The Living Word

My life hasn't always been lived following God. Many times in the past I have struggled with sin, still do at times. But I came across the story of the immoral woman who anointed Jesus with fragrant oil in Luke 7. I love how the NLT renders verse 47: "I tell you, her sins-and they are many-have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love." This is my story as well. I have found the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ and the more I realize through His Word what that means, the greater my love for Him grows.

An Old, Tired Argument

I read an article entitled "Who Did Christ Die For?" that argued for the idea of limited atonement (the notion that Jesus only died for a few...those who were marked for salvation, but not for the whole world), and had to sigh a great sigh that this ancient argument between believers still lives. I, myself, have been caught up in arguing the different sides of this issue in the past, only to find myself frustrated and angry at people who don't see the same as I do. Aside from the fact that I see many, many weaknesses in the author's arguments and that the article is full of conclusions that were reached by assumptions, I have come to one very startling conclusion in the whole Arminian vs. Calvinism argument--Neither side will EVER convince the other that they are wrong and change their mind.

Which causes me to take several steps back and look at the whole thing from a wide angle view and say, "After all is said and done, what does all this theological arguing matter to begin with?"I mean, what good does it do anyone to believe Jesus died for only some? Does it serve any purpose to equip the Christian to greater witness or win people to Christ? Does it serve any purpose to disciple a Christian to have a closer walk with God? Or is it all just an academic exercise that gets people caught up in arguing theology? And if it's that, how much damage has it done through all the centuries to the Church in bringing disunity and strife?

When all is said and done, I am neither Calvinistic nor Arminian. I am a child of God. I was a sinner who has been purchased by the blood of Jesus and given the gift of a RELATIONSHIP with the Creator of all the universe. My faith does not rest in a theological treatise. My faith is in the Son of God who is the Way to the Father.

Above all, I think all this theology stops woefully short of what is truly the mind of God, anyway. It only presents one side of the whole truth, but fails to see what only God in His infinite wisdom can see. The very beginning of the article condemns itself when it argues that the gospel must be logical. It isn't logical at all, and man is only capable of seeing just so much of the wisdom of God.

The conclusion of the matter? Let us rejoice in the fact that we are His because of what Christ has done, let us marvel at the reality that His ways are so far above our ways, and let us pray, let us truly love God and love one another, and let us tell as many people that will listen of the good news we have come to know, and leave the rest up to God.

The Importance of Prayer

I have come to a place in my life where the exercise of prayer has become far more than something I feel like I have to do or something I feel like God wants all good Christians to practice. I have come to the place where I’m beginning to understand that to say prayer is important is like saying breathing is important.

The Good News

God purposely set the bar of righteousness higher than any man can reach on his own. His righteousness is perfect, and yet that's what God requires of us. It is God's intention that we see the impossibility of attaining this righteousness that is necessary to be right with Him and fall upon His GRACE and MERCY that was offered to us freely through Jesus. Jesus fulfilled ALL righteousness in Himself as a man so that we, who have no hope of attaining it ourselves, can come to Him by faith, putting our complete trust in Him and Him alone. This is why the gospel is called Good News! See Romans chapters 5 - 8.

Experiencing The Holy Spirit

This is an exerpt from "Experiencing The Spirit" by Henry and Melvin Blackaby, page 72.

"The greatest single tragedy of the people of God today is that they're missing the fullness of the Spirit. If they only knew what they were missing, they would stop everything and seek Him with all their hearts. For apart from the active presence of the Holy Spirit, there's no possibility of an individual or a church doing anything but practicing religious activity. You may be very active and involved in your church, but without the fullness of the Spirit, you'll miss the power of God. What God is seeking from us is not more activity, but a deeper relationship."

State of the Church

What happened to the days when the Church acted like the life-changing entity she was created to be? A time when the people who call themselves followers of Christ felt an urgency to affect the climate of their culture around them spiritually. A time when they weren't so busy caught up in what has come to be known as the everyday-ness of life...like going to work and paying the bills are the purpose of our lives. Don't get me wrong, we need to work and we have to pay the bills. But we have made it so those things have become almost the whole focus of how we live our lives. The mission of Christ, our mission as a Church, gets relegated to something we do on the weekends and usually involves coming to a building once a week on Sunday and maybe a small group during the week. In short, the Church is just too busy to be the Church!
Somehow I think Jesus had another idea. I envision in my mind a day, not even that long ago comparatively, where if you were a follower of Christ, your whole purpose in life changed and the people in the Church became a spiritual force that brought transformation to people's lives. A time when people would come together corporately and pray down heaven in their community. A time when the business of the kingdom WAS their business in everyday life, even as they went to work each day. But nobody filled their lives with cable TV, iPods, internet, political talk radio, or Xbox. And hey, I'm one who enjoys getting online throughout the day. So in a very real sense, I'm preaching to myself here.
Somehow though, the Church in the West generally and the Church in America specifically thinks that getting involved in politics is the answer to changing our culture. And we have become so caught up in the world's systems that we have become impotent to affect anyone's lives. Whatever happened to getting together to get down on our knees to do battle in the heavenlies for our culture? Whatever happened to our dependence upon God to change the hearts of the ungodly? Whatever happened to crying out in desperation for an outpouring of God's Spirit in our day which is the ONLY way we will ever see any kind of lasting change?
I fear the hearts of the Western Church has grown hard and its love for Jesus has grown lukewarm. We have a fiery passion for right doctrine, but we are often times aloof when it comes to desiring a genuine encounter with God. We want to see ungodliness eradicated from our laws, but we fail to see that the laws only reflect the heart and desire of the people and WE, the Church, are guilty for standing idly by and watching while those people's hearts are held captive by the deception of the enemy, Satan.
And yet it is in places like China where the Church has been forced underground because of intense persecution that its members see the greatest amount of fruit with people coming to Christ in large numbers. It's because they are desperate! They have nothing but Jesus! So they call upon His name and depend on His power to do what they are unable to do. They feel the urgency! They feel God's passion for the lost and they know how to do battle in prayer to see God's kingdom established in their midst!
When will the Western Church wake up? What will it take to arouse us out of our slumber so that we quit depending on our little church programs and political action committees and milk-toast Sunday services that are filled with fine entertainment and good speaking? When will we tire of being fed good teaching but never use the teaching in our world? When will we get hungry for the Holy Spirit to move in power once again in our meetings and in our communities? When will we recognize our own lack of love for Jesus that is plainly displayed in the absence of our works? Were we not called to be a people of good works? Were we not called to be a people who turn the world upside down as the demonstration of the power of God is displayed through us? Were we not called to become filled with the Spirit and then go out and be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world (i.e. our own home town, our own state, our own nation, and then reaching the nations)?
Wake up Church! Come alive with passion for Jesus once again! Come together and pray! Go into your prayer closets and pray! Arise and do battle in the heavenlies! This is our purpose! This is our calling! This is our mission!

Transformational Love

In thinking about how God chooses love instead of guilt in confronting us with our sins, one might ask if this is too soft. Don't some people need to be coerced or given an ultimatum to get them to do what's right? My answer to that is if getting them to do what's right is the only thing you're interested in, then sure. Some people need that. There's nothing like the "hold 'em over hell on a rotten stick" method to scare someone into acting right. But what about their heart?
If someone were to use fear to get someone to act right, the person may change their ways...for a while. But try as they may, lasting change will ever be elusive and the person will find themselves right back in the same mess again, struggling with guilt and shame because they fell once again...and again...and again. It's really an endless cycle.
That's because, as God knows so well, it is the heart that needs to change in order for the behavior to have any lasting change. We see this in the story of the prodigal son. While the older brother stayed home and did everything right, his heart was just as far away from his father as the younger son who left. And ironically, in the end, it was the younger son whose heart was changed and devoted to his father over the older son who followed all the rules.
But God knows that it is love and compassion that have the power to truly change a heart. It's not at all that God is soft on sin. I am one who believes that God's grace is truly greater than legalistic coercion. Many writers have written books on God's grace, but what many fail to include is WHY His grace is greater.
While it certainly makes us feel more comfortable in God's presence knowing that He accepts us as we are and that there is nothing we can do to earn his love, God doesn't want to leave us in the same lifestyle He found us in. He loves us too much for Him to just wink at our sin and leave us to ourselves. God knows that our sins separate us from a deeper relationship with Him and He wants to remove that sin so that we can experience the fullness of life that He promises in Him. But instead of doing that through hammering us into submission, He does it through grace, compassion, loving kindness, and a whole lot of patience.
You see, God's love isn't just accepting. It is also transforming! I am persuaded that if someone gets even a glimpse of God's true love for us, it will transform that person's heart and life forever. If someone sets their mind to diving into His love, studying it, searching it out for greater understanding, praying it, and breathing it in on a daily basis, he will experience an ever-changing heart that looks like Jesus more and more.
Why does this work? Because that is what our hearts were made for! Being in union with God, living loved, living life as His beloved children, knowing we are cared for and eternally cherished by the only One whose opinion about us truly counts! When we get a hold of that, our lives become secure and we no longer feel the need to seek out selfish desires that alienate us from God and his creation. We begin to be transformed on the inside and that transformation automatically works its way outward. Then we begin to love the things He loves, and hate the things (like sin) that He hates. We begin to see the world through "grace-healed eyes," as Irenaeus puts it.
I want to conclude this post with recounting the story in Luke 7. Jesus was at the home of a Pharisee named Simon, dining with him. All of a sudden a woman with an immoral reputation walks in and proceeds to wash Jesus' feet with her tears and dry them with her hair, then pour expensive and fragrant perfume on them. Of course Simon was indignant, thinking to himself, "If this guy really were a prophet he would know what kind of woman she is." Jesus responds, reading his thoughts, with a parable.
The parable is about two men who owed the same person sums of money. The first person owed the creditor like $50 and the second person owed him like $50, 000, but neither could pay him back. So the creditor forgave them both. Then Jesus asked Simon a question. "Which person would love him more?" Simon answered correctly by saying, "The one who had been forgiven the most." Jesus goes on to affirm that this is, indeed, correct, and then pointing to the woman, He said that this woman had been forgiven much, therefore she is showing much love.
You see, something happened in the heart of that woman. More than likely, she had heard Jesus preach and/or saw Him ministering to someone and telling of His forgiveness no matter what they had done. She obviously got the revelation that she, too, was forgiven by the same Father that Jesus came to reveal. Because of this revelation, the woman's heart and life were completely changed...transformed! She was no longer the same person she was. In gratitude, she came to the One who showed her such matchless love and gave Him the only appropriate response--sheer, undignified worship. In doing so she was stating, "You gave me my life back when I was completely lost, now I give You my life completely. I am forever Yours."