Category Archives: Theology

Theology

Who is God?

Placing a name or description, or even a title on Jesus has been debated for over 2,000 years.  Mark 8:27 Jesus asked what others said.  Who do men say that I am …?

When Jesus asked the question, “Who do men say that I am? He did not need the information.  He wanted to discover what was in the minds of the men and women who spoke of him. It does not matter what you call God.  As long as you do. This is the most important question which confronts people of all generation.

What is particularly important that the apostles should be instructed in the all-important fact of WHO Jesus is, and was, and shall be forever.  And that is the real issue.  We may well call Him by many names, never-the-less, the vital, the essence of who He was, is, and will always be must be unchangeable. A God that does not change.  Just because we call Him one thing does not change His being.  What we call Jesus is more of a personal thing. It speaks loudly our perception of God.   I had one lady in church that used the name of “Baby Jesus”, another would refer to God as “Daddy God”, and some would call Him Messiah, Christ, Lord, King, Father, or even Triune God Head.  And each describes what the individual is looking for in God.

Listen carefully as you pray.  What names do you use?  And please remember:

  1. You can’t change God
  2. You can’t change God’s will
  3. You can’t change God’s plan
  4. You can change God’s methodology because he still uses people.
  5. You can change you
  6. God can change you.

Comments?

Life, Sermon Illustration, Theology

Trials and our response

No one likes being tested.  No one likes being on trial.  No one likes discipline. But they happen.  It happens.  There is no one immune to them.  They just happen.  We have no control over them.  But for a Christian they must be seen as a “woe is me moments.”   Our response makes all the difference.

First of all , one way of responding to these unwanted events in you life is to REBEL.  I will fight back.  I will put all my strength into a response that is characterized by anger, deceit, vengeance all filled with an attitude of pay back.

The second way to respond is to simply REJECT.  You can push back from the situation and cloister yourself way from it all.  Dig a hole in the sand and stick your head in. You can simply pretend it does not exist.  But it does not go away.

The next response can well be characterized as RESIGN.  You believe that nay response is futile.  You shout to God “I give up, I am powerless.”  You lay down in the gutter and let the garbage of live cover you and drive you to the sewer.  In a way, it is a move forward from the other previous two responses because you are acknowledging your inability to meet the challenge on your own. But in there is little hope.

In my opinion the best response to trials is REJOICE.  This may sound a little strange.  You might well thing that is simply impossible.  Quoting Jesus, “God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things about you (Matthew 5).”  God is still God and he has a blessing for you.

This does not mean to slather your problems with a sugar coating.  It is looking intently at that situation with clarity and reality and say, “I choose to accept this situation as a situation which God can work.”

It turns a prison to a palace.

It turns an heartache into a heart throb.

It turns a trial into a triumph.

It is the best choice.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

Life, Personal, Preaching, Theology, Uncategorized

Holy and the day to day

For some reason, when it comes to our relationship with God, there are a lot of Christians who have taken the position that since God extends His grace to me when I sin, I ought to keep on sinning so that I can get more of God’s grace my life. On more than one occasion I have witnessed those who claim to be disciples of Jesus intentionally choose to do something they know to be sin and comment that it’s OK because they know that God will forgive them.

There seems to be an inner desire that wants to presume, to do something based upon unknown or future consequence.  To do something without proof.  Christians frequently presumes to act, teach, and promote beyond what the Lord has written. We frequently see the following rationale offered to justify man’s action, soothe his own conscience, and silence the inner plea to submit to God’s Word:

  • God is our Heavenly Father. He loves me! Does He not want me to be happy? I know my Father wants me to have this, because it will make me happy!
  • God may have been strict in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament we are under a system of grace. Therefore, we are not in bondage to worry about keeping every law perfectly. We do not have to worry about tedious, detailed observances of any kind.
  • Do you really think God would send me to hell just for doing this?
  • Will God really condemn me for this one sin?
  • What’s so bad about doing this?
  • Who will be hurt by doing that?
  • No one will ever know about what I do.

True, God is our heavenly Father, and He dearly loves us; however, He seeks our best interest, which is not always what we want, what satisfies for the moment, or what makes us happy in this instant.

But we pull out the Big Bible and quote from Matthew 7:9-11

Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

The assumption here is that we know more about what is good for us than God.  We are assuming that we have judgment, clarity, foresight, knowledge, and wisdom paramount to God!

Since what we want and what God wants for us are often two distinct paths, only presumption would ignore God’s revealed will for us in exchange for satisfying our palpitating desires.

So then how should we live?

Let’s start with the fact that while It’s simple, It’s not easy.

I have discovered that losing weight is simple, but it’s not easy. All you have to do to lose weight is to consume fewer calories than your body needs. That’s simple. You figure out how many calories your body needs each day to maintain your present weight and then you eat less than that.  But restriction of the day to day snacks, and occasional cans of soda is not so easy.

The day to day life in Jesus is simple but it is not easy.

It’s Something I Have to Do

Nobody else can do it for you and you can’t do it for anyone else.  You are the only one that can die to sin in your life. Your wife can’t do it for you.  Not your Pastor or even your neighbor. It is my decision for me.   My deciding to live a holy life, that is a life that is in the center of God’s will and obedient to God’s will.

 God can’t or won’t do it for you, in the sense that he won’t take away your free will and force you to live a holy life, He’s willing to help in the form of the Holy Spirit. With God’s help you can do it. Do you believe that? But you have to want to. And it is a partnership.

Comments?

Life, Personal, Theology

Quote of the day

It will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages, while excited men of time rush about confusing motion with progress. But it will pay in the long run and the true Christian is not much interested in anything short of that. (A.W. Tozer)

Life, Theology

Thought about Justification

1 Comment

Confessing Christ with one’s mouth is not something that a person does to be justified; it is something a justified person does.  Those who are justified are ashamed of their sin and proud of their Savior!   Just as it is natural for a newborn baby to open its mouth and cry, so it is only natural for a sinner saved by grace to open his mouth and give full credit to Christ.  “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!” (Psalm 107:2).  “Saying so” is not something that a person does to be redeemed; it is something a redeemed person does!”

Life, Theology

Greater is He….

What is it to be a true Christian?

What does it mean to be united to Christ?

What happens when we are accepted by the Creator Beloved?

To start with, it is not simply Christ stepping in the way between God’s justice and God’s Love.  He does not just step into our world and settle our debts.  He does this act of mercy and love but there is so much more.  He comes into our lives to give us a perfect picture, a divine example, of what we should be.

Jesus is the perfect personality.  It is not for us to make an imitation of that perfection.  It is not for us to copy.  Any effort at this will only lead to frustration, discouragement, defeat and utter failure.  It is only when we allow God to be God that He will duplicate Himself in us.

Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world.

If my God lives in me, if he is part and parcel of my life, then I am another Christ.  No error here, I am not like Him, but I have a same mind set.  I am not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewal of my mind.  Christ develops in me a new life. I have heard many times that man can never be perfect.  We all fail, we all fall short of God’s perfection.  But never-the-less, this quandary should not stop us from moving forward toward the high calling that is in Jesus. We must take God’s provision for our failure and rise above it through His grace.

We must take Jesus as a substitute for our miserable selves. It is not me who lives but Christ in me. Our lives are a constant giving up.  We must give up that which is bad.  And just as important if no more so, we must give up the good as well and take Him instead. It is hard for us to learn that we must relinquish even the good in order that we will depend upon divine impulses rather than even our best attainments.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

 

Life, Theology

Belief and Faith

We live in a “Christian Nation”.  I have heard this statement thousands of times.  Christianity is the most adherents at 31% of the world population. Many of these people say with confidence, that they ‘believe’ in God. Many of these same people think that this is enough to guarantee that their sins are forgiven and gain them admission to Heaven. However, is this simple ‘belief’ in God enough? Is this ‘belief’ the same as the ‘faith’ spoken of in the Bible? I wanted to share a few thoughts.

True faith is more than simply ‘believing’

Faith absolutely includes an element of belief. But they are not the same.  As I used to tell my kids, “if they are not spelled the same they are not the same.”  A belief in something or someone is required before faith can be manifested. I believe that Grand Canyon is still deep, even though I am not on its edge right now.  I can believe in things that do not affect my life.  I don’t have to worry about the depth of the Grand Canyon grabbing me up as I set at my desk. I can believe in things that do not affect my life. I can live my life without this great hole in the ground because of my belief.  So also you may well believe in God but if that belief does not directly affect your life it is not faith.  It will not save you, it will not justify you, it will not bring God’s favor on you.

To have faith is to put trust in that someone or something.  And who or what you place your trusting faith in is what has far-reaching, even super-natural, eternal, effect.

Story here:  A pastor and his wife was scheduled to attend a very large denominational meeting on the other side of the nation.  Pastor’s wife had never been on a plane before and was very frightened.   She believed that airplanes can fly.  She was terrified. Her husband trying to console her quoted scripture, you know the Bible says, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.”  After a moment of thought she replied, “LO I will be with you.”

We can well say that I believe a plane can take me from here to there, but if I’m afraid to get on it, I reveal that I have no ‘faith’ in that plane. Also, if I do not get on the plane, I have no reason to expect it to take me anywhere. I must exercise my ‘faith’ in that plane, by boarding it, if I am to receive the benefits it offers.

Faith results in changed actions

I am not one to judge anyone’s faith or belief.  Never-the-less I have personally seen those who claim to be followers of Christ but their lifestyle remained the same.  They still

I have heard of, and have known, some people who claim to be followers of Christ; however, their lifestyle remained the same after they became Christians as it was before they became Christians. They still lived the same way, talked the same way, and had the same mindset as they did when they were living in rebellion to God. Were they exercising true faith? Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), meaning that our actions will reveal the change our heart has gone through when we became His true followers. Conversely, if our lives do not exhibit a change of allegiance from self to Jesus, we have good reason to doubt our salvation is real at all. John writes, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (I John 2:3). True faith is evidenced by a change in the way we act.

Faith results in changed priorities

If anything in our lives is more important than God, our priorities are misplaced and we should examine ourselves to see if we have truly given our lives to Christ. If our lives are focused more on our jobs, our favorite sports team, the next new technological toy, our love life, or anything else that diverts the center of our attention away from God, we should question the validity, or at least the maturity, of our faith.

Conclusion

The mindset of belief can well be simply a passive mental acceptance that amounts to nothing.  Belief must affect your life. Simply to say “I believe in God” means very little if it is merely coming from the lips and not from the heart. People can, and do, say that they ‘believe’ in God, but their lives never change at all. However, when one has true faith in God, one’s life cannot help but reveal this truth. True faith, dependence/reliance/trust, in God reveals itself in our actions, our thought life, and our priorities. If we claim we are Christians, but this is not the attitude of our hearts, it would be wise to ask God to search our hearts, cleanse us, mold us into the people that He wants us to be, and strengthen our faith.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.

Church, Ramblings, Theology

Facebook as a creator of sickness

I sit here in my little place of authorship.  I have a TV on my right giving me the news of the day.  I have three computer screens in front of me.  One has my home security cameras going to make sure I know what the weather is like just outside of my walls.  The main monitor is 34 inches and is high definition; I justify it because my eyes are not as good as they used to be.  My third monitor has my email split with my instant messenger.  I guess someone looking in would think I was pretty well saturated with technology. I am often distracted by another app running behind the current task of writing by a new post on Facebook.

I have to ask the question:  What does all this technology and social media affect my life?  Further, what affect does this plethora of technology have upon the way that you and I have of the church?

Facebook is mostly positive.  Lots of pictures of dogs and food.  Once and a while there is a reaction to news or something really affecting one of my Facebook “Friends”.  I have a link on my main screen that takes me to the church I attend. The church has certainly leveraged this technology to advance the cause of Christ.  This blog is my way of making my voice heard in the din of voices in the internet.  I don’t know if anyone is reading this stuff, but it is enough to know I am out there.  The technology is not the illness.

The issue is the direct affect this glut of information upon the church.  I have concerns and so should you.

I just reviewed a book on the social media and how it is affecting the morals and behaviors of its adherents. MIT professor Sherry Trukle wrote to point to the dangers and advantages of social media. Here are a few thoughts I have to agree with professor Trukle as I look at today’s “Facebook culture.”  The sickness names are just a simple way to characterize the issues and are not from Trukle’s work.

  1. Facebook Attention Deficit Disorder (FADD)

I read a great deal.  Real books on real paper is my medium.  Sure I use the internet to get a different opinion on a subject, but for the most part, the books I have in my small library are the prime sources for both inspiration and new thoughts.  But the pervasive invasion of Facebook and like sources has become the only place where some find information.  Short texts, tweets, likes, and smiley faces have become the medium of today.  How do we expect a person from the FADD (Facebook Attention Deficit Disorder) to come to church and listen to a preacher for forty minutes?  Do we insist each part of the service to be accentuated by a slick video presentation.  Do we expect the message to be broken up by a joke or a funny antidote? I believe the only medicine for the church member suffering from FADD is to teach them on how important big thoughts can be.  To teach them that the message is more than a bunch of tweets and thumbs up, but the very prophecy of God.

  1. Facebook Authority Syndrome (FAS)

Our church small groups have changed by the mindset that everyone’s opinion is as worthy as everyone else’s.  There is no hierarchy of authority.  Social media has broken down the barriers of the authority of source.  If I say on my Facebook page that my opinion is just as good as the local minister, there are few that would contradict me.  Not because it is true but because I have freedom of speech and in the egalitarian world of social media there is no consequences to being wrong.  Everyone has a voice.  We all have a platform to speak our mind, to say our piece. After any article or news story, anyone can offer an opinion. And certainly much of this is good.  But it leads to the view that if all have an authority to speak, then no one can be an authority.  We have come to a place where no one person’s opinion should be valued or weighted more than any other’s. Needless to say, this presents problems for the church and pastors to have real God-given authority in the lives of its people.

  1. Facebook Artificiality Ailment (FAA)

In a book by a MIT professor Sherry Trukle, she states “On social-networking sites such as Facebook, we think we will be presenting ourselves, but our profile ends up as somebody else—often the fantasy of who we want to be.”  What she was saying was even though social media users may feel more connected, they become even more artificial. We post only what you want others to know about you.  The good stuff. Sometimes this good stuff is not entirely true but slanted to make the poster feel better. Consequently, those with FAD (Facebook Artificiality Disease) become more and more distant.  “I posted, therefore I am social.”

The church was founded upon and demands that we engage with each other.  And this engagement has to be truthful, loving and forgiving.  We have to engage with people as they really are.  It is only in honesty that we can face our sin and grow together with Jesus.

  1. Social Media Phantom Malady (SMPM)

I remember when the nickle postcard went up to ten cents.  It was a method of communication that was limited to just a few lines of script.  It was open for all to see. Sure this medium lasted quite a while but has morphed into a marketing tool and little else. Today, I find people readily admitting they would rather leave a voicemail or send an e-mail than talk face-to-face.  Social media has reduced human contact to a point which is limited to a couple of lines in a tweet.  Modern technology, can create an almost non-physical, quasi-phantom existence SMPM.

If I read the church web page and watch my favorite preacher on YouTube it is enough. But the church was born in a face to face encounter.  A hand shake or a polite hug is more gratifying that a million lines of tweets.

  1. Negative Accountability and Commitment Condition. (NACC)

Probably the most attractive features of the use of social media communications is that it does not require much of a commitment and little or no accountability.  We control to the last letter of our posts, the duration, degree of the radical, and level of our contact.  There is little commitment to the those we are spewing to.  There is a mindset that “everybody” wants to know my meal plan.  It is a low-commitment and low-accountability form of interaction.

But the Christian life and real Christian relationships don’t work this way. We do have obligations to one another to be real.  Oh there are times we would rather not have those obligations. There are times we would rather not have accountability.  But the Christian Church is one of commitments and obligations.  In the church there is something called a covenant. The Christian church has a corporate aspect that stands directly against the individualistic and self-determined relational patterns of our modern technological age.

The Bitter Pill

So is the answer is to unplug and shut it all down?  Should we all move away from it all and get back to our old time religion roots? Not at all.  Do we abandon technology, move to the countryside, and adopt an Amish-like existence? I am not here to condemn methodologies but to point out the symptoms. Symptoms of a sickness that could well be infecting your life.

Yes, we may well need a sabbatical from this all purveying contagion of illness.  But in reality we can’t get away from it all.  My bitter pill is to be honest with your posts.  Have accountability.  Don’t let the ease of communication become the only communication.  Realize there are authorities in life.  People are not all the same: love them, keep them in your prayers and go to church and shake a hand.

Tell me what you think.

Church, Preaching, Theology, Worship

An echo and an AMEN to A.W. Tozer

The more I read of A.W Tozer, a mid-western born preacher, pastor, author, magazine editor and spiritual mentor to hundreds, the more he both puzzles and astounds me.  In very simple terms he internalizes the words of Jesus and through his writing Christianity is furthered.  He wrote, and preached thousands of words on a myriad of subjects.  He seemed to come back again and again to three themes.  What they are is a genuine heartache for the state of the church.

You could l characterize the first of these concerns as seeing the Bible as an end to itself.  It is seen as a recipe.  Take a verse here and another one from over there and use them to prove your point.  The Bible becomes nothing more than a collection of facts that can be dissected, positioned, extrapolated and preached.  Preachers today seem to have all the right illustrations and answers to any given problem.  They pour two parts from one test tube in the beaker and a couple of drops from another and the expected chemical reaction is the result.  There is little room for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Tozer saw this as the shortest path to dead pulpits and dead churches.  You can be,” Tozer delighted in saying, “straight as a gun barrel theologically and as empty as one spiritually.”  The goal of reading the Bible is not to know more about the Bible, or to be able to quote the correct scripture at the correct time, but to be a pointer.  A pointer to God Himself.  The Word of God, while extremely important, can become more than the source of those words.

Tozer’s second concern was a growing practicality of  programs in the church; to insert methods and techniques to make the Church more palatable with the world.  He called it pragmatism.  It was an attempt to make the church more popular.  It was to add things that were more fun, more exciting, more attractive to the world.   He wrote,The temptation to introduce “new” things into the work of God has always been too strong for some people to resist. The Church has suffered untold injury at the hands of well-intentioned but misguided persons who have felt that they know more about running God’s work than Christ and His apostles did. Let me interject here.  There is nothing inherently wrong with any method unless it dilutes the message or pushes out God. Methodology has become rampant in the church today.  No longer do we sing hymns about the blood of Jesus.  No longer is the bread and cup venerated as a means of grace; instead we have prepackaged cups with bread in the tear off.  It is neater but is it better?  Is convention better than the graceful God.  I wonder what Peter would think of our church service if he silently crept in the back of these new relevant churches.

Third in his triad of concerns for the church was the lack of true worship.  He remarked over and over again about the loss of the sense of majesty, reverence and awe.  The Church as he saw it, was trivializing the very thing it was trying to accomplish. He saw it becoming a form of entertainment.  Hymns were being replaced by gospel songs, (and now by choruses sung over and over again).  The pulpit was becoming a place of humor and endless illustrations. He heard too many laughs and not enough sobs.  According to Tozer, “Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence Our Father Which Art in Heaven.”

AMEN and AMEN

Your comments are appreciated.

Life, Ramblings, Theology

Liar, Liar, pants on fire.

8 Comments

There is a divide in our country.  It is not about morals.  It is not about religion.  It is about our President of the United States.  President Trump, because of his method of communication has caused much discussion and even hot tempers.  I read this morning a writer’s characterization of this split. The “division between pro-Trump voters and anti-Trump voters could be described as follows: his opponents took Trump literally, but not seriously; whereas his supporters took him seriously, but not literally.”

What we say is important.  I believe the way we say things are also important.  The Pro-Trumper,s find his style of communications refreshing and appreciate is “speak your mind” way of addressing issues. The “Never Trump group calls our President a liar. They want to judge President Trump on his words based upon a concept of what truth is.  They seem to want to take every word, every phrase and dissect them to a point to where these snippets become giant inferences of the total character of the man speaking them.  Sure, we all live in a community, we all speak with a perceived audience and with every word we expect them to hear the words as we speak from our ears.  It just doesn’t work that way. So should I, or even the President be responsible for everyone to instantly understand the framework of the speaker and not from the hearer?

So what am I trying to say?  What is a lie?  Are the words spoken to be judged by the hearer or the speaker?  I am well aware the answer to this last question expects to be a yes or no.  But it is not that easy.  First and probably most important is the words must be understood from the person saying them.  A lie is a mismatch between what’s in your heart, that is what you take to be true and what’s on your tongue or what we say is true.  We lie when we speak words that are not what our lives and hearts believe. We lie when we speak words that contradict our thoughts.

OK, how about someone who speaks words that are part of his life and fully believes in what he is saying?  Is this inwardly truthful person a liar?  If I truly believe the world is flat and say so, am I a liar?  Don’t think so.  I am just speaking my heart, my belief, my understanding of the truth.  Am a liar?  No I am not.  I am just deceived or haven’t placed truth deep in my heart.  Liar, no, deceived, yes.

If you call someone a liar you are simply saying to the one speaking the words that your concept of the truth is different than what someone else is saying.  But the problem saying they are a liar is a judgement based upon your truth.  Your understanding of the truth is not the same as the speaker’s understanding of the truth.  And if speaker is not violating the internal understanding of the speaker’s truth, it is not a lie.

Maybe those who are so critical of our President are on to something. God does care what we think. And he knows that what we really think will always, in the end, come out of our mouth. The issue is a judgement based on our own personal views of truth. And your truth is not always my truth.  Your truth may not be anyone else’s truth.   We as Christians are people who are on a journey to the place where we believe that truth brings more hope than lies. That journey makes us more and more honest — more and more like God our Father who never speaks what he knows to be untrue, and whose heart is disclosed to us perfectly in the words of Scripture, and, above all, in the Word of God, Jesus his only-begotten Son.  I cannot call anyone a liar.  And I truly believe neither should any other Christian.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.