This is a song about...hope...

I gave away one of my favorite cds, by one of my favorite song-writers, a long time ago. The details of why I gave it away or who I gave it to aren't important. The point is that I re-purchased the cd today, as well as the most recent cd by the same artist, Sara Groves. I know that Sara would not want me to dwell on her, or her songwriting because I know she wants the name of Jesus to be lifted above all else.

Something about one of the songs on the album spoke to me and I believe it is something the Spirit is starting to expose to me...He may have been trying for some time now. The word that started with that song and continues forward through the Word itself has ramifications that I have yet to really even begin to understand. In 1 Corinthians 13 when Paul writes about love, it is kind of hard not to let some of the other terms he talks about get lost in all the talk about love. I'm not going to diminsh the term love, nor would I dare diminish love's purpose. However, there is another term in this passage that merits great attention. This term is something that these verses state love always does. Love always hopes.

Hope.

I can't believe how useless this term has become in my vocabulary. I'm more often to say that I hope Auburn wins a football game, than I am to cry out for hope in Christ and the coming glory of God. Looking at the apathy that has scratched my soul in the past few years, I can now put my finger on a vast abscence of hope. A void lacking anticipation. Joyful hope has been replaced with cautious optimism, and cautious optimicism with an almost cynical doubt.

Yet here it is, the word hope. On this evening of rest with my wife, the word hope dares ring in the voice of this songwriter. Though she says plenty of other things, the phrase, "This is a song about...hope..." is the phrase that gets me up to write. She said 'hope' and the Spirit spoke to me, "Now these three remain: faith, hope and love".

When I look at life's circumstances, its hard for me to put into practice the principle of being anxious for nothing. Tough times can hit every aspect of existence, and I find what keeps me apathetic and unexcitied about the amazing potential for God's glory being revealed, is a lack of hope. Hope should be bigger within my heart and not just some religious substitution for the word 'wish'. We're not wishing on a star here, we're hoping in the Son of God. Who cares if it looks like someone we know will never change? Nothing is impossible with God. (Luke 1:37) Who cares if it looks like work's challenges can never be overcome? We are more than conquerors through Christ. (Romans 8:37) So what if it appears that our fears will come true? Perfect love drives out all fear. (1 John 4:18) And love always hopes.

Lord, I thank you for a new revelation of hope. Please keep showing me what it means to hope in You and what that means in the midst of everything going on around us. You are so good to bring the news of hope to us. When your Spirit comes, the excitement that fills my being is overwhelming. Surely in your presence there is fullness of joy. We love you Jesus.

God, Signs and Football

The last couple of days have been shown some pretty funny-interesting moments. I was reading a user-created list of 'The Worst Movie Twists of All Time' or something to that degree. One of the movie endings the writer didn't like was the ending to Signs. The author thought the idea ridiculous that God would go through so much 'trouble' to re-establish the faith of a former priest. The author suggested that simply making it rain would have produced the same level of gratitude from the priest. This argument is almost too ridiculous to give a response, except I just can't resist. God is an all-powerful being, and the writer is commenting on God going through too much trouble...as if a series of seemingly random events would be very complicated for God to pull off...and complaining about the efficiency of God's efforts to reach out to the spiritually scarred priest.

To carry things further, I then read an article in ESPN the magazine titled "Does God Care if John Kitna Wins?" This article was written regarding the faith of the Detroit Lions quarterback and the impact he has had on the football team. Kitna's faith in Christ has played a major role in bringing back team unity and several other areas that were sorely lacking among the players on Lions football team. The article is a great read and highly recommended, but ended with the following discussion question: "Does God care about the outcome of a football game?"

The thing that astounds me about these two experiences is how these two individuals view God. I understand that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-just, and all-loving being is a tid bit difficult to relate to, but come on, the least we could assume is that He isn't limited by the same things humans are limited by? What does God care about efficiency? To conserve resources? He has unlimited resources. To save time? He invented time. He's not bound by time. Does God care about the outcome of a football game? The outcome isn't the point...the process is the point. Men who follow Christ don't pray just so God will help them win. They ask God to help them concentrate, to guide them, to protect them, to give them wisdom, focus, integrity, to make conform them to Christ, or in the case of sports, to help them play for His glory. The outcome of the game, for those who are focused on Christ is quickly diminished.

This is a reminder to me of how easy it is to confine God to our limitations instead of appreciating the unlimited and unfathomable power at His finger tips.

Isaiah 50:8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,neither are your ways my ways,”declares the Lord.

The Divided Self-Centered Life

I had to copy the whole text of this document because it just really rings true with some things that I (and I'm sure others) have faced recently. Anyone who knows me, knows I read My Utmost For His Highest. This is taken from the August 19th entry and can be found at the following link (http://www.rbc.org/utmost/index.php). I also posted it here so that I could come back and read it again and again over the coming weeks. Without further delay:


God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— "Come to Me . . . ." The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.

Was Christ Simply a Great Moral Teacher?

Well, while all of our internal connectivity is undergoing maintenance here at work, I guess I can post something. It's been a long time since I've done so and I feel as though I am neglecting a friend from whose companionship I could benefit greatly if I'd only take the time to sit down and talk to them.

Today's inspiration for writing comes from a quote by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (Lewis 1952, pp. 43).

There's a lot to take in here, but I think what really gets to me is the statement "...but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to...". Christ makes no small effort in expressing that He is the Son of God, endowed with the very divinity of God. The disciples make no efforts to disguise this and all but one of them were killed proclaiming this truth adamantly. There is no middle ground on the deity of Christ. Either He is the Son of God or he is, as Lewis states, a madman.

Within my own soul, I have struggled with this question. "Is He really still alive? Is He really the Son of God? Was He just an exemplary man?" Within my own heart I have settled upon these responses based on the evidence He has shown me. The answers to the first two questions are most emphatically "YES" and the answer to the last question is "No".

Contempt for the Lord

I wonder if we realize what it is we do when we don't trust the Lord God. When our attitudes and actions tell God that He would have been better off leaving us to die in desert or live lives as slaves. When tough obstacles appear, it is human nature to be frightened. When our minds can't conceive of how the victory over the present and coming battles will be achieved, it is very easy to give up. The Israelites did this in Numbers. God sent them to explore the land He'd promised them. Their leaders explored for forty days and came back with reports of the fruitfullness of the land, but also of the terror that would contest them for it. Eight out of the ten explorers sowed fear into the hearts of the Israelites. They did not trust Moses to lead them, and they did not trust the Lord to be with them.I think we should understand that there is no justification to walking in the fear that confronts us. It is perfectly normal to be afraid, but it is showing contempt for the Lord when we embrace that fear or make decisions governed by fear. Fear is a terrible master and desires us to be slaves. A decision not to trust the Almighty Sovereign God, is contempt against Him. When we do this, we say to Him, "Surely you did not bring me this far, just to let me fall. Surely you should have left me back in the desert or in slavery, rather than give me false hope. Surely we would have been better off." To that I intellectually respond, "HOGWASH!" Surely there is no better place to be than in the presence of the Lord. Surely there is no better company than the Almighty. Surely there is no other that has ordained the number of our days. Surely there is no other who has died for our sins. Surely we can trust the one true living God.We must walk in trust. The outcome can never clearly be seen with human eyes, but God is not bound by our perspective of the future nor of time itself. It is all the same to Him and He can bend the 'laws of nature' to His whim. He can command the seas to be still, and walk upon them. He can stop time for a day. He can part the Red Sea. He can lead us with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Those who trust in the Lord, are like Mount Zion. They cannot be moved.