1 Peter 5:1 I appeal as… a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed:
1 Peter 2:21 to this (suffering for doing good) you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
1 Peter 4:16 if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. 1 Peter 4:12 Do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
1 Peter 1:6 In this (living hope of soon-coming glorification) you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 1 Peter 2:19 for it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 1 Peter 2:20 If you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.
1Peter 3:14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed (rewarded by God’s pleasure in you and therefore happy together with God). "Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened." 1 Peter 3:17 It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.
1 Peter 4:15 If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler.
1 Peter 4:19 so then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good. 1 Peter 5:9 Resist him, (the one who tempts you to be anxious so that he can destroy you with worry) standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
To sum up…
When you, a Christian, suffer, (whether persecution or illness or loss) fight against feeling shocked, afraid, anxious, ashamed, or singled out. (Our natural temptations)
In faith, fight for joy by fixing your mind on fellowship with Jesus in suffering making it your will / desire, because it seems to be his will for you.
Then decide to hope in glorification with Christ, a time when the desert-experience of this life is over and we enter our promised-land with him. Keep doing these right things, maintaining this right perspective even if it still hurts.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Anti-evangelism
Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
7b a time to be silent and a time to speak,
I have been begging, reasoning with, explaining to, warning, praying for, and loving my brother for 25 years to no avail. His heart is as hard as ever despite what he has seen in my life. Perhaps part of the problem is that I don’t know when to just shut up.
John 10:16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. THEY too WILL LISTEN to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
“They will listen!”, Those who are not his sheep, will not. What then do I do?
Mt 7:6 “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.
Mt 8:22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me now. Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead.”
Mt 10:14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.
1Peter 3:1 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives,
A whole theology of anti-evangelism could be established. The question is simply this, will I ever trust God enough to just shut up and know that he is God? (Ps 46:10)
Not that I have to stop loving or praying, just stop talking and giving books and offering advice and quoting scripture waiting for this moment to come along…
1Peter 3:15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer TO EVERYONE WHO ASKS you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.
Most books on evangelism do not tell us when to stop and trust and wait. Most apologetics books should come with this warning: There is a time to be silent!
7b a time to be silent and a time to speak,
I have been begging, reasoning with, explaining to, warning, praying for, and loving my brother for 25 years to no avail. His heart is as hard as ever despite what he has seen in my life. Perhaps part of the problem is that I don’t know when to just shut up.
John 10:16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. THEY too WILL LISTEN to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
“They will listen!”, Those who are not his sheep, will not. What then do I do?
Mt 7:6 “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.
Mt 8:22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me now. Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead.”
Mt 10:14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.
1Peter 3:1 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives,
A whole theology of anti-evangelism could be established. The question is simply this, will I ever trust God enough to just shut up and know that he is God? (Ps 46:10)
Not that I have to stop loving or praying, just stop talking and giving books and offering advice and quoting scripture waiting for this moment to come along…
1Peter 3:15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer TO EVERYONE WHO ASKS you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.
Most books on evangelism do not tell us when to stop and trust and wait. Most apologetics books should come with this warning: There is a time to be silent!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Divine Sovereignty & Human Free-Will
Reflections on Matthew 24:14
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Consider what is going on as you look out the window and notice that your bird feeder is getting low. You want to continue to enjoy the beauty of these creatures in your back yard so, with out much thought, you refill the feeder.
Looking hopefully out the window, you wait for return of the Cedar Waxwings and the Blue Jays and the Juncos, as they discover this new bounty that you have provided.
You enjoy the spectacle of color and see something of the mind of God in their beauty and variety and their differing natures. You like to feed the birds. You do it freely of your own volition and then you remember…
Matthew 6:26 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
And you think, “When I feed the birds, am I usurping God, replacing God, assisting God, supplementing what God is doing, or am I in fact, of my own free will, carrying out the sovereign plan of God?
Is God feeding the birds through me? Was this his plan? Is this how, at least in part, God sovereignly feeds his birds? Would they not have eaten as well today had it not been for me?
On a grander scale, consider the witness, the evidence you embody and communicate, even sometimes unwittingly, that testifies to the existence and nature of God.God displays his glory through your words and actions and attitudes. He planned it long ago as the vital means he would use to spread his gospel.
Your desire to serve him, to see people saved, is your own will, sovereignly employed by his plan, to make his fame spread and his grace to sinners known.
That God feeds the birds, needs to be clearly perceived while I am happily filling the feeder. What I must also come to see is that the gospel will be preached in the whole world.
And WE will joyfully pursue that goal, partnered with Him and it will be accomplished and then the end will come.God will sovereignly accomplish his will, in part, through our free will and effort. And in the end every people-group will have heard.
Revelation 14:6 Then I saw another angel flying in mid-air, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water."
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Consider what is going on as you look out the window and notice that your bird feeder is getting low. You want to continue to enjoy the beauty of these creatures in your back yard so, with out much thought, you refill the feeder.
Looking hopefully out the window, you wait for return of the Cedar Waxwings and the Blue Jays and the Juncos, as they discover this new bounty that you have provided.
You enjoy the spectacle of color and see something of the mind of God in their beauty and variety and their differing natures. You like to feed the birds. You do it freely of your own volition and then you remember…
Matthew 6:26 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
And you think, “When I feed the birds, am I usurping God, replacing God, assisting God, supplementing what God is doing, or am I in fact, of my own free will, carrying out the sovereign plan of God?
Is God feeding the birds through me? Was this his plan? Is this how, at least in part, God sovereignly feeds his birds? Would they not have eaten as well today had it not been for me?
On a grander scale, consider the witness, the evidence you embody and communicate, even sometimes unwittingly, that testifies to the existence and nature of God.God displays his glory through your words and actions and attitudes. He planned it long ago as the vital means he would use to spread his gospel.
Your desire to serve him, to see people saved, is your own will, sovereignly employed by his plan, to make his fame spread and his grace to sinners known.
That God feeds the birds, needs to be clearly perceived while I am happily filling the feeder. What I must also come to see is that the gospel will be preached in the whole world.
And WE will joyfully pursue that goal, partnered with Him and it will be accomplished and then the end will come.God will sovereignly accomplish his will, in part, through our free will and effort. And in the end every people-group will have heard.
Revelation 14:6 Then I saw another angel flying in mid-air, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water."
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Paper Jesus (confessions of a tough-guy)
The light and warmth of a small camp-fire keeps Jesus and his disciples in close and comforting proximity. Peter with his back supported by the smooth flat side of an olive tree leans noticeably to one side and farts like only Peter can.
James whose head had been tilted back, receiving the stream of wine from a skin, half swallows, chokes and then blasts a spray or red. Now on all fours, coughing, laughing, drooling. A rumble of laughter rolls over the fire-lit faces. A near-state of exhaustion, the late hour and a little wine has made them corporately giddy.
Thaddaeus rolls over and wakes from a slumber and stares in childlike query. Jesus, sitting on the ground by the fire lowers his head, wags it in mock disapproval, able, just, to prevent a smile from becoming a laugh, says to Peter… “Your mother would be proud.”
Did this moment happen? Or a similar one? What we are handed in the pages of scripture is a “paper” Jesus. We are delivered highlights of his mission and ministry, his teaching, his compacted, condensed, agenda-driven moments that the Spirit vivifies and uses to lead and feed his followers.
One thing I learned a long time ago was never to take a paper author at face value and compare my life to what I imagine his life to be, based solely on his writing. I was in the middle of reading “Ordering Your Private World”, one of my all-time favorite books, when the author Gordon McDonald confessed to being involved in an long-term, adulterous affair. It took me 20 years to finally forgive him and start respecting his writing again. Shame on me, perhaps, but I’m only human.
I’m not at all suggesting that Jesus ever sinned or would disappoint, quite the opposite. I’m suggesting that there were non-agenda driven moments that we can only imagine. What tear did he let fall on his mothers shoulder as he comforted her after the death of Joseph? What laughter did he share with James when making smiley faces at the table with a mouth full of fish?
What moments of comfort and joy and acceptance and friendship and love are lost between the pages that we could only imagine and seek to experience as we fill in the gaps of the story. What love and acceptance and compassion and rest must we offer, as we seek to emulate Jesus, with only “What would Jesus do?” to go on?
John tells us that, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)
Is it possible that some of the counter productive sternness and argumentativeness that develops in some seasoned saints comes from simply imagining that this “paper Jesus” is the complete Jesus. Was he always on task, always arguing in public, never personally congenial, affable? What did he talk about sitting with tax-collectors and prostitutes around a table? Did he ever just listen and love with his presence? Did he ever simply comfort with a touch and not add a single word. Did he ever forgive, just by pursing his lips and nodding his head to one side? Did he ever show acceptance that changed a life with a smile of his eyes?
We could only (and must) imagine if we are ever to live with more than a paper-Jesus. We must live with and reveal the present, living Christ. We must be disciples of more than paper. We must incarnate, demonstrate… him to the people around us. The people we love, the people in whose presence we fart.
James whose head had been tilted back, receiving the stream of wine from a skin, half swallows, chokes and then blasts a spray or red. Now on all fours, coughing, laughing, drooling. A rumble of laughter rolls over the fire-lit faces. A near-state of exhaustion, the late hour and a little wine has made them corporately giddy.
Thaddaeus rolls over and wakes from a slumber and stares in childlike query. Jesus, sitting on the ground by the fire lowers his head, wags it in mock disapproval, able, just, to prevent a smile from becoming a laugh, says to Peter… “Your mother would be proud.”
Did this moment happen? Or a similar one? What we are handed in the pages of scripture is a “paper” Jesus. We are delivered highlights of his mission and ministry, his teaching, his compacted, condensed, agenda-driven moments that the Spirit vivifies and uses to lead and feed his followers.
One thing I learned a long time ago was never to take a paper author at face value and compare my life to what I imagine his life to be, based solely on his writing. I was in the middle of reading “Ordering Your Private World”, one of my all-time favorite books, when the author Gordon McDonald confessed to being involved in an long-term, adulterous affair. It took me 20 years to finally forgive him and start respecting his writing again. Shame on me, perhaps, but I’m only human.
I’m not at all suggesting that Jesus ever sinned or would disappoint, quite the opposite. I’m suggesting that there were non-agenda driven moments that we can only imagine. What tear did he let fall on his mothers shoulder as he comforted her after the death of Joseph? What laughter did he share with James when making smiley faces at the table with a mouth full of fish?
What moments of comfort and joy and acceptance and friendship and love are lost between the pages that we could only imagine and seek to experience as we fill in the gaps of the story. What love and acceptance and compassion and rest must we offer, as we seek to emulate Jesus, with only “What would Jesus do?” to go on?
John tells us that, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)
Is it possible that some of the counter productive sternness and argumentativeness that develops in some seasoned saints comes from simply imagining that this “paper Jesus” is the complete Jesus. Was he always on task, always arguing in public, never personally congenial, affable? What did he talk about sitting with tax-collectors and prostitutes around a table? Did he ever just listen and love with his presence? Did he ever simply comfort with a touch and not add a single word. Did he ever forgive, just by pursing his lips and nodding his head to one side? Did he ever show acceptance that changed a life with a smile of his eyes?
We could only (and must) imagine if we are ever to live with more than a paper-Jesus. We must live with and reveal the present, living Christ. We must be disciples of more than paper. We must incarnate, demonstrate… him to the people around us. The people we love, the people in whose presence we fart.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
How Should a Christian Fear the Lord?
This is from John Piper's book “The Pleasures of God”
and is too good not to share.
To summarize, the fear of the lord is not nervousness or anxiety or uncertainty, but confident awe and wonder and amazement from a place of safety, a place you want to stay.
Piper writes:
FEAR AND HOPE AT THE SAME TIME
Does it strike you as strange that we should be encouraged to fear and hope at the same time and in the same person? "The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love." (Ps 147:11)
Do you hope in the one you fear and fear the one you hope in? It's usually the other way around: if we fear a person, we hope that someone else will come and help us. But here we are supposed to fear the one we hope in and hope in the one we fear. What does this mean?
I think it means that we should let the experience of hope penetrate and transform the experience of fear. In other words, the kind of fear that we should have toward God is whatever is left of fear when we have a sure hope in the midst of it.
GREENLAND GLACIER
Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Green-land in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and mountains of snow, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear rises in your heart that it might blow you over the cliff. But in the midst of the storm you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure. But, even though secure, the awesome might of the storm rages on, and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.
At first there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished from your heart. Only the life-threatening part. There remained the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power.
And so it is with God. In the same Psalm we read, "He gives snow like wool; he scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He casts forth his ice like morsels; who can stand before his cold?" (vv. 16-17). The cold of God is a fearful thing—who can stand against it! And verses 4–5 point to the same power of God in nature: "He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Great is our LORD, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure."
In other words, God's greatness is greater than the universe of stars, and his power is behind the unendurable cold of arctic storms. Yet he cups his hand around us and says, "Take refuge in my love and let the terrors of my power become the awesome fireworks of your happy night-sky."
The fear of God is what is left of the storm when you have a safe place to watch right in the middle of it. And in that place of refuge we say, "This is amazing, this is terrible, this is incredible power; Oh, the thrill of being here in the center of the awful power of God, yet protected by God himself! Oh, what a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God without hope, without a Savior! Better to have a millstone tied around my neck and be thrown into the depths of the sea than to offend against this God! What a wonderful privilege to know the favor of this God in the midst of his power!"
And so we get an idea of how we feel both hope and fear at the same time. Hope turns fear into a trembling and peaceful wonder; and fear takes everything trivial out of hope and makes it earnest and profound. The terrors of God make the pleasures of his people intense. The fireside fellow-ship is all the sweeter when the storm is howling outside the cottage.
Now why does God delight in those who experience him in this way—in people who fear him and hope in his love? Surely it is because our fear reflects the greatness of his power and our hope reflects the bounty of his grace. God delights in those responses which mirror his magnificence.
This is just what we would have expected from a God who is all-sufficient in himself and has no need of us—a God who will never give up the glory of being the fountain of all joy, who will never surrender the honor of being the source of all safety, who will never abdicate the throne of sovereign grace. God has pleasure in those who hope in his love because that hope highlights the freedom of his grace. When I cry out, "God is my only hope, my rock, my refuge!" I am turning from myself and calling all attention to the boundless resources of God.
and is too good not to share.
To summarize, the fear of the lord is not nervousness or anxiety or uncertainty, but confident awe and wonder and amazement from a place of safety, a place you want to stay.
Piper writes:
FEAR AND HOPE AT THE SAME TIME
Does it strike you as strange that we should be encouraged to fear and hope at the same time and in the same person? "The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love." (Ps 147:11)
Do you hope in the one you fear and fear the one you hope in? It's usually the other way around: if we fear a person, we hope that someone else will come and help us. But here we are supposed to fear the one we hope in and hope in the one we fear. What does this mean?
I think it means that we should let the experience of hope penetrate and transform the experience of fear. In other words, the kind of fear that we should have toward God is whatever is left of fear when we have a sure hope in the midst of it.
GREENLAND GLACIER
Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Green-land in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and mountains of snow, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear rises in your heart that it might blow you over the cliff. But in the midst of the storm you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure. But, even though secure, the awesome might of the storm rages on, and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.
At first there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished from your heart. Only the life-threatening part. There remained the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power.
And so it is with God. In the same Psalm we read, "He gives snow like wool; he scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He casts forth his ice like morsels; who can stand before his cold?" (vv. 16-17). The cold of God is a fearful thing—who can stand against it! And verses 4–5 point to the same power of God in nature: "He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Great is our LORD, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure."
In other words, God's greatness is greater than the universe of stars, and his power is behind the unendurable cold of arctic storms. Yet he cups his hand around us and says, "Take refuge in my love and let the terrors of my power become the awesome fireworks of your happy night-sky."
The fear of God is what is left of the storm when you have a safe place to watch right in the middle of it. And in that place of refuge we say, "This is amazing, this is terrible, this is incredible power; Oh, the thrill of being here in the center of the awful power of God, yet protected by God himself! Oh, what a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God without hope, without a Savior! Better to have a millstone tied around my neck and be thrown into the depths of the sea than to offend against this God! What a wonderful privilege to know the favor of this God in the midst of his power!"
And so we get an idea of how we feel both hope and fear at the same time. Hope turns fear into a trembling and peaceful wonder; and fear takes everything trivial out of hope and makes it earnest and profound. The terrors of God make the pleasures of his people intense. The fireside fellow-ship is all the sweeter when the storm is howling outside the cottage.
Now why does God delight in those who experience him in this way—in people who fear him and hope in his love? Surely it is because our fear reflects the greatness of his power and our hope reflects the bounty of his grace. God delights in those responses which mirror his magnificence.
This is just what we would have expected from a God who is all-sufficient in himself and has no need of us—a God who will never give up the glory of being the fountain of all joy, who will never surrender the honor of being the source of all safety, who will never abdicate the throne of sovereign grace. God has pleasure in those who hope in his love because that hope highlights the freedom of his grace. When I cry out, "God is my only hope, my rock, my refuge!" I am turning from myself and calling all attention to the boundless resources of God.
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