At What Cost?

My brother is a hero. His friend friend and partner Ian Leong is a hero. And so is Paul Starzyk, who lost his life a hero. All three are police officers in Martinez and while eating breakfast together they received a dispatch that there was an emergency situation at a hair salon. Felix Sandoval, estranged from his wife and locked in a bitter divorce dispute, filled with rage went after his wife, who owned the salon. With his hand, Sandoval smashed the plate glass window and forced his way into the locked salon demanding the patrons and workers there tell him where his wife was. Sandoval's own teenage daughter was working at the salon and begged him not to go after her mother. Unbeknownst to Sandoval, his wife had locked herself in a closet at the salon, trying desperately to hide from him.

Spying his wife's cousin who had tried to convince Sandoval's wife to leave him because of his erratic and violent behavior slipping out the back door with a customer, Sandoval went out the back after her. His daughter tried desperately to stop him but Sandoval would not be held back. Spotting the cousin in an apartment above where she had forced her way in to hide, Sandoval raced up the stairs with his gun, broke into the apartment and found his wife's cousin there. Inside the apartment was a mother and her three children. The kids were hiding in a bedroom and their mom along with the other two women faced the crazed Sandoval as he stormed into the apartment. Sandoval shot and killed his wife's cousin and then realized the police were coming up the stairs.

Sgt Paul Starzyk was the first up the stairs. Wearing a bullet proof vest, he came down the hallway toward the apartment with his partner Ian Leong coming from behind. Sandoval, hiding behind the apartment door, shot his arm out and fired down upon Sgt. Starzyk, hitting him in the neck and severing his carotid artery. Although dying from the wound, Starzyk fired back and shot Sandoval several times before he collapsed to the ground. Officer Leong courageously stood in front of the dying Starzyk and protecting him with his own body, shot into the door and the walls and at Sandoval himself, pinning him back so that he could not shoot at his friend anymore. This hallway of horror was where Leong remained, throwing down his own life in order to hopefully save not only his friend lying on the ground but also those held hostage in the apartment. My brother by now was up the stairs with his police dog and his dog shot out after Sandoval and attacked him. Seeing him move, and still perhaps a terrible risk, my brother also fired upon Sandoval and the killer was dead.

What makes courage so amazingly subtle and shockingly lovely is that courage is not forced and cannot be imitated. It springs out of a character honed to give away, even to the point that it costs your life. I hear stories of the common bravery of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and without cover, lost their lives without much thought at what was happening to them because they loved more than they wanted and it is too big a thought to adequately ponder. My brother and his friends are the fabric that makes a people noble and terribly lovely. Their courage was not exemplary, it was mundane...mundane in the sense that they did not ratchet it up, they simply did what was instilled in them. Protect, lay down your life, do not flinch.

Christian faith is not lovely because of what good is in believers. Christian faith is lovely because it is instilled by Jesus who knowing the brutality and horror of the Cross pursued it and would not flinch at it's crushing blood lust. Jesus died, knowing He was giving up on a future that He could hold to if He wished but longing more for a future He could give away. Jesus died as the ultimate Courage, killing off the deadly brutality of sin by staying hung on the Cross until His heart was busted open and His life ripped from Him.

And then He conquered.

I can never be thankful enough for Jesus dying for my sins and my meager statements of gratitude will not ever be much because I cannot comprehend in the least the immensity of what Christ has done for me. Eternity awaits us all and because of Jesus, faith in Christ holds a certain promise of joy forever with God. The Grace of God is not measured, it is too sweeping to mark. We live within Promise but not a promise far off, rather it is close, close enough to spot. The blood on the ground at the foot of the Cross holds the Promise too big for us to grasp, we can only faith it.

Glenn, Ian and Paul have blood on their hands, their own blood and it marks courage that cannot be measured. Courage like theirs is too big to pin down, it is the stuff of heaven and bigger than the human heart.

Across The Hedge Concluded

There were four indications that the Christians in Corinth were living anti-God lives. They were suffering from bouts of boiling anger. They were losing their temper and getting upset. They were quarreling with one another and wrangling over points of contention. They were doing what any Non-Christian might be able to do but nothing that revealed a legitimate dependence on God power. There was nothing unique about their actions that pointed to the supernatural handiwork of Jesus. In addition to all of this, these Christians were not able to recognize God’s hand in what was happening around them; they were attributing everything to some human explanation. In other words, there was not much about these Christians that looked, or sounded anything different than the Non-Christians surrounding them. Does this have a familiar ring to it?

I am not certain when a church crosses the line, goes across the hedge and has the look and smell of flesh but I think ours is there. What have we done lately that is supernatural, that only God could have made happen? What is there in us that indicates the Spirit of God is dominating our personalities and driving our actions? Do we have the fruit of the Spirit? Is there a craving for Jesus that is more fundamental than just doing what is right? Is Christian stuff one more chore of ours or are we filled with joy when we read the Bible, pray or do acts of service? What is there about me and you that could be pointed to as a sign that the Holy Spirit is dominating how we live and act?

If I said there was a way to get past flesh driven and man generated living and be truly driven by the Spirit of God and anointed by Him, would you bite? Would you be interested in having a Spiritual personality rather than a fleshly one? There are six basic steps to developing a Holy Spirit driven character. Each is as important as the other and not one can be lightly passed over. The first step to developing a Spirit personality is clear repentance. There are sins I have that need to be admitted and renounced. I must tell God I was wrong for my angry outbursts, wrong for my critical comments, wrong for my lustful thoughts, wrong for my refusal to forgive. No one lives Spiritual unless he takes a long hard look at his sins, particularly the ones others would dismiss as inconsequential and admits to them and renounces them to God as filthy and unacceptable.

I must decide to give up any sinful attitude or behavior I know I am doing. I must tell God I have been unable to give this up so far and need Him to crucify that part of me that wants to keep doing that sin. I must openly and publically make a profession of Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord. I cannot be filled with the Spirit of God if I am not a blatantly public Christian. I must surrender my will to that of the Holy Spirit and do whatever God says. A Christian once told me that God clearly told him that he was to be a missionary to China but never went. I cannot make these sorts of decisions if the Holy Spirit is to fill me and make me loving, kind and full of the joy of God. No Spirit filled Christian stays oppositional to God and His will for him. I must want to be filled with the Holy Spirit as much as a thirsty man in the desert craves water. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39 NIV)

Not many Christians honestly want to be full of the Holy Spirit, anointed by Him. It is far too easy to just accept a rather superficial and incoherent form of Christian living. But honestly it is irrational to taste Jesus and then not want Him ruling over you and filling you with all of the joy and love and peace He has to offer. This is only possible by turning ourselves over to the Holy Spirit of God and giving complete control of our lives to Him. A hedge separates you from all of the blessings of God…a hedge of desire. How badly do you want the Holy Spirit filling up your life? How much do you crave His dominance over you? What are you willing to do for the fruit of the Spirit to actually be the nature of

Across The Hedge Part 1

1 Corinthians 3: 1-7 GJW
And I brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual ones but as in the flesh, as to babies in Christ. 2 Milk, I gave you to drink, not solid food because you couldn’t handle it and even now you aren’t able to handle it. 3. For still you are fleshly ones for whereas there is in you boiling jealousy and contentiousness; are you not ruled by fleshly desires and walk just like men? 4. For when a certain one of you might say, “I myself am of Paul” but another, “I am with Apollos”, are you not just like men? 5. For what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed and only as each one of you were given by the Lord. 6 I myself planted, Apollos watered but the Lord was making the growth happen. 7 Consequently, neither the one planting nor the one watering is of any consequence but only the one causing the growth, God.


In our local paper the other day was a front page story about a set of neighbors who live in a peaceful little cul-de-sac, neighbors who have been friends for years. Their property is separated by a hedge one of them planted long ago as a decorative upgrade. They have watched each other’s kids reach adulthood, gone to one another’s parties and looked after one another’s homes during vacations. One of the neighbors recently put up a yard sign calling for a “no” vote on proposition 8. His neighbors in turn put next to the hedge in their yard a sign calling for a “yes” vote on proposition 8. Last week while his neighbors were gone, the one with the “no” sign went over and cut down the part of the hedge on his neighbor’s side and forced them to move their “yes” sign from where it had been placed against the hedge.

Now what could engender such rage and frustration that a friendship lasting two decades could be ruined by dueling lawn signs? The Apostle Paul would say it is just people being people. He uses a term that that is often found in his letters to describe the part of us that just won’t do what God wants, the flesh. Some refer to the flesh as our “sin nature”, others call it our “anti-Christ personality”. We all have it. The flesh is what pushes us away from God’s character and avoids anything that smacks of real holiness. Now it is not just Non-Christians who can be ruled by their anti-God personality, Christian people also are left leaning here. Paul calls us babies when we let our flesh take the lead in how we act and live.

Paul said that many of the Christians in Corinth were acting like babies because they were forming alliances and choosing sides. Some were for Apollos, others for Paul. The points of contention were irrelevant. It did not matter why they were disagreeing, the fact that they were clearly marked them as babies. Paul uses two terms to describe the approach these Christians had to their faith. The first is “sarksinoi” and simply means that they were flesh people; in other words, the tendency to think and live outside God was part of their character. But Paul takes his diagnosis a bit further by insisting that the Christians in Corinth were “Sarksika”; they were dominated by their flesh instincts. The anti-God personality was the operating system making these Christians who they were.
This created quite a problem for Paul as he tried to lead them. He was unable to speak to them through the Spirit of God. Now how does this sort of communication work? A person dominated by the Holy Spirit can talk of anything the Spirit directs and it is made clear to the person both in how they think but how they begin to act by means of the Holy Spirit. Coercion, guilt tripping and begging are not needed to bring about the needed change. The Spirit gets the message across and coordinates the new direction. Without the Spirit of God, there is almost no Godliness, little Christian love and peacefulness and not much interest in pursuing hard after Jesus. The fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5: love, joy peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are anything but actualized…important maybe and desired but not rooted and grounded in the person.

A Political Politic

I have in the past few weeks become accutely aware of my need for the Holy Spirit to overwhelm me and dominate my interests and desires. It isn't that I just realized my personal poverty here, it is that I was brought face to face with my longing for God to saturate me with His Presence as I went through an unexpectedly provacative book, The Work And Presence Of The Holy Spirit. What startled me was just how casually I was treating the work of the Holy Spirit in me and how little real effort I was making to let Him rule over my psyche. I have recently entered fully into the political dialogue and I do not apologize for my views nor think I am off base in how strongly I feel but I must admit the election will not alter the most crucial issue. Without Christ aligning my life, I have little to say of any value. The fruit of the Spirit is not just an alternative lifestyle, it marks the one who does know God and lives in Him. The pursuit of the filling by the Holy Spirit is dominating my will and I pray that you and I will not wilt in our craving to be overcome and driven by Him. Pray and give up your will to Christ. Pray and refuse to submit any longer to anti-Jesus desires. Pray and state unequivocally your desire to let the Holy Spirit rule over you. It is a new day!

Transformation

As some of you know we lost our kitten Saturday. I have called this little creature Beelzebub for good reason. She greets me many mornings by clawing her way up my leg if I am lucky and across my back if not. One time she lost her balance on my bare back and dug in with all her might. I did not curse...a miracle of no small proportion. Beelzebub slipped out our door Saturday morning and escaped our many attempts to recapture her. I had to take Rachel out of town so we couldn't keep trying to coral her but the rest of the family was home. Unfortunately they couldn't find her and so she was gone.

Several times during our 2 1/2 hours of driving Rachel wanted me to call home and find out if Beelzebub had been found. I couldn't reach anyone and so my little girl's stress levels continued to rise. Meanwhile, both of us prayed fervently for that little troublemaker's return. We finally got back home at 9 that night and the first thing Rachel wanted to know was if anyone had found her cat. No. Off Rachel went with a flashlight trying to find her kitten but despite all of us searching, no sign of her. We left food out on the porch to try to entice Beelzebub back and went to bed.

The next morning was Sunday and without any signs of a kitten, we all went to church. All of us were praying for the return of that little kitten and with high hopes we returned home early in the afternoon to find...no cat. Rachel hunted all around and the rest of us got lunch ready. Because we had a broken pipe and our friend Robert was coming over to work on it, I ordered Noah into the back to pick up his half a billion Megablocks scattered all over the area where Robert would be working. With much grumbling he went back and started the reconstruction of his life. But guess what he heard as he worked. A cat meowing. Searching for the sound, Noah found the kitten under a building at the school behind our house. The space was way too small to crawl through to reach that little kitten child and so Rachel and Noah spent thirty minutes trying to bribe her out with cat food. Finally, out she crept, ravenous after her twenty-four hour adventure into the dark side. With a swift swoop, Rachel grabbed the kitten and wrapped her in her arms.

Snowball had been won back. I do not know who prayed more for that kitten, Mary Jo who tries her best to avoid her, me who has claw marks all over my body to testify to Snowball's affection or Rachel, who went to bed the night before with tears in her eyes afraid she had lost Snowball forever.

I am not sure what to make of all this except I do know that prayer is more than just a religious exercise. It is the lifeblood of our adventures. And our misadventures. How does a Beelzebub become a Snowball? I guess through prayer!

And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that what we've asked for is as good as ours. 1 John 5: 14-15

News From The Good Old Days

From the newsletter of the radio station KFAX, I got this interesting list of facts about the good old days...
100 Years ago...

One home in seven had a bathtub

One home in 13 had a telephone

Infant mortality was 140 per 1,000 babies, compared to 6.3 per 1,000 today

Life expectancy was 47 years (uh-oh!)

6% of adults had high school diplomas

Colleges graduated 1.5% of the students they do today

The average workweek was 52 hours

Only 8,000 automobiles were registered in the entire country

One thing does remain the same though...


Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Election

I am not convinced this election is over...We face perhaps the biggest internal crisis in over 50 years as a nation and the Christian community needs to make its presence felt. It is time we pray three times or more a day for the state of our country. Regardless of the side of the fence you sit politically, dramatic changes are in store for us and it is only the person locked in on the mind of Christ who will fathom what is happening and how to respond. Nothing good can come of all of this if we are passive as the body of Christ and just act according to our will. The accusations that are about to flurry around this political contest must be met with Spiritual resistance. Hammer away these next three weeks at determined prayer and make your life count for this nation and for the Kingdom of God.

How Do You Know?

With the election looming before us, the undecided vote is becoming smaller and smaller and yet the question, "How do you know" is legitimate. How do you know how you should vote? We rely heavily upon our intuitive sense, our opinion of things and the tilt of opinion around us but how do you know which candidate should be elected and does your opinion mean you are right in your assumptions? As I was reading through the text of 1 Corinthians 2, Paul makes a comparision between two sources of understanding...the psyche which means far more than just our psycholgical make-up but rather describes the way of life of this natural world, and the spirit, which is the working of the Holy Spirit. If there was ever a time when we need to be reliant not upon our natural senses but upon the Holy Spirit and His insight into God's mind, it is now. These are grave times at multiple levels and if there is hope for insight into how to move through this, it is revelation that God's people possess as they pursue the insight of God. We do not need to think as everyone else thinks. Only the Holy Spirit opens the door to a creativity that escapes the narrow boundaries of this world and its dying values. We have through our life in Christ, the mind of God.

Vision

Last Sunday our worship service attendance was forty. But...this past week as I was praying I was unprepared for the vision that came to me. I suddenly saw our church sanctuary full and overflowing. At first I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming but I immediately got up and walked into our sanctuary. The vision stayed with me as I looked out across the empty seats. The sanctuary was full and people were everywhere. Then just as suddenly it all was gone and I was left with the shocking and even a bit spooky sense that God had spoken to me in a completely new way. I am not given to visions or for that matter prophetic dreams so this was overwhelming and disconcerting. I wasn't sure what to do with what I experienced; whether I should believe it was from God or not. I went back to pray and was given a great peace about it all.

Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. Isaiah 26: 12

I Get It Concluded

1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 GJW
18 For the word of the Cross to the ones being destroyed is foolishness but to the ones continually being saved, to you, it is the power of God. 19 For it has been written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the intelligence of the intelligent, I will push out of the way.” 20 Where is the wise one, where is the learned one, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For in as much as in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God took pleasure through the foolishness of the proclamation to save the ones believing. 22 And in as much as the Jews demand a sign and the Gentiles seek wisdom, 23 we on the other hand, we proclaim Christ having been crucified…to the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles moronic. 24 But to the called ones, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the stupidity of God is wiser than (the wisdom) of man and the weakness of God is stronger than (the strength) of men.


The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.



Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

What's It All About Introduction

Corinthians 1: 26-31 GJW
26 Now look at your calling brothers. From a fleshly perspective not many of you were wise ones, not many powerful ones, not many well-born ones. 27 But God chose the stupid ones of the world so that he might shame continually the wise ones and God chose the weak ones of the world so that he might continually shame the strong ones. 28 And God chose the commonplace ones of the world and the contemptible ones and the ones who don’t seem to exist in order that he might make useless the ones who are 29 so that each living being will not boast before God. 30 But out of Him you yourselves are in Christ Jesus who became our wisdom from God as well as the righteousness and holiness and deliverance. 31 This is so that just as it has been written, “The one boasting, he must boast in the Lord.”


One of the most difficult parts of Biblical interpretation and teaching is the stretch required to get past one’s preconceived ideas about what the Bible says and what one thinks the Bible ought to say. We are programmed at nearly every level to think of choice as the pre-eminent right of every human being. We choose all day, choose what we will eat, choose who we will email, choose our TV shows, choose to exercise or not, choose what clothes we will wear and when to take our shower. We love the right to choose our representatives in government and although there are many who “choose” not to vote, we could never imagine giving up that right by choice. We even choose our religion and choose how we will practice that religion. We are choosy and choosers. No one tells us what to do!

The passage we are looking at today makes a mess of our theology. It is, as we can see, big on choice. Our passage speaks of choosing but not once are we the one making the choice. It talks about a calling but it is not us calling, it describes a comparative analysis but not by us and not in a way that makes sense. It simply does not fit at all the paradigm we have of choice and decision-making. It is not a “Christian” passage if what we mean by Christian is what we think Christian ought to be.

I have tried to render a literal translation so that the major themes Paul had as he wrote the Corinthian church would stand out for those of us used to reading the Scriptures without an eye for the important details. The first one that pops up is found in verse 26. Paul tells us that we must pause a moment and examine closely our calling. Stare at it. Ponder it deeply. Take time to think about it and how it came to you. Don’t just slough off casually the inception of your Christian life. It is crucial to consider if you are going to know much about God and yourself.

Calling is a funny word in a sense. It implies someone else doing this. The word invitation comes to mind. The calling Paul describes is not to some sort of specialized ministry, it is the calling to salvation. That is clear because he is writing the entire church, not a specific group of leaders. In fact, if we can take the liberty of saying it, the letter is written to us and not all of “us” have a specialized ministry but all of us have a calling to eternal life. Paul is telling us that we need to look at the part of our salvation he labels a calling…the invitation. We are Christian because God issued an invitation. My daughter went to her friend’s party because she was invited…my daughter did not invite herself to it. The starting point of this discussion is that each of us who are Christian received an invitation from God and that is how we got to where we are. Jesus underscores this in John 15: 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. (NIV)
To Be Continued...

A Needed Change

I am excited about my new journey of faith! My sister-in-law Kitty recommended a book that she and her family are using and it has already had a fabulous effect upon me. Today as I was praying through the material, God's presence struck me and I was a bit overwhelmed by what He did with me. There is so much I want to see change in my personality and it simply is not possible without a transformation by the Holy Spirit. Last night I was amazed by the work of the Spirit in our cell group as we talked about the Bible passage, sang and prayed. I cannot say the work had anything to do with my entering this new phase but it did happen at the same time. I even had the opportunity to share the Gospel and pray with a woman who approached me when she spotted my Bible at the table. Her son is in jail and her health has suffered some difficult disease. I felt she came to me because of the inroads the Holy Spirit was making within me at the very moment she approached. The book Kitty recommended is A Call To Die by David Nasser. It is a forty day journey into being crucified with Christ. It invites everyone to spend an hour a day going through the material and taking intensive personal inventories. There also is a call to a fast of some sort whether a fast from food or from the various media types. My fast is from sports reporting and broadcasting. I know it sounds like a rather trivial fast but it has concentrated my gaze on Jesus already. One thing that struck me is how easy it is to assume that what I need is a change in circumstances when what I really need is more Jesus and greater affection for the Holy Spirit living within.

What's Right?

It is so easy to get caught up in what is wrong and yet we have in scripture a completely different view of things. It is what is right that must captivate us. Christ crucified is the pivot point of all life and with Him in us there is not a thing wrong with our lives, our situation nor our circumstances. He is after all our righteousness, our holiness and our wisdom. Reliance upon Christ to organize our circumstances and make our life situation best for us is the point of all this faith in Christ. We are prone to take it both ways...faith in Christ and personal introspection on what to do to fix everything. The worry about nothing command of Jesus is not religious blinders, it is the way to enter into complete reliance upon Jesus that all things really are working together for our good. I am as bad as anyone at fixing my eyes on my lacks or upon my attention to working it all out but Christ is not just my hope for eternity. Eternity is now and He is my hope for now...Reliance upon Him and satisfaction with what He brings me is faith too but more than faith. It is Christianity.

Good Things

Yesterday as I was reading my Bible I stumbled upon this verse from Philemon 6. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. If a full understanding means that you completely get it and that you are experiencing it, then the big hindrance to a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus is this matter or sharing our faith. We never really talk about it but it is the elephant in the room. The problem with churches corporately and Christians individually is not luke warm faith so much as a rejection of the faith. Faith is piercing, penetrating, energizing and it is expressed through the transmission of it. Talk about Jesus with someone not yet Christian and you have a leg to stand on when it comes to living in Christ. If 1 Corinthians 1 teaches us anything, it is that God doesn't need us to be good at talking about the Gospel but we must share it if we are His. The Gospel itself tears down the arguments against it and brings apart the doubt built in its path. Pick out one person this week and actually talk the Gospel with him or her. The good things of Christ are ready to be had if you are willing to have them.

The Great Disconnect

Why is there such a disconnect between our recognition that we are to explain the Gospel to people regularly and our not doing it? I do not think I know more than two people who last week explained the Gospel to someone. This part of Christian devotion has become so disregarded that it feels like a giant miracle if anyone gives a verbal witness ever. My kids were shocked the other day when I was talking to a couple I met at the track and told them about their need to put their faith in Christ for their salvation. It seemed to them a wonder that I could work the Gospel into my conversation with someone I did not even know. I had to ponder the possibility that perhaps they had not seen me do this enough...It should have been commonplace for them in being around me to have watched such conversations but it wasn't. So what do we do about this? I think we must begin to pray fervently that God would drive us into Gospel sharing...not for our own good but because it is the people we see and know and meet that are going to hell. Real people with real families, real aspirations and real emptiness...at least when it comes to eternity. The other day a friend from church was shocked by the death of her co-worker at the age of 47. It is not tomorrow that awaits the Gospel, it is today...and not from someone else but it must come out of me.

I Get It Conclusion

The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.



Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

I Get It! Introduction

“I Get It”

1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 GJW
18 For the word of the Cross to the ones being destroyed is foolishness but to the ones continually being saved, to you, it is the power of God. 19 For it has been written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the intelligence of the intelligent, I will push out of the way.” 20 Where is the wise one, where is the learned one, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For in as much as in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God took pleasure through the foolishness of the proclamation to save the ones believing. 22 And in as much as the Jews demand a sign and the Gentiles seek wisdom, 23 we on the other hand, we proclaim Christ having been crucified…to the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles moronic. 24 But to the called ones, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the stupidity of God is wiser than (the wisdom) of man and the weakness of God is stronger than (the strength) of men.


The “ah hah!” experience is famous in psychology as the moment when suddenly you get it; when your eyes open to what you never understood before, when your brain synapses all at once fire into inspiration mode. We’ve all had something like this happen to us; maybe not as world changing as the Wright Brothers suddenly knowing what was wrong with their airplane design or Thomas Edison realizing what he needed to do to correct his first light bulb but our ah-hahs are pretty important to us. You remember where you put your brush. Ah-hah! You think of your friend’s daughter’s name. Ah-hah! Inspiration comes for fixing your car’s carburetor. Ah-hah!

Recently I have been bemused by the “ah-ha” so many in the political world seem to be having about Jesus. The slogan that has sprung up recently as an “ah-hah” of sorts is that Jesus was a community organizer. Listening to a conservative talk-show, I was floored by the ah-hahs bandied around regarding Christ. A caller, decrying the slogan of Jesus being a community organizer told the host that Jesus was most certainly not a community organizer; he was a “teacher”. Now, as soon as the caller made his point, the host immediately corrected him. “Oh no” he expounded, “Jesus was not a teacher, he was truth”. That is what the Bible tells us about him and what Christians believe. So that was it. Three ah-hahs! Jesus was a community organizer, Jesus was a teacher, Jesus was truth. Honestly, I cannot find fault with any of the ones who thought they could define Jesus as they did. They each based their impressions on what they thought they had figured out and normally that is good enough. The trouble with Jesus is that your ah-hah will never be adequate…for that matter an ‘ah-hah can be your most fatal mistake when it comes to Him. Jesus is not an explanation, a definition nor even a biography. But to know Him is an impossible task if you rely just upon your common sense.

There are two types of understanding. The first is a natural wisdom, a common sense intelligence that everyone possesses to some degree or another. It takes things in and then makes decisions based on experiences, impressions and influencers. The ah-hah for natural wisdom is the result of mental synthesis, putting it all together and then the brain remaking what is there into an understanding. We operate out of this in practically every area of life. We discipline our kids based on it, choose careers based on it, form friendships and develop opinions through natural wisdom. For most people, that is all they know. We may see Gorillas using sign language to ask for water but you will never hear of one writing a book about family relations or discussing the grief process because it is not possible for them. Natural wisdom is all the wisdom the world has and so it cannot be charged with ignorance for being unable to go beyond it. Paul insists there is a wisdom that rises above natural wisdom just as distinctively as the wisdom of man soars above the understanding of a gorilla.
To Be Continued

Talking Points Conclusion

We are so accustomed to splits and divisions and spin-offs that we have a most difficult time taking this passage at face value. We seem to have an inherent need to find out what was wrong with the factions. What were they doing that caused the split(s)? Where had they drifted from right doctrine? Now we know from church history that there were plenty of theological rifts that nearly tore the church asunder. From the Palagians to the Gnostics, there were a slew of cultic teachings infiltrating the church. Paul himself fought against the Judaizers and their effort to destroy the work of Grace. But this furious reprimand of Paul had nothing to do with setting straight bad doctrine. It was an attack against the church way of life. Paul had absolutely nothing bad or good to say about whatever arguments and counter arguments were being cast about for the various factions. He just despised the splits.

Now there is a fascinating choice of phrasing Paul uses that explains the splits. He notes that each one separately is making his or her own decision about which group to join. The emphasis is on individuality, it is on personal choice, it is on independent thinking. Not that everyone was in some group or another but every person sectioned off in a group made the decision on his own. He did it. Now we have no idea what the criterion was for making these choices. It could have been quite logical and well thought. In fact probably every move into any of the groups was easily justified and explained. No lame explanations for these folk. They split off for a myriad of good reasons. This is the power behind the Me-Church. It makes perfect sense and always fits my needs.

The Me-Church is theologically built upon the premise that God is secondary to my values and concerns. Regardless of your talking points, every shism is a butchering of Jesus. Every split over a doctrine, every party faction vote that cuts apart the church is the severing apart of Christ. Now we can with quite lucid logic argue that there are divisions that can be justified. What if a pastor is teaching false doctrine, a business decision of the church is unethical or even not Christian, a rampant plague of immorality is running through the membership. Aren’t any of these problems a good reason for splitting off?

Just this week I was speaking with someone who was one of thirty pastors of a mega church that split apart. Half the staff were let go because of the financial difficulties the church faced as a result. He himself started a church when he was one of the pastors let go. Now I do not know what caused the split and I am certain that those on both sides of it felt justified in their actions. There very well could have been horrible and despicable goings on that infuriated members but for Paul, it still became a matter of cutting up Christ and sending His body parts across the land.

Paul feels so strongly about this that he even makes what seems an almost silly declaration that he was glad he hadn’t baptized hardly any of them. Now it is not that Paul thought little of baptisms, he just had no interest in anyone using him as their figurehead for a new split. It is silly of course to waste much time decrying the multitude of churches out there. And it is almost ridiculous to think than many, if any will retrace their steps and rejoin with churches they originally made a break. But we can begin to think seriously about what we can do to keep this plague of Me-Church from making headway among us.
Now I realize that conventional thought is that churches are comprised of ideologues that do not think much on their own and walk in lock step to some promoted value or cause. In other words, there is not much room for individuality within a church culture. Even believers in the church seem to fearfully guard against being trapped by some heaping tide of conformity. Christians too cheer for the boy who bucks the ethos of his church and attends dance parties and applaud the young girl who quits her constricting church choir and in opposition to the church leaders sings at jazz clubs. The ideal believer is one who isn’t afraid to walk away from his church if he doesn’t like how a vote goes or isn’t pleased with the style of worship. At least that is what it seems. Yet Paul, in his assessment of splits within the church could not accept any form of groupism, justified or otherwise, let alone a traipsing here and there between congregations.

The last verse in our section is not so much a formula for creating unity in the church but rather a reaffirmation of what must be our talking point. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to evangelize without wise words in order that the Cross of Christ might not be emptied. It is not about formulating alliances and building allies in your causes, the main part of our life together is doing nothing as a group that would empty the cross. I know that the NIV translates this as “empty the cross of its power”, but power is not mentioned by Paul. Paul just keeps sharing the Gospel because he does not want in any way to empty the Cross. The risk of this is not in baptizing though; it is in making do with the “wisdom of a word”. The “wisdom of the word” and living by it is the way the Cross is emptied, and that Paul will not tolerate.

All sorts of things can seem right and logically they may make a great deal of sense but the church is not built on what makes sense to me. There are all sorts of wise words that can be justified and a myriad of actions that are perfectly acceptable but the church is not that. It is the cross of Christ crucifying self and making us His. I live within a bent and wavering Christian community not because it fits but because Christ is fitting me within it. Churches make bad decisions, sing poorly, preach poorly, act inappropriately and generally make fools of themselves endlessly. But the church is the center within which the Cross of Christ makes its home and does its most revolutionary work.

Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t just make us like turtles…drop us down into a hole somewhere and let us hatch alone and then fend for ourselves? God places us in specific families, gives us certain parents and then makes us stay there. We follow this same pattern generation after generation and somehow although at times people breakdown and families bust apart, this is the way it goes again and again. The Church is the believer’s family and for better or worse, where He places you is the spot of your most crucial growth and significant work. It doesn’t make sense to me that God would expect the church to be together and stick together because that seems too stiff a restriction on my freedom. But if the church is not to be Paul-Church or Apollos-Church or Cephas Church or even Christ-Church (now doesn’t that seem odd), then it certainly is a curse upon us if it is Me-Church. Empty your will, empty your opinions, empty your comforts, empty your wallets even but do not empty the Cross. If we divide, it may seem logical, and if we split from one another, it might make sense, but we have grossly miscalculated if we think that by doing so it is not that critical. You cannot empty the cross and hope to make a better life. Unless of course you only want to be a Turtle…

Courage

Boy was I caught off guard. I have been walking for an hour and a half every day the past 4 weeks around Lake Elizabeth and have by going at the same time every day met some very nice people. I have a new friend who as we pass we comment on the latest sports news. A couple of nights ago, for the first time since I broke my leg and tore my achilles tendon ran (can we really call it that?) a half mile. It was exhilerating and yet I had a rough time of it with my legs. Today I decided to jog a bit on my trip around the lake and this friend along with all my other friends there was shocked to see me "picking up the pace". When he met up with me the second time as we both made it around the lake in opposite directions he chided me for not running. So, to preserve my sense of manhood, (like that is some big deal) I stopped and explained how come I couldn't run anymore. I showed him the scar on my leg where I had the rod placed in it and the scar from my achilles tendon surgery. Puffed with my bloated sense of courageous perseverence, I explained that it was tough for me to run very far so I had to stop because of the achiness. My new friend then told me why he couldn't run. While serving in Viet Nam, he had to come home and an aluminum rod was placed through his spine to save his back. He rolled up his socks and showed me where shrapnel scarred his leg. The truth is, some wounds really are war wounds and some courage is bigger than other bits of courage. "...with humility comes wisdom." Proverbs 11:2 b

Talking Points Part One

1 Corinthians 1: 10-17 GJW
But I urge you brothers through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you might speak in one accord and there not be any schisms within you all but that you might continue being united one in your thoughts and opinions. For it was made known to me through Cloe’s people concerning you that wrangling arguments are going on in your midst. I am saying this because separately, each one says, “I myself am of Paul”, “but I with Apollos”, “but I with Cephas”, “but I with Christ”. Has Christ been divided, Paul wasn’t crucified for you nor into the name of Paul were you baptized? I give thanks that not one of you I baptized except Crispus and Gauius so that certain ones of you might not say that into my name you were baptized. Oh, but I also baptized the house of Stephen. As to the rest I don’t know another one I baptized. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to evangelize without wise words in order that the Cross of Christ might not be emptied.


A talking point is a focus of discussion, a set of items that you or your team are determined to make central to conversations you enter. We have Republican talking points such as the lack of experience Senator Obama has in governing and we have Democratic talking points such as the connection between President Bush and Senator McCain. Talking points are used to keep critics from addressing the weak parts of your argument and to accentuate your strengths. Talking points are an agreed upon approach to addressing issues that may be controversial.

Apparently the Corinthian church had its own Democrats and Republicans, Libertarians and Socialists. They were the: Paul, Apollos, Cephas and the Christ parties. Now commentators have developed a multitude of creative platforms these four different groups may have adopted. Barclay contended that the Paul Party was comprised of Gentile believers who lived lawlessly. The Apollos Party was a group of intellectuals who were turning Christianity into a philosophy like Buddhism rather than a living faith. Cephas Party was the Jewish Christians who promoted the Law and made little of grace. The Christ Party was a collection of Christians who thought they were the only true church. Now the only difficulty I have with this quite fascinating and logical explanation is that nowhere in the text do we find a hint of this. In fact, Paul’s complaint with the factions has nothing to do with doctrine, teaching or practice. To try to assess what was wrong with each group completely misses the point.

Paul did not critique the Apollos Group for being sophists, never attacks the Cephas Group for pushing circumcision and certainly doesn’t tongue lash the Paul group for being too lax on practice. He does later make much of the immorality in the church and blasts them for suing each other but there is not a hint of quadrangular setting straight the doctrines of the parties. His attack is entirely based upon their splitting from one another. He uses the almost grotesque image of Jesus torn into pieces as rhetorical proof of their lunacy. Several hundred years before, in the early days before the nation of Israel became a monarchy, an Israelite and his concubine were threatened by the perverted Benjaminites of Gibeah. When the man sent out his concubine to the crowd in response to their threats, she was raped through the night and eventually died as a result. Furious with what they had done, the man cut up his dead concubine into twelve parts and sent the body parts of his slave girl out on donkeys throughout Israel to raise up the righteous wrath of his countrymen. Needless to say, it worked. Paul knew of the story and its horror all too well for he was a Benjaminite and the occurrence was a dark blight on his ancestral background. The terrible image of Christ cut up like that and sent out was intended to disgust and shock the church.

We are so accustomed to splits and divisions and spin-offs that we have a most difficult time taking this passage at face value. We seem to have an inherent need to find out what was wrong with the factions. What were they doing that caused the split(s)? Where had they drifted from right doctrine? Now we know from church history that there were plenty of theological rifts that nearly tore the church asunder. From the Palagians to the Gnostics, there were a slew of cultic teachings infiltrating the church. Paul himself fought against the Judaizers and their effort to destroy the work of Grace. But this furious reprimand of Paul had nothing to do with setting straight bad doctrine. It was an attack against the church way of life. Paul had absolutely nothing bad or good to say about whatever arguments and counter arguments were being cast about for the various factions. He just despised the splits.
To Be Continued

Say What?

Recently there was an ad making fun of John McCain and his lack of computer skills. Of course there is more to the story than that and an important lesson. It seems imperative that before we mock someone or make judgments, we should have all the facts. Regardless of political bent or even religious persuasion...

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7: 1,2 NIV

Click here for ...the rest of the story

Risky Business Concluded

Verse five continues the thought. At that moment when grace came our way, we were in every single part of our lives enriched in Christ. The wealth of Christ came to us out of two sources: every word and every insight brought by Him. In other words, when the Gospel came to us and by the revelation it carried in our hearts, we gained the wealth of the grace of God. Just as an inheritance is gained in its fullness and not piecemeal when the will is read, so with the acceptance of the Gospel we gain it all at once: eternal life, transformation and citizenship into the Kingdom of God.

Verse six answers the question, “How is this so?” We already have been enriched by grace because the witness of Christ was established at that same time in us. Now there are two ways to interpret the witness. It could be what others (the Bible, the Holy Spirit, those who shared the Gospel with us) provided us as witness or it could be the witness of Christ Himself in declaring us His. The Greek word translated “establish” means “to render constant and unwavering” or “to ratify”. It is the picture of a judge declaring an adoption finalized or the Supreme Court determining a law constitutional. The witness of Christ that the grace of God is ours is irrevocably decided and declared. Now it is my contention, that the witness, for this reason is not the one given by a friend but rather the witness of Jesus that when we received the grace of God through faith, we were established by Him as His. No verbal testimony can decide our place in the Kingdom but Jesus’ word can and does. It is the witness of Jesus Christ that decides our fate and upon the receiving of God’s grace, the witness is fixed.

As a result of the witness having been irrevocably established in us, we are made a promise in verse seven. Or, to be more precise, a fact is stated. We will not, in any single way come up short with regard to anything promised to God’s people when Jesus Christ is revealed at the end time. Paul uses a double negative to make his point conclusive. There is not one benefit of being God’s child we will miss when Christ returns. “Oh, but how can this be”, is a legitimate question. What if you fail in some important something you should have done? What if you don’t live up to all of your obligations as a Christian? Isn’t there some debit charge we will accrue at the end of time? How can you have all I have when Christ returns if you weren’t as good as me at living up to your responsibilities? Now logically, as we evaluate what ought to be upon Christ’s return, there should be some tallying done and spiritual accountability. A divine ledger ought to reflect a comparative analysis between us.

Of course that is what makes sense to us but it is not reflected in the Apostle Paul’s assessment of Grace. Not one gift of God will be missing from our stocking when Christ returns. The naughty or nice accounting of Santa Claus is just not there for God’s people. In Christ, we will not lack a single gift of God when He returns. The gifts are settled by the established witness of Christ that we are His own.

If verse seven lifted the lid of Pandora’s Box, verse eight blows it from its hinges. Verse eight makes a complete wreck of any semblance of end times retribution for the Church. It really is quite astonishing what verse eight states. Listen again to the Apostle Paul. “Which also he shall establish you unto the end, unblameable ones on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Unblameable is perhaps not a real word but it best explains the Greek term Paul uses. It means irreproachable, not charged, not on trial. Born-again Christians will not be charged at all at the end. Not a single claim will be made against us and the reason will be because God will make this certain. It is, as Paul puts it, “established, unwavering, never in doubt”. It is not our innocence that will be established, it is us as blameless that is established. This is not an overlooking of guilt, a closing the eyes and passing on what is obvious to all. God will, to the very end, make sure we are completely blameless with no one to charge us with a single fault. This is an astounding claim.

Verse nine concludes the section with the reason why we should believe we will be kept blameless until the end. God is faithful. God, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ, is faithful. You may not be able to count on your husband or your children, your boss or the economy but…you can trust God. What He has done is called us into a select group, the fellowship of His son Jesus Christ. We are not in the end Democrats or Republicans, Asians or South Americans, rich or poor, male or female or any other sort of classification the world tries to make us settle. We are only one sort of person; within the fellowship of Jesus Christ or not. If we are, no matter how badly we condemn ourselves, how horrifically we are ridiculed or rejected by others, we will be, in the end, blameless. And why will this be so? Because we are in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and it was God who called us into it.

Many in the Christian community are not ready to hear this. They feel much more comfortable trying to work out all their faults on their own and have a tough time thinking God will not somehow make us accountable for the many bad things we do as Christians. I cannot say it is fair that God will make us blameless on the last day and I admit it seems like some Christians I know should have to pay a price for their greed, immorality, bad temper and affection for primetime TV shows but I am as you are, left with the very clear pronouncement Paul makes here. In the end, we will, in Christ be let off scot free without a single charge brought against us. It is dangerous for God to do this. What is to keep some Christian man from professing Christ and then murdering his family and still be let into heaven? My own son asked me this very question about grace. If the cross teaches us anything, it is this. God is not afraid of our sins. And…the blood of Christ is sufficient to make clean the worst of us sinners.

The Pandora’s Box is opened. Grace has escaped.

What Do You Think?

Beautiful Baby In The Womb...It could have been You!


If you think the campaign has reached bizaro levels, read the story below from Jonathon Martin's blog...

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women.

“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.

Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."

UPDATE -- Carol Fowler releases a statement of apology: "I personally admire and respect the difficult choices that women make everyday, and I apologize to anyone who finds my comment offensive. I clumsily was making a point about people in South Carolina who may vote based on a single issue. Whether it’s the environment, the economy, the war or a woman’s right to choose, there are people who will cast their vote based on a single issue. That was the only point I was attempting to make."


I did not make this up! If you do not believe me, click here!
I have a great friend who vehemently argues that abortions should be legal and easy to obtain. She contends forcefully that if abortions are outlawed, then we will have an epidemic of dying women brutally attempting self-administered abortions.

Of course the emotional persuasiveness of this contention is most difficult to battle. No one wants what she describes happening ever.

But here is the basic point Christians argue regarding abortion. The baby in the womb is never a part of the woman's body. It is a separate, living entity 46 chromosomed into life. It may not survive outside the womb at six weeks but neither do many victim of car accidents or shootings survive without the help of medical staff yet we don't argue for just discarding those lives simply because they are inconvenient. They are at the mercy of the medical staff but no one contends that somehow the hospital personel "own" the victim because it is within their power to keep alive.

Two, the life in the womb or outside the womb is God's and no one else's. Jeremiah the prophet wished he had been cut off from the living while in the womb because of how hard his life was but at no point did he ever fail to acknowledge his life was not his own. In his mother's womb he was known by God and David the King tells us that God lovingly puts together our parts in the womb. As we know and still acknowledge, all life comes from God and He begins it despite the cloning efforts of scientists. We fight for life not because we want mothers dying of self-induced abortions but because the millions killed in abortion clinics are God's and the death of these babies is wretched beyond measure. We live, not because a mother chose to keep us alive but rather because a Savior wanted us to come about.


Ps 139:13-16
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
(from New International Version)

Risky Business Introduction

1 Corinthians 1:4-9 GJW
I continually give thanks to my God always concerning you upon the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus because, in everything, you were enriched in him in every word and in every insight due to the fact the witness of Christ was established in you. Consequently you aren’t at all being made to come short in any anticipated gift with reference to the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ which also he shall establish you unto the end unblameable ones on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ, is faithful.


The story of Pandora’s Box is a silly little myth the Greeks thrust upon the western world. If not for Pandora and her craven curiosity the story goes, we would not have all the wearisome troubles we face. Plagues and diseases, holocausts and terrors all flew out into the world the instant Pandora took off the lid. Of course even the Greeks knew the tale was just a teaching vehicle used to warn against flippancy, against the casual disregard for the actions we take. We must think before we act is the moral; that even the most breezy wisp of a thought can reap a world of harm. Ten car pile-ups and lost political campaigns can both be initiated by a solitary decision that at the time seemed meaningless and trivial. It of course goes the other way too. Pandora’s Box could have the small pox inoculation, the chance meeting that turns a plumber into a world-class author, a happy discovery at a pawn shop of a Monet. We can wonder what might have been King David’s legacy if he hadn’t wandered out on the roof the fateful night he stumbled upon the lovely Bathsheba bathing but we can just as easily ponder the way history could have shifted if Moses had taken his sheep east rather than west and missed the burning bush. Both were a sort of Pandora’s Box.

There are findings in scripture that are a Pandora’s Box. As you gaze upon them, the consequences of opening these discoveries are monumental in ways we may not know at all. The realization that God is a Trinity is a Pandora’s Box. The finding that God is eternal and everything that is sprang not out of random evolutionary processes but rather from God’s specific word is a Pandora’s Box. Our passage today is a sizable and in ways baffling Pandora’s Box for by opening it, we can unleash an entirely undesirable fury. And yet, if the Gospel is good news, then you just might have something else altogether. The problem with the Bible is that despite what you may wish it say, it says what it does and we are left with the many consequences that spring from it.

Some could argue that the six verses found above are simply a minor introductory statement for the much more important body of instructions that follow in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians but if you look closely enough at it, you find within this little passage an extraordinary assertion. Now we can take one of two courses. We can heed the warning of Pandora and keep this risky portion of scripture closed or we can follow the example of Abraham Lincoln or Governor Palin and run for office anyway despite its risks or in our case, open the passage.

Paul marks out a quite straight path toward a revolutionary teaching. It all begins with verse four. Of course the verse may not sound like much. It is innocent enough. Paul gives thanks continually because of the grace given the church in Christ Jesus. This grace Paul notes is given all at once. It is completed in a moment. The verb translated “given” describes something finished, already accomplished. Of course grace is in Paul’s writings the total work of God in us. It is the death of Christ for our sins, the calling of God to receive our salvation found in Jesus, the transforming work of God in making us a new creation; or as Jesus puts it, “born again” and it is the eternal life we possess through faith. That says Paul is what has happened for us. We shall not receive grace at some later date; grace has already come our way and its work with us is finished and for that, Paul gives ongoing thanks.
To Be Continued

Evangelical voters

Pollster George Barna and the Barna Group recently came out with his findings on how Americans view Evangelical Voters. His discoveries are quite interesting!


What Do Americans Think of Evangelical Voters?

In general, evangelical voters are perceived with a mix of skepticism and respect. Americans are not always sure what to make of evangelicals, but they believe the voting bloc has significant influence. Barna examined eight perceptions of evangelical voters. Four of the statements represented the most widely-held views:


that evangelicals will have a significant influence effect on the election outcome (59% of American adults said this was either "very" or "somewhat accurate" regarding evangelical voters);
that evangelicals will cause the political conversation to be more conservative (59%);
that they will be spend too much time complaining and not enough time solving problems (56%);
and that they will be misunderstood and unfairly described by news media (56%).
Surprisingly, given the attention that moral issues have received in connection with evangelicals, only half of Americans (52%) felt that evangelical voters would focus primarily on homosexuality and abortion.

Roughly half said that evangelicals will minimize social justice issues (47%) and another 47% felt they believe that evangelicals will vote overwhelmingly Republican. Roughly two out of every five Americans (44%) believed evangelicals will not approach the election with an open mind.

To read the rest of the article, click on the link below!
Click Here

The Prayer Of The Anointed Concluded

What was the undergirding force making the fearful bold and the broken strong? It was, we must acknowledge, faith in God. The story ended happily. The Ammonites and Moabites in a bizarre twist of circumstance unraveled and started butchering the Edomites and when that wasn’t enough to quench their collective fury, they destroyed each other. Without lifting a hand against her enemies Israel was saved. How would things have turned if the people had doubted the prophet’s call to trust? If Israel never came out in battle formation and hid behind its town walls instead, what might have happened? Would the Edomites and Moabites and Ammonites still have ruthlessly attacked one another had the armies of Judah stayed home or would they have remained a united force and destroyed God’s people? We don’t really know, do we? Therein is the befuddlement of faith. How far do you go with faith’s stretch? Does faith just make you feel better or is it the most dramatic change agent available to God’s people? Is it the crossover into the supernatural or just a psychological quick fix to stress?

Imagine needing to travel three thousand miles in three days or lose the dream career opportunity of a lifetime back in 1850 and stumbling upon a BMW roadster with the keys left in the ignition and a gas tank big enough to carry you across the United States. What would you have done? Certainly you would have hoped in the car, turned the key and made your way as fast as you could across the prairie. But what if you didn’t think the car could move, didn’t believe it could take you anywhere at all and walked away from it and given up on your dream career? Would you have been a fool in 1850? Perhaps not… Yet you certainly would be thought one now! Faith operates always with the future in mind; it never really stands in the present. Faith is the ultimate enigma, the unsearchable premise. Place the BMW in Middle Ages Germany and it is faith, put it on the Autobahn and it is science.

But, you may argue, the BMW in Middle Ages Germany is just as much science as it is if it is sitting in one of our showrooms today but that is because we misunderstand the nature of faith. Faith is not confidence in a non-entity that we dream about; faith is confidence in the very real God who keeps your heart pounding and your mind working. Turn the key even back in the Middle Ages and the BMW starts. Turn the key of faith today and you become Jehoshaphat. Your life starts. It is impossible to guess at what we miss when we don’t trust God moment by moment and pray in faith. Certainly the people of Nazareth didn’t know what their lack of faith in Jesus meant to them…but now we do. The same holds true today. A lack of faith seems so very inconsequential right now…or at least we are not sure what harm it may cause us. The truth is that because faith always lives within the future and we cannot see into the future, we make our most fatal mistakes within the realm of faith. At the time it doesn’t seem to matter if we have faith or not. But for the people of Nazareth and even earlier for the citizens of Judah, it did…and it does for us too!

There are three signs that our faith is growing too low to change our circumstances and causes us to miss the same things the people of Nazareth missed, God’s miraculous interventions. The first is fear. If we have become fearful, we are low in faith. When the disciples panicked over the horrific storm they found themselves swept into on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus ridiculed their response. "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. (Matthew 8:26 NIV) It isn’t that the storm wasn’t real or that people don’t die in storms like that. Jesus gave no hint that the disciples were behaving insanely. Bills are real, bankruptcy is real, rapists are real, broken pipes and broken arms are real. Christian faith doesn’t deny reality. What Christian faith does though is look to God for complete help. Like water and oil, faith and fear cannot mingle, they may co-exist in the same heart but one always works to push out the other. Open up faith and fear slips off, nurture fear and your faith bubbles away.

A second sign that faith is low is a concentrated gaze on stuff. Part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was dedicated to the problem of God’s people spending too much time and effort collecting goods, clothing, food and drink. Little faith and a preoccupation with what we eat and wear and what we have go hand-in-hand. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:30-31 NIV) The fuzzy line that defines just enough and too much money and property collected and considered is the line between unbelief and faith. A new may be just what God wants me to purchase for myself. Yet the amount of thought I put in my wardrobe may be the chief hindrance to having enough faith in God to do much for the Kingdom through prayer. Spend too much time debating the benefits of one computer over another and your hope in God could diminish and your faith weaken. Do not take the time to pursue God’s guidance in what to buy or not buy and you may have a great sound system but nothing to help you with your cancer or your new boss.

A third sign that my faith is weak is when I complain. On another occasion the disciples were boating with Jesus and Christ wanted to teach them about how bad it was to follow the same approach to God as did the Pharisees. This was a crucial lesson for the disciples to grasp and Jesus wanted their full attention. However, the disciples were bitterly obsessed with the fact no one had brought bread along for the trip. Stomachs growling and fatigue setting in on them, the bread crisis kept them from listening to God. Jesus’ rebuke of them was sharp. Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? (Matthew 16:8 NIV) Bread is not the issue when we complain about something nor is a messy house, a touchy supervisor or a whining child. When we complain, our lack of faith is being proven. “You of little faint”, Jesus remonstrated, not, “wow, we are having a horrible day. Who forgot the bread?”

All faith begins with this one decisive moment. Without real hope available anywhere else, I cry out, “God help me.” Whether I need to buy a tie for a wedding, get my car running, take a sick aunt to the hospital or decide how I will spend eternity once I die, the plea, “Jesus, please help me” is the one and only way to enter into the supernatural of Christ. I can wag my finger at a store clerk who won’t let me return a Christmas present, beg for a bank employee to give me more time to pay off my debt, work for hours on a new resume but nothing enters me into God’s world if I do not in faith turn to Him for help.

At the very edge of Easter was perhaps the purest picture of the sort of faith we must embrace if we are to know the power of God mingled with our earthy moments. Having watched Jesus’ blood splatter down before her and then in agony groan out His last breath, Mary Magdalene did what even the disciples were not willing to risk, go to the grave of Jesus and honor His memory. How could she go down to His tomb Easter Sunday when so many others could not who loved Jesus just as dearly? What strength gave her power to risk the wrath of the guards stationed at the tomb? How was she able to manage the journey there when no one else would? We must call it…faith. Take what seems to be empty hope, mix it with the unwashed promise of God to always be with you and help you in your times of need and you have faith…It was faith that gave Mary Magdalene, when everyone else was gone, the first sight of the risen Savior.