The Basics

Sigh. Somehow it became Saturday night and I haven't blogged yet this week. I don't feel as bad about this as I did a couple weeks ago though, because it wasn't for a lack of ideas that I fell down on the job. I've just been busy. I thought about writing about Judas this week, or some of the other things in the book of John because that's where I'm reading right now. Honestly though, I'm really tired and I want to go to bed, so I'm going to just write something really basic that I've been thinking about a lot. That doesn't mean it's not profitable, but I do apologize that I may not be giving it 100% tonight because we should always be giving 100% to spiritual things. 

 

"If you love me, keep my commandments" John 14:15

If I don't try to keep the commandments of The Lord, I don't love him. 

"Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself" James 2:17

If my faith doesn't make me do something, I don't have faith. 

These verses show us that it's not really a matter of "stop saying and start doing" when it comes to our spiritual lives. (Works, after all, don't make you righteous. God justifies you because he is gracious to those who have faith in him.) It's more of a matter of not being honest with ourselves and realizing that if we aren't following God's commandments, and doing good things because God is God, we don't have the qualities of faith and love that we think we have. 

So we need to just stop it right now with the "I love Jesus, but I'm going to get drunk every weekend" or the even more subtle "I love Jesus, but maybe I don't have to try so hard to stop thinking this kind of bad thought...I like this thought." And we certainly have to stop saying things like "Works can't save me so I'm just going to believe in Jesus and live only for myself" or the much more insidious "Faith saves me, so I shouldn't do this or that good thing lest people think I believe justification comes through works."

That's not love and that's not faith. If I have true love for and faith in my Lord, I will do things for him and for his people. It's the natural consequence of those attitudes. I know it's hard because no one can be perfected in love and faith on this earth, but we have to push in that direction. As we work on our hearts, the outward signs of the goodness of the inner man will increase and be perfected along with us. 

Evangelism isn't a Cake Walk

We aren't promised an easy life as Christians. We know that. There are all sorts of verses that tell us that. The one verse that seems most clear to me is John 16:33 where Jesus says to his disciples:

"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

We can't deny that we are guaranteed tribulations in this world. Things are going to be hard--I don't deny that. But I think I've always assumed that there would be SOME THINGS that wouldn't be hard.

One such thing that I assumed wouldn't make my life difficult, that would be straight forward and rewarding, was evangelism. I don't know why in America I thought this would be the thing that wouldn't be hard. But the conversation in my mind literally went, "Sure, people will persecute you for being a Christian, and not sinning will be difficult sometimes, and maybe you won't be a part of some sort of in crowd, but God wants you to evangelize, so that will never be a thorn in your side."

Clearly this perspective came from an ignorance of the Bible, or perhaps some sort of wishful thinking and idealism that I was magically impervious to the struggles of the great men of the Bible. Two occasions that specifically come to mind that prove how wrong I really was are Ezekiel and the 70.

In Ezekiel 2 and 3 God tells Ezekiel that preaching to the Israelites will be like having thorns all over him and sitting on scorpions. To top it off, in 3:7 He tells Ezekiel outright that the Israelites aren't even going to listen to what he has to say. Evangelism wasn't going to be easy for Ezekiel, but God told him to go and to speak.

In Luke 10, Jesus sends 70 (72?) of his followers out to preach the gospel. He says that He is sending them out as lambs among wolves. And then he gives them specific instructions for what to do when people inevitably do not receive their message. Evangelism wasn't going to be easy for the 70, but God told them to go and to speak.

Maybe I was the only crazy person that had this idea that evangelism wouldn't hurt. Maybe I was alone in the view that even if people rejected the gospel (which I know is a constant reality), it wouldn't be so bad for me as a teacher. But if I wasn't alone in that, if you also thought evangelism wasn't one of those trying aspects of the Christian life, you can take comfort along with me by looking back once again to John 16:33.


"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Our Lord and Savior has overcome the world. It's going to be okay, and it's going to be worth it. It's going to be hard, and people will reject the gospel which was so graciously given to mankind, and maybe they will reject you, or treat you badly, or you will feel badly because people you try to teach don't believe...but it will be worth it. Christ has overcome the world.

Being Prepared

I realized today that I didn't post this week, and that I really didn't have an idea for a new post, but that today was in fact the last day of the week. I knew I had to think of something because I told myself that I would post on here every week in 2014 and so far I have. I can't stop now.

So here I was, racking my brain about what I could possibly talk about. I thought about just posting some verses (which would certainly be beneficial), and then I thought of resurrecting one of my less inspired ideas, and then I came up with the idea that I'm going to share with you now.

Maybe you guessed from the title that I will be very ironically talking about preparedness.

I heard a very insightful sermon recently about the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25. After Jesus concludes the story he admonishes his listeners to "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." (I'm realizing now that I'm probably just going to plagiarize this sermon right now, so just know that these thoughts are not unique to me)

There are lots of things that we cannot anticipate the time of with any real certainty. Both good things and bad things are going to happen to us with virtually no forewarning. But we can't just let life happen to us. We need to turn good things that happen to us into opportunities for personal growth, and bad things into opportunities to rely more fully on God. The only way to ensure that we use our experiences to their maximum benefit is to be prepared to handle them.

We aren't capable of magically preparing ourselves. That makes me sad because I like to think that I control things and that I can fix them and make them happen and really impact situations. Then again I can take comfort in the fact that God can prepare us for life's challenges through his Word. My best planning outside of his word won't help me handle the highs and lows of life effectively.


So really this post is for the unprepared me more than it is for you. I was really discouraged for a large portion of this week because of things I couldn't control that I wanted to control, but instead of relying on God and going to his word for support, or even thinking diligently about the things I knew from his word that would prepare me for these specific scenarios, I just stayed discouraged. So, when it became the end of the week, I was not prepared with tons of spiritual thoughts I had been thinking during the week because I spent most of it not preparing to be prepared, or perhaps suffering the consequences of being prepared. At the very least I did not spend enough time in the Word this week, which is the key to preparedness for life's situations.

I've been much less discouraged the past couple of days (thanks to some very reliable and encouraging friends, and prayer) but I know I can definitely do a better job letting God prepare me for the situations in my life.

He's here for us and his word is here for us. We cannot forget to utilize those resources.

Run.

What should we do about temptation to sin? That should be a big question in the minds of Christian people. How do we respond when we are confronted with the wrong choice, when we are encouraged to make the wrong choice? We have to have answers for those questions.


When I was thinking about writing this post about how to handle temptations, I immediately thought of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife. He literally flees from the temptation to sin, which is the point I wanted to drive at. But, as I read the story again, something stood out to me that is an equally important way to approach temptation.

Genesis 39:6b-12 
Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” But he refused and said to his master's wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her.
  But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house.

What I didn't notice before that I noticed on this reading was that Joseph didn't just immediately run away from the problem that was facing him. Potiphar's wife tried to entice him day after day, but his first response wasn't to run. His first response was to refuse her and proclaim his faith. "I can't sin against God this way." He likely had to say these words over and over again to her, having to convince himself to continually deny her, even though she tempted him. I wouldn't claim to know that this was indeed a true temptation for Joseph, except from the evidence we see in the rest of this story.

After he diligently and dutifully spent days and days relying on God and his affirmation of his own faith to resist temptation, the day came when she caught him, tempted him, and he ran away. If he had no desire to sin in this scenario he could have just continued to tell her no. But instead he ran, leaving his responsibilities and his position so that he wouldn't sin.

I think the dual nature of Joseph's approach to this temptation (resisting while remaining/fleeing) can tell us lots of good things.

1. People of faith will be tempted.
2. Strong faith will help us through temptations, but it won't make us magically impervious to them or incapable of succumbing to them.
3. Reminding ourselves why we shouldn't sin can help us resist temptation.
4. Running from the source of our temptation doesn't always have to be our first response (Although I would never lessen the power or importance of verses 2 Timothy 2:22 or 1 Corinthians 6:18. I would say present resistance is a form of fleeing)
5. We can teach others about God even when we are tempted (Joseph taught Potiphar's wife about serving God amidst this temptation)
6. It's better to run than to give in. 

 I want to spend a little more time talking about point 6 here. I think it's so important that we realize that Joseph couldn't just tell her no forever. Perhaps he could have, but when he felt as though he could no longer resist her, he left. Joseph was a pillar of morality and trust in God, but he had to run away from this temptation. That tells me that it's not shameful to have to run away from sin, or to change what we do so that we resist temptation. It is often necessary, and always beneficial. It wasn't worth it to Joseph to say "No, I can probably just keep telling her no. I want to do the wrong thing, but I probably won't. It's probably fine." When he was honest with himself and realized that he was no longer going to be able to resist her in the way he once had, he took more drastic measures and he kept from sinning.

There should be no length we are unwilling to go to to stop from sinning. Period. If we can resist temptation easily through faith and will-power--great. But if not, let's do whatever we need to do to cut sin out of our lives.

He Set Eternity in our Hearts

Sorry this post is coming so late in the week. For some reason I really had trouble coming up with something to talk about, especially amidst the busyness of lectures, etc.

I decided to talk about something that came up more than once in my week in really subtle ways, but that I think is really interesting and important. Admittedly, I need to think a lot more about this complex subject.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11
"I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."

Think about that while I tell you these two stories from my week:

One.

I'm very blessed to be able to have lots of conversations about God with people who don't necessarily believe in him or care about what he has to say. In my field, almost everyone is an atheist, but they are generally very interested in my alternative perspective. Recently, during one of these conversations, a colleague of mine asked me a question that she feared was too personal. "Do you really, actually, deep down inside, feel that there is something more?"

That was a weird question for me. People don't usually approach my faith in terms of my feelings about it. I don't usually approach my faith in terms of my feelings about it. But then I realized that the answer to her question was "Absolutely yes, I know there is something more. I can feel it inside of me." I really don't think I had ever said that to a person before, because I focus a lot on intellectually coming to God. But I realized as I answered her, that another way that I believe in God is because I know in my heart that he is the explanation for things. I'm the kind of person who likes to know things only with my brain, but there is something to be said for feeling in your heart that there is something more to life than what you can come up with in your own brain.

After all, that's exactly the premise of Ecc 3:11. God set eternity in our hearts, not so that we can understand all of the things that God has done or what God understands, but so we can understand that there is something more. Like I said, I need to think about that verse and what it means more, but there seemed to be a strong correlation between what my colleague was referencing in my "gut feelings" and the idea of God "setting eternity in our hearts." Whether or not she believed in something more, she was willing to recognize that my belief (especially in life after death) would be something that stemmed at least in part from an internal instinct of some sort.

Now for story number two. This isn't really my story as much as the other one was. I started watching this documentary called "Surviving Progress" on Netflix. I've been busy, so I've only watched about 15 minutes of it. During this fifteen minutes, a evolutionary scientist (I think that was his title) was explaining the differences and similarities between chimps and humans. The major difference he brought out was that when something doesn't work how it is supposed to for a chimp, they just keep trying to do whatever it is and they don't understand why it doesn't work. Alternatively, if something doesn't work in the way that a human expects it to based on prior knowledge, they look for an unobservable factor that could be causing this different outcome.

The scientist, of course, gave no explanation as to why humans, rather than chimps, are capable of understanding that there could be invisible/unobservable things that explain life. Those are his words, not mine. He stated very plainly that humans are looking for unobservable things to explain life, not just individual events.

So here it was again, Ecclesiastes 3:11 from the mouth of a scientist. Humans are seeking explanations that go beyond our senses. What the scientist didn't say, but that I will, is that our Creator gave us that longing to help us search for him.

I don't know if there is anything that one could make of that searching, that longing, or that "gut feeling" without the Creator. If there is just nothing else--no more to this life (or beyond this life)--why is there this pervasive idea that we are looking for something that we naturally perceive inside ourselves?

(Now that I'm reading this, I'm realizing that these ideas are probably also informed in part by C.S. Lewis and his discussion of the Law of Human Nature in Mere Christianity. Regardless, I take comfort and hope in the fact that God gives us tools to help us search for him and find him. And I hope that we can all be aware of those around us who are looking and feeling so that we can help guide them to the true God.)

"Being single is sad," "Marriage is dumb," and lots of other things we should never say again.

I am not a big facebooker. In fact, I rarely ever got on Facebook before November of last year. At that point, it became a sort of cathartic place for me to go, where my friends and I could share stories of loved ones and encourage one another in a time of loss. I spent a good portion of November and December checking Facebook pretty regularly to look for these encouraging words, and it became a habit for me. There's nothing wrong with a Facebook habit. In fact, you can learn lots and lots of things on Facebook. Everyone seems to have an opinion there that they feel comfortable expressing, so you learn lots of aspects of lots of issues.

Recently, I have noticed lots of sharers on the subject of singleness and marriage. These people fall into six main categories (maybe there are more, but these sharers are certainly the loudest): people who are single and happy, people who are married and happy, people who are single and upset, people who are single and angry about people who are married, people who are married and scoff at those who are single, and married people who are mad at single people for being mad at married people.

I'm just going to be super honest about this, not many of those groups are thinking the right way about the issue. I don't claim to know everything about being single or being married, but I do know that the bible teaches us about it.

1 Corinthians 7 (Emphasis mine)

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” ² But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. ³ The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴ For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵ Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
⁶ Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. ⁷ I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
⁸ To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. ⁹ But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
¹⁰ To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband ¹¹ (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
¹² To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. ¹³ If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. ¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. ¹⁵ But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. ¹⁶ For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
¹⁷ Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. ¹⁸ Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. ¹⁹ For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. ²⁰ Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. ²¹ Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) ²² For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. ²³ You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. ²⁴ So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.
²⁵ Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. ²⁶ I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. ²⁷ Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. ²⁸ But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. ²⁹ This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, ³⁰ and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, ³¹ and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
³² I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. ³³ But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, ³⁴ and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. ³⁵ I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
³⁶ If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin. ³⁷ But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. ³⁸ So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.
³⁹ A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. ⁴⁰ Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.

In the above passage (it's lengthy, sorry not sorry, it's important) I've keyed in on some things that I think are really important. In red I've emphasized the positive things Paul had to say to single people (it is good for them to remain single, the unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, etc.). In blue I've emphasized the positive things Paul said to those who wished to marry or were married (they should marry, you have not sinned, etc.). However, the most pertinent points to the discussion here I bolded throughout the text.


But each has his own gift from God

• It's ridiculous to think that we are all the same. We aren't all the same and we aren't all going to be going though the same experiences at the same times or be called by the Lord to do the same things.

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him

• In whatever circumstance you find yourself, live your life. God gave you the life he gave you and he wants you to use it, not be mad about it.

but keeping the commandments of God

• Keeping God's commandments is of the utmost importance, no matter what your circumstance is.

  I want you to be free from anxieties

• Be about the Lord's business, don't worry about the things of the world. 

 secure your undivided devotion to the Lord

• Christians should want other Christians to be fully devoted to the Lord (married or single, Paul tells us marriage isn't wrong. It's from God)  

So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

• The one who marries does well and the one who doesn't marry does well. Paul says that the unmarried will do better only because he can be fully devoted to the Lord. The key to his success is not singleness, it is devotion.

The important thing is not if we are married or if we are single. The important thing is that we are serving God in every circumstance. Some people are married right now and some people aren't. Some people will eventually get married, and some people wont. Their task is not different, only their circumstance.

God gave us marriage, but he also gave us times in our life when we aren't married. Let's make the best use of both circumstances, and be happy for our brothers and sisters who get to serve God in a different way than we do at this particular moment. There is no need to pity ourselves, or the people who are in a different stage in their lives than we are. And there is no reason to be bitter or angry that other people are happy in their circumstances. There is only a need to be fully devoted to the Lord. 



So, thinking again about the issue of Facebook that I started with...instead of typing out long diatribes about who is wrong or right or who lives a better life than whom, we could exhort each other in a more productive way:

If right now you are single, that's great! Do God's work.
If right now you are married, that's great too! Do God's work together.
 

"Meet me in the church, we're gonna pray. Anywhere you meet me guarantee we're gonna pray"

Some of my friends and I have this habit of changing the words in songs on the radio so that they no longer refer to bad things. I don't know how this practice originated, but it's a pretty fun road trip game. Songs become about marriage, baptism, bible study, or the holy spirit instead of fornication, gang violence, clubbing, or doing drugs. I always thought this was just a fun little thing that we did, but recently I thought of some important lessons that I could draw from this practice. I want to share them with you here:

1. We have to put effort forward to think about good things. In Philippians 4:8 we are encouraged: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." But it's not as if the world is just tripping over itself to offer us wholesome things to think about. I believe in monitoring what we subject ourselves to, but sometimes we are going to just have to make the best of things that we can't avoid. I want to return for a moment to the example about songs on the radio. The other day as I was driving to school that song "Dead and Gone" by TI came on the radio. Now I'm pretty certain this song teaches terrible messages, but it was just playing in the background (on the radio station that wasn't playing commercials) while I thought of other things. Suddenly, however, the song came into the forefront of my mind as I heard these lyrics: Oh hey, I've been travelin' on this road too long Just tryin' to find my way back home But the old me's dead and gone Dead and gone... In an otherwise completely unwholesome song, there were messages about repentance and striving for home that could easily apply to the Christian walk. That's when I thought to myself "I need to be looking for these sorts of things!" This brings me to my next point.
2. As Christians, we should strive to make everything in our lives about God and Christ Jesus (because it is). This isn't always manifested directly, as it is when you change the words in songs to be about scriptural things. I'm not saying that you should make eating your morning cereal "about" Christ (although if you could think about Christ through eating cereal I think that's great, the more time we spend "thinking on these things," the better), but in some ways everything we do and every situation we encounter is connected to Christ and our Christian faith. I think about Titus 2. In this chapter, Paul tells the brethren how they are supposed to act, and gives them a rationale that explains why they should act this way. I especially like the way the NIV reads about slaves (9-10) "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive." The way they do their jobs is intended to show the greatness of God and the goodness of his revelation. I don't think we should be ignorant of that. Every situation we are in should show shows other people something about God whether or not we are aware of it. So, let's be aware. We need to be asking ourselves things like "How can I best reflect Christ in this situation?" and "How does this relate to my walk as a Christian, to the Bible, or to moral principles?" I think a good way to train ourselves to think that way and act that way (as I've mentioned above) is to make things about God. Let's relate things on the radio to the bible, things on the news to God, and the things we learn in school to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  

 
It's time for us to "make the best use of the time" (Eph 5:16). Let's put effort into thinking about the goodness of God, his law, and his love for us in all circumstances so that we may glorify Him.