Film, Pharisees, and Frustration

I’m back!

It’s fall. I’m employed. I’m still broke. I’m kind of a senior.

These (except for being broke) are all new things that apply to me since the last time the I posted. That was way back there in April, back when I still believed that UGA’s football team had a prayer in 2010. Here’s to high hopes that didn’t pan out.

Regardless, back to the employment thing. I have a job now! It’s an odd job, but a job nonetheless. I take pictures of newspapers these days. When I’m not taking pictures of newspapers, I’m looking at microfilm of pictures of newspapers. It’s monotonous, but I don’t really mind it because I have lots of time with my iPod, so I can catch up on podcasts and audiobooks as I go. It’s been great, but two days ago I was floored by some scripture I heard in a sermon. The text was from John 5:

“So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.’ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’”

John 5:10-17

In verses fifteen and sixteen the Jews persecute Jesus because He heals on the Sabbath.

Stop and think about that for a second. What exactly did He do on the Sabbath?

He healed somebody.

Who heals people? God.

Would I be out of line if I said that these Pharisees were mad at God for being God? I mean, think about it. This man has lay by this pool at Bethesda for 38 years. He’s been a patient man. He’s been a frustrated man. Every day when the pool would stir, he’d try his hardest to get there, to have just a little bit of hope that that would be the day his miracle would arrive. But he kept failing. And the people kept walking by.

They would see him every day and come to accept his position as normal, as the status quo. He’s crippled, sure, but that’s just who he is. It’s who he was, it’s who he is, and it’s who he’s going to be. Throw him a dollar every now and then but don’t worry about it. And when the pool would stir, he would have no one to help him into it. He wanted healing so badly that he’d struggle to try and get over, but he just wasn’t fast enough. First come first serve on the miracles, son. Work for it if you want it. That’s the way it is.

And then comes Jesus. Throws a monkey wrench into everything.

“Do you want to be healed?”

Jesus tells him to take up his bed and walk. On the Sabbath. This man knew just like everyone else that he wasn’t supposed to work on the Sabbath, but he also knew that this Man who had just healed him had some kind of authority and power. If He could heal a 38-year invalid, He could tell him to walk on the Sabbath.

This man honored God by obedience. He enjoyed the gift that Jesus gave him, the gift of mobility. And what did the Pharisees do? Rejoice? Far from it. Rather than enjoying seeing the power of God at work in Christ, they resented it and were furious that this Man, who was claiming equality with God, didn’t fit inside the box that they’d built for God to fit in.

Let’s get legal.

Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.

Exodus 35:2-3

I’m so confused as to where they’re finding that he can’t take the bed that he’s been lying on for 38 years home. If I had been lying on the same mat for 38 years because I couldn’t walk, it would not feel like work at all to pick that trash up, take it away, and go find somewhere to dance. That’s not work. That’s liberation. But the Pharisees didn’t see that. They had made rules for themselves. They were righteous because their pedometers said so. “If you take one more step than me, you deserve to be stoned! How dare you break the Torah?!” Except that it’s not in there. The Pharisees weren’t mad because Jesus broke God’s Torah. They were mad because He broke THEIR torah.

How do you rebuke a man for a miracle on the Sabbath? Isn’t God in control of miracles? Isn’t God in control of the Sabbath? So if there’s a miracle on the Sabbath, don’t you kind of have to think that God gave it the OK?

I was really quick to rebuke the Pharisees in my brain until I started thinking about it.

I do the exact same thing.

God has unstoppable power and immutable authority. Psalm 115 says that God does whatever He wishes. He can rock miracles on the Sabbath because He made the Sabbath. He wrote the law. As Jesus He kept the law. He fulfilled the law on the cross. And what do I do? Exactly what the Pharisees did. I make rules based on my self righteous morals that, in my mind, govern how God should act. If He doesn’t act by my rules, on my timetable, according to my requests, how often do I call foul? I’m quick to cry for justice and fairness, but I really shouldn’t be. The Gospel isn’t fair. Fair is God killing me and sentencing me to the conscious eternal torment in Hell right now, because that’s what the filth of my sin deserves. That’s fair. That’s justice.

So here I am, in my filth but for the atoning blood of Christ, and somehow I’ve come to the arrogant position of thinking I can tell God how He should treat me because “I deserve this” or “it’s not fair for You not to do this.”

Maybe it’s the fact that I live in a microwave, eHarmony, iTunes-already-on-my-iPod culture. I get to live in a world where everything is simple and all the work is taken out of it. Everything is available right in front of me (disclaimer: I DO NOT HAVE AN eHARMONY PROFILE). I can pop food in a microwave and it’s ready in 3 minutes. I can tell a computer I’m single and it’ll say, “Hey, meet her because she matches the checklist you filled out!” If I hear a song on the radio I want, I can buy it right then. I pick those three examples because they NAIL three cultural failings that have leaked into my life: Impatience, self-idolization, and impulsivity. I want something quickly and painlessly, exactly how I ordered it, just because I decided that I should have it. That is DISGUSTING.

I know God loves me and that He has a plan for me. His works are forever, His plans are forever, and He has plans for my hope and for my future. But that’s the key: they’re His plans. Not mine. His ways are above my ways. His thoughts are above my thoughts. When I see the power of God at work in others, I should rejoice in it. I should be happy because God is showing Himself generous and glorious in them. When something hasn’t quite arrived in my life yet, I need to just keep living and keep devoting myself to Jesus and His Gospel. If God wants something to happen, it’ll happen regardless of what is done to stop it. If He doesn’t want something to happen, no matter my amount of hard work, dedication, and tenacity, IT WON’T HAPPEN. I have to submit not just parts of my life, but all of it.

It’s not right for me to demand things be done by my timetable to my preferences. It’s idolatrous, and by my actions it’s saying that I should be God because I know how to do things better than He does.

I’m not God. I don’t want to be.

But I don’t want to be mad at God for being God either.

Psalm 25

To You, Yahweh, I lift up my soul.

O my God, I trust in You;

Let me not be ashamed;

Let not my enemies triumph over me.

Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed;

Let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause.

Show me Your ways, Yahweh;

Teach me Your paths.

Lead me in Your truth and teach me,

For You are the God of my salvation;

On You I wait all the day.

Remember, Yahweh, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses,

For they are from of old.

Do not remember the sins of my youth,

nor my transgressions;

According to Your mercy remember me,

For Your goodness' sake, Yahweh.

Good and upright is Yahweh;

Therefore He teaches sinners in the way.

The humble He guides in justice,

and the humble He teaches His way.

All the paths of Yahweh are mercy and truth,

To such as kept His covenant and His testimonies.

For Your name's sake, Yahweh,

Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.

Who is the man that fears Yahweh?

Him shall He teach in the way He chooses.

He himself shall dwell in prosperity,

And his descendants shall inherit the earth.

The secret of Yahweh is with those who fear him,

And He will show them His covenant.

My eyes are ever toward Yahweh,

For He shall pluck my feet out of the net.

Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me,

For I am desolate and afflicted.

The troubles of my heart have enlarged;

Bring me out of my distresses!

Look on my affliction and my pain,

And forgive all my sins.

Consider my enemies, for they are many;

And they hate me with cruel hatred.

Keep my soul, and deliver me;

Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in You.

Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,

For I wait for You.

Redeem Israel, O God,

Out of all their troubles!

You also, be patient.

"Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful."

James 5:7-11

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I figure now is just as much an appropriate time as any, because I seem to think and mull things over the most when I write.

I'm flat out not a patient person. I constantly rush things, am never content with where I am or where God has me at the moment. My fallen nature tends to get the best of me, and instead of focusing on all of the good things that God has put in front of me to enjoy and give Him glory for, I focus on the one thing I don't have and subsequently make myself miserable.

I've been going through the book of Ecclesiastes lately. Somebody today called it a very "backwards" book of the Bible. I kind of see where it's coming from. You've got a man, likely Solomon, writing about how all of life is vain. Of course, Solomon had neither a concept of an afterlife nor the knowledge of who Jesus is, but in a temporal sort of way, it makes sense when you think of where he's coming from. He's a man who had everything. He had wisdom like the wisdom he showed in Proverbs. He had, at one point, a happy, Godly marriage as seen in Song of Solomon. And then somewhere after those books it all fell apart. He falls into this pattern of thinking:

"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new'? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after."

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

I've really keyed in lately on the verse that says "All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full." I want to stop being the sea and start being the stream. I'm tired of just soaking up all of these blessings and not pouring some out to others. I don't feel like the earth is futile, because I know that there is a loving God running it. I know that He is a Dad who loves me and has taken care of me for longer than the 21 years I've been alive. He knew me before I was born, and will know me long after I die. He knows my likes and my dislikes, my wants and my needs, my sins and failures along with the things He's done through me and the high points of my life. He knows me inside and out and won't leave me. But somehow I've lost sight of the stability of the world.

There is a beautiful stability in Solomon's words. True, the streams will always run into the oceans for as long as the world exists. And the oceans will never be filled. But that's what they're supposed to do, isn't it? The streams go to the same place every time, the sun rises and goes down in the same place every day, both in complete obedience and submission to their God. Instead of being futile and depressing, I feel like they're teaching me a little bit about obedience. As Jesus designed them to be, so they are: unquestioning, obedient, and loyal servants of the King of Kings. And what is the result of this obedience? A planet full of life, warmed by the sun and watered by the streams that flow through the land. The oceans support fish and tons of other life. The wind that blows carries seeds and pollen that causes plants go grow all over the world.

How did we come to the conclusion that the world works better when we're in control?

How did I come to the conclusion that my life works better when I'm in control?

I want to be the stream. I want to go where Jesus tells me to, and flow into the oceans that Jesus commands me to. I want to rise when He says rise, and set when He says set. I want to stop looking for the things that I think I want and simply do what He wants me to do. He is a good Father that won't give me a stone when I ask for bread. He won't give me a serpent if I ask for a fish. He won't leave me without the things that my heart needs. I just have to be patient. I have to be satisfied with seeing, satisfied with hearing. I have to stop desiring more and more and more and just desire Him. I want Jesus to work that miracle in me, to change my desires from those of an impatient, unfocused 21 year old college guy to those of a man with wisdom and patience given to him by God.

But that will only happen if I stop trying to control my own life. I see the evidence of my Dad stepping in every day. It's a very humbling experience to know that even when I feel like I planned something with its own purpose, God is accomplishing His plan on a much higher level than I could ever dream of. Every single step of my day is not only known to Him, but planned by Him and shaped by Him. There is no defeat for the believer. God will accomplish his will. I think it was C.S. Lewis that said, "We all do the will of God, but some do it like Judas and some do it like Peter." I've come to realize that for a believer, all "taking control" does for us is increase our frustration with ourselves, because we notice the power of God in our lives, and it reminds us that no matter how hard we try to obtain something that is our desire or want, God has the final say. It is visible to us that "the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD" (Proverbs 16:33). When we try to take control, its impossible for us to ignore the influence of God on every single aspect of our lives, and our fallen nature, the root of our controlling rebellion, is insulted by its insignificance compared to the power of God.

I've been rebellious and controlling and impatient lately. I've been convinced that I have to make all the moves, I have to control every piece of my chess match, I have to be here at the right time, there at the right time, say the right thing, shut up at the right time. Really the solution is that if I'm just worrying about Jesus, if I just worry about His will, His will includes a perfect, holy, sanctifying, and perfectly fulfilling plan for me. By submitting to His will, I'm submitting to a loving, God-honoring and God-glorifying, conformed-to-Christ plan for me. What else could I possibly want? Because every single need I have is contained in that plan.

Jesus doesn't love me because of what I do. He loves me just because He does. Same with all other believers. He is patient with me, so I should be patient with His plan for my life. He's better at my life than I am anyway. Maybe I should just let Him live it.

What a novel idea.

Take a Break

It's been a while since I've written anything. That's probably a good thing. I've had a lot of things I needed to get done. That's also partially the reason that I've decided to pop my head back out into the digital ether. I'm going to try and keep this brief though...I'm sleepy.

We Christians talk all the time about living in freedom.

"Free from the law."

"Free from sin."

"Free in Christ."

I completely agree with every one of those statements. I agree that we are free from the law and sin through Jesus. I would also go so far as to say that we live sinfully a lot of the time because of the conditioning that we've received from society here, especially on the University campus. The concept of free time is nonexistent. If you're not in class, you're expected to be in some seminar. If you're not in some seminar, you're expected to be in some orientation. If you're not in an orientation, you're expected to be in your apartment or dorm room studying furiously because all of your other time is full of classes taught by professors who don't have a clue that their class isn't the only class taught here. We wake up in the morning, put on our clothes, rush to class, to to seminars/orientations/study sessions, then come home, study, sleep for a couple of hours, and get ready to do it all again the next day.

Now don't get me wrong...I completely support working hard and being responsible. But I also support not making an idol out of an ideal. An American Ideal. Work hard, make your way to the top, live the American dream with a house, two kids (a boy and a girl, of course), a picket fence, and tax forms that contain lots of dotted i's and crossed t's so as to keep the Man off your back. Our hearts are idol factories, and this is a big one for us. We feel like if we take one second off, we're behind. We're losing time. We're getting beaten. Successful people don't take breaks.

Jesus was pretty successful, and He took a nap every now and then.

And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, adn there was a great calm. He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?"

Mark 4:36-40, emphasis added

Now, may I draw your attention to the section I italicized. He left the crowd. What, Jesus didn't stay and work until He had bags under His eyes because there was more to be done? He was tired. He needed sleep. He was fully human as well as fully God, after all. He needed a break. His disciples were the ones working their tails off, and how much did they accomplish? All they got out of it was a lesson and Jesus asking them why they had no faith.

Here are some other verses as food for thought.

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Matthew 6:25-34

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."

Exodus 20:8-11 (funny that this and idolatry are the longest two commandments...since idolatry is usually the reason we tend to break the Sabbath...)

"And he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Mark 2:27

So in closing, I'd like to throw out there that I think sometimes we can sin just as much by working too hard as we can by being lazy. There are times for everything. There are times for working our tails off, and there are times for taking a break. Even Jesus did every once in a while. God the Father did when He was finished with creation in Genesis. He did that as an example for us; we weren't made for the Sabbath. It was made for us. Take a break from the idol of your creation and work and take a minute to worship God for His creation, provision, and love.

Fast Horses and Falling Breaches

You know, there are those moments in life that you sit there after praying for a while and get just a little bit of an inkling that God is speaking to you. And then there are those times when God makes Himself so abundantly known that a deaf man would not need a hearing aid to notice His voice. This is kind of one of those times.

I've really had my brain stuck in Isaiah 30 lately. I'll go ahead and throw that out there. Here goes:

"Woe to the rebellious children," says the LORD, "who take counsel, but not of Me, and who devise plans, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who walk to go down to Egypt, and have not asked my advice, to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore the strength of Pharaoh Shall be your shame, and trust in the shadow of Egypt shall be your humiliation. For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes. They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them, or be a help or benefit, but a shame and also a reproach."

The burden against the beasts of the South.

Through a land of trouble and anguish, from which came the lioness and lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people who shall not profit; for the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose. Therefore I have called her Rahab-Hem-Shebeth.

Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll, that it may be for time to come, forever and ever: that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the LORD; who say to the seers, "Do not see," and to the prophets, "Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us."

Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel:

"Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perversity, and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach ready to fall, a bulge in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant. And He shall break it like the breaking of the potters vessel, which is broken in pieces; He shall not spare. So there shall not be found among its fragments a shard to take fire from the hearth, or to take water from the cistern."

For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:

"In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength." But you would not, and you said, "No for we will flee on horses"- Therefore you shall flee! And, "We will ride on swift horses"- therefore those who pursue you will be swift!

One thousand shall flee at the threat of one, at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill.

Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are all those who wait for Him.

Isaiah 30:1-18

Yeah, I thought that those were a pretty beefy 18 verses. I could've kept going, but I'm just going to cut it off there for now. Let me break down why this has been impacting me so much. Basically what we have here is the children of Israel looking to find their strength in places other than in their God. He wants to take care of them, but they want to take care of themselves. They look for counsel and advice, but they never go to God with it. They make plans without ever paying any attention to the plans that God may have in mind. They have a control complex.

They also have a security complex. The next part of the passage may refer to when they were led out of Egypt and wanted to go back. If it does, think of this: the Hebrews had just seen God unleash the plagues on Egypt. They had seen the sky blotted dark, the death of the firstborn, and other ridiculous things, not to mention the fact that God parted a dang sea for them to walk through on dry land. They got out there and had one day without water and were begging to go back to Egypt. Maybe that's not even referring to the Mosaic period. Maybe it's talking about a more recent time. Either way, Israel isn't trusting God to provide; they're trusting Pharoah and Egypt to provide. They basically want to be proactive and take over the reigns of their lives.

So what is God's response?

Fine. Go ahead. Take your riches, take your wealth, and wander through the wilderness. Go to your Egyptians. You will be no help to them so they will not want you. They also won't be able to help you.

C.S. Lewis said it pretty well. There are two types of people in the world: Those who say "Thy will be done," and those who refuse to obey and to whom God says, "Fine. Have it your way." These Israelites were doing just that. And God let them do exactly what they wanted and took their success from them. Actively.

To make it even worse, God says the Israelites here have told the prophets that He sent not to tell the truth. They didn't want to hear it when God was telling them that they were going the wrong direction. They didn't want to hear that God wasn't pleased with the way they were acting and that He would deal with them if they didn't change. These things that God wanted to tell the Israelites were all for their good, but they still would rather have the lies instead of the truth.

And what was the result? God said that their disobedience and resistance to hear was like a bulge in a high wall or a breach ready to fall. What are breaches? Breaches and walls are both defenses in a time of war. An army or a city builds them in order to keep the enemy out. A breach that is built shoddily is constantly ready to fall. What happens if the breach falls? The army/city gets overrun. Easily. Same with a wall. If the wall is built sturdily, it will be level throughout. A bulge is a sign of shoddy construction and compromises the structural integrity of the wall. A bulging wall is easy to tear down, and we all know (or at least should know) what happens when the wall falls down. Destruction. Total destruction.

What's most interesting to me is who tears the wall/breach down. We live in an age where the Church likes to blame everything on the devil. "The devil messed up my life...things just won't work out! I keep praying for a breakthrough, for God to work this out for me"; I don't know how many times I've said this or heard this from someone else, but it's almost too many times to count. That's not what's happening in this passage. Jesus is actually the one who tears down the Israelites defense and allows them to be defeated. Check it out: "And He shall break it like the breaking of the potter's vessel, which is broken in pieces; He shall not spare. So there shall not be found among its fragments a shard to take fire from the hearth, or to take water from the cistern" (Isaiah 30:14). Isaiah has been called the fifth gospel for a reason; it talks about Jesus almost as much if not more than the four New Testament gospels. The whole Bible is about Jesus from cover to cover, but for the Old Testament Isaiah is extremely explicit. He shows up in this verse and ransacks a people.

So what is the solution? For the people to sit down and shut up. Return to God and rest. If they would return to Him and rest, be quiet and be confident that He is sovereign and in control, then He would fight their battles for them. He would do the footwork for them. But they would rather get on fast horses and ride away. They would rather run away from the danger. That doesn't work when God controls the danger, though...we forget that He does that. His sovereignty has no bounds. So you want to run away on fast horses, huh? Fine. I'll send fast pursuers. And they will catch you. When they do, they will utterly destroy you. You'll be stuck on the top of a hill surrounded and have nowhere to go. You'll be utterly surrounded and utterly defenseless. That's what you will get for running.

But God, who loves us enough to die for us, shows His grace and mercy again. He shows patience and promises to wait so that He can be gracious. Instead of utterly destroying an utterly unfaithful people, He gives them yet another chance. There is pain involved in getting to that point, but if the people will wait for Him, He will give them justice because He is a God of justice.

So all that to say this. I've come to the conclusion that we're just like the Israelites. We have things that concern us and so we seek counsel. Like the Israelites, we're quick to seek counsel that isn't necessarily what God would counsel us to do. If someone comes along who actually warns us that what we're doing or that path that we're going down doesn't necessarily match up with what God has revealed to us in His word, then we either gloss them over or tell them that they've lost their minds. After all, the advice they give us sounds nothing like the counsel that we like, the counsel of people who tell us what we want to hear. It sounds more like the Wisdom with a capital W that God imparts, and that stands in the face of all our fleshly desires.

It's easy to forget that it's not all about us. It's all about Jesus. It's all about His glory. It's all about His name, His fame, His grace. Attempting to take control from Jesus is mutiny. He is a sovereign God who honestly does love us. He wants the best for us. He gives us grace and mercy beyond our wildest dreams.

So why do we always seem to think our plans are better than His?

I have a bad habit of "seeking counsel." Unfortunately when I "seek counsel" without praying, I'm really looking for people to tell me the things that I want to hear. I seem to think that the more people tell me something the more right it is. Then after finding several people who are willing to regurgitate what I feed them by asking loaded questions (which I'm good at, sadly), I assume that, since I've asked a large sample, they must be right. I then ball up all of the answers I get into a little digestible clump and feed them to my soul, convincing myself that they are what God wanted to tell me. Without fail, I end up jacking up my life because of this habit. I'm not really seeking counsel. I'm seeking myself. I'm living a life of idolatry by worshiping myself. I take my words and my desires and esteem them above the words and desires of God. I seek counsel, but not of Him.

What did this do to the Israelites? Ended up being like a bulging wall. Who tore it down? Jesus. Same thing happens to me. I try and take control and overstep my bounds into the realm of God's sovereignty, and for my own good Jesus thwarts my plans. This is an act of mercy. If I, a stupid human, got what I wanted every time, my life would be terrible. If we're honest with ourselves, how many times is what we want really what we need? Not many. Run on fast horses, get fast pursuers. Try and control your life by manipulating others? Be prepared to get manipulated. If that's your method of control, be prepared to meet the bigger fish in the pond. Get ahead by scheming? Better watch your back, because it's coming for you. We reap what we sow; this isn't just Old Testament here. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you (Matthew 7:2). Those are the words of Jesus. Same idea, huh? Makes sense, Him being the same God that spoke Isaiah into being.

So let me ask this: if we claim to be waiting on God, resting in quiet confidence that He goes to battle for us and will provide for us, are we still trying to get our fingers in the mix and control things ourselves? If we are, are we really waiting? If we're doing that, are we really trusting God, or are we trusting ourselves? Maybe we should do what Jesus said and "go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly" (Matthew 6:6). If we would return to our God and rest in the quiet confidence that He is God, then maybe we would stop getting ourselves in the messes that we find ourselves in because we're convinced that the counsel we manufacture is better than the counsel He's graciously willing to give us. He knows what we need. We don't need to doubt that our God realizes we have needs that need to be fulfilled. He made us that way and knows us better than we know ourselves. He alone is able to provide us what we REALLY need.

So are we seeking His will in our lives, or are we looking for the nearest fast horse to jump on?

And the lack thereof.

Ok, so this may not be as long as my normal posts due to my collegiate studies (or lack thereof). Hebrew's been feeling the need to kick my butt for the last few hours, but because of something that happened earlier today, I've just got to write right now.

Rewind.

I was sitting outside an SLC classroom today waiting for class time to get there and decided to respond to one of Ben's posts over at the Harmony Baptist Church Youth/College Ministry Facebook Group. I typed this big, exhaustive response and was pretty excited about it. And then the server reset and wiped the whole thing out and trashed everything I had written.

Boom goes the dynamite. I was a little ticked off.

So here I am now, back with a vengeance.

Basically if you haven't read Ben's post, this won't be read in the same context. You can find Ben's post here. Ben asks the question "are we responsible for our actions." In short response, yes we are, but I feel the need to add something to that.

There are two types of sin: sins of commission and sins of omission. Sins of commission are exactly what they sound like: they're sins that we commit. We're probably the most familiar with these. Sins of omission, however, like to kind of fly under the radar. They're sins that take place in our lives because of things we don't do. Check out what Jesus said:

"If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;" (John 10:37)

So what comes next? What are the works of the Father? We're joint heirs with Jesus, right? Sons and daughters of God through the power of His blood? Then this applies to us, too. Check these out:

God stands in the congregation of the mighty;
He judges among the gods.
How long will you judge unjustly,
And show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Deliver the poor and needy;
Free them from the hand of the wicked.

Psalm 82:1-4

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

James 1:22-27

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Depart in peace, be warmed and filled," but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith, and I have works." Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe- and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

James 2:14-26

The guys at the BCM are doing a study called "Get Uncomfortable." This study is all about how we live out our faith in a world that is a consumerist pigsty. We root around all day in the trough worrying about ourselves first. It's even seeping into the church. A pastor is only as good as his last sermon, some places. Which church you go to can be seen as a status symbol. "How many projectors does so-and-so church have? Really? Well this church just built a brand-new youth building with stages for their 3 bands! Isn't that great?" We like to see just how many bible studies we can get into and just how much Jesus we can soak up without taking that same Jesus to a world that is outside our doors, within view of our steeples and dying. They're dying because we can't put down our Beth Moore or Louie Giglio books for a few minutes to go outside and tell them who Jesus is. Not that Beth Moore and Louie Giglio are bad, because they're not. I'm just using the popular names to make a point: the church has become just as consumerist and insider-oriented as the rest of the world, and I'm just as guilty as any other Christian for making it this way.

Follow my logic for a second. I'm as much of a grace person as I can be, and I love it that way. But look in John for a second: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14) He came full of grace and truth. Part of that truth was that the world was dead in sin, and dead people are pretty helpless. Only after imparting us grace through his sacrificial atonement for our sins on the Cross are we alive and capable of doing real good;in fact, not only capable of doing good, but INTENDED to do good (see Ephesians 2:10). We were created to do good works. We're not saved by them, but they ARE the natural next step following regeneration, as well as the evidence of that regeneration.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that If we don't do good things God won't love us. But I may just be saying that if we don't walk in those good works that He prepared beforehand that we might walk in them, we may not really be loving God. There are over 2000 verses in the Bible about taking care of the poor, needy, widowed, fatherless, and injured. We talk all the time about how once we're saved, God does a miraculous work in our heart by changing our desires. We no longer want to do evil because it's contrary to the nature of God. True, we war in our flesh between carnal things and spiritual things because our body is still fallen and subject to the curse, but the soul is regenerate and doesn't want to live that way anymore. But this is only talking about sins of commission...that's what we normally talk about. But what about our sins of omission? Isn't it just as sinful to NOT do something we know we should as it is to do something we know we shouldn't? We have to make war on that sin, too. Jesus changes our heart to not want to commit sin, but in the process our heart is made to want to do good. If we're not doing what Jesus has for us to do, then we're failing at our job.

Disclaimer: I am also super-convicted about this.

We're the hands and feet of Christ right? So can we stop getting in our little love-huddles and stop giving each other the unspoken "Jesus is an insider just like us!" hugs and get out there and share Him with the rest of the world? I heard once, and I really liked it, that most of the time we pray that we'll stay unless God tells us to go. Instead, we should go unless God makes it abundantly clear that we should stay. I'm guilty of sins of omission, the sins of not reaching out to the people I know that are dying and going to Hell, even though I know the answer to their problem. The answer is Jesus. The answer is His grace, love, and mercy. If I don't go and do what He has told me to do, then I'm like the Pharisee who stood on the temple mount "praying" for forever about the things he DIDN'T do and then left unjustified. I'm like the man who received a talent from his master and then buried it. Upon the masters return, he deemed that servant a wicked man and gave away his portion to another.

So I guess the point is this: Yes, we're responsible for our actions.

And the lack thereof.

The Most Controversial Thing I've Ever Written...I Think.

So I'm all about not being judgmental. That's great.

But I tend to think about being a fruit inspector more than I think about being a judge, and here's why:

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner- not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore "put away from yourselves the evil person."

1 Corinthians 5:9-13

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Galatians 5:16-26

Now that those two passages have been put out there, lets follow the current theme of wolves and put this one out there too. This one's from the Son of Man Himself, Jesus:

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"

Matthew 7:15-23

Disclaimer (because I know I'm gonna need it...): I'm not advocating salvation by works by saying this. If you know me, you know that's one of the last things I would ever do, right on up there with cauterizing an open wound with lye. Salvation is by grace alone, and not through works.

THAT BEING SAID, does that mean we should sin more that grace should abound more? Nope. That's Paul, too. Let's break this down.

In the first passage I threw out there from Corinthians, Paul talks about judgment WITHIN the brotherhood of believers; he speaks pretty bluntly, too. See, the Church at Corinth was basically the church gone wild. They'd lost their minds. Here's how crazy it got: a man in the Corinthian church was sleeping with his father's wife. Check out 1 Corinthians 5:1. Paul said in that verse that this act was so out of control that even the gentiles were shocked by it. What shocked Paul even more, as seen in verse 2, is that the church there wasn't saddened by it at all. What Paul is trying to get across in the later part of this chapter is that judging, or discernment, has its place. Why should we judge outside the church? They are still enslaved to the flesh; they shouldn't be expected to act any different. Those are the people we're supposed to be going to and showing the love of Christ, so we should know what's present in their flesh and expect it to be there. But professing believers are a different story. If you profess Christ and profess to know Him, your life should show evidence. Just because you claim the name of Jesus and do wondrous things doesn't really mean that you know Him...see Matthew 7:15-23. How did Jesus say the wolves would come? In sheep's clothing! The wolf doesn't show up advertising its wolf-ness. It wants to blend in. It wants to have "fellowship" with the sheep, but its purpose for being there is different. It wants to steal the benefits of friends and fun and dating prospects, kill the healthy Christian relationships and familial love, and destroy the hope that God wants to give a community through that fellowship of believers.

We've put a lot of stigma on that word...judgment. Judging is automatically written off as an evil thing. Judging really means, in this case, nothing more than to ascertain or discern something. So if that's what it means, what are we ascertaining/discerning? In light of the passage from Matthew, we'd be discerning whether or not we're dealing with a good tree or a bad tree, a sheep or a wolf. So how do we tell? Paul gave us a few things to look for: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Notice it doesn't say mission trips, camp counselorships, being a person who prays on Wednesday nights, being a person who doesn't make out with their boy/girlfriend during lock-ins, being a person who doesn't show his or her pride from being a good little legalist. The fruits of the Spirit are all conditions of the heart that come from being around the Person Jesus Christ, not from doing things. It's completely possible to be a person who prays on Wednesday night just because they are envious of the good reputation someone else gets from doing it. It's possible to have an outburst of wrath because somebody interprets a passage of the Bible different from you. Do I need to even mention how our boy/girlfriends can become idols to us? What kind of fruit are you showing?

The important thing here is keeping your relationship with Jesus first. If you love Jesus, you will love His family, which consists of your brothers and sisters. Sin hurts them! Judge and discern whether or not the actions in your life are good, beneficial fruits. Make war on the sin in your life, not because God won't love you if you don't. Do it out of love for Him and for your brothers and sisters in Him. We should want to be holy because He is holy. We should want to have no tolerance for tolerating sin. God doesn't tolerate it. He died to pay for it...is that winking at it or ignoring it? If we do ignore the way we live, we can hurt our brothers and sisters. Check out some stuff from Proverbs:

A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates the best of friends. 16:28
A violent man entices his neighbor, and leads him in a way that is not good. 16:29
The north wind brings forth rain, and a backbiting tongue an angry countenance. 25:23
Where there is no wood, the fire goes out;
and where there is no talebearer, strife ceases. 25:20
As charcoal is to burning coals, and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife. 25:21

And I'll throw this question out here really quick too, just as much for me to think about as for anyone who reads this. If this angers you, if you're quick to say don't judge, what is your reason for that?

Luke 12:2-3

Psalm 146

Psalm 146

Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!
While I live I will praise the LORD;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Do not put your trust in princes,
Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.
His spirit departs, he returns to his earth;
In that very day his plans perish.

Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps truth forever,
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD gives freedom to the prisoners.

The LORD opens the eyes of the blind;
The LORD raises those who are bowed down;
The LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the strangers;
He relieves the fatherless and the widow;
But the way of the wicked He turns upside down.

The LORD shall reign forever-
Your God, O Zion, to all generations.

Praise the LORD!

Concordances are funny things, you know? If you've ever used one you know that they can be really useful. I was walking around this morning, and started thinking about freedom in Christ. It was all kind of downhill from there:

Freedom in Christ -> Freedom from what? = Sin -> How does Sin bind us? -> Guilt

And at guilt, it gets kind of complicated. See, here's the way it works. Before we had Jesus and His forgiveness, we were basically dead men and women walking. We were already condemned to Hell and were basically dangling by the thread of life hanging over the flames (thanks, Jonathan Edwards). That's basically exactly what it says in John 3:18b: "but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." Thankfully that's not the only half of that verse. The first half, John 3:18a, tells us what happens after Jesus yanks us out of that position: "He who believes in Him is not condemned." Simple enough, huh? Condemned vs. Innocent. Eternally, we have nothing to fear because the victory is already His.

But I doubt that there's a human being who knows Jesus on the planet that hasn't felt like sometimes, there are still chains. We know Jesus has forgiven us, right? So why do we feel this way?

I think we do it to ourselves.

Don't take this the wrong way; sin still has consequences. If you break a brother in Christ's trust, you can go to him and ask forgiveness, and he should give it to you. That's the Christlike thing to do. But that doesn't mean that he's going to trust you again. And depending on what happened, it may not even be right to expect him to without a long process of earning it again. Sin does have consequences. I'm just saying that I think sometimes we execute the sentence of those consequences on ourselves.

Maybe the consequences to certain sins are more of the same. Take idolatry for example. Devote enough of yourself to an idol, and if that idol gets taken away (which is in fact a MERCY of God) it feels like part of you gets taken away with it. At this point you have two choices: you can either return to the forgiveness, grace, and mercy of Jesus, or you can mourn the loss of the idol that was eating you alive. You can become fruitful again, or you can render yourself useless in terms of being usable by and teachable to God. If you choose the first choice, there may still be consequences, but God can help you deal with them and make a recovery. I would even venture to say the consequences may be far less if you take this route. If you take the second route though, the consequences tend to increase. In the idolatry example, this may take the shape of being mopey and lazy. Heck, I've been there. I skipped two days of classes last semester in what I now see as the mourning of the loss of an idol. This may, in the case of some people, result in idol substitution. Instead of returning to the love of Jesus, the person will cut down another tree and carve another idol for himself. We lock ourselves in this prison of sin, going back to the things that should repulse us, like a dog returning to his vomit.

The reason I say concordances are funny is that when I looked in the concordance in the back of my bible under the heading "freedom," I expected to find a lot of new testament verses. Instead, I found one section- in the old testament, no less: Psalm 146. Jesus brings freedom to the prisoners. If we put our trust in some other thing, like a person, then we're going to be disappointed. It doesn't matter how wise this person may be, this person will die. And when they die, their plans amount to nothing. Their wisdom amounts to nothing. Their followers will die just as they did. Jesus opens our eyes, heals our wounds, and though our bodies may die, He grants us eternal life and the promise of new bodies one day: bodies that will not age, decay, or get sick. Jesus wants good things for you, but if you lock yourself in the chains that you forge yourself, you won't be able to enjoy any of it.

Symptoms vs. Disease

A couple of days ago, I was sitting at home thinking about AIDS.

I know how random that is, but think about it for a second. It's a crazy disease. You know why we haven't figured out how to cure it yet? It's because it mutates, the same reason we can't cure the common cold. These two diseases, with completely different outcomes, are invincible for the same reason. See, one minute, the virus looks one way, is shaped one way. The next, it's completely different. This keeps any of our drugs from working.

Once somebody is infected with AIDS, currently there isn't much we can do for them. We can provide them with antiretrovirals that slow it down, but we don't really have a cure. We can mask the symptoms, but we can't kill the disease. Eventually the virus catches up to everything we do to hide it, and the victim dies.

I've been thinking that sin is kind of the same way. Look at this parable that Jesus told:

Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men: extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

Luke 18:9-14

It seems to me that this man, the Pharisee, was a victim of sin-mutation. This Pharisee was a fallen man, which means he had in his heart the urge to live unjustly, just like Romans 8:7-8 says: "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God." This man also kept his nose in the law 24/7, and actually did a pretty good job keeping it by the sound of this parable. His problem was that his sin mutated. It changed from extortion, injustice, and adultery into pride, and pride is a dangerous thing. I think pride is probably the reason that we can't be justified by the law...those who follow the law can't possibly be sinless because they'll be proud they keep the law (or at least that they think they do). So what does it matter if you don't drink, don't steal, and don't sleep around if you're a proud person? Congratulations, you're moral but you commit the same sin that got Satan thrown out of Heaven: Pride. That's not really progress.

This Pharisee had things mixed up. He was treating the symptoms and not the disease. He failed to recognize that his actions stemmed from his condition. He didn't really understand what the word "righteous" meant. Being righteous, being justified, being holy...none of those come from what you do.

If you're an unbeliever and you seek to please God by living a certain way, you're wasting your time. All righteousness was and is lived through Jesus. Righteousness and Holiness are a Person, and Justification is given through that Person alone. That person is Jesus. By yourself, you have no power to live right. You have no power to change your nature. God is the only one who has the power to do that. If you try and weed the sin out of your life by any other means, you're on track to be drowning in pride. You're treating the symptoms, but not the disease. Eventually it will catch up to your patch job and it will kill you.

If you're a believer and you're concerned about the sin in your life that you keep coming back to, maybe you're trying to deal with it the wrong way. We all have our things that we struggle with. If you grit your teeth and fight tooth and nail against this sin that keeps yanking you back, you're going to lose. Attacking the sin in your life isn't really the way to deal with it, at least not directly. Let me ask you this question, and answer honestly to yourself: are there people in your life that you act differently around, for better or worse? Maybe a friend, maybe a youth pastor? We all do it, whether or not we want to admit it. If certain people are in the room, who we are shifts. We tend to take on the attributes, mannerisms, and tendencies of those around us.

Now, following that train of thought, does Jesus sin? No. Has He ever or will He ever sin? No. Does He love you and want good for you? Yes. So why not hang around Him?

The cure for the sin in your life isn't taking your computer away if you're a porn addict. It isn't pouring out your bottle collection if you're an alcoholic. The cure for your sin is Jesus. The more time you spend with Him, the more you'll look like Him and act like Him. Jesus said "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance" (Mark 2:17). I don't necessarily know all of the underlying problems in your life, all of the ins and outs of who you are. Jesus does. For some people, certain things may be necessary. For others, not so much. Let Jesus do those things through you, because He knows you better than you do anyway.

Stop trying to treat the symptoms, and let the Physician heal the disease.

Wants, Needs, and Witchcraft

So here I am at 2:00AM thinking about some of the things Ben said last night, and I figure a lot of the stuff he said was dead on point. Him talking about Wants vs. Needs really hit the nail on the head in my life, because that's something that I struggle with on a daily basis. I thought that maybe I should write down the things I was thinking. Who knows? It may help somebody else.

I think the best thing Ben did tonight in terms of an illustration was bringing up relationships. I'll even submit that I think that's one of the biggest struggles around here. Personally, I've wondered for a long time what the hold-up is. I've even said some very impatient, very disrespectful things to God about it. I've asked Him how He can see how much I fight to try and live the way He wants me to and not give me a partner to fight that fight with. I've told Him more than a few times that I don't think that's fair. Of course, that's usually in the heat of the moment and I regret it later, but I truly feel that way at those times nonetheless. What I've come to realize lately that that line of thinking is very legalistic and at times I could even classify it as witchcraft or sorcery.

Does that really sound that strange to just say? Maybe just because we have some crazy stereotypes. What is witchcraft anyway? Witchcraft is performing rituals, saying specific words, or doing certain things in order to get the powers that be, or in the case of reality, God to do something specific for us. In the world of pagans, that may mean weird things with candles and strange words. In the world of “organized Christianity” that may mean praying with certain words, only renting movies of a certain rating, only wearing certain clothes and going certain places, and then expecting that because of everything that YOU'VE done God will pay you back out of His obligation to be “just.” That's a warped definition of “just” and it's trying to control God. That's the essence of witchcraft.

That being said, does God reward believers, His kids? Absolutely. Hebrews 11:6 says that “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” Notice though: what is the believer seeking? Is he seeking a wife? Money? Power? Social Status? Ease of Living? Absence of Sickness? No. He's seeking God Himself. If you're seeking God, none of those other things would really be a reward, would they? It's not what you're looking for. The reward for seeking God is God. Those other things aren't necessarily guaranteed. If You or I ever find ourselves living a lifestyle of doing things in order to get God to reciprocate and give us the things we want, we're living a life of idolatry by worshipping something other than God. Sometimes we even have the nerve to ask God to help us worship this other god. Does this sound familiar: “God, I'd do anything to get her back. Just tell me what You want!” Or how about this: “God, he's the one I want, so just tell me what to do and I'll do it if You'll let me have him! I know you can do it!” I'm definitely guilty of the first one of those two (You won't find me asking God for a guy). That's some witchcrafty type stuff right there, believing that because of some things we do that God is obligated to do things for us or believing that God is someone to be bargained with, like He actually needs anything we could possibly give Him. He made the universe by speaking! What could we possibly do for Him that He couldn't do Himself? We live lives of purity not because we're trying to earn good things from God, but because we love Him.

But even with all of that, there's nothing wrong with desiring a partner. God said in Genesis that it's not good for man to be alone; we weren't designed for life on an island, destined to live in solitude for forever. There is a deep desire in every human being for companionship. What we have done as a culture is idealize and deify this search for companionship. All of our stories are “love” stories. Even the action/adventure type movies always have the guy-gets-girl or girl-gets-guy subplot going on. Heck, horror movies even fit the bill. They're way off the mark because nine times out of ten they show sex without any semblance of intimacy and oneness through marriage, but they're still appealing to that primal desire to not be alone. We go wrong when we believe these idealized stories. We've been raised to believe that when we find this girl (guys) or this guy (girls), everything will fall into place. If things don't click, that means they must not be “the one” so we drop them and move on to the next prospect, hoping that things will be more instantaneous, more perfect. Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes things don't work out and we degrade ourselves, convincing ourselves with every word that they were perfect and the reason it didn't work out was completely our fault. We look for completion in a heart that is just as twisted, mangled, and carnal as our own instead of looking for completion through the Author and Finisher of our faith, Jesus.

To the guys (I'm also having to remind myself of EVERY SINGLE POINT in this list): Treat girls with respect. Treat them like the daughters of God that they are. At the same time though, remember that they are only human. They make mistakes just like you and me. If you seek fulfillment in these girls, they're going to let you down. Don't put them on a pedestal that defines your manhood, because if you do you're only ever going to feel inadequate, or at best, trapped in a cycle of performance and proving yourself to her. You are made in the image of God and can find fulfillment in Jesus alone. Ask yourself this: If you were to live your life forever as a single guy, never marrying a girl, would you feel like God had slighted you? Would you be angry at Him? If so, it's good for us to remember that these are HIS daughters anyway, not our wives/girlfriends/prizes for the taking. Why do you live the way you do? Is it because you want God to give you someone in return for your goodness? That's idolatry and witchcraft. You're worshipping something other than God, and God shares His worship with no one. He's probably not going to help you worship an idol. Our God is not a weak, passive God. He's a warrior. Spend the time NOT in a relationship to learn and grow in Christ. Let Jesus show you what being a man really means. Learn how to pursue something wholeheartedly and without fear; let Jesus show you what perfect love really means, because perfect love drives out all fear (1 John 4:18). Only then will you be prepared to love a woman the way God would have you do. If you're letting the girls pursue you, something is wrong. The man is supposed to be the initiator; we love them enough as our sister in Christ first, so we give them the right to accept us or reject us. It's pretty cowardly to fear rejection so much that we allow them to make the first move. That's not being a man. That's being a joke. No real woman wants a joke.

To the girls: I'd tell you what I told the guys: don't let the love of a man define your worth and beauty as a woman. If a guy isn't chasing you at the moment, take the time to love Jesus even more and get to know Him even more. Let Jesus make you wise. Get spoiled by His love. Get used to that kind of love, so that way when a less-than-desirable guy comes along and tries to sweep you off your feet with a few sly words, you'll see right through his two-bit sham. No man can love you like God can, but if God has it in His plan for you to marry, then you better believe that He is training up one of His sons to be able to treat you like you deserve to be treated: as a daughter of the King. Wait for that guy. In the meantime, there are lots of your brothers in Christ who are in the process of growing and getting to know their Dad. These guys, not of their own choosing, are hardwired very physically. Because of that, sometimes when you think you dress “cute,” you make these guys who are trying to live for Jesus stumble. Now I'm not saying I think it's inappropriate for a girl to try to look nice...I'm just saying that sometimes one needs to think if it's really necessary to own a shirt that is that low-cut. Or that tight. The “too-tight” thing goes for pants as well. What's the goal of those clothes? What image do you want for yourself? What kind of guys do you think that will attract? We live in a world where guys are bombarded with sex everyday. According to lightedcandle.org, more than 70% of men ages 18-34 visit a pornographic website at least once monthly and the internet is a significant factor in 2 out of 3 divorces. Think about that when you go through your closet. Of the ten guys that will see you in that outfit, seven of them have seen porn at least once that month. Do you want to make yourself look anything remotely like the sex objects they've had stuck in front of them?

I've said some pretty blunt and to-the-point stuff on here, but I'm not trying to sound condemning. Heck, I'll admit that I could smack myself in the face and yell “hypocrite” really loud just for writing this, because at times I am. But we're human. If we are in Christ, we are new creations, but we still inhabit fallen bodies with a tendency to do fallen things. I love my Christian family and I know relationships and sex cause a whole lot of pain, and I don't want that for anyone. I'm not trying to condemn. I thank God every day that I have Christian friends and a church that I can discuss things like this with. Relationships, Sex...some would keep from talking about this in church because it's “inappropriate.” I think the Church is the most appropriate place in all of creation to talk about these things, because where the Church is silent, other voices will speak. It's all in love.

Leave the Hotel

So I'm sitting in Treutlen County right now. It's good to be home, but it's been a really busy day. I woke up at ten this morning and drove over to the middle school gym (never thought I'd be inside that place with a purpose again) to start prepping for the biggest youth rally to every hit this place...biggest to my knowledge, at least. 2.6 hours away in Athens, all of my cymbal buddies were doing work at Redcoat auditions. By the time this post is up and circulated, the news about results will have circulated, so congrats to all you guys that made the line. Carry on the good name...r I will hunt you down and loosen your straps. Have fun playing with THOSE in a show.

Suffice to say that I'm really freakin' exhausted. Wouldn't trade a minute of it, either. I'll sacrifice a day to see the message of grace get to that many people. Ben spoke a lot from Romans 8 tonight, so here's some good stuff from that chapter:

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation of itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Romans 8:18-21

Suffering stinks. It's not always constant, but it's always in the back of our heads - kind of like that cowlick that we all get in our hair every once in a while. I've learned a few things in my 20 years on this planet; not nearly enough to feel like I can call myself wise, but enough to say that I make the same mistakes a lot less frequently. Life is a series of mountaintops and valleys. If you're in a valley, keep pushing, because a mountain is likely coming. If you're on a mountaintop, go ahead and get prepared, because on this side of Glory...well, lets just say that none of us have legs strong enough to jump from mountaintop to mountaintop. It's a really annoying cycle. I'm pretty tired of it, to tell you the truth. If you want to get biblical though, Paul points out that this suffering, this crap that we go through, is not even worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the glory that Jesus is going to reveal in us. Creation is sick just like we are, burdened and belabored by sin. Just like we have to fight it every day, so does the rest of creation. And like a child of God hates sin, so does creation. It's waiting. It's hoping. It's looking forward to that day when everything is going to be made new.

“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

Romans 8:22,23

See? Creation is groaning. It wants Jesus to come back and complete the work in us that He started. All that's left to be done is one finishing touch: the adoption. The redemption of our bodies. I'm so freakin' ready for that. Every single day I have to fight sin. I have to fight with my mind and my heart. My spirit doesn't want to sin...it's repulsed by it. It hates the very thought of it. If my spirit was all that I was, that would be great. Unfortunately for me, I'm stuck in this fallen, sinful body. One day though, this body will be changed. Jesus will come back and complete my redemption by giving me a regenerate body to match my regenerate heart. I'll be completely Jesus-rebuilt from the ground up. And creation will be to.

“For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”

Romans 8:25

I'm not a seminary grad, and I don't think you have to be to understand everything in the Bible. I don't think this one is that difficult. I think this is just Paul reminding us that we have a lot to look forward to. The church is the most energized and powerful when we're looking toward Jesus. Looking toward Jesus is looking toward Heaven, looking toward home. It's easy to just sit down and quit. I feel like, from personal experience, there is a big misconception about the point in time that Christians sit down and quit. I don't think we quit when things get rough. I think we sit down and quit when things aren't. If life stinks, it's easy to look forward to Heaven. It's easy when you're in those situations to think, “wow, if I was home, this wouldn't even be an issue.” When things are going great on earth though, we kind of forget that this is a hotel and not a home. We were never meant to stay here. You can stay in a five star hotel when you go in a trip, but a hotel is still a hotel; you can't live there. Eventually, you want to go home. That's what I try and do sometimes though. I try to bunk down in a nice hotel and not leave, oblivious to the fact that I'm on a journey homeward. Staying in the hotel, staying where things are nice temporally...that's not having hope. That's being captivated by the things I can see.

Just some stuff that I thought about during that message. Romans 8 is a great chapter of a great book. In a great book. Go figure. It's pretty influential, too, what with being the Word of God and all. Here's a related verse to leave you guys with:

“People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country- a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”

Hebrews 11:14-16

Emerging Stuff: The Revised Edition

If.
Then.

These two words make up one of the stronger tools in the English language (as well as many other languages, as a matter of fact) and are used to create what's called a “conditional sentence,” implying that the occurrence of the second half of the sentence is contingent on whether or not the first half takes place.

• “You will often run in, in religious communities, in faith communities, to the idea “if you would just repent, then God would...”
• “For the first Christians, repentance was never 'if you would just do these things, then God would do these things'. It was 'do you understand what God has done?'”
• “Repentance was never trying to get God to do something because God has already made peace with all things.”

On the surface level, all of that stuff sounds fantastic. If you look at it closer though, it's pretty far off base.

The man's name in the video is Rob Bell. He is seen here in a clip from his recent tour “The Gods Aren't Angry.” He's gotten pretty popular lately through his Nooma videos and his Zondervan-sponsored “Everything is Spiritual” tour. Although he doesn't actually call himself an emergent, Rob Bell's doctrinal viewpoints are very similar to the those of Brian McLaren, one of the members of the board of directors for the organization “Emergent Village.” The emergent village is the large umbrella organization for what has become known as the “emergent church.”

I'll go ahead and say it...the emerging church looks pretty enticing to my generation. It's edgy. It's different, nonconformist. Andy Crouch said it best in Christianity Today when he wrote the article “The Emergent Mystique”:

"Gentlemen, start your hair dryers--not since the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s has a Christian phenomenon been so closely entangled with the self-conscious cutting edge of U.S. culture. Frequently urban, disproportionately young, overwhelmingly white, and very new--few have been in existence for more than five years--a growing number of churches are joining the ranks of the 'emerging church.'"

Like the video clip, emergent theology sounds pretty good on the surface. If you quickly listen to the short segment above, it sounds a lot like the grace preaching that we know and love. Listen a little bit closer though and you find a drastically different view on what the death of Jesus really means. Here are some more statements from nationally prominent emergent leaders Brian McLaren and Rob Bell:

"I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (A Generous Orthodoxy, 260, 262, 264)."

-Brian McLaren, More Ready Than You Realize

When I hear this, I feel like I'm being told that it's ok to put Jesus in a pantheon. I feel like I'm being told that the differences of eternal destiny between Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam don't really need resolution; all they need is to add a little bit of Jesus in and everything will be fine. Now, this is just one guys opinion, but I don't really think the messages of Jesus, Gautama, Muhammad, and the Vedas are very compatible. If the Jesus that you worship fits in with these guys, chances are you're not really worshipping the Jesus of the Bible.

"What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?...

What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?”

-Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

Rob has a reason for asking if we can keep jumping. In fact, there's a whole chapter in his book called “Jump.” Rob makes an analogy. If Christianity were a trampoline, we could imagine our doctrinal points, our theology as the springs. These springs are orthodoxy. Our ability to actually live out the faith is the membrane, the springy part. The bouncy part is orthopraxy. According to this analogy, it's possible to insinuate (which Bell does) that a couple of springs can be removed and the trampoline will still function.

I love Mark Driscoll. He's one of my favorite pastors. I heard him say something in a sermon the other day that went something like this. There have been lots of great, brilliant, theologians throughout history. You've got your Martin Luthers, your John Pipers, your Jonathan Edwards. And then you've got the random guy who walks into church on a Sunday morning in 2009 and announces that he's figured out some great theological conundrum. We'd probably laugh at him. Mark's absolutely right. There are just some things that we don't understand. It's because of these things that we don't understand, these passages that we interpret to mean different things, that we have different denominations. We may disagree on the small things, but to be a Christian, you have to agree on the big points. The big points are things like the sinfulness of humanity, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the grace of the Father in sending Jesus, the Resurrection. Things like that.

Some things just aren't worth arguing over and it's just more productive to not fight with each other over them. The big points don't fit into that category. Do you have communion every time you meet, or do you do it in intervals, or do you just do it every so often? Not a big deal. What if the virgin birth never really happened and it was just made up to make the story more appealing to the current audience? That is something worth fighting over. If Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, then Jesus is a descendant of Adam and is still under the curse. If Jesus is still under the curse, then he is still subject to human sin nature. If Jesus is still subject to fleshly sin nature, then he would have sinned. If he sinned, then he is no longer an acceptable sacrifice for our sin and our faith is in vain.

"I believe people are saved not by objective truth, but by Jesus. Their faith isn’t in their knowledge, but in God."

-Brian McLaren

This is another big idea in emergent theology—Postmodernism, the idea of relative truth. Basically, truth that isn't even really truth at all, truth that isn't absolute. What may be true for one person isn't necessarily true for another. Everything is relative. The problems with this point of view are pretty obvious when you put Postmodernism up against scripture:

• Scripture is the Word of God.
• Jesus is the living embodiment of the Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” John 1:1-5
• The Word contains all the prophecies about messiah, including the prophecies about the virgin birth: “Therefore the Lord Himself with give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
• Jesus said that God's Word is truth: “Sanctify them by Your truth. You word is truth.” John 17:17
• If Scripture is the Word of God, Jesus is the living Word, and the Word is the truth, then Jesus is Himself the truth: “Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'” John 14:6
• Jesus is THE truth.

Saying that we aren't saved by truth means that we aren't saved by Jesus, because Jesus is truth. Our faith depends on us knowing the reality of who Jesus really is: the Son of God, the Living Word, Immanuel, the Truth, the Sinless Messiah, born of a virgin and fulfillment of all the prophecies concerning Him. If He were to not fulfill even one of them, then He is no longer messiah and is no longer capable of saving us from our sins. Our faith would be in vain. Saying that being a Christian is possible in the absence of the virgin birth just doesn't work. It destroys who Jesus is and therefore destroys the Gospel. On several occasions Jesus asked people who they said He was. Knowing who He is, knowing His identity, is crucial to our salvation.

The general idea behind Bell's speech “The Gods Aren't Angry” is this: for thousands of years mankind has given sacrifices to various gods because they feared retribution. God sent Jesus to show the people that He was never mad at them in the first place. Now, armed with this new knowledge, mankind can go back to the peaceful relationship they should have had with Him all along. This view unduly elevates fallen man to a state of holiness and acceptability to God and brings God down to the level of tolerating and glossing over sin, making Him unjust and no longer holy.

God has no tolerance of sin. He's never glossed over sin. Sin has always required the spilling of blood, from the very beginning. When Adam and Eve sinned and were hiding in their nakedness, what did God clothe them with? Animal skin. That death of those animals is the first death of a sacrifice for sin. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). God demands it.

“You will often run in...to the idea 'if you would just repent, then God would...”

There's a reason that that idea seems to pop up a lot. It's in the Bible. And it's pretty much verbatim in John 1:8-10: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” There's the If/Then statement. Also, in Romans 10:9: “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There are several take home points here:

• We have to confess our sins, meaning that prior to salvation through the grace of Jesus' death on the cross, we are in a state of sinfulness, unacceptable to be in the presence of God.
• To say that we don't have any sin makes God the Father a liar, and the Word isn't in is. Remember, Jesus is the living embodiment of the Word.
• Confessing the Lordship of Jesus is a requirement. Believing God raised Him from the dead is a requirement.

With these facts straight, we can be sure of this: Jesus didn't come to let us know we were fine with Him in the first place. We are saved by the Truth: Jesus and His grace toward us. Believing that God only sent Jesus to show us we should have been relating to Him peacefully all along says that we had no sin, which calls the Father a liar. It just doesn't work to see the death of Jesus this way.

“For the first Christians, repentance was never 'if you would just do these things, then God would do these things'. It was 'do you understand what God has done?'”

At first glance, this looks like the doctrine of grace. This looks like endorsement of the belief that we can't do it (salvation) ourselves. In reality, taken in the context of the entire message, Bell isn't saying that we can't do it ourselves. He's saying that the point of the cross is that we never needed to because God didn't see anything wrong with us in the first place. This view of what happened on the cross sees Jesus as no more a gesture of goodwill so that mankind would understand that a lamb didn't need to be killed every time we did something wrong.

Scripture contradicts this as well. Romans says very clearly that we've all sinned, and it also very clearly defines the reason for Jesus sacrifice and what His death on the cross means to us:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Romans 3:23-26

Jesus was propitiation for our sins, not just a show that God put on to make us feel good about ourselves. Sin has a price, and it's death: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Jesus died so that God would be able to justify us. Contrary to popular belief, there are a few things God can't do:

• God Cannot Sin.
• “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:%
• God Cannot Tempt.
• “Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.” James 1:13
• God Cannot Tolerate Sin.
• “Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity.” Isaiah 59:1-3

God the Father, showing us His grace and mercy, sent Jesus to pay our price so that He could clothe us in righteousness and justify us before Him. If we believe that Jesus died just to show us that God was never mad at the sin in our lives, then we leave ourselves with two options. Either God is not truly holy because He can tolerate sin (which makes Scripture a lie, blasphemes God, and invalidates the bible), or God is truly holy, we had no sin in the first place, and God sent Jesus to prove our own holiness to us (according to John 1:8-10, if we say we have no sin then we make God a liar, which again invalidates His holiness and blasphemes Him). Neither of these approaches work. The only conclusion we can reach about Jesus death from these verses is this: that we were, in fact, sinners before God, in need of a savior because God despised our sin. In His grace, He loved us and sent us Jesus. Jesus was required as payment for our sins, the price of the debt that we could never pay. Through the grace of God by the death of Jesus on the cross, the Father now sees us as righteous when we believe on Jesus because of the shedding of His blood. A transaction occurred on the cross. Our freedom was bought. It was more than just a show.

“Repentance was never trying to get God to do something because God has already made peace with all things.”

This is what Jesus had to say about the effect his coming to earth would have in regards to temporal peace: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to 'set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law' and 'a man's enemies will be those of his own household'” (Matthew 10:34-36). Jesus said that His presence would cause families to divide of the controversy He would cause. This is true. It happens every day around the world. In some countries, if you accept Christ as Lord, then your family has a funeral for you.

Also in James 4:4-5: “Adulterers and Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, 'The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously'?”. Our culture, our world today, loves to assimilate things into itself. America itself is built on inclusion. Sometimes, the Christian faith just doesn't mix with the world, and when we concede key points like the virgin birth or the sinfulness of mankind to make our faith seem more plausible or friendly to the world, God is not at peace with that. To befriend the world is to make an enemy of God. Some things are just not flexible. Some things are absolute.

“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” John 3:36

Think back to an earlier mentioned verse: Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. When you believe in Jesus, you have the Life; you have Him now. Our soul is redeemed already and we just wait for the redemption of our bodies when He returns. Our corrupted bodies may die, but our soul already has the eternal life that God promised us if we believe in Jesus. We presently possess that. Inversely, if you don't believe in Jesus, the present tense still applies; the wrath of God currently abides on you. Think back to the passage from Isaiah. Sin has caused God to hide His face from us, to turn away because of the blood and iniquity on our hands. The wrath of God is the absence of God's help and intervention, the turning away of His face from us. Jesus pays for our sins when we believe and, through His grace, closes the gap of separation between God and us that our sin created.

Truth is important. Knowing who Jesus really is, why He really died, and what really happened when He did is important. It's so important that it determines the validity of what we call “Gospel.” The views put out by the emerging church don't always line up with what scripture says about who Jesus is and what He did, and that's why I've written this.