insight into His truth and modus operandi is a gift of grace and should generate a genuine sense of thankfulness. We who believe learn to see life and our surroundings through the eyes of God.

The apostle Paul explains that spiritual insight is given and governed by the Holy Spirit. Others claim that they are spiritual too though they are not referencing Christian spirituality. What they are defining about themselves is a kind of adherence to religion or they are invigorating the immaterial part of their being by an imagined energy from an unknown reservoir. It could be that they believe in a higher source but cannot accurately describe it for there is no actual written documentation that has been revealed in the same manner as the Bible. They may have an attachment to a religion that has a god and creedal literature to back it up, but the difference between the followers of Jesus and those who subscribe otherwise is that there has been no visible being from above or outside the world that has appeared to show them the veracity of their god. They may claim to have had prophets or sages that have pointed to their god, but they have not had God Himself appear on earth to show them the true God. Christians have had the actual physical visit of their God to explain Himself, and there is no one who stands beside Him for comparison, nor is there any being to replace Him.

Throughout history many have claimed to be prophets. The true prophets defined in the Judeo-Christian writings have a 100 percent accuracy rate for their projected foresight. Anyone else is a phony. The book of Acts revealed individuals who gained their income from making alleged predictions, calling themselves prophets but were self-exaggerated and cheap figureheads, not God-appointed servants. Every true prophet was deployed from above to carry a divine message directed by the purposes of God Himself to warn of impending judgment, interpret signs and actions for inquirers, or promise His favor on faithful people. In Scripture, the apostles Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and Jesus Himself all warn of false seers and anti-Christian teachers that boast their foresight but are frauds.

For many outside Christianity, spirituality is derived from what a person sees in