Deeper Waters

In the Garden of Eden, the first seed of doubt is planted by Satan in saying “Has God not said?” The lie worked incredibly well back then. It’s worked so well that I believe it’s the main lie used today. Imagine how different our lives would be if we really believed the great truths of Scripture. If we knew God said them and that we could believe him, our lives would be radically altered.

I was pondering this today as I wrestled with some past sins. There are things in my past I’m ashamed of. As I say such, I realize that it is 99.9% likely that I am not alone and the same percentage could apply to you having the same problem. I find it amazing that the hardest person to forgive often is ourselves. I used to think it might be that we were taking our sin too seriously, and maybe in some way we are, but now I suggest that it is us taking ourselves too seriously.

I can look at someone who has the exact same sins as I do and say “Oh God can forgive you! Your slate will be wiped clean!” However, I turn and look at myself and say “Oh no. Your sins are too horrendous to be forgiven.” How do I know I question their forgiveness? Because I still dwell on them and repent of them over and over.

Why can’t we let it go? Why do I say we? Because again, I suspect you’re in the same boat. I just don’t think we realize how awesome this grace is. What would God have us to do? Change the past? We can’t do that.  What could we do to possibly earn his forgiveness in any way? All he tells us to do is to ask to be forgiven and we are forgiven. It’s that simple.

I think that’s a large part of the difficulty. We find it hard to believe that it could be that simple. We live with the mindset of “There’s gotta be a catch.” We will watch and say “Did I really repent of that?” Did we say the “sinner’s prayer” right? Were we baptized in the right way? Depending on how you view salvation, these questions can come to mind.

What would it mean if we really believed we were forgiven? It would mean we were trusting God, but as I said yesterday, trusting God goes against our very nature. We are so fallen that we run from him every chance we get. We are more prone to believe the father of lies than the God of all truth.

God has said it. God has done it. We need to accept that. We need to move past our past and live in the present. There can be nothing that we can do to change the past. Now there might be times we need to go to other people and make up for some wrongs for them, but not to earn our forgiveness. We do so merely because it’s the right thing to do.

I wonder how awesome it would be for many of us if we had Christ appear to us today and say to us “I love you and you are forgiven.” Most of us would be on cloud nine for the rest of our lives after hearing that. The truth is though that he has said that! It’s no less him saying it because it’s contained in Scripture. Perchance we need to get into this book more and read about the awesome promises God has made to us.

Maybe then we can learn more to trust him. The more we see who he really is and not the way we think he is, the more we can see the good news. We are loved and we are forgiven. Welcome home Prodigal.

Where I work, we sell movies. One of the movies coming out tomorrow is the Pursuit of Happyness. I’ve never seen this one so I have no comment to make on this movie. However, I do wish to comment on another thought of mine. We in America live in a land where we are granted the right to the pursuit of happiness. However, I think deep down, we all have a fear of happiness.

What? We’re afraid to be happy? Why would we ever be afraid of such a thing? I think we are because we live in a very individualistic society. In our world, it’s every man for himself and we each live with our own independent worlds. Our worlds are built with such order and hopes and dreams that unfortunately, the castles we build in the sky can easily come crashing down.

I have this belief that when man fell, man not only fell from God. Man also fell away from his environment, he fell away from his fellow man, and he even fell away from himself. Man has been left to wander and he doesn’t really know who he is because his identity is to be rooted in God and he is estranged from him.

Man’s first sin was wanting to be God. We’ve never given up on that dream. Whenever we sin, we are ultimately saying that we want to be God. God is omniscient, but we will choose our way for life. He will not be the Lord of our lives. We will be the Lord of our lives.

What does this have to do with happiness? In order for us to be truly happy, we have to return to that place. We have to be living a life of full trust in God. That thought terrifies us though in many ways. We aren’t sure if God will keep his promises. We ask ourselves several “what if” questions. It is easier to worry than to rest in God.

Consider it though. If we did trust God, would we not be happy? Would we not realize that he does have our best interests at heart despite suffering? Would we not consider the joy of eternity? Would we not live each day in wonder and awe of what he is doing in the world and who he is especially?

Indeed, we would. However, to do that, we must give up our claims to deity, and that is something that we are very opt to not want to do.  We want to control our world, because we think it is safest when we do that. You’d think the years we’ve spent learning that it isn’t would teach us, but it doesn’t.

<> Today, I urge surrender. Get off the throne and see that God is the one on it. Let him be God and let you be you. Then, be happy.

I went to another church this morning since one of my former professors from Bible College was preaching. I thought he did a great job and the compliments I got from him and some other former studentes were highly encouraging to me. After the sermon, I heard him talking about how when something happens to a pastor’s wife, everyone gathers around the pastor and it’s great for the church because they get to shepherd the shepherd. He then said that it’s a shame that there’s not an easier way for that to happen.

I told him there was. The congregation needs to just do it. This got us to talking about this kind of situation. He told me that Tony Campolo once said something along the lines of “If you knew what I was thinking and what was going on in my mind this week, you wouldn’t come to hear me preach, and if I knew what was going on in your minds, I wouldn’t be preaching to you.”

I’m not a real fan of Tony Campolo, but when he’s right, he’s right. Friends. Your pastor has his own struggles as well. Unfortuantely, it’s too often that pastors and leaders are put on pedestals that they don’t belong on. It needs to be realized that going to Bible College or Seminary or being ordained does not immunize you from life’s difficulties.

When I was at the church today and heard some of the compliments, that was exactly what I needed. Those of us in ministry spend a lot of time giving of ourselves. You can’t give all the time and not receive back. We need that encouragement. It could be simple. It could just be stopping to ask them how they’re doing. It could be sending them a card thanking them for a good sermon.

Your pastor has struggles too. He’ll need you to be there for him at times. Please don’t put your pastor in a position he does not belong in. He can do a lot for you, but he is only human as well. Your pastor will bleed if you cut him and he has situations in his life that try his soul as well.

<> Yet imagine what a blessing you can be to your pastor if you just call him up simply to ask how he’s doing. How much he’d like it if you called him up and simply asked if he’d like to go out to dinner. Your pastor enjoys having fun just like everyone else does and needs a break from his study every now and then.

Today, keep this in mind. Encourage one another. It applies to your pastor as well.

I am one of those C-type personalities. That means that I spend a lot of my time analyzing things to death. Unfortunately, one of those things that I tend to analyze to death and the analysis that I do is hardly constructive. I am also the one who is my own worst critic, which is another aspect of the C-type personality.

I was pondering today that I could spend more time thinking about more important things if I wasn’t so much thinking about myself. Now we have to think about ourselves to some extent. I have to pay my bills and buy my groceries and things of that sort, and I don’t see any wrong in looking for pleasure and looking for a wife as well. However, we can put ourselves first and Christ second too often. In fact, I would say every sin does just that. (Have we ever sinned to please Christ? It’s nonsense to even think of such a thing.)

Thus, while walking around tonight, I saw a beautiful lady on a music video at work and thought of that with the nature of beauty. Have you ever been in love? I have been in love once and lost it and it indeed was and is one of the most painful events of my life. However, that love is always focused on that which we find to be beautiful in some aspect.

I find this incredible about beauty. Beauty is always something that makes us lose ourselves. The most lucid man in speaking when confronted by a beautiful lady can find himself tripping over his sentences. Those who like to speak the most can be just awed in silence at the sight of an eclipse. Beauty is an enchantment that casts a powerful spell on us.

When you are truly in love though, you do lose yourself. You are so in awe of the other that you are willing to surrender your own personal problems in order to focus on the situation of the other. Could it be that this is why love transforms us so much? It doesn’t change the problem usually. It changes our perspective. Our problems are a trifle and we are focused on what matters to the other.

I think this is the same also with worship. I don’t believe worship changes our problems. I believe it changes us and our perspective. When we see God as he is, we can only worship him and we are in awe of his greatness and love then. We are also in awe of his intense beauty and we have the most powerful spell cast on us of all.

You know, this could lead to a great suggestion. Maybe we ought to worship God more? Maybe we ought to live our lives in such a way that we focus more on him. He must increase and we must decrease. We were created to worship him and when we do so, we are living the way that we ought.

To do so though, we must love God. To love God, we must know him. I believe this is where doctrine comes in. We need to know why the great doctrines about God matter. Can we know God entirely? No. We can love what we do know about him entirely. If you are married, you don’t know your significant other entirely, but you do love them. I don’t know any of my friends entirely and they don’t know me, but we share a mutual phileo love with each other.

Augustine once said “Love God and live as you please.” I think that’s a good point to close on. People often worry that the second part will get out of hand, but if the first is in the right, the latter will follow. Keep it simple. Love God.

I went to the bank today to cash my paycheck. The teller was a floater working at the bank. I had never seen her before, but she was cute and sweet (And had a ring on already unfortunately) and was glad to deposit my check. As I left, I was stunned when for the first time, she called me Mr. X (Last name concealed for obvious reasons). No one at the bank had ever called me by my last name with a Mr. before.

I’d never given my name, so she could have only seen it when getting my information off of my checks when I showed her my checkbook. Does it bother me? No. In fact, I was quite pleased. This employee took the time to see me as a name and in the end, thank me using my name as a respected person.

Isn’t there something nice about somebody really knowing your name? The theme song to the TV show Cheers, was that it was about going to a place where everybody knows your name. How many are pleased when they find this person they have a crush on does know their name? Isn’t it better to get mail from a friend with your name other than something generic like “occupant.”?

This makes me think of the Scriptures. In Isaiah 49:16, God says of his people that he has inscribed them on their hands. In Rev. 2:17, we are told that we will be given white stones with a new name on them and it looks like this new name will be something secret between the holder and God himself.

<> My favorite though is in Galatians 4:9. Paul talks about how we should live now that we know God, but then he adds, “Or rather, are known by God.” That’s a turnaround that I really like. It’s great to know God, but I find it incredibly more awesome that God knows me.

Socrates once said the great goal of man is to know thyself. Calvin added in to know God. Unfortunately, we can’t really know either. Our own selves are often quite a mystery to us, but God knows us better than we know ourselves. In fact, he has an intense fascination and wonder with us.

It was once said that a good friend is someone who knows all there is to know about you but likes you anyway. I find it amazing that the God of all creation knows my sin and how much I screw up against him every day and yet, he still wants to love me. In fact, he wants me to love him. It is an honor to get to love God. We could not love him though unless he had loved us first. We cannot give what we don’t have, and we only have love because he has loved us already.

This is something I try to keep in mind. I am known by God. As one who is my own worst critic, I have to face the fact that I am loved by God as I am. It’s not saying that I am perfect and that there aren’t areas to be worked on. There are. It’s just realizing that I am loved regardless.

Quite lovely isn’t it?

In a past post called “Every Woman”, I wrote about an Elizabeth Withers song. Now I’m sure she’s a fine lady, but I wonder how much thought went into this song. I can understand metaphor, but I don’t like metaphors that can convey a terribly false meaning.

I am thinking again of the line where she tells the man “Tonight I’m gonna be every woman in your fantasy!” Now I doubt it’s much of a secret to women that men are very visual and one glance can be all it takes to get a girl locked into the memory banks forever.

I wonder about that. Why be every woman? I have said earlier that I think that the lady should be a specific woman. This is the point. The true lover does not want his lady to be another woman. He wants his lady to be her. He rejected all others in choosing her. Why should she try to be another one?

This is such a point with love. When you are in love with someone, you want that person to be them. You want to accept them as they are. What you treasure is not what the person does but who they are. Their sheer company alone brings utter delight to you.

Yet as I think about this, someone will ask “Well what about God? Doesn’t he change us?” YES! Of course he does, which actually shows the point. Only God knows who the you that you are really is. Not even you know you as well as God knows you. Frankly, not many of us even know who we are anymore. It could be a relief that there is someone who does.

And what does he do? He doesn’t turn us into who we aren’t. He turns us into who we are. God cuts away from us all that does not belong to us so that he can have us as ourselves. He doesn’t want us plus our works. He wants us. It is not how we perform. It is who we are. Of course, who we are will work out in how we live, but he doesn’t want to love an action. He wants to love a person.

Thus, our true love on Earth is to be the same way. Unfortuantely, too many men and women engage in pre-marital sex where one’s sexual ability is tested to see if it passes. It is the couple in the covenant who can love freely, for they know that they are accepted regardless. They “perform” without fear.

Let us go to the throne today just as sure that we are accepted.

Last night was a hard night for me. I’ve been dealing with an issue of trying to recover from a past loss. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always come as easily as I’d like. Last night was such a night. It was a night that in the depths of my sorrow, I got up and started writing poetry. I haven’t shared what I wrote with anyone, but getting it out helped.

<> It made me think later throughout the day on how we Christians sometimes give a cliche healing. I can think of a few who would say that I should simply pray that the pain goes away. Don’t you think that I do that? Of course I do. However, I don’t think that this was the reason God gave us the gift of prayer.

Prayer is a lifestyle. I have a hard time with that honestly. My mind doesn’t always focus like it should and to really concentrate and pray for something is incredibly difficult. However, my life is always to be one of giving thanks to God. I am always to keep him in mind in all that I do.

My concern then becomes that we make prayer something it’s not. It is as if I or any person suffering from anything would not have this problem if we would only learn to be more spiritual. In fact, I hear a number of counselors say that when they talk to a Christian in a hard time, the Christian usually says something like “And please don’t tell me to pray more or read my Bible more.”

<> Prayer and Bible Study are great things, but they’re not about us. They’re not meant to make our problems go away. They can help in many times, but because we are in distress it does not mean we are less spiritual. I think God gave us many things as outlets to help us. I use poetry. There’s also such things as conversations with great friends.

In fact, to say to such a person that they are not praying enough is exactly what might not be needed. What does that say to a person in doubt that they are not praying enough? What about the one who fears they aren’t good enough for God? Our cures have often been the poison of many a churchgoer.

Will I make it through my valley? Yeah. I will. I will be praying and I will be studying the Scriptures, but I will also be using the other gifts God gave us. I hope you’ll remember that in your valleys as well.

I had someone ask me an interesting question today. He’s a fine young man who’s a strong Christian and he asked me if I always enjoyed reading the Bible. I know I’ll disillusion some here (And maybe you need to be disillusioned) but the answer is no, I don’t always enjoy reading the Bible.

<> I think it’s a good question. The truth is that no, I don’t always enjoy reading the Bible. There are times I do not have any religious passion at all. There are times I’m overflowing with it. In fact, I think if I looked at my life honestly, it’s pretty much that way with everything.

<>There are times a beautiful lady will drive me crazy. There are times I really can’t register interest. Why? It could simply be that I’m a normal person whose interests just fluctuate based on my mood that day, the weather, digestion, psychological status, what have you. I’m not a psychologist. I don’t claim to know.

It seems that we think we are to be somewhat different all the time when it comes to religious topics. I talked about this with someone recently. They were of the mindset that your religion should always produce strong feelings. That’s not really so. Ask anyone in a marriage relationship. There are times you feel intense love and there are times that you don’t. In both cases, you love.

There are times that I pray at night and it seems like things are dead. What do I do then? I pray. There are times I come to the Bible and I know I should read it but I’d rather go straight to bed than read a chapter that I’ve already read several times before. What do I do then? I read.

Why do I say this? Because I want you to know I’m not alone and I think you’re probably like me. I know some people who only enjoy religious matters and frankly, I don’t want to be one of them. I believe God gave us much to enjoy and while it all reflects him, it’s not all explicitly about him.

What to do? Learn to enjoy the Scriptures along with everything else. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life after all.

Tonight at work, I had a friend from Bible College come by. I told him about my plans to go to Seminary with a customer passing between us. This customer later approached me on this as he was a professor at a local Bible College as well.

We started talking about various topics and he mentioned a sermon that someone had delivered recently at his school or church on Heaven. He spoke of the measurements given in Revelation and said that by those measurements, 3.5 billion people could live there and each have 1 cubic mile.

I replied though that I just didn’t see it that way. I saw the figure of the cube as representing that of the Most Holy Place. The Jew would know immediately that John was speaking about how holy this Heaven is.

I then pointed to Romans 8, a favorite passage of mine on this. Romans 8 tells us that all creation awaits redemption. This is an exciting thought to me as it tells me that all things are being made new.

 Do you remember the end of the Chronicles of Narnia? The kids go into the stable and they find in there a new Narnia, except this is a perfect Narnia. This is the real Narnia. They reply that they don’t like this world because it’s like the old world, but they liked the old world because it was like this one.

In my view, the old creation was not perfect. It was never meant to be. It was meant to be the battleground between good and evil, as God knew it would be. God’s plan never went wrong. It’s all working according to schedule. We would be quite arrogant to think we could destroy the plan of God.

We will instead have a new cosmos, and a cosmos better than before. Every single square inch of this cosmos I believe will be filled with the manifest presence of God. How else could it be Heaven? That’s the real joy. God is there. We shall know as we are known. We shall enter into the presence of Christ and we shall be like him.

Is the resurrection good? Of course. Let’s take it all the way though. As in the first of the Chronicles of Narnia also, death began working its way backward at the resurrection. Imagine what glory will exist in the new creation.

I’m looking forward to it. How about you?

I love the church. I just love it too much to leave it the way it is. I don’t think my church I attend is much different in this respect from a lot of other churches and that is what concerns me the most.

I thought about my Sunday School lesson today. We had a lesson on the battle of Jericho and on the sin of Achan. It was alright, but unfortunately, the main point stressed was obedience to the commandments of God.

Don’t get me wrong. We should be obedient to the commandments of God. However, when Joshua was being written, while that was part of the intention, I think the obedience to God was based on a much larger idea.

What did Jericho teach? It taught that God is in control. He was fulfilling his promises to Abraham. He was showing the new generation that he would be with them as they conquered the land. The sin of Achan shows that he is absolutely holy and that is to be treated seriously.

Our churches though seem to skip to application immediately of the text. The Scriptures are described as a revelation. A revelation of what? An ethical system. Ethics are good and the Bible teaches ethics, but you can find great ethics in the Greek philosophers and even in several secular humanist writings.

No. The Bible’s uniqueness is that it is a revelation of God. Thus, when we read the Bible, we should try to find something about God. We should come to see how he is revealing himself and then say “Based on that, how ought I to live my life?”

Yet is it any wonder I grew up seeing Christianity as simply a teaching on being good to your fellow man? I don’t remember hearing anything about what the doctrine of the Trinity was. In fact, I don’t hear Trinity sermons today at all.

How are we to live then? We are given commandments with nothing to base them on. God says not to have pre-marital sex. Why? Hmmm. I don’t know and I’m on this couch here with this girl and she’s really good-looking and I’m sweating bullets and I want this so badly……

If someone is in such a situation, then it could be that a few verses from Paul won’t stop the onslaught of hormones. We sadly know that our emotions can override our logical reasoning at times. Many of us have in some ways given in to lust, anger, pride, etc.

Christianity is more than ethics. Christianity is a belief about the whole of the universe. Maybe this is why we don’t live the Christian life. We’ve made it a set of rules instead of a whole way of seeing the world.

We are about more than fixing people. We are about truth. Yes. The church is to help you with your problems, but they are to be a bastion for truth also and to stand strong against the force of darkness.

I urge the church to fix itself. We need to get back to the teaching of truth and then to application. I do not believe we can hope to change the world if we do not return to the essential and orthodox doctrines of the faith.