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Oct 16
Love0

5 Ways For Building Loving Relationships With Your Neighbors

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What does the single mom that’s trying to figure out what to cook for dinner, the college student lacing up his running shoes, and the elderly couple walking their dog all have in common? They’re likely your neighbors.

Right now, there are people of many shapes and sizes with an array of beliefs and backgrounds from a variety of races and regions that live – to be quite honest – uncomfortably close to you.

Think about it: that guy in his boxers playing X-Box across the hall in your dormitory, and the divorcee who’s trying to restart her life next door to your life, both showed up in your life completely unannounced. They just rolled right smack dab into the middle of your world and no one even consulted you. Such is life, asG.K. Chesterton humorously observed, “We make our friends, and we make our enemies, but God makes our next door neighbor.”

What this means, of course, is that something quite profound is at work all around you. God has hand picked and delivered to your doorstep a mysteriously peculiar but perfectly suited group of neighbors. Every person that God brings into your life is full of meaning, so full in fact that God summarized the entire law with one word concerning neighbors, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14; James 2:8).

Seeing the significance of loving neighbors, an obvious question arises, “How are we to love our neighbors?” The most basic and beautiful answer to this question comes in the gospel. In order for us to love our neighbor we must first know Jesus as neighbor.

Jesus became our neighbor in the incarnation when the eternal Son of God became flesh and took up residence among us (John 1:14). Then, he showed us the extent of neighborly love by coming not to be served but to serve, demonstrating His love on the cross, removing the guilt of our miserable neighborliness and renewing us in love (Matthew 20:28, Romans 5:8). At this moment, he is in heaven preparing a place especially for us, that when he returns, we might forever be neighbors with Him (John 14:2-3).

To live out the ultimate neighbor love of Jesus in the here and now, let’s briefly look at a five practical steps for building loving relationships with neighbors.

1. Meet Your Neighbors

If we ever hope to love our neighbor in a way that even remotely resembles the love of Christ, we must overcome our tendency to remain anonymous. So whether we’re reintroducing ourselves to what’s-his-name next door, or establishing a relationship with the brand new employee in the corner cubicle, a personal introduction with pleasantries is the first step in opening up lines of relationship. Loving your neighbor starts with meeting your neighbor.

2. Refocus Attention on Your Neighbors

The very thought of meeting neighbors causes nervousness for many of us. Sometimes this nervousness is triggered by focusing on how we appear rather than the person appearing before us. To refocus, take a deep breath and ask the Lord for courage. Remind yourself that this person shares with you in the image of God, in being a sinner, and in desperately desiring love and care. This little exercise will often clear your heart of anxiety and refocus attention on your neighbor.

3. Make Notes about Your Neighbors

If you are often forgetful of names or important personal details like family relations, occupation, etc. let me encourage you to commit that information to writing soon after the encounter. One of the most helpful practices I’ve found in neighboring is simply making notes about the people I meet and revisiting those notes often to refresh my memory.

4. Plan to Follow Up with Your Neighbors

Make every effort to beat down a path through the hedge. Lengthy silence will send a relationship into limbo; so seek to keep short accounts with neighbors by targeting regular times for reconnection and deepening of the relationship. Informal hospitality is quite possibly the best path forward. Be open to spontaneity. Keep it simple. Sometimes lemonade on the front porch or a plate of cookies is better than a four-course meal on fine china.

5. Step into Service of Your Neighbors

Listen and look for ways to care for ordinary needs in your neighbors life. If they’re out of town, volunteer to mow the grass or check the mail while they’re gone. If they’re having car trouble, offer to drive them to work or make a grocery store run. Offer your time, talents, treasure, and yes, even your tools. Take advantage of the opportunities before you, and then purpose to walk through the open door.

These five instructions are not exhaustive by any stretch—just a few simple ways to get down the neighbor-loving road. More important than what you do, however, is the purpose for which you do it. Each of the five points above, or any additional steps you may take are not just good things to do but occasions to participate in and share the love of Christ. In being good neighbors, we are positioned to touch others with the truth and power of the neighbor-loving gospel.

What step will you take this week to build a closer relationship with your neighbors?

This post was originally published and can be read in it’s entirety here. Nate Shurden is pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, TN. He blogs and can be followed on Twitter @NateShurden.

Oct 16
Love0

How To Lead Someone To Christ Without The Sinners Prayer

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If we don’t lead people in the “sinner’s prayer” in evangelism, then how can we lead them to Christ?

Pastor David Platt is answering that question after having expressed reservation over the widely employed “sinner’s prayer.” Earlier this year, he called the specific prayer “superstitious,” sparking debate among Christians.

The Birmingham, Ala., pastor understands that many (like Billy Graham) have used and continue to use the prayer in their evangelistic efforts and that many have come to Christ that way. But for him personally, Platt chooses not to ask people to repeat after him in a sinner’s prayer partly because it comes across as “unhealthily formulaic.”

“I talk with people all the time who are looking for a ‘box to check off’ in order to be right with God and safe for eternity. But there is no box. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone,” he said Monday in a blog post.
So to answer the question, Platt, who leads The Church at Brook Hills, offered to summarize what he teaches at his church’s Institute for Disciple-Making every spring.

First, he explained, “share the gospel clearly … and call people to count the cost of following Christ.”

The person on the receiving end of the Good News must have a biblical understanding of the Gospel, Platt stressed. That is, that God looked upon “hopelessly sinful men and women,” and sent His son to bear His wrath against sin on the cross and to show His power over sin in the resurrection so that everyone who repents and believes in Him will be reconciled to God forever.

Once that is established, “Tell them following Jesus will cost them their life…and tell them Jesus is worth it!”

Platt, 33, emphasizes the latter part because he has witnessed the “sinner’s prayer” being abused among Christians, where people are assured of their salvation simply because they prayed the prayer. But in many cases, the prayer was said without having counted the cost of following Christ.

Next, the believer can ask the person if he or she has any questions and then ask if the person would like to repent and believe.

Then when giving the invitation to call on the Lord and be saved, “you don’t necessarily need to tell them the exact words to say at that point,” Platt noted.

A specific “sinner’s prayer,” is not found in the Bible, he maintained.

“If they see God for who He is, their sin for what it is, themselves for who they are, and Christ for who He is and what He has done, then by the grace of God through the Spirit of God they are more than able to call out in repentance and faith…so let them do so.”

The believer should also be willing to let the person be alone with God, in some cases.

Finally, once that person repents and believes in Christ, the one who shared the Gospel should continue to lead that new believer.

“Remember, our goal is not to count decisions; our goal is to make disciples,” he emphasized.

In the end, Platt remains cautious of the “sinner’s prayer” as it can be recited without a full understanding of the Gospel and of the life they’re committing themselves to.

He highlighted, “Assurance of salvation is not found in a prayer we prayed or a decision we made however many years ago as much as it is found in trusting in the sacrifice of Christ for us, experiencing the Spirit of Christ in us, obeying the commands of Christ to us, and expressing the love of Christ to others.

“Ultimately, however, I don’t want people to look to me or even to a ‘prayer they prayed’ for assurance of salvation. I want them to look to Christ for this. Assurance of salvation is always based on His work, not ours.”
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/platt-how-to-lead-someone-to-christ-without-the-sinners-prayer-77592/#aDlzhyHkxttV364V.99

Oct 16
Love0

How To Share The Gospel With Muslims

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“How do you pray?”

Ahmed and I had been sitting at a little teashop talking about various things when he asked this question. Like many other Muslims, he was curious about how Christians pray. I began to explain how our hearts need to be purified in order for us to approach God in prayer. He agreed and wanted to know more. “What do you say when you pray?” he asked. I told him that we can speak to God as a loving father. I then went on to show him the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6.

“Is that from the Bible?” he asked. “Yes it is,” I answered. He responded, “That’s beautiful! Can I get one?” From the beginning, it was obvious that God was working in Ahmed’s life to draw him to Jesus. It was a blessing to introduce him to Jesus the savior—whom he had only known as Jesus the prophet.

As we talk about Insider Movements and how we should or shouldn’t be sharing Christ with Muslims, two dangers can emerge. First, people can become a leery of Muslim evangelism out of fear of doing so incorrectly. We should have no fear in sharing the gospel with Muslims. It is the gospel that we are sharing, after all. It is powerful to save!

Second, we must remember that Muslim evangelism should not be merely talked about and debated on blogs or in academic circles. It is something that should be done wherever we find Muslims. In that endeavor let me offer some words of counsel to all who seek to make Christ supreme among Muslims.

Ground yourself in the fact that God is sovereign in salvation.

Muslims come to faith by a supernatural work of God, by which the Holy Spirit opens their hearts (Acts 16:14) and grants them the gift of repentance (2 Tim. 2:25). We believe that a Muslim coming to faith is not intrinsically connected to our form of contextualization, but rests solely on God’s divine intervention (Dan. 4:35; Ps. 115:3; John 6:64-65) and our humble obedience to proclaim the gospel (Acts 1:8; Matt. 9:38, 28:19-20). God is not concerned with glorifying a method; he is concerned with glorifying his Son. Strategies are useful and necessary, but none of them offers the “key” to Muslim evangelism.

Be diligent in working to understand the local culture and determine the best way to present the gospel.

God’s sovereignty is not meant to make us lazy, careless, or vague in our evangelism. It gives us hope, because our finite attempts to share the gospel are backed by an infinitely powerful Savior who has “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). Wanting to present the gospel clearly and knowing that God’s grace is irresistible are not mutually exclusive.

When it comes to understanding the local culture, we should seek to do two things:

    1. Know Islam. We need to ask ourselves, What are Muslims longing for? What keeps Muslims from attaining this? Don’t be afraid to read the Qur’an or other religious sources. These things will give you great insight into Muslims hearts and minds.

 

    1. Use their language. When I say “language” I’m referring to two things. First, speak their actual language. If you want to see a church planted among Arabic-speaking Muslims, learn Arabic. If you’re working among Pakistanis, learn Urdu. If among Bengalis, learn Bengali. Second, speak the language (figuratively) that communicates to them. My wife and I lived and worked among Arabic speakers. We learned early on that we could not get people to listen by presenting a beautiful apologetic syllogism proving Jesus is God. We had to use stories, parables, and passages from their religious books.

Center your gospel presentation on Jesus and the Bible.

The degree to which Muslim-background believers seek to retain their previous religion correlates with how we present the gospel to them. In other words, if we use the Qur’an extensively in our evangelism, we risk encouraging a sentimental attachment to it. Muslim-background believers may see the Qur’an as the means by which they understood the gospel and therefore have a harder time letting it go. If we present the gospel as fulfilling their previous religion, we open ourselves up to future problems.

I am not against the proper use of the Qur’an in evangelism. I am concerned with how much we use it. We should not give it center place in our gospel presentation. Jesus is the only way to the Father. Muslims must believe Jesus is their savior, and this belief can only come from the Scriptures. The story of redemption cannot be told from the Qur’an.

Don’t force your ideas on them.

Muslim evangelism can be messy; discipleship can be even worse. Each convert I worked with was different. I made it a point to preach the gospel and let it linger, giving them the time and freedom to think through the implications and determine how they should be applied in that particular culture. We should not attempt to impose our ideas or forms on Muslim-background believers. This means we shouldn’t impose either Western or Islamic expressions of Christianity on them. This is where much of the tension comes from.

We all have an idea of what we hope to see, and how we do Muslim ministry will be determined by our desired outcome. Insider Movement advocates envision implanting the gospel in a Muslim culture with the hopes that it will grow like yeast and lead to transformation from the inside out. In order to do this, they believe, the message must take on Islamic form. Anything less will be viewed as foreign and suspect. Others argue that Muslims need to be called out of Islam and gathered into a separate body with a clear Christ-centered identity. Anything less, they claim, would be viewed as syncretistic.

I would argue that both are correct. The gospel will take on a form of the culture that it is speaking to; if it doesn’t, it will not be understood. But the gospel will also speak with a prophetic voice within the culture that calls for transformation. It goes in and calls out. Our goal is to preach the gospel of Christ from the Scriptures and let the Spirit transform lives and communities.

In the end, expressions of the church or faith communities among Muslims may challenge all our views at some point. However, if these expressions are orthodox in their beliefs, Christ-centered in their view of the gospel, and not deceptive in their practices, we have cause for rejoicing. May God give us wisdom, grace, patience, and boldness as we seek to share the gospel with Muslims.

This article originally appeared on the TGC Blog on May 15, 2012. It was written by J. T. Smith. You can read the post in it’s entirety here.

 

Oct 16
Love0

The Biblical Basis For Missions

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“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (v. 17).

– John 3:16–17

Even Christians who attend churches that are faithful to the teaching of Scripture have an unfortunate tendency to see a tension between God the Father and God the Son. Without necessarily being conscious of it, many think of the Father as harsh and vindictive, seeking only to punish mankind. At the same time, His Son Jesus Christ is viewed as the compassionate and merciful one who must persuade His Father to spare some of His people from wrath. However, this is a gross distortion of the biblical teaching.

As today’s passage indicates, it is the Father Himself who, out of love for creation, has sent His Son to save transgressors (John 3:16–17). In fact, when we look at the wide scope of redemptive history, we find that the Almighty has always been the one who sends out emissaries for the purposes of salvation. God sent Moses to Pharaoh to liberate the children of Israel from bondage (Ex. 3:1–10). Likewise, He sent the prophets to call the people to repent of their sins in order that they might be rescued from destruction (2 Kings 17:13).

The concept of God sending His servants into the world to save them from judgment is so important that the church recognizes her call in the very word used to describe worldwide outreach — missions. This word comes from the Latin verb missio, which means “to send.” When the church sends evangelists and missionaries to preach the Gospel, she is imitating the Creator Himself.

Furthermore, the church sends proclaimers of the Word to the ends of the earth in order to fulfill the Savior’s direct command. First, the Father sent Jesus to save sinners, and now, Christ sends His people to bring the word of salvation to those who have never heard of Him (John 17:16–18). Loving our Redeemer requires us to obey His commandments (14:15), one of which is the call to world missions. We need not fear any opposition that may arise when we go forth, because as we follow Jesus we can be assured that He has asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit to go out with us (vv. 16–17). His presence assures us that the task of missions is not impossible; our preaching will surely be used to bring salvation to the ends of the earth when we are sent into the world.

Coram Deo

Not all of us are called to be full-time missionaries, but all of us are called to be involved in missions — if not as goers, then as senders. Have you fully grasped the importance of world missions to the plans of God? Consider today the budget you have established for giving to worldwide outreach. Try to increase what you give to the sending of workers — if not permanently, then in a one-time gift to a missionary who needs support to fulfill his call.

Passages for Further Study

 

Isaiah 6:8
Jeremiah 1:4–19
Matthew 28:18–20
Acts 13:1

From Ligonier Ministries, the teaching fellowship of R.C. Sproul. All rights reserved. Website: www.ligonier.org | Phone: 1-800-435-4343

Oct 16
Love0

Dangerous Sin Symptoms

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The first thing to do when seeking to put a sin to death is this:

Consider Whether Your Lust Has These Dangerous Symptoms Accompanying It

He goes on to list several of those dangerous symptoms.

Inveterateness (hardened or deep-rooted). Here is what he says: “If it has lain long corrupting in your heart, if you have suffered it to abide in power and prevalency, without attempting vigorously the killing of it and the healing of the wounds you have received by it for some long season, your distemper is dangerous. … When a lust has lain long in the heart, corrupting, festering, cankering, it brings the soul to a woeful condition. In such a case an ordinary course of humiliation will not do the work: whatever it be, it will by this means insinuate itself more or less into all the faculties of the soul, and habituate the affections to its company and society; it grows familiar to the mind and conscience, that they do not startle at it as a strange thing, but are bold with it as that which they are wonted unto.”

Secret pleas of the heart for the countenancing of itself without a vigorous gospel attempt for its mortification. He offers two ways in which this may happen:

  • “When upon thoughts, perplexing thoughts about sin, instead of applying himself to the destruction of it, a man searches his heart to see what evidences he can find of a good condition, notwithstanding that sin and lust, so that it may go well with him. For a man to gather up his experiences of God, to call them to mind, to collect them, consider, try, improve them, is an excellent thing—a duty practiced by all the saints, commended in the Old Testament and the New. … But now to do it for this end, to satisfy conscience, which cries and calls for another purpose, is a desperate device of a heart in love with sin.”
  • By applying grace and mercy to an unmortified sin. “There is nothing more natural than for fleshly reasonings to grow high and strong upon this account. The flesh would fain be indulged unto upon the account of grace, and every word that is spoken of mercy, it stands ready to catch at and to pervert it, to its own corrupt aims and purposes. To apply mercy, then, to a sin not vigorously mortified is to fulfill the end of the flesh upon the gospel.”

When a man fights against his sin only with arguments from the issue or the punishment due unto it. “This is a sign that sin has taken great possession of the will, and that in the heart there is a superfluity of naughtiness [James 1:21]. Such a man as opposes nothing to the seduction of sin and lust in his heart but fear of shame among men or hell from God, is sufficiently resolved to do the sin if there were no punishment attending it; which, what it differs from living in the practice of sin, I know not. Those who are Christ’s, and are acted in their obedience upon gospel principles, have the death of Christ, the love of God, the detestable nature of sin, the preciousness of communion with God, a deep-grounded abhorrency of sin as sin, to oppose to any seduction of sin, to all the workings, strivings, rightings of lust in their hearts.”

Here’s a helpful explanation of what he means:

Try yourself by this also: When you are by sin driven to make a stand, so that you must either serve it and rush at the command of it into folly, like the horse into the battle, or make head against it to suppress it, what do you say to your soul? What do you expostulate with yourself? Is this all—‘Hell will be the end of this course; vengeance will meet with me and find me out?’ It is time for you to look about you; evil lies at the door [Gen. 4:7]. Paul’s main argument to evince that sin shall not have dominion over believers is that they ‘are not under the law, but under grace’ (Rom. 6:14). If your contendings against sin be all on legal accounts, from legal principles and motives, what assurance can you attain unto that sin shall not have dominion over you, which will be your ruin?

When your lust has already withstood particular dealings from God against it. God oftentimes, in his providential dispensations, meets with a man, and speaks particularly to the evil of his heart, as he did to Joseph’s brethren in their selling of him into Egypt. This makes the man reflect on his sin, and judge himself in particular for it. God makes it to be the voice of the danger, affliction, trouble, sickness that he is in or under. Sometimes in reading of the word God makes a man stay on something that cuts him to the heart, and shakes him as to his present condition. More frequently in the hearing of the word preached—his great ordinance for conviction, conversion, and edification—does he meet with men. God often hews men by the sword of his word in that ordinance, strikes directly on their bosom-beloved lust, startles the sinner, makes him engage unto the mortification and relinquishment of the evil of his heart. Now, if his lust has taken such hold on him as to enforce him to break these bands of the Lord and to cast these cords from him—if it overcomes these convictions and gets again into its old posture; if it can cure the wounds it so receives—that soul is in a sad condition.”

This post was originally an article on www.challies.com. You can read the article in it’s entirety here. 

Oct 16
Love0

Are Short-Term Mission Trips Worth Doing?

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They can be.

At the time of this recording, this coming weekend our church will do another seminar with an expert in short-term missions. He will seek to train leaders to make them what they ought to be.

A huge thing is that you should only go where you’re wanted.

You don’t foist yourself on a missionary. I have had missionaries say, “Frankly, short-term teams are more trouble than they’re worth.” So you don’t do that! Don’t make yourself more trouble than you’re worth. If somebody doesn’t want you to come and they don’t have a plan for how it advances their mission, then, good grief, don’t take a vacation, grab your eighteen teenagers, and go make some missionary’s life miserable.

Rather, talk to the missionaries. Work out a plan. And if they want you to come, then come.

That way it should work out both ways. If older people, or young people, or multi-generational teams are really serving, pouring themselves out according to the needs of the missionary, then it’s the best of both worlds.

For one, though it may not feel like the fun and games some were hoping for, it will be deeply satisfying, because it is more blessed to give than to receive. And, secondly, it will be helpful to the missionary, because he is able to get some projects done that he hoped to get done.

So the answer is not an easy one, it’s not a simple one. Yes, short-term trips can be a mess. But yes, they can be worth the work and energy and finances.

One of the payoffs is that there is scarcely today an under-fifty missionary on the field who didn’t do a short-term mission before they went out. The testimonies are widespread that tastes of what mission life might be like were gotten on short-term trips.

So I’m for them. And Brad Nelson, who oversees them now at Bethlehem, knows the issues really well. And he’s not going to force any of our teams on anybody that doesn’t want them. And he’ll see to it that they are fruitful.

 

Oct 16
Love0

Listen To Them Or Lose Them

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The following is an article written by Barbara Challies and originally posted on the True Woman Blog. You can see the original here. Barbara Challies is mother to five grown children (three of them girls) and grandmother to eleven grandchildren. She and her husband, John, live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Yep, you guessed it . . . she’s mom to prolific author/blogger Tim Challies!)

Daughters. How we long for them and love them. But what exhausting little creatures they are! Ask almost any parent and I think you will hear the same thing. They love to talk . . . and talk . . . and talk.

Fortunately as a woman, I love to talk . . . and talk . . . and talk, as well. But I also love to listen. Over the years, I have spent an astounding number of hours listening to my three daughters. In retrospect, I think this is one of the best gifts I have ever given them. Let me explain.

All children are born with questions, big ones. I remember Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (Francis Schaeffer’s daughter) saying that every question she has heard from an adult she has also heard from a child–just presented in a different form. An adult might ask, “What are foundational, epistemological principles?” A child just asks, “How do I know I am not really a robot?” (a secret fear of mine as a child). Children need answers to big questions, desperately. One of the most important functions of a parent is “prophetic,” interpreting life to tiny people who have next to no context for determining the nature of truth and reality. What a privilege this is for the parents! What a gift to the child! The importance of this type of communication applies equally to boys and girls.

The reason girls become particularly exhausting is that the world of ideas is just one level of their being. Along with this, they have tremendous interest in the world of people. Specifically, they are extremely sensitive to people as they impact their own lives. “What did she mean by that?” “Is she really saying she doesn’t like me?” “Are they better friends than we are?” And so on. Girls twist themselves into knots responding to their own world of people. Because of this, they are often desperately insecure. And the related pain is very real.

If you don’t parent them on this level, there is generally one result. They can’t carry the burden of these emotions and they harden. As I tell my grown children, “Listen to them or lose them.” For any child, time spent with him equals love. But for girls, time “being listened to” trumps any other activity. Their need for support, to know and be known, is simply voracious. And there is nothing wrong with that. They resonate to “people vibes.” It is the way God has made them.

If you work with this, they feel known, loved, and safe. You win their hearts. They become your friends. You don’t cease to be a parent, but you have a genuine friendship, as well. And this bodes well for the future. As they get older, the bond of friendship–the horizontal bond–pulls them toward faithfulness and loyalty to you as parents just as much as the vertical bond of authority. There is just too much love and intimacy for them to easily go astray. Girls do not readily violate intimate relationships. It is just not their nature. They are “bound” with bonds of love–built on the foundation of listening.

Of course, alongside this is the nurturing of an intimate relationship with God–also built on the two layers of the objective and the personal. God and His ways fulfill both mind and heart wonderfully. When girls are well-known by parents–both the best and the worst about them–they “dare” move close to their heavenly Father because they understand grace. It has been offered to them from childhood. And it all stems from listening to them–knowing them better than they know themselves, then caring deeply and intimately for their souls. This is what they most want. They will love you deeply for it.

Sep 02
Love0

Parenting for Recovering Pharisees

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This article was originally posted on the Gospel Coalition website found here.

Cooking dinner, I hear the sounds of angry hearts bubbling over into stinging words. It gets louder, and soon someone is crying. Two boys come out into the great-room, red-faced, fists clenched, and both yelling at once. After multiple attempts, I finally gather that one had frustrated the other, who responded by kicking his brother.

I begin by saying, “Remember how Jesus said we were to treat one another?”

“I’m not Jesus!” my oldest responds immediately, his face scrunched up as his feet stomp the tile floor. He runs off to his room.

Sometimes, my children speak words that the Spirit has been trying to pierce into my heart for a while.

The pasta is boiling over. The water makes sizzling sounds as it hits the red glass cook top. I stare at it, knowing I need to leave the kitchen and talk through the conflict with them. I think of how quickly anger can overflow the heart, spattering burning hot drops of pain on anyone nearby.

Turning down the heat on the pot, I walk into the boy’s room, hoping to do the same with their anger. I find them both calm and playing with Legos. I get down on the floor, look my oldest in the eyes, and say, “I know you’re not Jesus.”

Deep into the Past

How often does a parent’s response to her child’s behavior imply that we expect perfection? The pharisaical heart has roots that dig deep into the past–back into childhood. A child can learn quickly the ways of self-righteousness. When they have behaved, they hear, “You’re such a good boy.” Over the years, they can grow to believe that the good they do comes from their own ability. When those beliefs take root, they can struggle with seeing their own sin. And perhaps even struggle with seeing their need for a Savior.

“Jesus called us to live as he lived. But he knows we can’t be perfect as he is perfect,” I tell my son. “That’s why he died for us, because we can’t do what’s right. Through faith in him, he gives us the Holy Spirit. We have his power living within us. That’s the only way we can ever obey. We need to pray and ask for his help.”

He nods his head, listening.

“When you don’t obey, remember that Jesus died for that disobedience. He loves you that much. When you feel the anger rising within you, pray and tell God you are angry. Ask him to help you to obey him.”

As a recovering Pharisee, I struggle with living as though I can earn grace. I know how the self-righteous heart can look down on those who don’t follow the rules. I don’t want my children to grow up with the heart of a Pharisee.

I do want them to know the holiness of God. I want them to know all that he expects, what he commands, and what glorifies him. I also want them to realize that they can’t perfectly obey him, and they need a Savior. I want their hearts to be grieved and humbled by their sin. I want them to run to the cross when they sin and remember his grace and mercy.

God’s grace covers even my parenting blunders. How grateful I am that his grace is greater than all my sin! I rest in his promise that he is at work in my children’s hearts despite my failed efforts. I trust in the story of redemption he is writing in their lives. And I look forward to that day when we will finally be like Jesus.

 

Christina Fox is a writer, blogger at www.toshowthemjesus.com, homeschooling mom, and coffee drinker, not necessarily in that order. She is a licensed mental health counselor and women’s Bible study teacher. She lives in sunny South Florida with her husband of 15 years and their two boys.

Aug 31
Love0

Lord’s Prayer (Part 3)

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The following is the third part of a series written by one of our members, David Carrico. Previous parts can be found at the links below:

Part 1

Part 2

“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…” 

Matthew 6:9

As we meditate through the Model Prayer, we come next to “…hallowed be Thy name…”

Hallowed…a very odd sounding word to the modern American ear.  Sounds kind of old-timey, doesn’t it?  That’s because it is old-timey.  The dictionary calls it archaic and obsolete.  And you’ve got to admit, this isn’t a word that just pops up in everyday conversation.

That explains why we see it in books dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, like the King James translation of the Bible.  But why do we see it in modern translations like the New American Standard?

Well, that has to do with a deficiency in modern English.  For all its flexibility in communication; for all that most of the world seems to have adopted English as a universal communication tool; for all that some of the grandest written works in human history have been rendered in or into English, it’s not perfect.  It has a few flaws.

One of those flaws is there is no verb form of “holy” in modern English.  We can say “be holy” or “make holy” or “is holy”, but we can’t say “God holied” something.  But to handle the Greek correctly, translators sometimes have a need to be able to say “to holy” someone/something when translating the New Testament.  And that is why modern translators will sometimes use “hallowed” in translating this verse; because this archaic word is a form of a Middle English word that basically means “to holy” something or someone, and it allows them to correctly translate the Greek word.

So in “hallowed be” what we have is a prayer that something be “holied”.  And what is the object of that desire?  The name of God.

As a child in Sunday School, way more years ago than I care to think about, this phrase never made much sense to me.  I had the idea back then that “hallowed” somehow meant something like “praised”.  And that sort of made sense to me.  Even in my early years as a believer, I understood enough to know that God deserved praise from His children.  But “praise the name of God” statements never made much sense to me.  What was so special about the word “God” that made it something that should be praised?

Even if I had known that “hallowed” meant “holied”, it still wouldn’t have made much sense to me.  You see, in our modern culture names are only labels.  The label most people know me by is “David”.  Now that name has meaning—it means “beloved” in Hebrew—and I know that my mother chose it for me with intent.  But in our society, we don’t think about names the way the people of the Bible did.  I sure didn’t in my earlier years.  And we especially don’t understand that when the Bible talks about “the name of God”, it is talking about so much more than a mere divine label.

You see, in the Bible, when one of the writers talks about “the name of God”, the word “name” is being used in a very particular way.  It’s not a reference to any of the thirteen names of God found in the Old Testament:  Yahweh, Elohim, El Elyon, Yahweh-Yireh, El Shaddai, Yahweh-Shalom, etc.  Those names all express characteristics of God, true:  creator, possessor, provider, peace, etc.  But that is different from what one of those writers says when he writes “the name of God”.  The ancient Jews believed that the name of God encompassed the essence of God, His power, and His glory.  Take a look at the following verse.

 

Some boast in chariots, and some in horses; 

But we will boast in the name of the Lord, our God.

Psalms 20:7

They weren’t talking about boasting in a label.  “The name of the Lord/God” wasn’t just a label to them.  That phrase was filled with meaning and import.  When they used it, they were invoking the power and might and glory and majesty of God: the God who always has been, is now, and always will be; the God whose mind held the plan of the universe and of history before He said “Let there be light”; the God who will draw all creation to an end and then create a new heaven and a new earth.

That’s not a God that you just stick a label on and believe you understand Him.  That’s a God who is beyond our ability to comprehend.  Yet the Bible still gives us glimpses of Him.  And one persistent theme in the Bible, particularly among the Old Testament Prophets, is that God is holy.  Many times He is called “The Holy One of Israel”.

What is holy?  Well, the Greek word means pure, clean, without blemish, flaw, or taint.  So in a spiritual application, it means to be morally and spiritually pure, without a touch of sin at all, anywhere, at any time.  God is holy.  You could also say God is holiness.  Holiness is such a part of God’s nature that it can’t be separated from Him.

In recent years I’ve come to believe that holiness is the preeminent characteristic of God.  I know a lot of people, including very learned commentators, would disagree with me and put forward the idea of “God is love” as being the most important aspect of God for mankind.

The problem I have with that is if God is not holy, then everything else about Him is meaningless.  Of what value is the justice of a God who is not holy?  Of what value is the power of a God who is not holy?  Of what value is the love of a God who is not holy?  And ultimately, of what value is a salvation offered by a God who is not holy?

Everything that we know about God, everything that we value about God, everything that we cherish about God flows out of His being holy.  Regardless of which metaphor we pick—cornerstone, keystone, core—it is the holiness of God that is the beginning and end of who God is.  All the other characteristics of God are not necessarily secondary, but must be seen through the lens of God’s holiness.  God is peace because He is holy.  God is the righteous judge because He is holy.  God is love because He is holy.

 

So let’s come back to our prayer.  If God is holy, then what does it mean to pray “hallowed be Thy name”?  I mean, it does sound a bit silly for us to pray for God to be holy when He already is holy, when holiness is such a part of Him that we can’t separate the two.

 

Well, I think there are a couple of things at work here.

First, the prayer acknowledges the holiness of the almighty God.  We need to be constantly reminded of that holiness.

Second, I believe there is a prayer for personal application implied here:  “God, You are holy.  Let Your holiness be evident—in me.”

 

Holiness should be the goal of each believer.  In fact, we’re commanded to it.

 

“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” “

1 Peter 1:14-16

 

It should be our desire, individually and collectively, to be holy.  Not “holier than thou”, not self-righteous, not judgmental.  Simply holy.  And our prayers should reflect that desire, because we can’t be holy on our own.

 

Peace and grace to you.

 

David

Aug 30
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57 Billion Dollars

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This is the figure to chew on… Pornography has become a $57 billion industry worldwide. It produces more revenue in the United States than the combined revenues of all pro-football, baseball and basketball franchises or the combined revenue of ABC, CBS, & NBC.

It robs the workplace of the time and talents of employees. 20% of men admit accessing porn at work, 13% of women.

One in five children ages 10-17 has received a sexual solicitation over the internet.

Three million of the visitors to adult websites in Sept. 2000 were age 17 and younger.

 

It is a huge problem that is taking men and women of all ages captive, including those who call themselves followers of Christ. Yet nobody wants to talk about it until its too late when a marriage ruined, a career ended, a life damaged and a mind corrupted.

Is there help, is there a way out of the bondage?

As I recommend this WEBSIGHT I realize that most of the trouble is on the Internet (because of its secrecy and accessibility) but there is help there if you GO TO THIS SIGHT AND NO OTHERS.

www.menlivingup.org

But don’t stop there! Get with another man, a godly friend you can talk with and open up exposing light to the darkness.

‘Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. For the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.“

James 5:16

 

Want to talk? Email Jim

Jimmy Jackson

Family Pastor at Heritage Baptist Church, OKC

Aug 30
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Is it worth it?

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During the past 16 years serving overseas, many people have asked if it’s worth it to live so far away from home.  There have been days when we have asked ourselves the same question.

“Is it worth it?”

Is it worth it to live 10,000 miles away from your college-age daughter?

Is it worth it for your son to miss out on seeing grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on a regular basis?

Is it worth it to miss important family gatherings, such as weddings and holidays?

Is it worth it to miss out on the fellowship of your church family every Sunday?

Is it worth it to leave behind almost all of your earthly belongings and have to start from scratch to turn a house into a home?

Is it worth it to give up your house near the beach to live in an apartment building in a congested city of 8 million people?

Is it worth it to give up your dog who is too old to move overseas?

Is it worth it to live in a foreign country where your light hair, fair skin, and blue eyes make you stand out like a sore thumb?

Is it worth it to spend months studying a foreign language and still only be able to speak on the level of a 3-year-old?

Is it worth it to be illiterate– unable to read signs, letters, books, menus, and even your remote controls?

Is it worth it to deal with the transportation hassles of having no car?

Is it worth it to have to run errands, go to class, and everywhere else on a bike in the hot sun, pouring rain, and bitter cold?

Is it worth it to give up all the conveniences ofAmerica?

Is it worth it to live in a country that denies the existence of God?

The answer is YES!  If even one person hears of Jesus Christ from our lips, sees Him through our actions, and learns of the miracle of Immanuel, God With Us, then every minute we spend so far from home is most definitely worth it!   Thank you for generously giving  to fund our work.  We couldn’t be here without your support.  Thank you also for your prayers which sustain us on a daily basis.  May God bless each of you in 2011.

Editor’s note:  Whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s call on our missionaries’ lives and their faithfulness in ministry.

(names, locations and original blog links omitted due to security issues)

IMB Prayer, Missionary Blog Digest, 2011

Aug 23
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Preach the Gospel to Yourself

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The following is an article from Tim Challies. You can fin out more from him and his ministry here.

 

Jerry Bridges was talking about preaching the gospel to yourself and being gospel-centered long before it was cool to do so. One of the great burdens of his ministry has long been to have Christians understand that “the gospel is not only the most important message in all of history; it is the only essential message in all of history. Yet we allow thousands of professing Christians to live their entire lives without clearly understanding it and experiencing the joy of living by it. … Christians are not instructed in the gospel. And because they do not fully understand the riches and glory of the gospel, they cannot preach it to themselves, not live by it in their daily lives.” In other words, we teach people just enough gospel to get saved, but then move on to other things. Bridges wants us to understand that we never move on from the gospel.

In the third chapter of The Discipline of Grace, Bridges provides a powerful, thorough review of the gospel and does this by looking at Romans 3:19-26. He offers an exposition of that passage and through it leads to this imperative: Preach the gospel to yourself. Let me provide an extended quote that gives some of the how and the why:

To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.

To preach the gospel to yourself means that you take at face value the precious words of Romans 4:7-8: “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”

It means that you believe on the testimony of God that “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). It means you believe that “Christ redeemed [you] from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for [you], for it is written ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). It means you believe He forgave you all your sins (Colossians 2:13) and now “[presents you] holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Colossians 1:22).

Turning to the Old Testament, to preach the gospel to yourself means that you appropriate by faith the words of Isaiah 53:6: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and theLORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

It means that you dwell upon the promise that God has removed your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), that He has blotted out your transgressions and remembers your sin no more (Isaiah 43:25). But it means you realize that all these wonderful promises of forgiveness are based upon the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

It is the death of Christ through which He satisfied the justice of God and averted from us the wrath of God that is the basis of all God’s promises of forgiveness. We must be careful that, in preaching the gospel to ourselves, we do not preach a gospel without a cross. We must be careful that we do not rely on the so-called unconditional love of God without realizing that His love can only flow to us as a result of Christ’s atoning death.

This is the gospel Bridges wants the Christian to preach to himself day-by-day. “When you set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you will begin to realize what an awful sinner you are. And if you are not firmly rooted in the gospel and have not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you will soon become discouraged and will slack off in your pursuit of holiness.”

To learn very practically about how Bridges preaches the gospel to himself, click here for a short quote from his book Respectable Sins.

Aug 23
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A Black and White Choice NOT to read Fifty Shades of Grey

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The following is from www.womengonewise.com and is written by Mary Kassian

A Black and White Choice NOT to read Fifty Shades of Grey Photo | Girls Gone Wise “Fifty Shades of Grey,” an erotic novel by an obscure British author based on Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, has electrified women across the country. Readers have spread the word like wildfire on Facebook pages, in college hallways, at office functions and in spin classes. Within six weeks of publication, the three books of the series, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, claimed the top three spots in USA Today’s Best-Selling Books list. Sales have topped 10 million. The series is so popular that last month, author E. L. James was listed as one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World“.

Red Room of Pain

The books in question are erotica that explicitly describe sexual bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM). The story follows an unfolding affair between a recent college graduate, the virgin Anastasia Steele, and handsome young billionaire entrepreneur, Christian Grey, whose childhood abuse left him a deeply damaged individual, and who enlists her to share his secret sexual proclivities. Steele is required by Grey to sign a contract allowing him complete control over her. Because of her fascination and budding love for him, she consents to a kinky sexual relationship that includes being slapped, spanked, handcuffed, and whipped with a leather riding crop in his “Red Room of Pain.”

A few weeks ago, the book popped up as Amazon’s suggested buy on my Kindle. I declined. Like my friend,Dannah Gresh, I absolutely refuse to read these books.

Smut is Smut

Undoubtedly, the series portrays BDSM in the context of an engaging, passionate, tender, romantic relationship that culminates in the characters falling in love, and the conflicted girl assuaging the billionaire’s troubled soul. But it doesn’t matter to me how the author sweetens it up. The tasty red Kool-Aid doesn’t offset the bitter poison. Smut is still smut.

I don’t have to read the book to know that it’s bad for women. Nor do I need to read it to tell you that I think it would be unwise for you to read it.

7 Reasons Not to Read 50 Shades

1. It violates God’s design for sex:

God created sex to be exclusive to marriage. In 50 Shades the relationship is based on a sex contract, not a marriage covenant. The Lord says that sex outside of marriage is sin. It grieves Christ when we take pleasure in something He abhors.

 2. It violates the biblical concept of authority:

The relationship between a man and wife is to mirror Christ’s relationship to His Bride. BDSM tells a lie about the nature of that relationship. Christ taught and modelled that authority is for the purpose of loving service. It is not an egotistical power trip. Christ is not into domination, control, abuse, and humiliation. So in my mind, there’s something seriously wrong when we get a kick out of interpersonal domination/humiliation, and bring BDSM into Christian bedrooms.

3.  It violates the biblical concept of submission:

A wife’s submission is first and foremost to Christ. The biblical directive to submit does not turn women into brain-dead, passive, weak-willed doormats who acquiesce to the whims of dominant, controlling men. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Lord doesn’t want His daughters to be wilting, weak-willed, wimpy women who welcome and enjoy abuse. BDSM perverts and mocks the beauty of what true submission is all about.

 4. It encourages the sin of sensuality:

Erotica is a genre that aims to arouse sexual desire. It evokes sensuality, a sin that appears in numerous New Testament lists of vices (Gal 5:19, Rom. 13:13, Mark 7:21-23, 1 Pet 4:3, 2 Cor. 12:21). Sensuality is anything that

  1. is characterized by lust
  2. expresses lewdness or lust,
  3. tends to excite lust.

Scripture tells us to flee all such things.

5. It promotes sexual perversion:

“Curiosity” has led to the downfall of multitudes who have been trapped in the destructive, downward vortex of sexual sin. Fifty Shades piques curiosity. It dangles behaviors that are forbidden, unfamiliar, and titillating. Maybe you’re just curious, or maybe you rationalize that it might boost your libido and marital sex life. And it might. Temporarily. But the problem with erotica, as with porn, is that you’ll end up craving increasingly graphic, perverse images over time. Erotica/porn lead to deeper, darker erotica/porn. What’s more, they end up robbing people of the joy and satisfaction of “ordinary,” non-twisted sex with an “ordinary” spouse. In the end, they assault and diminish a healthy sex life.

6. It glamorizes pathological relationships:

The male protagonist is a very tortured and misunderstood soul with a proclivity for sexual perversion. One moment he is abusive, and the next he is tender and romantic. The girl feels she is the only one who can reach him and help him. Hmmm. Sounds like a seriously dysfunctional co-dependent abusive relationship to me. AsDr. Pinksy, a relationship expert said, “the idea that women look at this relationship as anything other than absolute, categorical, profound pathology is more than I can imagine… I worry about the 15-year-olds and 19-year-olds reading this and formulating a notion that this is anything close to a reasonable relationship.”

7. You won’t get it out of your head:

The Bible tells us to think about things that are pure, right, excellent, praiseworthy, lovely, admirable, noble, and true (Phil 4:8) There’s truth to the old proverb that “as a man thinketh so is he,” and the modern day adage, “garbage in – garbage out.” Your thoughts have transformational power – for good or for evil. Filling your head with thoughts of sin, sensuality, dysfunction, and BDSM will lead you further away from the things of God and not closer to them. Darkness has incredible “sticking power” – Once exposed, it can be extremely difficult to get the images and thoughts out of your head.

As Dannah says,

“God has given me more than fifty shades of truth in His Word and when just one of them is in conflict with my entertainment choices, I choose to pass! To be clear: I wouldn’t drive my Envoy into the front of an oncoming semi-truck any more than I would open the pages of Fifty Shades of Grey. I love my marriage, my God, and myself too much.”

So girls, have some respect for the Lord, and for yourselves. Exercise some discernment, and don’t read this book!

In my opinion, the choice whether or not to read Fifty Shades of Grey is pretty black and white.

Aug 23
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Here’s Your Sign

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The following is from www.housewifetheologian.com and is intended to get us thinking. Enjoy.

 

Well it happened again. There I was, innocently driving my car,  only to come face to face with another bad church sign. Here is what the latest offender said:

“Pray” is a four-letter word that you can’t say in public school.

Really? Let’s get our facts straight before we put them on our church signs. The word “pray” is not banned from public school. Praying isn’t banned either. I remember when my oldest daughter started elementary school, she and a friend used to “say grace” before their lunch together everyday. (That’s in a public school, by the way.) Now in middle school, she is part of a student-led “Bible Club” that meets after school a couple of times a month. She has never encountered opposition from administrators for these things, because it is perfectly legal.

What this church sign is intimating is the Supreme Court decision in 1962 to ban any form of organized, state-sponsored prayer or religious services in school. But we have to also look at what led up to this. Originally, Christianity was taught in the public school. Children actually learned their ABC’s and biblical catechism’s together (for a good little history lesson on this, read Stephen Prothero’s book, Religious Literacy):

A–In Adam’s Fall, We sinned all.

B—Heaven to find; The Bible to mind.

C—Christ crucify’d; For sinners dy’d.

School books such as spellers and readers taught biblical knowledge, integrated with their learning tasks. One of the primary motivations for literacy was for more Americans to be able to read their Bibles. Not a bad idea. And yet, these well-intended motivations led to inevitable conflict.

I don’t think it’s helpful to paint public schools out to be our enemy. There were many factors in our American history that contributed to the removal of religious content from the public schools, such as the Sunday school movement and Bible and tract societies, that were not the result of the evil government stifling faith. For the sake of ecumenism in teaching Christianity, religious content was diluted. While it first seemed wise for Christian religions to come together and teach their children, theology had been replaced by morality. The biblical content itself suffered on account of nondenominationalism. We can’t just blame the government for taking the Bible out of the schools. History shows that the Protestant verses Catholic wars on which Bible translation was to be used in schools led to the court cases that banned religious material and organized prayer.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t want my children’s public school teachers teaching them how to pray any more than I want my pastor to teach a math lesson from the pulpit. The Fourteenth Amendment required the scope of this federal amendment to be applied at the state level. The first part of this amendment, known as the Establishment Clause, assures me that there will never be an established religion imposed on my child. The second part, known as the Free Exercise Clause, ensures me that “pray” is not a four-letter word. My kids are allowed to pray on their own, as long as they are not being disruptive.

Of course, I don’t want to paint a picture of the public schools with rose-colored glasses. As Christians, we recognize that many of the secular interpretations of natural revelation are taught under a world view that is different from the biblical account of creation. We all want our kids to receive the best education we can provide them in the natural sciences and in the content their faith. Since we are the primary arbitrators for our children’s education, we need to consider all obstacles and benefits of our choices, whether public, private, or homeschooling. And we need to be equally discerning in the churches we join.

We can also acknowledge that some of the best educators are public school teachers.  My husband happens to teach fourth grade in the public schools.  We should be happy to have Christians working in this field for both believer’s and unbeliever’s children.  Hopefully, families will be sensitive in their decision-making not to hold their own convictions about how to educate their children above other families.  These are difficult choices.  None of them are without pitfalls, and we should make our decisions with humility.

It just isn’t helpful to pit the church against public schools. Plastering misinformation or exaggerations on your church sign does not contribute in a positive manner to the problems that do exist.

Ironically, the church across the street from this offender was advertising their extreme couponing workshop on their church sign…

Aug 12
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Lord’s Prayer (Part 2)

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The previous post can be found here.

Continuing with some meditations on “The Model Prayer” (or “The Lord’s Prayer”, as most of us in my generation know it).

 

“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who art in heaven…” Matthew 6:9

 

“Our Father who art in heaven…”  That’s not just a form of address.  It’s a promise.  In what way?  Well, walk with me for the next few minutes and let’s see if I can explain this.

 

Heaven.  When you read or hear that word, what comes to mind?  Most people associate that word at least with pleasant thoughts, with the end of pain and suffering, with eternity, with a time of joy and freedom.  We as believers, as disciples of Christ, immediately jump from heaven to God.  Why?  Because we believe that heaven is the abode—the dwelling place—of God.  There are many verses in the Bible that tell us that heaven is the royal seat of God, that His throne is established there.  Here’s one as a case in point:

 

Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.  Revelation 4:2

 

So God rules and reigns in heaven.  We’ve all accepted that, if we’re believers.  We all believe that God is in heaven.  We’ll come back to that thought.

 

But what do we really know about heaven?  Do we know what it’s made of?  Does it have a physical existence that can be found, located, described?  Mmm, well, maybe not so much.  Scripture indicates that angels and a few men go “up” to heaven, and “down” to earth.  That would make us think of heaven being somewhere “out there” (waving our arms to the sky).

 

Now I’m not going to try and rationalize heaven with the natural science of the world.  But back in the days when dirt was new and I was in high school, I had a science teacher who taught me that our universe has four dimensions:  length, breadth, height/depth, and time.  These are what we can perceive with our bodies, right?  (Yes, I know there are some physicists who are postulating other dimensions, but let’s stick with what we can experience.)  Okay.  Now, mankind has pretty much been all over the earth.  We’ve at least peeked into all its nooks and crannies, even if we haven’t walked there.  The mountaintops have all been viewed.  Any sign of heaven?  Any sign of God’s throne on earth?  Not that I’ve heard about.

 

Man has learned to fly through the air.  Any sign of heaven lurking in the clouds?  Not that anyone’s reported.

 

Man has learned to send sophisticated scientific measurement devices out beyond the atmosphere.  Any sign of heaven on the moon, or Mars, or any of the other planets of the solar system?  Any sign of heaven glimpsed by the Hubble telescope?  Nope.

 

Does that mean that heaven doesn’t have a physical existence?  No.  But it does mean that if heaven is bound into the physical universe of length and breadth and height and time, it’s either a lot farther away than we can see, or it’s in a form that we can’t recognize as being heaven.

 

But . . .

 

There is one verse in scripture that makes me believe that a search for a physical heaven is wasted, that heaven is not a physical place or structure.

 

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  2 Peter 3:8

 

Time is an inextricable part of the physical universe.  And from the creation of the universe until today, time has always marched in one direction.  And despite the theories of the natural scientists, no one has ever been able to substantially affect the flow of time.  A second is a second pretty much everywhere on earth.

 

The temptation is to treat Peter’s words as poetic imagery, as hyperbole to create a feeling or effect.  The problem with that is this verse is out of the middle of a sobering passage describing to believers many of the effects and consequences of the last days.  But to me this passage is also saying that God is not bound up in time.  Therefore, God is greater than the limitations of our physical universe.  God is within our universe, yes, but He is also without it.

 

And if God is not contained within the strictures of time and length and width and height, then it makes sense that heaven is also not contained within them.

 

So how does heaven exist?  Well, I think we get a clue in the following verses:

 

For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created by Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.  Colossians 1:13-17

 

 

In Christ all things hold together.  Another way of saying that is that the mind of God holds all things together.  And if that is true of the physical universe, then it is undoubtedly true of heaven.  Heaven exists because God wills it to exist.  And if it exists in some manner not bound into our physical universe, it does so because that’s how God wills it to exist.

 

All of the descriptions of heaven found in scripture are given to us by way of visions, no two of which seem to be exactly alike.  Is that a problem?  No, not really; because in each case the visions were being given to diverse individuals for diverse reasons.  God was allowing them to see what they needed to see to convey God’s particular message for thatparticular time.  They could not and did not see all of heaven.  See the following verses where Paul describes what all authorities believe was one of his own experiences:

 

Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.  I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago —  whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows —  such a man was caught up to the third heaven.  And I know how such a man — whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows — was caught up into Paradise, and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.  2 Corinthians 12:1-4

 

“Inexpressible words.”  Things that Paul heard could not be expressed in Greek—I dare say could not be expressed in any human tongue.  Likewise, trying to describe the wonders of heaven with any human language must be impossible.  What we read in scripture is only the poorest description of the beauties of the place created by God for Himself.

 

And now let’s circle back to the beginning, where I said that the phrase “Our Father who art in heaven” was a promise.  Turn now to John 14:1-3.

 

“Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”  John 14:1-3

 

We have the promise of Christ–the promise of God Himself—that we will one day stand in that indescribable inexpressible place outside of our physical universe, that place which God formed for Himself; the throne room of God.  And because of that, when we pray “Our Father who art in heaven” we should feel great joy at the reminder of that promise.

 

Prayer should always begin with joy.

 

Peace and grace to you.

 

David

Aug 12
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Modern Day Knight

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A book recommendation for Men

I just finished reading one of the best books for dad’s with sons, its call ‘Raising a Modern Day Knight’ by Robert Lewis. This has an outlined plan for dad’s to encourage, instruct and give their sons wings to soar into becoming a man of God. There is even an iPhone app you can download with monthly reminders. Even if your dad didn’t model this for you, you can break the cycle and learn to give this precious gift to your sons. On a scale from 1 to 10, I give it a 10 plus!

Jimmy Jackson

Family pastor at Heritage and father of three daughters who desires for their husbands to be a men of God!

Jul 19
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The Lord’s Prayer

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This is part 1 of a study on the Lord’s Prayer by one of our members, David Carrico. We are printing this to help spur one another on towards godliness and to stoke the fire of our affections towards this great God we have. It is also a great example of different parts of the body using their gifts to build up the whole. We hope you will read it and be blessed.

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As believers, as followers of Jesus Christ, as those called Christians after Him, we are supposed to be a people of the Book (the Bible, in other words), and a people of prayer. That means we should seek God in His revealed word, and we should seek Him in prayer. I am convinced that none of us do enough of either one, but for the next few blogs I’m going to focus just on prayer.

There are many scriptures, of course, that refer to prayer, and that point us to the need for prayer on a constant basis in our daily lives. Just picking one almost at random, listen to the apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:18:

“With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints…”

Pray at all times. Pray constantly. But pray with a focus.

It’s not for nothing that Jesus’ disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray…” (Luke 11:1a)

So a review of Jesus’ first teaching on prayer is always in order. I’m old enough to remember when everyone called it ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, although today it is usually referred to as ‘The Model Prayer’. Turn to Matthew 6:9.

Jesus begins with:

“Pray, then, in this way: Our Father…”

Let’s consider just that bit today.

Our Father…

Christians refer to God as Father all the time. It’s almost endemic in us. It’s part of our culture, and even for us Baptists it’s become a part of ritual. (And yes, even Baptists can have rituals. We just don’t call them that.) I knew a guy at a church I once attended who didn’t seem to be able to pray without saying “Father” at least three times in every sentence.

Why do we do that? Because Jesus taught us to do so, in passages like this one. And when you stop and think about it, it is a very awe-inspiring thing to be given the right and the privilege and permission to call the God of the universe “Father.”

Or at least, it should be. The problem is that when we human beings do things over and over again, we all too often slip from a reasoned understanding of what and why we’re doing them to a rote routine mentality. In other words, we do it because we’ve always done it. We do it out of reflex. We do it because it’s programmed into us at some point and it doesn’t require any thought. We become flippant and matter-of-fact. We approach God casually. And in doing so, we are disrespectful to God.

We need to be more aware of the majesty and awe of God. The Jews certainly were; so much so that God is only called “Father” once in the Pentateuch (books of Moses), and only seven times total in all of the Old Testament. (Deut 32:6; Psalms 89:26; Isaiah 9:6, 63:16, 64:8; Jeremiah 3:4, 19) In contrast, Jesus calls God “Father” 17 times just in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7.

“But,” you say, “isn’t the word translated as ‘Father’ in this verse the word ‘abba’, and doesn’t that mean ‘poppa’ or ‘daddy’ or ‘dad’?”

Yes, that’s true. “Abba” is Aramaic for the informal form of endearment that is most equivalent to “poppa” or “daddy.” (The Hebrew form is “avi”, for you trivia buffs.) But a familiar form of a word is not equal to a casual or flippant treatment. And certainly there is nothing in the Law that God gave Moses almost 4000 years ago that indicates God considers casual/flippant to be a good thing. On the contrary, look at the following verse:

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” Exodus 20:12

You recognize that as one of the Ten Commandments, I’m sure. So God considers all fathers worthy of honor, so much so that there’s an implied curse there on those who don’t honor them. How much more so is God the Father worthy of honor? And this verse:

‘Every one of you shall reverence his mother and his father, and you shall keep My sabbaths; I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:3

So God the Father considers all fathers worthy of reverence. Then in the next breath, He commands that His sabbaths be kept. Do you think that is a coincidental connection of the statements? I don’t think so. This verse can be read to say that reverencing fathers is of as great an importance to God as the worship of Himself. And finally this verse:

‘If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him.’ Leviticus 20:9

If these are the things that God commanded in the law He gave to Moses about earthly fathers and how they are to be treated, about how they should be revered and honored and respected, how much more do you think He feels is due Himself?

I don’t think it’s a very good thing to be disrespectful to God. We need to rethink our attitudes about how we approach God. After all, we’re talking about the God whose mind contained the basic design of the universe and the plan of all history before the universe was created. We’re talking about the God who had a plan of salvation for fallen man already in place before the events of Genesis 1:1. We’re talking about the God who sacrificed His own Son to accomplish that plan of salvation.

Don’t you think that that God, Who is and did all those things, is one who should be approached with awe and respect?

The miracle about prayer, to me, is two-fold:

1. First, that we are allowed to approach God at all in any way, shape, or form. By rights, God in His holiness should not allow it. That we can is an expression of God’s mercy.

2. Second, that we as believers are allowed to address God as “Father”. That God gives us that privilege is an expression of His grace.

Calling God “Father” is a gift, a grace, a privilege; and it is something that we do not deserve and should never take lightly. When you talk to God in prayer, always keep that in mind. He is awesome. He is worthy of awe and reverence and honor, and we should always approach him that way, even when we begin with “Our Father….”

Peace and grace to you.

David

May 10
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The Body of Christ

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The Body of Christ is a vivid image of what our lives should look like as we daily interact with other Christ-followers and unbelievers as well; but its more than an image, it is what we are a part of. We must fight against the tendency of ‘doing Church’ a few hours on Sunday morning to ‘being the Church’ which is the Body of Christ functioning 24/7. Can you imagine if your body only functioned a few hours one day a week – the unmet needs of the body, the malnutrition leading to infections leading to disease, and the list could go on?

We must Understand, Thank and Obey God for His wise placement of each of the members of His Body.

‘But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.’ 1 Corinthians 12:18

This verse should be branded on our heart for the times of weariness, feelings of being forgotten, overlooked, taken advantage of or inferiority to the placement and gifting of others in the Body – God wisely chose your part in His Body and only you can fulfill its function.

Over the next few weeks Jimmy Jackson will be preaching through Hebrews 10:23-24 at Heritage.

 

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