In the final verse of Judges it states 'In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes'. I think even now, though we have a King, it is so easy to do what is right in our own eyes. And I'm not talking about the 'secular' world, but predominately among Christians. At least non-believers have the excuse that they don't claim the absolute truths of Christianity whereas Christians as a whole, generally speaking, claim the same moral code as their banner. I was reading the story of Joshua and thought it appropriate to start the conversation of within Christianity, where do we find truth, and even more so, what is truth by definition through the lens of Christianity.
At the end end of his life, Joshua makes his famous charge to Israel with the verse '... choose this day whom you will serve... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord' -Joshua 24:15
Easy enough, right? Choose to serve the Lord. I don't know if, for me at least, it was the choosing so much that was difficult, it was what follows after the choice has been made. In the verse before the charge, Joshua is encouraging Israel to chose God by saying this: 'Fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth'- Joshua 24:14
And what stood out to me what that Joshua said sincerity AND truth. Then it all came back to me. All the frustration and guilt of living a life under the Christian banner while wearing the clothes of a self absorbed, prideful sinner. It's not that once your a Christian you stop sinning, obviously, but for me, my short fall was that I had the sincerity without the Truth, the absolute, the black and white. I was very much living in the 'what was right in my own eyes' by creating my subjective truth and filling in the holes with Scripture instead of Scripture being my truth molding my life around it.
Sincerity without Truth is, possibly, the biggest lie Christians by into. Church, community, good works, best sellers, blogs, podcasts, these things are nothing without the foundation of Truth sent by the Holy Spirit who inspired men to write it out so that no one can claim ignorance.
So that poses the question of all question: What is Truth?
This video from Focus on the Family's 'The Truth Project' asks a lot of questions about Truth and offers some opinions. Here is what I have found to point me in the direction of finding what Truth is.
Absolute
"This God-His way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true..." -Psalm 18:30a
Revealed by the Spirit
"... knowing this forst of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." -II Peter 1:20-21
Moral Compass for Life
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." - II Timothy 3:16-17
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
for every excuse, an answer
A couple weeks back we talked at K-Life about the story of the 'burning bush' in Exodus and how Moses emerges as one of the greatest leaders in Biblical history. No doubt Moses was a historic figure, but I wanted to go back to the beginning of how Moses was even put in the position to lead the Hebrews out of exile and to the gates of Canaan.
The story is found in Exodus 3 & 4 and it begins like this:
"Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God."
Moses is an adopted prince of Egypt, turned wanted Hebrew murderer, hiding in the back of the desert; yet God still found him. The burning bush in itself, to me anyway, isn't all that strange or miraculous. I don't know, maybe brush fires are rare in an Arabian desert, but the fact is that Scripture says that Moses noticed the burning bush, and upon seeing it not being consumed turned aside to see why. It was then, after Moses took notice that God called to him.
I think that last part about God calling to Moses only after Moses acknowledge the effort of God to catch our attention. How many times to we look past a seemingly natural occurrence in our lives when in fact God is trying to get our attention.
We know God calls Moses to lead a nation out of bondage, a feat I would argue most of use will never experience, but we have all been called, directly by God, to a command, a commission, a calling. We'll get back to that.
Moses, after a direct command from God, has the pride (some may say he was shy, but defiance (excuses) in the face of God, I would call pride as some level) to come up with not 1 but 4 excuses, and God in His sovereignty has an answer for every one.
You can read the excuses yourself, and God response to each one, but the thing that I think stands out to me and I find applicable to everyday life are the following questions:
1. What is it that God has called us to do a Christians?
2. What are our excuses to not live a sold out life for Christ?
3. What are the pride issues at the root of our excuses that have us believing a lie or doubt about God?
The story is found in Exodus 3 & 4 and it begins like this:
"Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God."
Moses is an adopted prince of Egypt, turned wanted Hebrew murderer, hiding in the back of the desert; yet God still found him. The burning bush in itself, to me anyway, isn't all that strange or miraculous. I don't know, maybe brush fires are rare in an Arabian desert, but the fact is that Scripture says that Moses noticed the burning bush, and upon seeing it not being consumed turned aside to see why. It was then, after Moses took notice that God called to him.
I think that last part about God calling to Moses only after Moses acknowledge the effort of God to catch our attention. How many times to we look past a seemingly natural occurrence in our lives when in fact God is trying to get our attention.
We know God calls Moses to lead a nation out of bondage, a feat I would argue most of use will never experience, but we have all been called, directly by God, to a command, a commission, a calling. We'll get back to that.
Moses, after a direct command from God, has the pride (some may say he was shy, but defiance (excuses) in the face of God, I would call pride as some level) to come up with not 1 but 4 excuses, and God in His sovereignty has an answer for every one.
You can read the excuses yourself, and God response to each one, but the thing that I think stands out to me and I find applicable to everyday life are the following questions:
1. What is it that God has called us to do a Christians?
2. What are our excuses to not live a sold out life for Christ?
3. What are the pride issues at the root of our excuses that have us believing a lie or doubt about God?
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Cross as our Stoning Experience
I gave a talk to a youth group in Peru the summer before my Senior year of high school. It was about the story of Achan found in Joshua 7. My point in the story was to point out a key verse and have everyone apply it to their own life. It's found in verse 13 and its God's response to Joshua as Joshua is weeping and tearing his clothes asking God why He had brought them out of the desert only lead them to defeat at the gates of their enemies (Chapter 7- Defeat at Ai). God's response is this:
"Get up, sanctify the people, and say, 'Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel: "There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you."
My thoughts were challenge everyone to find that 'accursed' thing in our lives (Achan took gold from Jericho and hid it in his tent) that are keeping us from an intimate relationship with Christ. And for years, that is the only thing I got from the story.
Tonight I talked at K-Life about the same passage, with the same hopes of challenging everyone to ask themselves the question of "Is there something in my live and is separating me from the Grace of God?" As I got into the talk, the story of what took place after the 'accursed' thing was found in the tent of Achan really hit home. Joshua takes Achan, his family, and all his possession out to a field and the story follows:
"And Joshua said, 'Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.' So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day."
Is the Cross our Stoning experience? God is consistent. We know He is both loving and a jealous God. My experience is too often Christians fail to see the severity of our sin because of how accessible Grace is. Yes we have the Cross, but God is Just as He is Love. And we see the product of sin throughout the Old Testament is the "fierceness of His anger". So what changed from the Old to the New Testament?
Here is my belief. The Cross is our Stoning experience. Christ on the Cross took the stones and the fire as nails and a crown of thorns, and the heap of stones raise to remind us that Christ is our propitiation of sin is the Cross. Behind the Grace of the Cross is a loving and jealous God and I hope we never fail to recognize the severity of our sin ('so the anger of the Lord burned against Israel' Joshua 7:1).
The story may or may not be about what is our 'bag of gold hidden in out tent', but here is a thought: every sin we commit against our Father God is worthy of justice, a fate spared us by the Cross. God has an image in our mind of a caring father, but if we believe that about God, we have to take God in His entirety, and that includes a God that burns with anger when we sin against Him.
Don't Abuse Grace. Don't fail to recognize the severity of sin. Don't forget the sacrifice at the Cross.
"Get up, sanctify the people, and say, 'Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel: "There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you."
My thoughts were challenge everyone to find that 'accursed' thing in our lives (Achan took gold from Jericho and hid it in his tent) that are keeping us from an intimate relationship with Christ. And for years, that is the only thing I got from the story.
Tonight I talked at K-Life about the same passage, with the same hopes of challenging everyone to ask themselves the question of "Is there something in my live and is separating me from the Grace of God?" As I got into the talk, the story of what took place after the 'accursed' thing was found in the tent of Achan really hit home. Joshua takes Achan, his family, and all his possession out to a field and the story follows:
"And Joshua said, 'Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.' So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day."
Is the Cross our Stoning experience? God is consistent. We know He is both loving and a jealous God. My experience is too often Christians fail to see the severity of our sin because of how accessible Grace is. Yes we have the Cross, but God is Just as He is Love. And we see the product of sin throughout the Old Testament is the "fierceness of His anger". So what changed from the Old to the New Testament?
Here is my belief. The Cross is our Stoning experience. Christ on the Cross took the stones and the fire as nails and a crown of thorns, and the heap of stones raise to remind us that Christ is our propitiation of sin is the Cross. Behind the Grace of the Cross is a loving and jealous God and I hope we never fail to recognize the severity of our sin ('so the anger of the Lord burned against Israel' Joshua 7:1).
The story may or may not be about what is our 'bag of gold hidden in out tent', but here is a thought: every sin we commit against our Father God is worthy of justice, a fate spared us by the Cross. God has an image in our mind of a caring father, but if we believe that about God, we have to take God in His entirety, and that includes a God that burns with anger when we sin against Him.
Don't Abuse Grace. Don't fail to recognize the severity of sin. Don't forget the sacrifice at the Cross.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
if only we all searched our hearts according to these thoughts...
an excerpt
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
Chapter 6, Human Pain
"My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting ith my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesess look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over- I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless."
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
Chapter 6, Human Pain
"My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting ith my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesess look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over- I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless."
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