Theology

Humanity of God

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Many struggle with the concept of the humanity of God.  Or for that matter the Godliness of man.  What is the significance of Jesus as the perfect man and the perfect God at the same time.  Is it all that important?  Is it necessary for me, as a Christian, to believe this dual congruence?

If Jesus was just a very holy man, a great teacher or rabbi, just a great pious person or a holy man with a charismatic character it is enough?   I have found sources that see Jesus as a not single unified being but a physical entity that had a divine consciousness.  But on further study that philosophy has too many pitfalls.  And while you are at it contrary to the Bible.

In my simple mind there are two truths on this subject:
1.  The mark of humanity is birth (Jesus was born of a woman)
2.  The mark of divinity is resurrection (the empty tomb of Jesus)

So why did God become man?  Why did Jesus become God with us?
Why did Jesus become like us?  Why did Jesus become God for us?

It is all about feelings.  Not empathy.  I have never given birth.  I will never know the pain or the changes a mother goes through.  But for that matter I really don’t want to know. I don’t want to experience child birth.  But without being a woman how will I ever understand?

Only a human could sympathize with our weaknesses and temptations. In His humanity, Jesus was subjected to all the same kinds of trials that we are, and He is, therefore, able to sympathize with us and to aid us. He was tempted; He was persecuted; He was poor; He was despised; He suffered physical pain; and He endured the sorrows of a lingering and most cruel death. Only a human being could experience these things, and only a human being could fully understand them through experience.

God’s deity limits His intimacy. God is omniscient up to a point of experience.  Science has examined it all, but not one can know what it is like to be me.

What do you think?

Life, Personal, Sermon Illustration

Ship on the Horizon

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Growing up with a father that always seemed greater than life was not always easy. He worked all the time.  If he wasn’t at Ordside Garage, he would be working on some other car for a neighbor or friend.  It was a rare treat to spend time with my dad alone.  One special Sunday I was invited to an adventure. We were to go to the Monterey wharf to see one of the last three mast sailing ships still working the coast of California.  I could not have been more than 9 or 10. We toured the ship just me and my dad.

It was amazing.  Tall masts with furled sails.  The hull was made of iron but the rest was all wood and rope. We toured through each berth and saw the cook in the galley. It was a wondrous time.  The smells and the sights were so much better because I was sharing with my dad.

But the tide was going out and we had to disembark.  So we watched as the brightly uniformed crew of that grand old ship pull all the lines in and set its grand white sails and moved into that arching blue bay.
It was going to San Francisco, its next point of call. That ship was an object of beauty and strength. We stood there until the white sails became nothing more than a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky came down to mingle with one another. Then someone in the crowd said, “Look, she’s gone”!

That day is often brought to memory.  My sometimes over shadowing Father, the perfect blue sky, and  while sails as they seemed to fall off the edge of the world. But it also brings to mind that exclamation from the crowd, “Look, she’s gone”.  But we must ask, “Gone where?” Gone from my sight, that is all. That grand ship with its large mast and hull was not any less strong or able to cut the waves. That ship was diminished size only because of my perspective.  That ship is “gone” because I can not see it any more.

My dad is no longer with us.  He has sailed over the horizon.  Is he gone?  I don’t think so.  He is just out of sight and never out of mind. In my golden years of retirement I often wonder how I will be remembered when I am “gone”.

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Life, Personal

Joseph Monson – My Dad

I posted this previously in a different media and I thought I might share it again.

Every time I open my hands and look at the grooves and line in my own hands, I see my father.  I have big hands: the hands of German English heritage. Just like my father’s hands, the digits are not well suited to playing the piano or sometimes even typing.  There are few images in my mind of my father which are stronger than the sight of his hands. My father’s hands were huge, but the most remarkable characteristic was the rough callousness of them.  My dad was a mechanic in the days before computers and smog control devices.  Being a mechanic meant you were tough, greasy, tolerant, and patient.
Those great big hands that would reach out to me to come and give him a hug seemed so coarse.  Years of working with hot engines, sharp tools, and caustic chemicals made them that way.  I remember dad when mom was in the hospital for a three day visit and trying to fix the kids something to eat, reaching out for a hot black iron frying pan from the electric stove top.  He had picked it up to take it to the table and he had gone five steps before he realized it was burning hot.  His hands were so desensitized to heat it took that long to set off the warning bells in his head.  With one giant throw, the pan and our dinner went into the sink splattering oil and our food all over the wall.
I guess the reason I remember my father’s hands so well is because as he suffered from the ravages of Alzheimer’s and the rest of his world shrank his hands were still the most remarkable thing to see. They bore the unmistakable signs of hard work.  Those thick, strong and rough hands did not shrunk with the rest of his body.  Those hands that had gripped steel, plunged thousands of times into gasoline and oil,  and pulled chains never seemed to change.  In his last days as his body could no longer keep up with demands of his shrinking world, his hands hung from his arms from still thick wrists that stretched any watch band he had ever known.  They were not the hands that should be idle in darkening days.  They shook and were increasingly awkward when he tried to wipe the drool off his  own proud chin.

Some day all will meet our ends in this world.  But today I will remember a grand man with big hands.

TWO GREAT HANDS

My Father was a man with two great hands,
The skin was rough as it could be.
Work was his life with its pulls and commands,
But he always made time for me.

Sleep and rest were not part of his clock,
There was always someone else in need.
Never did he stop, even when he could drop,
For there were many mouths at home to feed.

His bones were often tired and painfully uncured,
His hands often bandaged and red.
But a promise was a promise, and his bond was his word,
And everyone believed what he said.

He was my dad, and constant each day.
It amazed me how he could be ever so strong,
In his life, in his convictions and in his way.
In my eyes he would never do wrong.

Consistent in actions and strong were his words,
All were made better for walking with this man.
My hands are not as rough, or nearly as tough,
But my inheritance was his gentleness of his hand.

My Dad was a man with two working hands,
Until his life did stop with a beat.
Oh how I miss him, his hands and loving gentle soul,
But these hands I have will ever remind and keep.

Life, Ramblings

Why I Write

My purpose of writing is to clean out the cob webs of my life.  It is not enough to just be.  You have to pass something along. I have done much in my life but little to make waves.  What is strange is some would say I talk to much, others would say I am stoic and don’t talk much at all.  When I am quiet, I am told that I must be mad or angry.  When I am loud and verbose it is a attitude of passion not an attitude rejection of others ideas.
My writing is about my personal struggle, my personal grasping for happiness, my travail for my destination that almost pushed all else out of my journey.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing myself to the great journalistic giants of history, but the more I study, the more I read, the more I understand, I find there are paths, rivulets of cohesive continuity in the chaos.  If I just take a moment to look carefully and stop for a moment, I learn.   I have realized that it is the journey not the destination.
Serendipity is finding something when looking for something else.  It is the discovery of joy along the way.  It is the “ah ha” moments we encounter as we stumble along our journey. Serendipity is not luck.  It is not finding a crisp 20 dollar bill along the road.  Serendipity is having your efforts produce more than you expect.  Serendipity still requires effort.  It still requires a pointing toward the destination, because if you don’ know where you are going, you have already arrived.
But Serendipity is looking for words to describe a grandchild, the sweet strength in the quiet of a son and in doing so discovering beauty of someone that makes you happy.  Understanding is found in the most unlikely places.  Serendipity is offering a kind word to a stranger just to get them to smile for a moment, and having them change their mind about suicide. Serendipity is walking the halls of a small hospital trying to do the right thing and be confronted with someone asking to be led to a new path.
Serendipity is writing a description of one person’s life and discovering your own.
Ministry, Preaching, Sermon Illustration

Knowing of God and Knowing God

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Hank, had just graduated from college ….with Landscaping contractor’s license.  He moved to a small rural town and opened a small office, bought a new pickup truck and waited for his first job.

The first job that was offered him was to remove a stump in a farmer’s field.

Wanted to act as if he knew what he was doing when he met the farmer in the middle of the pasture and all the cows.  Dynamite was the logical choice.  After helping the farmer to move all the cows to another pasture, Hank pulled out the box of explosives.

Hank dug a small hole under the base of the very large tree just as was illustrated in his textbook he had read the night before. He knew he would have to pack it in with enough dirt to contain the blast.  He used a calculator to determine the length of the fuse.

The problem was how much to use… He had no idea….  He didn’t want the farmer to know he as an amateur so he simply guessed at the number of sticks of dynamite.  So hoping it would be enough to move the stump but not so much as to kill them all, he put in the charge with the fuse, tamped it in carefully, covered it with dirt.

The moment came with a look at the farmer and a nod he lit the fuse and ran for cover.

An eternity seemed to pass.  In the middle of faint mooing of cows in the distance and huddled down behind the farmer’s tractor, it happened.

It was a mighty blast

The stump not only moved but it was catapulted into the air fifty feet.  It did three complete revolutions and landed right in the middle of the cab of his new pickup.

In the calm that followed, in the deathly silence, the farmer turned to hank and said: “With a bit more practice you should be able land those thing in the truck bed every time.”

There is a great difference between hearing how something is done and actually doing it.

And so there is a great difference between hearing what God is like and Knowing God.

 

Church, Life, Ministry, Ramblings, Uncategorized

Passion

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Passion is what energizes life. It is the zing in our waking.  It is the empowerment to go one more time. It turns the impossible into possible. In fact, if you don’t have any passion in your life, your ministry, your church, or in your salvation, you will become boring, dull, routine, monotonous. What I am saying here is, if you don’t have passion in your life you are not living. You are existing. God made you to live a passionate life and to serve him and his people with vitality. Life with vibrancy, energy, and enthusiasm is not the exception, it is the expected norm. He wants you to have this in your life.  If you are not living on the edge of excitement you are probably just taking up space.

In John 10, Jesus said “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” God wants you to live a full life, a fulfilling life, which is the basis for a fulfilling your calling to be one of his followers. If that’s true, that’s the kind of life God meant for us to live. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not merely endured. Sadly, however, countless thousands of pastors, hundreds of thousands of Godly church members and ministry leaders are simply enduring, holding on for the ride and hoping to survive until death without blowing it too badly.

The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:9, “God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.” God’s will for you is to live and lead in a spiritual adventure. The life that God plans for you is not a mundane boring life. It is an adventurous life. Helen Keller once said, “Life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing.” I often think the same should be true of our spiritual walk – it’s a daring, bold adventure, or it’s nothing.

Brent Hobbs defines passion this way:
Passion is waking up in the morning wherever you are and bounding out of bed because you know there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in and that you’re good at. Something that’s bigger than you are and you can hardly wait to get at it again. It’s something you’d rather be doing more than anything else. You wouldn’t give it up for money because it means more to you than money.

Life, Theology, Worship

Lent

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Lent is a season in which the Church proclaims life is more than just getting by day to day. Lent is about renewal.  It is observed by self-denial. It is saying I can do without something that may well be set in concrete in our lives.  For some it is giving up sweets, for others it is giving up certain meals, for others it is not eating meat of any kind two or three days a week. Lent is a kind of short term “New Year’s Resolution.”

The word Lent means “Spring;” we use it now when we speak of the spring fast–the forty days before Easter Day–I mean forty days not including Sundays, for Sundays are never fast days.

Does the word “fast” frighten you? Does it mean something hard, something very distasteful, or perhaps something that does not concern you at all? If so, it is because you have not yet learnt for yourself (as I hope you will this Lent) its true meaning and happiness.

This is the invitation which our LORD sends to each one of us this Lent–listen to His Voice.  It is as if Jesus is speaking to us “Come ye yourselves (here mention your own name) apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.”

Lent is about realizing I’m on a journey I don’t really get, led by a God I can’t really grasp.  And the end of it all is God.

Life, Sermon Illustration

Kids and Grandkids – Prayer

My kids now have kids of their own.  My prayer is the same.  I want so much for them and I know the only answer to their modern situations, their modern pains, their modern struggles is God.

Heavenly Father, thank You for my kid’s salvation. Thank You for a plan that included them and part of that plan included You. Thank You that You have lavished Your riches and Your inheritance on them, although they could do nothing to earn it or deserve it.  They have their own wills, yet I am praying that you reach out to them and grasp them in your hands.  Provide your grace.

I pray for my kids’s legs to walk in step with your will. Always with You, not racing ahead, not lagging behind, not wandering off, but day-by-day walking with Jesus, so that He is their constant companion. God, take them where You want them to go and keep them from the places they shouldn’t go. Give them strength to continue when they feel weak. Give them courage to keep on walking with You, even when the road ahead looks uncertain and dim. Give them grace to bridge gaps, to leap walls, to span the separations between people and groups.

I pray for my kid’s feet, that You would place them where You want them to stand. Plant their feet on the immovable rock of Jesus. Talk to them when storms come or the world’s attractions try to lure them down its path. Whisper in their ears and to their spirits, “Stand firm.”

Through my kid’s arms, always do Your work. Strengthen them, hold them up, and direct them to do whatever You want them to do. Make their time valuable for eternity, not just the quick flash that is the span of their days on earth.

I pray for my kid’s hands that they will often fold them in prayer. Make them mighty in prayer. Teach them to pray after Your own heart. Enable them to live their lives so that everyone will see Your signature, “This one is the Lord’s.”

Give my kids the patience to wait on You, Lord, so that You may renew their spirits and they may soar as on eagle’s wings.

Give me the strength to continue in prayer for my kids.  I trust in your mercy and grace.  I live in faith that you will make a mighty difference in their lives.  My prayer is that they may know You.

AMEN

Bible Study, Preaching

Are we missing something here?

Open Letter to all that Preach and teach

There is an ongoing epidemic in church pulpits across the nation.  This sickness is not being addressed by preachers and teachers who are simply not willing to address the need for a cure. The pulpits rarely preach and teach about the greatest soul killer.  Subjects are hedged and avoided.  Here is a list that just is not heard anymore:

  • “Stop sinning!” — Jesus, John 5:14
  • “Flee fornication” — the apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:18, KJV
  • “God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” — Hebrews 13:4
  • “If you owe taxes, pay taxes” — the apostle Paul, Romans 13:7
  • “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature together with its passions and appetites.” — the apostle Paul, Galatians 5:24, Amplified
  • “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” — Jesus, Matthew 5:28
  • “…all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone” — the apostle John, Revelation 21:8
  • “Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error” — the apostle Paul, Romans 1:26b-27
  • Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery…” — the apostle Paul, Ephesians 5:18
  • “Do not let unwholesome [foul, profane, worthless, vulgar] words ever come out of your mouth…” — the apostle Paul, Ephesians 4:29, Amplified

I just don’t understand.  Why is it like it is? In Romans, Paul proclaims, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel.” Is that due to the fear of man? Is it a desire to please the hearers? It is that cowardly preachers are afraid of offending people? It is a conscious attempt to speak only uplifting things?

I leave that to your judgment.

2 Timothy 4:2-3  Preach the word… [3] For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

Life, Personal, Ramblings

Church growth and electric screwdrivers

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I often see something that needs to be fixed around the house.  I have all tools, I have the ability to look up the solutions, and I have the desire to get it done.  The results are not always the best; if you looked at my work the new braces on the fence may not be very straight, and that engine on the old truck finally gave up after working on it for six months.

But what I would like to vent on today is often in the middle of one project, I get distracted with another.  While working on the fence and putting new slats with an electric screwdriver, a distraction presents itself.  The very tool in my hand becomes a distraction.  Reminders of other screws that need tightening are brought to mind.  Matter of fact everything around me seems too need my screwdriver touch.

The church, it seems to me, is caught in the same trap.  There have been volumes of writings on Church Growth.  Seminars, educations, blogs, denominational studies on church growth abound.  They have become the electric screwdrivers of Evangelical Christianity.  “We can solve all our problems with increasing numbers.” Massive outputs of time, talent and treasure have been invested in this Church electric screwdriver.

Why is bigger always better? Why has it become the go-to answer for every church.  For that matter, has church growth become a solution looking for a problem?

I look at the Bible for answers.  What should be the pattern for today’s church?  There are amazing similarities between the first century church and the church today.  They had large churches and small churches.  There were healthy, sick and dead churches. There were churches with strong leaders, weak leaders, and even sinful leaders.  These churches worshiped God in imperfect ways.  There were arguments over beliefs and practices.  Some were in homes while others were big enough to gather in communal gatherings.

If there ever was a picture of variety, it was in the early church.  The church in Jerusalem, Corinth, Laodicea, Thessalonica and Ephesus had little in common outside of following scripture and practicing communion and water baptism.  Their goal was not building new edifices to gather in.  Church growth was never a solution.  It was a natural evidence of something else.

When a church was in trouble, when a church was not living up to the standards of Jesus the New testament writers did not exhort them to get bigger.  They were told the argumentative to get along.  The immoral church was told to repent.  The sinning church was warned of impending punishment.  Not once did Paul, Luke, John, or Peter ever tell a church in crisis to expand.

No New Testament writer ever told a sick, dying, sinful or hurting church to get bigger.  Church growth and church health are not equal.

Church growth is not the electric screwdriver that can fix a church that is not what it should be.  No early church leader ever pointed to church growth as the fix for problems.

Yes, I know that Jesus said to go out and make disciples and that would mean growth.  But a sick church is not helped or maybe even harmed by an in swell of more people.  John, when he addressed the challenges, sins and blessings of the seven churches in Revelation, never told any of them to grow.  No early church leader ever told any church – sick or healthy – to structure for growth. Not every church was growing. Many were barely hanging on, while staying faithful. But there’s not even a hint that the apostles saw their lack of numerical growth as evidence of a problem.

In fact, unless you’re looking at the New Testament through a modern, western church growth lens, it’s impossible to miss the fact that small, suffering churches were given far more praise for their faithfulness than large, growing churches were given for the numerical increase.

With my electric screwdriver in hand and everything around me needing a wood screw, it is easy to be distracted from the fence that needs fixing.  I believe that churches are supposed to grow.  But I do not think then next Church growth tool is the answer.  I believe that health not size is the emphasis of the first church and should be the emphasis of my church.

I’m merely raising a much-overlooked point about where we place our priorities.  The fence needs to be fixed before we worry about that new deck that is planned.

Have to go, the battery on my electric screwdriver is now charged.

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The Study of God and Life