Continuing In Prayer

Those who have grown up in Christian homes and in the church have heard "Christian speak" all of their lives. It is like being out in the cold weather, eventually you get use to it. The purpose of today's blog is to look at one such phrase that we have all heard. We have all heard at one time or another the expression to "walk with God," or another way you may have heard it expressed is walking in "fellowship with God."

Now, to let you know, I love theology, and with theology comes words, concepts, and ideas. However, theology with its concepts and ideas must be brought down from the abstract into reality in order for it to be effective and explosive in our daily lives. If theology remains in the abstract, it becomes neutered for us and diffused of its power and explosiveness.

This concept of walking with God sounds so wonderful, so grand; to think that sinful man, that you and I can walk with the creator of the universe. We have sung about it; we have read about it; matter of fact, we see it in the first book of the Bible. We have recorded for us that Adam and Eve had contact with God on a level known only by a few other humans. Then further on in Genesis we see that Enoch enjoyed a close relationship with God...it is recorded that Enoch walked with God.

Throughout the entire Old Testament, we see that there were those who enjoyed the privilege of walking with God. When we come into the New Testament, we are struck with language that implies and suggests that we are to be walking with God. Jesus whispers this concept to His followers as he tells them, "abide in me, and [let] my words abide in you" (John 15:7).

The Apostle Paul echoes the same thought when he tells the Church at Galatia to "walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16). The whole epistle of 1John is peppered with the language of walking in the light, and walking in truth...which are all metaphors for walking with the one who is light and truth.

Here is the conundrum for us all...how do we keep this expression from becoming just another catchphrase? Just another bumper sticker slogan that we paste on our cars? How do we get this concept out of the abstract and make it our reality?

As I was thinking hard on this and reflecting on my nearly four decades of being a Christian, one thought came to mind...now mind you, this is just one principle out of many principles that the Scriptures give to instruct us on how to walk with God. This one grand principle is given to us in Colossians 4:2 where Paul tells us "Continue in prayer," and again in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where we are exhorted to "Pray without ceasing." Continual prayer seems to be the one link in the chain that needs to be healthy in order for the believer to have a strong and vigorous walk with God.

The idea of continual prayer should be looked at from the perspective of an attitude more so than how often we pray. If the believer maintains a prayerful attitude, he is guarding his conscience from those things that would disrupt a strong healthy conscience before God. No believer can have a healthy walk with God while carrying around a weak and offended conscience.

The believer who walks with God is a sober and vigilant person. He is on guard from any influence that would disrupt his communion with his God. This prayerful attitude keeps his emotions in check...there is much self-inventory going on: do I have a bitter spirit? a jealous spirit? a greedy spirit? a lustful spirit? etc.

This attitude of prayer reminds the believer daily, no, not just daily, but hourly, or even better  yet continuously, that he is to be dying to self, dying to his sinful passions and desires.

So I leave you with this last thought: "For every look at self—take ten looks at Christ! Live near to Jesus—and all things will appear little to you in comparison with eternal realities Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843).

Is Christianity all about being relational?

Is Christianity all about being relational? Yes, to a large degree it is, and no, to a large degree it is not. The problem arises when the Bible is cherry picked to make a certain narrative work. For the liberal/postmodern thinker cherry picking the Bible is what they do best.

The postmodern thinker has a narrative about who Jesus is and what Christianity is suppose to look like. They tell us that Christianity is all about love and helping others just like Jesus did, so goes the chirp. They provide for us examples of Jesus feeding people, healing others, and just being a real nice guy. Where they err and fail, is that they throw out any narrative that does not fit their rosy self-painted picture of Christ.

Now we know at the heart of the gospel is reconciliation which at its core is relationship. The sinner who was estranged from God has been brought into a right relationship to God by the atonement of Christ. Man is in a very serious situation, you see, he is estranged form God by his sin, and his sin must be removed before he can enjoy any relationship with God.

So yes, Christianity is about relationship. Now here is the fly in the ointment for the liberal/postmodern, they will agree about the relationship part of Christianity, but will exclaim hogwash to the sin part. They are not so readily disposed to talk of sin, for them sin is a divisive word; it separates people, and marginalizes those who might be offended by being labeled a sinner. For the postmodern thinker sin is an outdated term and should be regulated to bygone days.

The liberal/postmodern has a different brand of Christianity...for them they have an offend none at all costs religion, for them, tolerance and being relational are the supreme virtues of the Christian life. Tolerance in their theology has morphed into a pervasive insistence that no one should hold firm convictions. In the end, this high value placed on being relational has distorted and perverted the whole message of the entire Bible.

The whole of their theology of tolerance is filled with structural flaws and is in direct opposition to traditional Christianity.  Neither Orthodox Christianity nor the Bible ever talks about relationship with God apart from first being reconciled to Him through atonement. Whenever we separate what the Bible has joined together we become guilty of cherry picking and we distort the true picture that the Bible paints of Christ.






The same Savior who told us to love our neighbor also said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). The same Savior who showed kindness to the poor and marginalized also spoke to them in parables lest they should hear and understand and be converted, see Matthew 13:11,  "He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

Here is the full text:

Matthew 13:10. And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"

11 He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

12 "For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

13 "Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

14 "And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive;

15 for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.'

16 "But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear;

17 "for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

Revelation 1:7 gives us a description of the second coming of Christ when John records these words for us, "Behold He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. Did you get that? All of the earth will wail when Christ comes with power and glory...not the humble Shepherd as painted in the gospels, but the Lion of the tribe of Judea.

Let us heed the exhortation in the book of Romans 12:2 where Paul tells his readers to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Let us submit our minds, wills, and emotions to the authoritative word of God. Let God's word sit in judgment upon all of your narratives, and let His narrative become your story to tell.

Some errors never die.

I am telling you today that something’s never die. Something’s just hang around and continue to morph and take other forms, but the core, their center is still the same. One of those things is theological error. Irenaeus of Lyons sums up error very succinctly with this definition---- “Error, indeed is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced more true than truth itself.”

One such error that has been able to wear a myriad of dresses is that old evil theological error of Marcionism. You are thinking what? Never heard of such a thing...well, that is most likely because it is so old and took place in the middle of the second century.

Back in the early church there was this bishop named Marcion who was extremely influential in that he succeeded in establishing churches of his own to rival the Catholic Church for the next two centuries. He was labeled a heretic and was excommunicated from the Roman church around 144 AD.

What was so dangerous about this man? Well, Marcion concluded that many of the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of the God of the Old Testament.  Marcion responded by developing a dualist system of belief around the year 144 AD. This dual-god notion allowed Marcion to reconcile supposed contradictions between Old Covenant theology and the Gospel message proclaimed by Jesus.

The main premise of Marcion's teachings were that the God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Testament can not be reconciled. So Marcion set out to edit his own versions of the biblical books. Marcion's edited version of the Scriptures were known by The Gospel of the Lord.

Marcion did not like the picture of how the Old Testament presented God. The God of the Old Testament was wrathful and angry, and Marcion could not reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the Jesus of the New Testament, so he simply dismissed the God of the Old Testament as a Demiurge.

It seems that in some ways Marcion lives on today...maybe in another dress, but error nonetheless. How does his teaching live on today? Our modern liberal religious climate gives his error great soil to grow and take root.

The notion that God is only love, the notion that Jesus only came to show love, the notion that the primary mission and message of Jesus was to feed the poor and physically heal those who needed medical help. The notion of God punishing sin, judging sin, being angry at sin and the sinner is dismissed as some ancient tribal myth.

The next step that our modern liberal religious elite take is to edit the parts of the New Testament that does not fit in with their narrative of what God is supposed to look like. In the end we have idols that have been concocted in the depraved minds of those who reject the revelation of God throughout the whole sixty-six books of the Canon.

The liberal religious thinking of today has created a God that does not reconcile with the God that is presented in the whole of the Canon of Scripture. Their God is only love, sin never will be punished, in fact the notion of sin is dismissed as some old fashioned guilt tool used to manipulate the masses.

Let us heed the words of our old friend, Pastor J.C. Ryle:

Let us read our Bibles in private more, and with more pains and diligence. Ignorance of Scripture is the root of all error, and makes a person helpless in the hand of the devil. There is less private Bible reading, I suspect, than there was fifty years ago. I never can believe that so many men and women would have been “tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine,” some falling into skepticism, some rushing into the wildest and narrowest fanaticism, and some going over to Rome, if there had not grown up a habit of lazy, superficial, careless, perfunctory reading of God’s Word. “You do err not knowing the Scriptures” (Matt. 22:29). The Bible in the pulpit must never supersede the Bible at home

Truth Divides

Truth has a way of drawing a line in the sand; a unique way of calling the class to separate sides of the room. Truth can divide the best of friends, separate churches, split bible colleges and seminaries, and in the end it calls each man to take a stand.

So what is this thing called truth? Here is a simple definition given by John MacArthur in his book Truth Wars, "truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God." Do you see a thread here? A common link as to what truth is? Truth is the self-expression of God. The Old Testament shows us that God is the God of truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 31:5; Isaiah 65:16).

Jesus claimed to be the truth along with claiming to be the way and the life (John 14:6). In Jesus claiming to be the truth, He was making the claim of deity for himself. This was the reason that on more than one occasion the religious elite tried to kill him (John 8:58-59; 10:30-33).

We have a choice to make when the truth is presented to us...do we submit to God's standards of truth or do we deny God's truth and create our own truth? When the human soul denies God's absolute truth he/she is by default turning to the prince of lies, to the one who in the beginning turned God's creation against Him.

Satan is presented to us in Scripture as the antithesis of truth. He is called the prince of the power of the air... Ephesians 2:2. The Living Bible puts it like this: "You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil--the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God."

The reality of life is that there is a spiritual battle raging. The forces of darkness do not want man to ponder the reality of absolute truth...MacArthur notes in Truth Wars, " The moment you begin to ponder the essence of truth, you are brought face-to-face with the requirement of a universal absolute---the eternal reality of God."

We are living in a culture and time that says that truth can not be known, and if it can be known, it can't ever be known perfectly. The postmodern thinker disdains absolute truth. Absolute truth to the unconverted postmodern mind is anathema. The postmodern lives in the gray areas of life, they have blurred the line between certainty and uncertainty. They presume that truth resides in all of us. But the follower of Christ knows that truth is found outside of himself, and that is in the sacred Scriptures.

But for the orthodox Bible believing Christian we reject the notion that truth resides within us. We reject the notion that if we just dig deep enough we can find truth inside of us.

The true regenerated believer has been given the Spirit of truth as 1 John 2:19-21 tells us:

"But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth."

Fit Bodies, Fat Minds!

         

      

I'm just taken with the idea of the "thinking process," or the "life of the mind." My last post dealt with the importance of being critical thinkers and developing the ability to think deeper so that we become the owners of the truth or concepts that we are trying to understand. It bothers me to see so many in the Christian community just parroting their pastor or their favorite Christian author. It truly is the bane of the Church...we have become in many respects mere lemmings.

I love the title of Os Guinness's book, "FIT BODIES FAT MINDS." Guinness puts forth the argument that one of the leading problems in American evangelicalism is...anti-intellectualism. "Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind," says Guinness. He continues this thought, “Living in a sensuous culture and an increasingly emotional democracy, American evangelicals in the last generation have simultaneously toned up their bodies and dumbed down their minds."

We live in a Joel Osteen culture... where feeling good, and having your best life now has become the Christian manifesto. Osteen's positive thinking messages appeal to many who love to feel emotionally satiated. Our culture prizes feeling good, experiencing emotional peace, and where the idea of feeling secure far out weighs the concept of  seeking absolute truth. Positive thinking has become prized above reflection and hard critical thinking about the eternal truths of God's word.

The Christian community has suffered tremendously from this lack of thinking and love of feeling good. Guinness tells us:

" Evangelical anti-intellectualism bears on many of the problems of evangelicalism...superficial or bad theology, the lack of serious apology for the faith, the lack of constructive public philosophy, and the continued defections of thinking evangelicals in the direction of Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy."

Let me provide a snap shot of the love of the mind from the origins of Harvard Divinity School. The study of theology at Harvard can be traced back to the very beginning of Harvard College, when an initial fund of 400 pounds from the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony established the College in 1636. The founders of Harvard recorded their reasons for establishing this center of learning:


"After God had carried us safe to New England and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government: One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust."

When the believer develops a Christian worldview...which takes time, hard work, and much reading... then he can go out and apologize for the "faith that was once delivered unto the saints." The body of Christ must be able to speak to all aspects of life: education, science, government, and all things that make up society.

Where do I start, always with an open Bible?

The Life of the Mind

To think or not to think, that is the question! Research shows that the amount of time that someone spends making a choice affects what kind of information they use to make that choice. What implications does this have for the Christian life? How much time do we spend making our decisions? Where do you go to get your information when you are making life's decisions?

A driving goal for educators is to cultivate a natural level of inquiry. So for the child of God, do we have the desire to go to the source book for our information? The process of gathering information is one step in the process, but the next step is the process of thinking.

I'd like to look at the process of thinking assuming that you already went to God's inspired and inerrant word to get your information. Let me also add that  there are many other sources of spiritual advice that the believer can make available to himself: commentaries, topical books, Christian seminars, advice from other Christians etc.

It is not enough just to read our Bibles. We must think and think hard. We must ask penetrating questions and allow the Bible to answer those questions for us. The cultivation of the mind is hard work. The Apostle Paul urges Timothy to "think carefully, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything" (2 Tim. 2:7).

I didn't do a count on how many times the bible uses the words thinking or mind, but from a quick glance it seems that there are many  passages that deal with our minds and how we think. One of the most well known texts of Scripures is Philippians 4:8... Paul urges his listeners to "think about certain things..." this is how the Christian mind is cultivated...through hard and intentional thinking.

Paul then urges his readers in Romans 12:2  to be transformed by the "renewing of their minds;" and the results would be that they could  then discern what is the will of God, and what is good and acceptable and perfect. This process of thinking and having our thinking influenced by the wisdom and mind of God is the most richest treasure that we have as believers...John Piper tells us that "thinking is indispensable on the path to passion for God."

So believers, we are to love God with all our minds. We must be intentional in allowing God's truths to go deep inside of us and make us alive. We are to be "set on fire" by the pure truth of God's word.

My concern is that for too long the church has been ambivalent about the life of the mind. I personally lament the lack of thinkers in our evangelical culture. We need deep thinkers. We need Christians who can articulate a Christian worldview with passion and integrity.


Application: Start a plan where you do more than just read and parrot information. Write out thoughts. Write out your understanding of a text or biblical idea as if you had to convince a class of non-believers. Keep a journal of important truths that hit home or where God was speaking to you through a particular text. Cultivate your mind for the Glory of the King.

The Sleeping Church.

The Sleeping Church.

As I observe what is happening around us socially and politically, I see a culture that has abandoned God and has drifted into the high seas of moral relativism. My take on our culture is that we have lost our moorings, and our moral foundation has crumbled. It is a scary thing to be adrift without a sail. We as a society are drifting along the dark seas without a sail or compass.

How did we get here? And what are the consequences? As I read the first chapter of the book of Romans, three times the Apostle Paul uses the term "God gave them up." For any society or kingdom the road to destruction is always the same; ruin comes slowly and gradually. When society moves away from the rule of law, when society moves away from God as the sovereign King, that society starts a downward spiral and drift into the black hole of corruption.

From a theological perspective when God gives an individual or society over to their own ways it is an indictment of God's ultimate wrath...it is the surest sign that God has turned His back and removed His restraining grace which allows for evil and depravity to run rampant.

How did we get to where we are at? That question can't be answered with one answer, but I’ll provide at least one answer that I believe is undeniable. The Church of Jesus Christ went to sleep, and as she was sleeping the Prince of the power of the air was busy doing his work.




While the Church was asleep, the ungodly, the secularist, the depraved mind of man was busy implementing his poisonous world view that has permeated all of our society. Whenever the Church of Jesus Christ pulls out of society and ceases to be light and salt there is left a moral vacuum which will always be filled with secular,  humanistic, and Godless thought.

It would be an interesting study to look at all of the reasons why the Church withdrew and became non-reactive to societal issues and ideologies. It would be an interesting study to look at how and why the church became in some respects relativistic and accommodating to the culture...to the point that there was not much difference between the church and the secular culture.

But I think that we can all agree to some extant that the church did withdraw from society in the early part of the twentieth-century, and the results have been devastating.

Whenever the Church starts to be  a voice again, and  starts to proclaim absolute truth again, she can then expect to be derided and told to go back inside the walls of her buildings...the culture says, "you can be a church just keep your religious stuff private...don't bring it out in the public square.

The answer must be that the  church wakes out of her slumber. The church must start to become what she was called to be: light, salt, ambassadors for Christ, healers, ministers of grace, and boldly proclaim the gospel to a dark and sinful culture.

Wherefore `he' saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee Ephesians 5:14.