Logoscentric

Information at the Expense of Relationships

2006-12-04T13:06:00.009-05:00

During certain phases in a woman’s life, her family may be her only ministry.
—Carolyn Custis James, When Life and Beliefs Collide

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
—2 Corinthians 11:3

November, especially the second half, was a good month. A major reason for this was that I was freed from the burden of my participation in the blogosphere. I have prayed and I have enlisted friends to pray for me as I sought God’s direction for Logoscentric, and He has made it clear to me that my contributions to the blogosphere have come to an end for now.

My natural inclination is towards information rather relationship, and God has made it clear to me that I have enough information. My primary focus must now be on relationships, both with Him and with others, especially my husband and children. Too often, my blogging and reading blogs took my attention away from them. (I am so thankful for the cross!)

Therefore, this will be my last post. Thank you to Lisa N., Michelle, and Kim for your support and encouragement. And to Lisa S.: I am so sorry that I didn’t get to know you sooner! I pray God’s blessings upon all of you as you continue seeking to glorify God in the blogosphere.

To my friends and family members who have read my blog and have prayed for me and encouraged me, I thank you as well. You are quite a longsuffering lot of folks, and I appreciate your putting up with me. I love you.

Worthless Things

2006-10-22T22:08:00.007-04:00

I will set no worthless thing before my eyes.
Psalm 101:3a

Three years ago, when my daughter was a newborn, she liked to be held. All the time. I sat around a lot doing things I could do while holding an infant: reading, watching television, surfing the Internet. My general idleness was encouraged by my environment. We were living in a temporary rental house surrounded by boxes as our new home was being constructed, so I had no motivation to do any homemaking other than the absolute necessities of doing laundry and preparing meals. After some weeks of wasting my days away, I read Psalm 101:3a: I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. The Holy Spirit’s conviction was quick and specific: No more online celebrity news. No more Oprah or Dr. Phil. Think about what you’re spending your time doing, Katy. Is there eternal value in it?

Ever since that time, the Spirit has been quick to bring the verse to mind when needed, and for the most part, I have been more careful about what I “set before my eyes.” The King James Version uses “vile” rather than “worthless,” but I think the NASB’s use of “worthless” is superior. Not only does it seem to be the more accurate translation of the original Hebrew word, it also raises the standard for our conduct. I do not struggle with setting what I consider to be vile things before my eyes. I am not tempted by pornography or trashy books or magazines. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading Cosmo, much less anything worse. But do I expose myself to things that are worthless? Too often I still do, I’m afraid. For example, on more than one occasion, I have spent more hours than I care to admit reading knitting blogs. The knitting blogs I read wouldn’t have been considered vile by the most devoted of Puritans, but spending an inordinate amount of time reading them is indeed a worthless pursuit. Generally speaking, there is no eternal value in reading a knitting blog.

Since God impressed upon my heart the message of Psalm 101:3, I rarely watch television. I have been more careful about the movies I watch. I have been more selective in the books I read. Not that what I was exposing myself to previously was bad (I’ve been a snob for some years now.), but I have raised my standards. Is what I’m exposing myself to pleasing to God? Does it have eternal value? Does it manifest artistic merit? And something that our morning speaker brought to mind this very day: Is it something I would be embarrassed for Jesus to see me doing upon His return?

I feel compelled to provide some specific examples that may be “getting into your business,” as my pastor likes to say. Do you read Danielle Steel when you could be reading Jane Austen? Do you read Joel Osteen when you could be reading John Piper? Do you watch Desperate Housewives when you could be spending time with your husband? (Yes, THAT is what I am implying.) Men, instead of watching one football game, do you watch the whole Saturday line up? I encourage you to ask God, “Lord, what am I setting before my eyes that is worthless?” Make a list. Then ask Him to enable you to raise your standards. He is faithful.

Spiritual Maturity and Knowing God

2006-10-05T11:15:00.001-04:00

This week in our study of The Patriarchs, at the bottom of page 161, Beth Moore writes: “Over a two-decade span of time, the abiding presence of God “who has been with me wherever I have gone” (35:3), gradually shifted Jacob’s focus from the things of God—blessings, protection, land—to God Himself. This shift is the single most profound turning point toward spiritual maturity, for Jacob or for us.”

As I reviewed this passage from the text in preparation for class, God made it clear that this is what He would have us focus on during our discussion time. I know that this is the place where I am in my walk with God, and there are several other women in the class that I expect are in the same place. For others, those who are still primarily learning about God and familiarizing themselves with the things of God, it gives them something to look forward to and to strive for.

The Bible makes it clear that knowing God and having a relationship with Him is the ultimate reward in the Christian’s earthly life.

In Genesis 15:1 (NIV), God told Abram, “I am your very great reward.”

Paul said in Philippians 3:8, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…”

Jeremiah 9:24 says, “but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me…”

In John 17:3, Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Things of God in Our Lives
What are the things of God that we focus on during the early stages of our respective relationships with Him? For me, I spent a lot of time reading books other than the Bible that helped me to understand doctrine and how to live the Christian life. Many of the books I read were invaluable to me, such as The Pursuit of Holiness, Ordering Your Private World, and The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life. At the time, I think this reading was appropriate for me, but if I continued spending more time reading books than studying Bible, I would be focusing on the things of God rather than God Himself.

Other “things of God” that can distract us from God that we discussed are church and related activities, music, a certain pastor or teacher, Bible study, and the list goes on. All of these things are good things and can be very beneficial. However, if they distract us from having a relationship with God and knowing Him, and if they are more important to us than God Himself, we will not mature spiritually.

How Can We Know God?
The best way to understand knowing God and having relationship with Him is the romantic relationship analogy. This is not inappropriate as the church is referred to in Scripture as the “Bride of Christ” (Ephesians 5:22-32, Revelation 21:9). When you fall in love, you want to spend time with the person, talk to them constantly, know their opinions and their likes and dislikes. You want to do things for them. You conduct yourself in a way that will please them.

It should be no different in our relationship with God. You spend time with Him and talk with Him in Bible study, prayer, worship, and fellowship with other believers. You learn God’s opinions, likes, dislikes, and priorities in the pages of Scripture. You do things for Him through acts of service to others (Matthew 24:35-36, 40). And you conduct yourself in a way that will please Him through obedience to His commands (John 14:15).

Knowing God Versus Knowing About God
It is important to differentiate between knowing God and knowing about God. There are many people who know about God but do not know Him at all. They are familiar with the Bible and with the things of God, but they do not have a relationship with Him. The classic example is the president of the United States. Because of his position and the modern media, we know a lot about him, but how many of us actually know him, have a relationship with him?

Not that knowing about God isn’t important. One must know about Him in order to know Him. All of those books I read early on in my walk with God were very important in providing the foundation I needed for a relationship with Him. (One book that I highly recommend in learning about God is Knowing God, by J.I. Packer.)

The Word of God is the Key to Knowing God
In John 14:9, Jesus says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” To know God, one must know Christ, and to know Christ, one must know the Word. In John 1;1, John refers to Jesus as “the Word.” Constant exposure to and study of the Word of God is the primary means of knowing Him. Prayer is not secondary, but it should be initiated and informed based on the Word. This way we can be confident that we are praying according to the will of God.

You cannot overexpose yourself to the Bible. Daily study and reflection on Scripture, small group discussions, preaching and teaching in church, scripture-based music, praying scripture…Every opportunity to exposure yourself to God’s Word should be taken advantage of if you genuinely desire to know God and to mature in your faith.

Following are the lyrics to one of my favorite praise songs.

Knowing You

All I once held dear, built my life upon,
All this world reveres and wars to own;
All I once thought gain I have counted loss,
Spent and worthless now compared to this.

CHORUS:
Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You
There is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the best,
You're my joy, my righteousness,
And I love You Lord.

Now my heart's desire is to know You more,
To be found in You and known as Yours,
To possess by faith what I could not earn
All surpassing gift of righteousness.

Oh to know the power of Your risen life,
And to know You in Your sufferings;
To become like You in Your death, my Lord,
So with You to live and never die.

©1993 Make Way Music
Words and Music by Graham Kendrick

Do You Know Watoto?

2006-10-01T21:07:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday night (9/24/06), the Watoto Children’s Choir from Uganda, Africa performed in concert at our church. The choir is made up of orphaned children, nine boys and nine girls, most of whose parents died of AIDS or as a result of civil war. These children have found new life and hope in Christ through the Watoto ministry.

We had the privilege of being a host home for three of the Watoto girls and their “Auntie Alice” from Sunday night through Tuesday morning. The girls we hosted—Ezarine, Anita, and Laziya—are pictured above with our children. There is a photo of the lovely Alice below.

Our experience with these precious Ugandans was delightful. The children were sweet, soft-spoken, and incredibly polite. My children adored them, and they played well together. “Auntie Alice” was a wonderful care-giver and role model for the children in her care. Her job on the tour is to manage the shop that sells handmade African gifts and jewelry, and she also manages logistics for the tour. Alice is a graduate of the University of Kampala with a degree in travel and tourism. She is beautiful and gracious, and I consider myself blessed to now have her as a friend.

I encourage you to check out the Watoto web site to learn more about this ministry. More than a thousand orphans are currently being cared for, and the leaders have a vision to minister to thousands more orphaned children throughout Africa as the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to impact the continent. I also encourage you to check the tour schedule and to attend a concert, if one comes to your area. You will be blessed.

Lessons in Prayer from Abraham’s Servant in Genesis 24 UPDATED

2006-09-13T15:32:00.001-04:00

Some weeks, my preparation for the Bible study I lead takes less thought and prayer than it does in other weeks. This week in our study of The Patriarchs, we spent two days on Genesis chapter 24, which tells the story of a bride for Isaac. After completing those two day's study, I knew exactly what I wanted to discuss in class: what we can learn from the prayer of Abraham’s servant. Following are the lessons I learned from his prayer and from the circumstances surrounding its answer.

1. The servant was in complete subjection to his master (v. 9,12) and focused on his master’s success (v. 33).
I should not expect my prayers to be answered if I am not in subjection to my master, Jesus Christ. If I am living my life for myself and for my wants I cannot expect Him to grant my requests. Furthermore, when I ask for good things, if my motive is to please myself and accomplish my purposes rather than to please God and to accomplish his purposes, I should not expect my prayers to be answered.

2. The first thing he did when he arrived in the city was to pray (v.12).
So often, I don’t think to pray until much later than I should have. Rather than praying to prevent a crisis, I tend to pray in the midst of it. One recent is example occurred when my husband and I attempted to get away for a fun, restful weekend alone. We did not pray in advance for God’s protection and blessing on our time together, and as a result, our children both got sick the day we left, and I was "under the weather" myself. In contrast, I have a friend who always asks us to pray for her and her husband when they go out of town, and God has honored her faith and dependence on Him.

3. He prayed “in his heart,” which means silently and deeply. (v. 45)
If you’ve been reading Logoscentric for some time you are familiar with a phrase I’ve used in the past to describe my feelings about my prayer life: treating God like a cosmic short-order cook. My prayers are often a thoughtless sending up of a request in the midst of a busy day. They cannot often enough be described as silent and deep. I pray that God would grant me the ability to pray silently and deeply.

4. He prayed for something seemingly impossible (v.14).
It would have been consistent with ancient Middle Eastern hospitality for Rebekah to provide a drink of water to a stranger. However, for the servant to ask God to send woman who would voluntarily water ten thirsty camels was extraordinary. Scholars estimate that Rebekah may have drawn as many as 250 gallons of water for the camels! The servant requested something that only God could provide in his desire for God’s choice for a bride for Isaac to be clear. How often my prayers underestimate God’s ability to provide! Matthew 19:26 says, “with God all things are possible.” I must learn to pray big.

5. He believed God would answer his prayer (v.12).
This is something that I infer from the text. The fact that he even prayed such a prayer demonstrates this (See 4, above.), but his response to the immediate answer demonstrates it as well. Before he had finished praying he looked up and saw Rebecca, and he ran to meet her (v. 17). He didn’t watch for a while from a distance and ponder to himself whether or not she could be the one. He didn’t pray some more. He ran to her in expectation that God had provided the answer to his prayer. Neither did he appear to be surprised that God answered so quickly. Matthew 21:22 says, “And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

6. He bowed low and worshipped God immediately upon receiving the answer to his prayer (v. 26).
The servant responded to God in humility and gratitude, and praised Him for His provision, AND he did it right away. I am all too often guilty of taking for granted God’s answers to my prayers rather than responding to Him as the servant did.

7. He gave glory to God and shared the story of God’s provision (v. 27, 35-48).
How often do I take credit for myself when God clearly is the only one deserving credit for my circumstances? The servant's actions have inspired me to be more deliberate in giving glory to God and to share with others how he has provided for me and worked in my life.

Addendum: In class this evening, another lesson from the servant's prayer was offerred: His prayer was specific. We need to be specific when we pray. Then there can be no doubt when God answers our prayer, and He alone will receive the glory.

Katy and the Men

2006-09-06T23:12:00.001-04:00

During my summer vacation in the woodshed, God taught me some things about submission. Since that time I have continued to ponder how to submit in light of my spiritual gifts; specifically, as they relate to my participation in Sunday school class.

My husband and I attend a couples class, and I am by far the most outspoken woman in the class. In fact, the primary talkers are two other men and me. I always try to comment when I feel led by the Spirit, and I make a conscientious effort to give others an opportunity to speak. I do not monopolize the conversation, and I have been repeatedly assured of this by my very reserved husband and others as well. While I was in the woodshed, during a conversation with one of my friends, she shared that in God’s dealing with her on submission, she had felt directed to refrain from speaking in class in deference to the men. I have thought about it a lot since then, and have at times refrained from speaking because she is in the class, and I wanted to be responsive to her counsel. However, on other occasions I have simply had to speak out of obedience to the Spirit. I recently entertained the idea of attending a women’s class thinking that would be more appropriate for me.

It has been a real dilemma. How does a women with the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, discernment, teaching, and prophecy keep her mouth shut during a Biblical discussion in a group of men and women? Is she supposed to given that she has such gifts? I finally got my answer Monday evening as I resumed reading When Life and Beliefs Collide. The section that spoke to me is in chapter 8, and it is subtitled “Mary and the Men.” First, I will quote the passages of scripture to which the book refers.

John 12:1-8
Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?" Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it. Therefore Jesus said, "Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial. For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me."

In Matthew’s account (26:13), he includes Jesus’ words:
“Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this women has done will also be spoken in memory of her.”

Carolyn Custis James suggests that unlike the disciples who still had their hopes set on an earthly kingdom, Mary truly understood the gospel in advance, which prompted her to anoint Jesus in preparation for his burial. Following is the passage from the book that spoke to my heart. It’s lengthy, but I encourage you to read it all.

[Mary’s] actions poke holes in the notion that it is ungodly, unfeminine, insubordinate, or pushy for a woman to take the initiative, Here we see Mary taking he initiative in public, on a theological matter, and in a gathering of male leaders. What is more, she did it right in front of Jesus. And to everyone’s astonishment, Jesus praised her for her actions. Jesus taught a brand of theology that was living and active. It did not lead Mary to withdraw into passivity or wait for a man to do the job; it lead her to accept responsibility, step out, and take action where she saw a need.

Under the umbrella of Jesus' approval, it is clear that Mary's decisive actions did not in any way violate headship. What may come as a surprise is the fact that her actions actually modeled godly submission, the kind of submission Jesus also displayed. She is not mindlessly resigned to what Jesus has purposed to do. That would degrade the meaning of biblical submission and is certainly not the kind of submission Jesus desires of his followers. Christ (the standard of true submission for all Christians) never modeled a passive unthinking submission to his Father, and Mary did not offer that kind of submission to him. She had applied her mind and heart to understand what God required of Jesus and whole heartedly threw herself, as well as her resources, into embracing and promoting Jesus' obedience to the Father. Submission did not reduce her to passivity but actually drew her out to participate in God's will. Her submission to God united her to Jesus, and as a result, she flourished and took the kind of bold action such a moment calls forth. Biblical headship does not ask less of us. It asks more. Headship is not so fragile that women must walk on eggshells for fear of threatening or destroying it. Jesus did not look askance at Mary's behavior nor rebuke her for making the Twelve look bad. To the contrary, he applauded her.

And did she make the men look bad? One would be hard pressed to resist arguing that they looked bad enough on their own. They saw it that way themselves later and wrote with great integrity of their failure that evening. Ironically, the disciples were the ones who violated Christ's headship with their unsubmissive rebellion against the will of God. But the fact is, Mary's actions that evening certainly did expose their failings. Although clearly Mary's intent was not to embarrass or shame the disciples, neither did she show any interest in covering for them. Mary's primary allegiance was to Jesus, not to the disciples. But the outcome was beneficial for them as well. Imagine what she would have denied Jesus and what great harm she would have brought on his disciples had she restrained herself to protect their sense of masculine leadership. Their masculinity didn't need to be shielded by her holding back but needed rather to be jolted by her obedience.

This is not to suggest, however, that Mary's actions leave room for women to be offensive, insensitive, or cavalier toward others. Mary didn't elbow her way into the room or behave disrespectfully toward the disciples, although they were in fact offended by her actions. Her conduct was above reproach, filled with grace and graciousness. The fruit of the Spirit must always govern how Christians interact with one another. This underscores the importance of fixing our eyes on Jesus to know him and his ways, so we will reflect him when we step out. Mary was not putting herself forward, fighting for herself, her rights, or her sex. She was fighting for her Lord. The issues involved were much bigger than Mary or the disciples. Her eyes were fixed on Jesus alone. Knowing Jesus prompted her to initiate and act on the truth in a way and with a spirit that would honor him. Her actions were costly and difficult for her, but it was the right thing for her to do, if Jesus' words mean anything at all.

I will speak as I am led by the Spirit as I fight for my Lord.

Becoming an Exact Person

2006-09-04T19:34:00.001-04:00

I think all serious readers at one time or another desire to be writers. However, desiring to be a writer and actually writing are two different things. I began journaling intermittently and dabbling in poetry at a young age—around ten, I think. When I was in the tenth grade, I remember asking my English teacher if she thought I could be a writer. She gave me a vaguely encouraging response with which I was not satisfied. I did well in high school and college English, and my writing skills enabled me to maintain the B I needed for my financial analysis seminar in graduate school, as my financial analysis skills were somewhat weak. I landed my first "real job" as a technical writer and editor primarily because of my writing skills. There have been a few isolated incidences wherein I was moved to record my thoughts or experiences, but I never developed a regular discipline of writing until I began blogging. Before I began blogging, I entertained ideas of being a writer. Since I began blogging, I actually WRITE.

I was motivated to begin Logoscentric while I was leading my first Bible study in early 2006. I felt compelled by God to share the things he was teaching me, and He has continued to show me things to write about. There have been several occasions when I have had to get out of bed to jot down ideas for a post. Sometimes the posts seem to originate out of nowhere, and at other times, I contemplate things to write about for some weeks before actually recording them.

I have been through periods of near-obsession with blogging, and I have contemplated deleting the whole thing during periods of struggle and apathy. I have been repeatedly discouraged by the lack of feedback I get, especially from my friends. But I think I have finally come to the place where I am supposed to be. I blog simply because it is something I feel led by God to do, because I like to write, and because I am the primary beneficiary of these posts.

Recently, I was flipping through an old journal, and I came across my notes from the 2004 RZIM Founders Conference. I had recorded the following quote from Ravi Zacharias: “Writing makes an exact person.” (A paraphrase of Francis Bacon.) Blogging has motivated me to write, and writing has enabled me to articulate what I think and how I feel about things that I may not have realized had I not taken the time to reflect on them through writing. I am becoming a more exact person. If you are benefiting from my experience, then that is an added blessing.

Being Set Apart

2006-08-30T11:14:00.001-04:00

I am currently leading Beth Moore’s The Patriarchs on Wednesday evenings at my church. In week one, Moore emphasized Abraham’s being set apart, both as being chosen by God and by his isolating himself from the wicked cities of the valley. In class, we briefly discussed what it means for Christians to be set apart. Following are a few of the verses we discussed.

I Peter 1:15-16
…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.”

I John 3:9-10
No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious; anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

Romans 12:1-2
Therefore I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodes a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Scripture makes it clear that there is a standard of conduct for believers that differentiates us from nonbelievers. However, since our class discussion, I have been thinking about other ideas related to being set apart that are important to understand as well.

I. Provenance
The first thing we must understand about the initial act of our being set apart, i.e. our salvation, is that God does it. Just as God chose Abraham to initiate his plan of redemption, God chooses us for His kingdom (Ephesians 1:4). One who is dead in his trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) and who is an enemy of God (Romans 5:10) cannot set himself apart. Colossians 1:13 says, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son…” God rescued us, and God transferred us.

II. Process
The term we use for being made like Christ is "sanctification." The original Greek word is "hagiasmos," which means consecration or purification. It is encouraging to know that scripture often refers to us as already having been sanctified (I Corinthians 1:2, I Corinthians 6:11, Hebrews 10:11). Hebrews 10:14 makes it clear that our having been sanctified was completed in Christ.

However, anyone attempting to live the Christian life can attest to the fact that being conformed to the image of Christ in His purity is a process. I Thessalonians 4:3 says, “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” And Philippians 1:6 supports this as well, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Just as a sinful human being cannot initiate setting himself apart, neither can he make himself like Christ through the process of sanctification. He began the good work, and He will carry it to completion (Philippians 1:6. NIV). This does not mean we are passive in the process. We can choose not to cooperate. Galatians 5:16 says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” We must determine to walk by the Spirit.

A couple of years ago, when my small group was studying Galatians, I began praying that God would show me how and enable me to walk by the Spirit. I have since concluded that this something at which I will never “arrive.” Learning what the Bible says about how I am to live and think and allowing the Holy Spirit to bring it to my mind and to direct my actions is something to which I must continually submit. I expect to see progress in my willingness to submit and in the mortification of sin in my life, but I will only be completely holy when I am no longer encumbered by my sinful flesh.

III. Purpose
Holiness is not an end unto itself. As those who claim the name of Christ we most definitely want to reflect His character and to bring honor to His name. However, we are also sanctified to be useful to the Master and to complete the good works that He has prepared beforehand for us to do. II Timothy 2: 21 says, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.” And Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

The concept of being set apart is rarely taught in churches today, as evidenced by the number of so-called Christians whose lives are not substantively different from the rest of the world. I encourage you to make pursuing holiness a priority in your life. If you have not read the book, The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, I highly recommend it.

Temporary Alternate Reality, UPDATED

2006-08-17T22:19:00.001-04:00

Did you see the film, The Family Man? Nicolas Cage stars as a New York investment broker who is given the opportunity to see what his life would be like if he had chosen to prioritize marriage and family over his career. He gets to temporarily experience an alternate reality in the suburbs, and he discovers that it is what he REALLY wants.

I need my own temporary alternate reality right now. I’m sure it would be helpful for me to spend a few days back in Atlanta living the life of a career woman as if I had never left. How high up the corporate ladder would I have climbed? Where would I live? Who would my friends be? What would I be doing socially and for entertainment? How would I really feel about the evenings and weekends at my disposal to do whatever I wanted? How much money would I be making???

I can imagine loving my job, going for runs along the Chattahoochee River after work, living within ten minutes of Barnes and Noble, eating at interesting restaurants, watching movies with subtitles (in the theater), having leisurely evenings at home to read or to watch videos or go to bed early. These things are easy for me to imagine because this is what my life was like before marriage and children and life in the boondocks. However, to provide no additional information would be misleading. Because regardless of how “good” my life was back then, what I wanted most was to be married and to have a family. In fact, this desire is what God used to draw me to Himself.

Those of you home schooling half a dozen children will find it hard to understand, but this stay-at-home mom thing is the hardest thing I’ve EVER done. It’s harder than graduate-level quantitative analysis. (Back in the day, I did my linear programming WITHOUT a computer.) It’s harder than being a teenager whose parents won't let her go to the prom. It’s harder than marriage. Going to work every day and dealing with incompetents and office politics is a cake walk compared to this. And if one more person tells me that it’s only going to get harder, I’m going to do something drastic—like eat a whole quart of Blue Bell Banana Pudding ice cream.

There is only one explanation as to how I got myself into this situation. It is not a choice that I could have made on my own “in the flesh,” as we say in Christian-speak. Only Christ in me working through the Holy Spirit could have motivated me to choose a life of self-denial and hard work. Philippians 1:6 says, For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. God began a good work in me by saving my soul, and he is perfecting me through my being out of my element and through life being hard for me.

I never GOT I Timothy 2:15 until I was well into motherhood: But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. The Greek word for "preserved" is “sozo,” and Strong’s defines it as follows:

1) to save, keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger or destruction
a) one (from injury or peril)
1) to save a suffering one (from perishing), i.e. one suffering from disease, to make well, heal, restore to health
1) to preserve one who is in danger of destruction, to save or rescue
b) to save in the technical biblical sense
1) negatively
a) to deliver from the penalties of the Messianic judgment
b) to save from the evils which obstruct the reception of the Messianic deliverance

What I get from this verse and from an understanding of the meaning of “preserved,” is that in becoming a mother, I was rescued from myself. I am confident that my experiencing a temporary alternate reality would not only demonstrate all of the temporal things that I long for on a bad day, but it would also demonstrate a lack of the eternal things I have gained through my present life. I was rescued from a life of purposelessness and delivered into a life of eternal possibility (Colossians 1:13).

I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 3: 13-14

Addendum:
I don't feel the need to defend myself against the negtive personal attack I recieved on this post. However, it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough on something, which resulted in inadequate glory being given to God.

Prior to my marriage I was completely career-oriented. I have an M.B.A. with an emphasis in corporate finance, for goodness sake! I had absolutely NO intention of being a stay-at-home mother. I intended that my income should be adquate to provide for in-home child care or a nanny, if possible. What I am doing now is completely against my goal-oriented, ambitious nature. And the credit for that goes to God. He changed my heart, and He changed my life, and I am thankful.

The Overriding Purpose of the Woodshed

2006-08-17T10:40:00.001-04:00

This is my final post on my recent woodshed experience. I appear to have emerged. For a week or so, I wasn’t sure.

On August 4, as I was reading My Utmost for His Highest, God communicated to me through the following passage the overriding purpose of my recent time in the woodshed:
It is not a question of our equipment but of our poverty, not of what we bring with us, but of what God puts into us; not a question of natural virtues of strength of character, knowledge, and experience—all that is of no avail in this matter.

In addition to the particular lessons I learned, the ultimate purpose of the woodshed was to make me absolutely certain of my own poverty as I begin a new semester leading a women’s Bible study at my church. It could be easy for me to lapse into confidence in my flesh. In the spirit of Philippians 3... I was a very successful member of my university’s debate team; I have taught college and university courses in economics and finance; I have additional experience with public speaking through past work experience; and I have much better than average knowledge of scripture, theology, and doctrine. However, I also KNOW that I am consumed with sin and selfishness, and that I am completely incapable of accomplishing anything for God’s kingdom except that which He chooses to accomplish through Christ in me. The woodshed simply reminded me of how bad I really am and how much I need Him, thereby providing the necessary humility for me to be effectively used during the coming weeks of the study.

Based upon my experience leading a study last semester, I KNOW that any good that came out of what I did was because Christ was working in me through the Holy Spirit. I was constantly claiming 2 Corinthians 12:9: My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. And God was faithful to demonstrate His power through an empty vessel. We cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit if we are full of ourselves. The woodshed ensured that I would not be full of myself.

Lessons from the Woodshed—Prayerlessness

2006-08-17T09:28:00.001-04:00

Looking back on my recent time in the woodshed, the whipping reached a crescendo during the message by Priscilla Shirer at the Precept National Women’s Convention. Shirer’s message was on prayer, and her text was Matthew 6:6: But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Shirer began her message discussing the power of prayer and the general need for prayer. Then it got personal. Here’s what I wrote in my notes: If you’re not praying, it’s an issue of what you love the most. You do what you love. You must understand prayer is NECESSARY for your life. Prayerlessness is the first sign of pride. = Not depending on God.

Shirer provided an excellent illustration from her life. For a number of weeks in a row, she had to go to her doctor's office for blood work. There was a gated parking area that required payment of a $3 fee to enter the lot. Around the third week, as Shirer pulled into the parking area, she looked in her review mirror and saw a McDonald’s across the street. Tired of paying the $3 fee, she backed out, drove across the street, and parked her car behind McDonald’s. When she returned to the McDonald’s parking lot after her appointment, her car was gone. It had been towed. Her telling of the story was much funnier and more entertaining than I can make it here, but as you probably have anticipated by now, it cost her more than $150 to get her car back, when she could have paid a mere $3 to park.

Shier’s point was that in making prayer a priority, it may cost you a little now, but it will cost you a whole lot more if you don’t make it a priority. To write an “ouch” here would be a gross understatement. Shirer’s entire message on prayer was excellent, but this portion of it brought a flood of conviction upon me. At the end of the message, I was very thankful that I had let my hair grow out because as my bent my head over and repented and wept, my mane provided a measure of privacy that I would not have had a year ago. (It’s strange, the things you think of in times of distress.)

I have written about prayer here before, and I have been praying for some time that God would teach me to pray and make me a woman of prayer. It’s not that I don’t pray, but I haven’t loved prayer the way I love studying the Bible. I haven’t looked forward to praying. I haven’t searched out time to spend with God listening to Him. I haven’t seized opportunities to pray such as when I lay down with my daughter to get her to sleep at night or when I’m alone in my car. I have prayed, but prayer has not been a priority.

Later that evening, as I was talking to my friend about the conviction brought on by Shirer’s message, I told her that in essence *I* had paid the $150 towing/impounding fee when I could have just paid the $3 parking fee. She encouraged me by telling me to be thankful for learning the lesson now rather than later.

Indeed I am thankful for this particular lesson from the woodshed. And I am thankful that God is full of grace and mercy and that His actions are not contingent on my prayers, but, rather, He ordains my prayers to accomplish and to allow me to participate in His purposes. To Him be the glory.

Sympathizing with My Sin

2006-08-13T14:44:00.001-04:00

Never sympathize with the thing that is stabbing God all the time. God has to hurt the thing that must go.
My Utmost for His Highest, August 13

In my reading this passage today, God showed me that I have been sympathizing with a struggle that I have had for many months. I looked up the word "sympathize" at Dictionary.com and this definition stood out: "be understanding of."

I have prayed. I have confessed. I have repented. I have fasted. I have done everything but mortify the struggle completely because I have been understanding of it. In being understanding of it, I have analyzed how it came to be and why; I have tried to determine how God is using it in my life; and I have come to view it as a cross that I must die to daily. BUT I have not been entirely willing to kill or mortify it. This is something I can only see in retrospect.

I have been stabbing God with it, and it must go.

Learning to Walk (Another Lesson from the Woodshed)

2006-08-10T10:31:00.001-04:00

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
Galatians 5:16

More than two years ago, my small group studied Galatians and Ephesians. Since that time, I have been praying that God would show me how and enable me to walk by the Spirit so that I would not carry out the desire of the flesh. When I first began praying this prayer, I didn’t really know what it meant to walk by the Spirit. Up to this point I had incorrectly assumed that if I were filled with the Spirit I would have a supernatural ability not to sin, and I couldn’t figure out how to tap into that power. Through our discussions in my small group, our leader helped us to understand that fundamentally, walking by the Spirit was simply choosing to be obedient to the will of God in everything we do. Power would follow obedience.

While I was in the woodshed, I was reflecting on what God had been teaching me about submission during the previous two weeks, and I was prompted to turn to Ephesians 5:15-21…
15 Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; 21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

As I was reading through these verses God showed me that during the time I had been praying for direction in walking in the Spirit, He had been teaching me a series of lessons consistent with this passage.

Lesson 1: Make the most of your time.
Do not waste your time on fruitless activities that are of no eternal significance, and make sure your priorities are consistent with God’s priorities.

Lesson 2: Understand what the will of the Lord is.
The only way to know the will of God is to know His word, the Bible.

Lesson 3: Be filled with the Spirit.
Daily ask God to fill you with His Spirit and to enable you to walk by the Spirit so that you do not carry out the desires of the flesh. Then obey God’s word and submit to the Spirit’s direction.

Lesson 4: Always give thanks.
Pray that God would give you a thankful heart, and look for things to be thankful for in every situation.

Lesson 5: Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Philippians 2:3-4 says it best: Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

I was excited when I realized what God had been teaching me. My only question was, “Why did it have to take so long?!” For more than two years, God has been showing me how to walk by the Spirit. Now my prayer is that He would enable me to DO it consistently.

The next lesson from the woodshed will be on prayerlessness.

Lessons from the Woodshed—Idolatry

2006-08-03T18:55:00.001-04:00

Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 6:1

Whether then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
I Corinthians 10:31

My pastor refers to being in the place of receiving discipline from God as being taken to the woodshed. Culminating with the NWC last weekend, I was in the woodshed for more than two weeks, and I took quite a whipping.

Generally speaking, God showed me the extent of my problem with submission. I had no idea it was THAT BAD. Please understand, I am not one of those people who is deluded. “My sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51:3), and I usually take exhortation well because there ain’t nothin you can tell me about myself that I don’t already know. However, three weeks ago today, a dear friend sent me to the woodshed on God’s behalf, and if I have indeed emerged, I am now in what will probably be a long period of recovery.

Prior to entering the woodshed, I had been convicted about the place of Logoscentric in my life. I would have days where I spent a reasonable amount of time on the computer, and I would have days wherein many hours were spent reading and writing and tweaking and linking. In the woodshed, God provided the clarity that only the woodshed can provide: Logoscentric had become an idol.

Not only had my blog become an idol in my priorities, but I had become preoccupied with increasing readers and pleasing my “audience” rather than doing the thing for God’s glory. It’s not to God’s glory to write some insignificant blog post at the expense of one’s husband and children.

So in the woodshed, when I came face to face with my pride, my misplaced priorities, and the futility of my pursuits, I did what anyone truly desiring to please God would do, I offered to give Logoscentric up. COMPLETELY. “Lord, I will click on the delete button, if that is what you want me to do. Just say the word.”

Some of you may be thinking, Katy, how can you know if God is telling you to delete your blog? How do you know you’re not just talking to yourself, or that it’s not Satan wanting you to give it up? Believe me, once you’ve been in “sold out” mode long enough, you’ll know when God is communicating to you. He is not subtle.

So far the word has not been to give up Logoscentric (no pun intended), but to prioritize it appropriately. I also have been impressed with the need to be more intentional with what I am doing here, but I haven’t determined any specific direction yet. I would love feedback from you as God directs you to give it.

More lessons from the woodshed are to come.

Home Again

2006-08-01T19:28:00.001-04:00

I'm posting right now by sheer willpower. I'm EXHAUSTED. I got home Sunday evening around 10:00, and my DSL was back up and running on Monday morning, but between hitting the ground running yesterday and being so tired today, I just haven't been able to bring myself to post until now. I'm hoping to catch up on my rest in the next couple of days because school starts on Friday. No sleeping until 8:00 then!

The NWC was excellent. I was convicted, exhorted, encouraged, and motivated. My prayer is that it won't be yet another temporary mountaintop experience, but that I would be truly changed as a result of what God taught me. In future posts I plan to share some of the things I learned.

I must say that Kay Arthur rocks. One of the speakers made a theologically/doctrinally unsound statement on the first day, and Kay dealt with it with great spirit and authority in her closing message. I may not agree with her eschatology, and I doubt she describes herself as Reformed, but she sure knows what the Bible says about unconditional election!

I spent a good bit of time in the bookstore, but I didn't buy much. There just wasn't much that interested me. Ten years ago I would have needed an additional suitcase for books, but at this phase in my walk, I'm primarly interested in simply studying the Bible or reading the classics—old and new.

Speaking of which, one of my purchases was Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World by Rebecca Manley Pippert. She was one of the speakers, and I really liked her. She is erudite and down to earth. I had her sign my book, and I asked her about her doctrinal leanings. I was correct in my guess that we are like-minded. It was interesting to me that her book table did not draw nearly the crowd the others did. Her books primarily focus on evangelism, and she has been endorsed by the likes of Charles Colson and J.I. Packer. I'm really tempted to begin a rant here, but I'll trust the Holy Spirit to teach others, as He did me, that studying the Word itself will enable women to deal with their problems and challenges—as an endless stream of "Christian self-help" books cannot do.

Now she's back.

Road Trip: Precept National Women's Convention

2006-07-26T20:45:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow afternoon, I am heading to Chattanooga, Tennessee for the Precept Ministries National Women's Convention. I am not in the position to "live blog," so I plan to come home with plenty of blog fodder. In the rare event that someone out there reading this blog is also going to the NWC, be on the lookout for me in the bookstore.

I just found out that our DSL connection will not be operational until Friday, at the earliest. So after I post this, I will again be incommunicado until Sunday evening.

Have a great weekend!

Colossians 1:11—The Purpose of His Power in Me

2006-07-23T15:26:00.001-04:00

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience…
—Colossians 1:9-11

Having completed Job, our Sunday school class is now studying Colossians. Most of today’s discussion centered on the passage above. I was especially blessed by our discussion of verse 11. Our teacher, Jim, pointed out that the purpose for which we have been “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might” is for “the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.” The ESV and NIV use the word “endurance” rather than steadfastness. Two members of the class who had notes in their Bibles indicated that the original Greek word for steadfastness/endurance refers to endurance in dealing with people, and the original Greek word for patience refers to patience in difficult circumstances.

What the passage is saying is that the power we have through Christ in us is for the purpose of demonstrating steadfastness/endurance and patience. Jim suggested that it seems like the power of God in us should be used for something seemingly more significant than in demonstrating patience with people and circumstances; but immediately, I realized that these are precisely the areas where I have the greatest struggles.

Because of said struggles, I am tremendously encouraged by this verse and the implications for my life. Knowing that the power of Christ is in me specifically to enable me to be patient with people and to endure difficult circumstances should release me to let go and enable Him do what I clearly cannot.

Mini Review: Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest

2006-07-21T13:56:00.001-04:00

I receive a weekly movie newsletter from Christianity Today, and having glanced over last week’s issue, I vaguely remember a statement saying that Christian reviewers were giving Pirates favorable reviews. Now that I’ve seen the movie I understand why. The film makes it clear that there will be a judgment, and that judgment is something to dread. It also demonstrates that there are two choices in life: bondage to Satan and death, as in Colossians 3:3. I doubt whether the writers intended to show this, but it’s there. There are also discussions about truthfulness, courage, and having a “moral center.” And there are demonstrations of sacrificial love.

Hollywood loves to make statements on issues, and Pirates makes its indictment against corporate greed and the operations of multinational corporations via presenting the unscrupulous activities of East India Trading Company—arguably the world’s first MNC. EITC is presented as being more powerful than even the King of England in its quest to rule the seas.

My husband and I have been amazed at how Pirates has been marketed to young children. McDonald’s Happy Meals are promoting the film, and at Disney World, we saw massive amounts of Pirates merchandise designed for little ones. This is NOT a film for young children. It is frightening, violent, grotesque, and at times, sensual; and for all of its positive attributes, it does include black magic and the now ubiquitous English version of the “f” word, which Americans still don’t seem to get and subsequently see as offensive. (If you don’t know what word I’m talking about, email me, and I’ll tell you.)

Pirates is entertaining fun with a fundamentally Christian world view appropiate for adults and teenagers . I should warn you that the film leaves you hanging at the end. The third and final installment of the series is being filmed right now, and it is scheduled to be released next year. If you didn’t see the first Pirates movie or if you have forgotten most of it, as I had, you will want to rent it before seeing part two so you can keep up with what is going on. It can be hard to follow at times.

That’s my two cents worth.

Lessons from Orlando

2006-07-20T11:14:00.001-04:00

Right now, it seems downright ridiculous to me that going into the trip to Orlando my primary concern was the weather. It never occurred to me that I would have to deal with a rebellious attitude in my firstborn son. His distressing behavior manifested itself in three areas: (1) Talking back. Constantly. (2) Questioning every directive. (3) Expecting all activities to revolve around his desires. Perhaps you’re thinking this behavior sounds normal? My son is five. Not yet in Kindergarten. I expected this at thirteen, not five.

This phase (I hope) in my son’s conduct is especially troubling to me for two reasons. First, my son has always been a very good child by anyone’s standard. His current conduct often seems that of a whole other person. He isn’t himself. I have on several occasions stopped what I was doing and prayed against the work of the enemy in him because he seemed downright possessed.

The second cause for distress is what my experience with my son is teaching me about myself. Observing his conduct and feeling my reaction to it have been an ongoing opportunity for the Holy Spirit to reveal to me my own rebellious tendencies, how my rebellion makes God feel, and why I need to be disciplined. For someone who already has a tendency to beat herself up over her sin (another vestige of my Arminian past), this has been very hard to take.

In addition to the trouble with my son, I severely underestimated the importance to my emotional well-being of the two hours to myself I usually have daily from around 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm. My husband is an early riser, and I am a night owl. I make myself go to bed around 11:00 because I know that is what I have to do to get adequate rest. The time I have to myself each night while the house is quiet and still is very important to me, but I had no idea how important it was until I went without it for four days straight. Four people in a standard hotel room—two of whom are five and two—does not a “vacation” make.

All of this emotional stress, and I had been concerned about the weather! It was very good, by the way. Lower nineties. Moderate humidity. Afternoon thundershowers to cool things off. Couldn’t have been better by July in Florida standards. Thank you for your prayers!

My husband spent some time researching the best strategy for tackling Disney World, and his work paid off. We arrived when the park opened at 9:00, and everyone was ready to go by 2:00 when the afternoon thunderstorms were approaching. We never stood in line for more than ten minutes. The kids enjoyed the Magic Kingdom, but I think they would have been just as happy to have spent the morning at the hotel pool. This is no ordinary pool—big shallow area for small children, slide, fountains, lazy river. I highly recommend the hotel. It’s not on the Disney property, but it takes ten minutes max to get to the Magic Kingdom parking lot.

As usual, I am glad to be home. Returning from traveling regardless of the circumstances always makes me thankful for my home. I still have a lot to think and pray about regarding what I learned, but for now, I must do laundry.

On Vacation…So to Speak

2006-07-13T17:11:00.001-04:00

We are leaving Saturday to go to Orlando. Yes, I know. Orlando. In July. Sounds refreshing, doesn’t it? Especially since I already endure near 100 degree temperatures on a regular basis during the summer months.

My husband is participating in a yearly professional conference that caters to families, so we are going along. This is our summer vacation as well. At least we are staying in a hotel. Last year, we rented a condo at the beach, which still required a certain amount of cooking, laundry, and keeping things picked up. A hotel is more like it. Of course, as I said last year, at this phase in my life, vacation is just a change of scenery. Not that it isn’t welcomed or appreciated. I’m just trying to be realistic.

I’m the type of person who is affected greatly by my expectations. If I expect something to be great, and it isn’t, I am usually terribly disappointed. However, if I expect something to be unpleasant (such as Orlando in July), and it turns out to be fun… You understand.

Anyway, I will not be posting for at least a week. When I return, I expect to be able to post a treatise on how Orlando in July is evidence supporting unconditional election. If salvation were up to humans, surely such a foretaste of hell would send people running to Jesus.

Feeling Guilty About Quiet Time?

2006-07-13T10:28:00.001-04:00

I'm sure most of my Reformed friends out there read Challies.com, but for those of you who do not, I MUST direct you to one of this week's posts: "The Tyranny of Quiet Time." You must also read the article referenced: "Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt."

"Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt" dovetails nicely with what I learned reading and reflecting on The Papa Prayer (see below). And I am especially prone to thinking things aren't going well because of what I have or haven't done—vestiges of my Arminian past.

Read these posts and be encouraged in your relationship with God.

Book Review: The Papa Prayer

2006-07-11T22:43:00.002-04:00

If you have read the “100 Things About Me,” you may recall number two: I struggle with prayer. More than once in the past year I have described my prayer life as sending up orders to a cosmic short-order cook. So when I picked up a copy of The Papa Prayer by Larry Crabb and read through some passages, I only briefly questioned the voice in my head telling me I needed to buy the book. Of course, what better way to rationalize putting off actually praying than to read about improving your prayer life?

Apparently, not only am I not alone, but my experience seems to be common among believers. In fact, Crabb suggests that the reason I struggle with prayer is because I see my prayers as akin to placing orders with a cosmic short-order cook. He writes, "Most of us find our prayer lives dominated by asking God for things. For most of us, that’s what prayer is. Changing our minds about the point of prayer will be tough. The wrong idea is nearly universal and deeply imbedded in our thinking. But if we hold to it, if we keep on believing prayer is more about getting things than getting God, not only will we eventually get thoroughly confused when prayer doesn’t “work,” but talking to God will at some point feel boring as well, if we’re honest. … I’m starting to think that getting fed up with asking God for what we want is not such a bad thing. It prepares us for relational prayer."

When I read this passage I realized that my dissatisfaction with my prayer life was a result of my prayers being ultimately about me. Even when I use the ACTS approach (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication), my motivation is to get to the “S.” The best thing about The Papa Prayer is Crabb’s consistent emphasis on what he calls “relational prayer”: "The chief purpose of prayer is to get to know God, to deepen our relationship with Him, to nourish the life of God He’s already placed within us, and to do it all to satisfy His desire for relationship with us."

Not that I didn’t basically know this already, but Crabb very effectively demonstrates how we can come to God as if we are pursuing Him when we are still ultimately pursuing our own interests. He says, "In this life, the feeling of satisfaction that comes when a marriage improves or a child turns back to God or…a ministry takes off feels stronger and brings more pleasure than our experience of God. We are foolish to dampen that pleasure, but we are in danger of living for it, of thinking that blessings from God satisfy our souls more deeply than God Himself."

The second aspect of the book I found to be beneficial was in the section on “purging yourself of anything that blocks your relationship with God.” Crabb believes that everything that is wrong in our lives is somehow related to what is going on in our primary relationships and that relational sin starts with fear. We don’t trust God to take care of us, so we attempt to take care of ourselves and subsequently sin against others. He gives some excellent examples of how this plays out in life.

In a nutshell, The Papa Prayer approach is as follows:

P: Present yourself to God authentically; be real with Him as you are with no one else.

A: Attend to how you are thinking of God, how you picture Him as you are talking to Him, and then modify your perception to fit who He tells you He is. (He directs us to Revelation chapter one for a proper view of God.)

P: Purge yourself of your relational faults by taking an inventory of how you put your interests ahead of His and getting rid of anything that blocks intimacy with Him.

A: Approach God just as you are, tuning into your passion to know Him and to honor Him above all others.

Herein lies my problem with Crabb’s approach. In elaborating on the first point, “present yourself to God” Crabb describes this step as finding your “red dot.” The point is to be honest with God about how you feel and where you are spiritually. I’ve been thinking about this for several days, and I can’t get beyond the conviction that my prayers shouldn’t begin with ME. Maybe it’s just that the ACTS approach has been drilled into me, but it seems appropriate to me to think about who you’re dealing with FIRST in order to get the proper perspective of yourself.

Two more warnings: (1) The first half of the book was somewhat boring to me as it seemed to be an extensive and repetitive introduction to the PAPA approach. (2) Crabb is a psychologist, and every now and then, he veers into what I call psychobabble. However, I am willing to admit that my sensitivity to this is probably a matter of personal taste as I am all about DOCTRINE. No touchy feely here.

Criticisms aside, I would recommend this book to anyone who struggles with prayer or who could simply use some instruction in praying. The substance of the book and the examples from Crabb’s practice are beneficial. However, I still intend to use the ACTS approach. And after reading the book, for all of its helpful content, I know that the only way my prayer life is going to improve is for me TO PRAY.

Seven Lessons from Job

2006-07-09T15:21:00.001-04:00

God cares more about our faith than our pleasure.
—Philip Yancey on Job in The Bible Jesus Read

Our Sunday school class finished our discussion of Job last week. I can’t remember when we started the study, but it has taken some months, and about two-thirds of the way through the book I told my husband that I was sick of Job’s friends. However, my enthusiasm returned at the end of the book, and now I want to reflect on what I learned—or what I already knew that was reinforced.

I. God is sovereign.
No surprise that a “grace girl” would start here, is it? Job presents a concise picture of God’s sovereignty by showing us God’s involvement in and intimate acquaintance with the life of one of His children, and it demonstrates God’s power in the creation and maintenance of His world. One can rightly conclude from Job that nothing happens that isn’t either initiated or permitted by God. Which is reinforced by and leads to my next point…

II. There are things going on in the spiritual realm that we cannot begin to contemplate.
I really don’t like to think too much about the implications for my life of Job 1:8 when God asks Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?” …Have you considered my servant, Katy? However, as frightening as it may be to consider that God may initiate incredible hardship in our lives to accomplish His purposes, we should find comfort in the knowledge that He allows these things to happen because He has confidence in us. He knows we will endure because of the work He has done and will do in us.

III. It is never about us.
Bad theology reigns supreme in this world and even throughout the church. The philosophy that what we do or don’t do results in either good or bad things happening to us is the primary mode of thinking, and it is NOT Biblical. This thinking is why Job’s friends couldn’t get away from the conviction that Job had committed some sin to kindle the wrath of God against him. God’s wrath is ultimately kindled against Job’s friends because “you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.” (Job 42:7) Of course, we will reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7) and we can expect to be disciplined by God for sin (Hebrews 12:4-11), but the ultimate reality of our lives is not based on our actions but on God’s purposes.

IV. Creation is primary evidence for the existence, power, and provision of God.
When God speaks to Job (beginning in chapter 38), He focuses on His creation. This makes me think of Romans 1: 19-20:
…that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

V. The presence of God satisfies all of our questions.
Up until chapter 38 when God speaks to Job, he repeatedly asks for an audience with God. Understandably, in light of his humanity and his bad theology, Job wants an answer as to why such bad things could happen to someone who is “blameless” (Job 1:8). After God responds in chapters 38 and 39, Job has this to say in chapter 40 (v. 4-5):
Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
Once I have spoken, and I will not answer;
Even twice, and I will add nothing more.

VI. We can only begin to have the proper perspective of ourselves when we see ourselves as God’s servant.
God refers to Job as his servant (1:8) at the outset of the narrative, and he reaffirms Job’s status at the end (42:7-8). The Hebrew word “ebed” used here denotes bondage. The New Testament makes our position even clearer in I Corinthians 6:19-20:
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

VII. The restoration of Job’s fortune is not the point of the story. His knowing God is.
In a world filled with proponents of a prosperity gospel, there is a tendency to want to focus on the end of the book of Job and the restoration of Job’s fortune. However, (and this is speculation on my part, but I believe it is enlightened speculation) I believe if you were to ask Job, he would say that the highlight of his experience was coming face to face with God and knowing Him in a way he had not known him before. As another servant, Paul (who lost much from the world’s standpoint), wrote in Philippians 3:8:
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.

Read Widely and Think Carefully

2006-07-08T14:15:00.001-04:00

Why Christians shouldn't limit themselves to "Christian books":

The reality of confirmation bias* and its threat to intellectual integrity is one reason that Christian thinkers must read widely and think carefully. We must not limit ourselves to reading material from those who agree with us, fellow Christians who share a common worldview and perspective. Instead, we have to "read the opposition" as well -- and read opposing viewpoints with fairness and care.

This does not come easily, but Christians bear a particular responsibility to be watchful for confirmation bias and its effects.

Dr. Albert Mohler, "Confirmation Bias in a Fallen World"

*"whereby we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence"
—Scientific American

True Freedom

2006-07-04T10:12:00.001-04:00

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

What makes you free? Knowing the truth.

Who knows the truth? Disciples of Jesus.

How do you know a true disciple of Jesus? A true disciple continues in the Word.

The Greek word for “continues” is “meno”, and it is defined as follows:
I. to remain, abide
A. in reference to place
1. to sojourn, tarry
2. not to depart
a. to continue to be present
b. to be held, kept, continually

B. in reference to time
1. to continue to be, not to perish, to last, endure
a. of persons, to survive, live

C. in reference to state or condition
1. to remain as one, not to become another or different

II. to wait for, await one

Meno is the same word Jesus uses in John 15 when he describes Himself as the true vine and instructs His followers, the branches, to abide in Him. Therefore, to know the truth, the follower of Jesus must abide in Him.

Placing one’s faith in Christ sets one free from eternal punishment, but only by abiding in Christ can we know the truth and be free in this life. Paul makes the reality of a choice clear in Galatians 5:1 when he writes: “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” From this we can conclude that we can choose to abide in Christ, know the truth, and be free or we can choose to subject ourselves to a yoke of slavery. The yoke of slavery Paul is referring to in Galatians is legalism.

When one is abiding in Christ, He is being led by the Holy Spirit, so there is no need to resort to a list of rules and regulations to know how to live. The Spirit of Christ will not direct the believer to do anything in conflict with God's word. Galatians 5:18 says, “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

The tendency to live by rules and regulations and to attempt to obtain one’s righteousness from them is manifested by those who do not abide in Christ, who do not have a relationship with Him. According to Paul, people who live this way are in bondage. In Galatians 3:1 he asks the question: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

Paul is talking to Christians. He is saying, you were saved as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit. Now that you are saved, are you going to sanctify yourself by attempting to keep the law? That’s foolish. Just as you were unable to save yourself, you are unable to sanctify yourself. Only the Spirit can do that.

And He does it when you abide in Christ.

Happy Independence Day.

Do You Know Jesus?

2006-06-29T22:48:00.001-04:00

I opened up the proverbial can of worms this evening at Crunchy Con. I commented on the Anne Lamott thing, and they let me have it. I was asked the question:

Do *you* know [Jesus]?

Following is my answer in the context of the Anne Lamott euthanasia controversy.

A little more than two years ago, my greatly beloved maternal grandmother died of complications resulting from CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). We watched her waste away for weeks, the last of which she was under the care of Hospice, so morphine was available for the pain. It was excruciating to watch her suffer. However, it never occurred to any of us to take matters into our own hands and to end her life.

Why not? Because we know Jesus. As Christians, we know that God loves us more than we could possibly love ourselves and that He has a plan and a purpose for our lives. Sometimes His purposes are accomplished through suffering. I don’t understand it, and when I am enduring it, I certainly don’t like it, but because I KNOW Him, I can trust Him. No matter what. Because I trust Him, I can submit to His authority when He says, “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s that simple.

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.
Romans 8:16-18

Can Ann Lamott Be Regenerate?

2006-06-29T16:18:00.001-04:00

You will know them by their fruits.
Matthew 7:16

...the first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration is to give the heart a Divine taste or sense; to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature.
— Jonathan Edwards

I read Dr. Albert Mohler’s post about Ann Lamott last night before I went to bed, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. You should read it in order to have the proper context for my comments here.

I read several of Lamott’s nonfiction works years ago, and while I was always uncomfortable with her pro-choice position, her lack of concern for sexual purity, and her frequent use of unwholesome language, I took her testimony of being a Christian at face value. When faced with her own unplanned pregnancy by an unsupportive partner, she opted NOT to have an abortion, and her writing offers much evidence of a changed life. In addition, it takes time to be conformed to the image of Christ, and if we were all as open as she is about her life and wrote about it for a living as she does, our particular sin struggles would be more glaringly evident. On top of all this, she lives in Marin County, California, the Mecca of American liberalism. I mean, what can you expect?

However, after reading Dr. Mohler’s post, I have to ask the question, how can someone indwelt by the Spirit of Christ blatantly disregard the Biblical directive, “Thou shalt not kill” and participate in the euthanasia of a friend? Not only did she obtain the necessary drugs and administer the lethal dose, but her recounting of the process reveals no second thoughts and no subsequent remorse. The fact that she chose to write about it as she did displays a degree of hubris that is mind boggling.

My former thinking about Lamott in light of the current evidence has taught me something about myself. I wanted Lamott’s Christian testimony to be true for my own sake. I wanted someone who is a smart, hip, articulate, literary celebrity who claims to be a Christian to be the real thing because it makes the rest of us not look so bad. No one can possibly say Lamott is a right-wing fundamentalist. If Lamott loves Jesus and reads the Bible and goes to church, then perhaps the rest of us have been misunderstood.

Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.
I John 3:13

No more delusions.

A Heartbreaking Need for Jesus

2006-06-27T18:09:00.001-04:00

Don’t misunderstand my title. Everyone needs Jesus to the same degree—absolutely. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the need so painfully manifested in a human being before as I saw it in Lucy Grealy as recounted in Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty.

Truth and Beauty is the story of the friendship between novelist, Ann Patchett, and poet/writer Lucy Grealy. They were nominal acquaintances at Sarah Lawerence and later became best friends when they roomed together while in graduate school at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Grealy was disfigured from childhood cancer, and during her life she underwent thirty-eight operations in an attempt to reconstruct her face. Despite her disfigurement, Grealy was extremely charismatic and popular, and she was incredibly intelligent. She had a considerable number of friends who loved her and put up with behavior that would have prompted many people to give up on her early in a friendship. She published a book, Autobiography of a Face, to tremendous acclaim and subsequent financial success.

However, despite all that she had going for her, she was obsessed with wanting to be pretty and for others to love her. She would ask her friends continually if they loved her, and she constantly talked of being lonely and wanting to be loved by a man. She was promiscuous to a degree that caused me to marvel that she didn’t end up with STDs and AIDS. At the end of her life, she was addicted to heroin. She died penniless and estranged from many of her friends who no longer knew how to help her. Following is a passage describing her sense of loneliness:

Lucy’s loneliness was breathtaking in its enormity. If she emptied out Grand Central Station and filled it with the people she knew well, the people who loved her, there would be more than a hundred people there. But a hundred people in such a huge space just rattle around. You could squeeze us all into a single bar. With some effort you could push us into a magazine shop. If you added to that number all of the people that loved her because of her book, all the people who admired her, all the people who had heard her speak or had seem her on television or listened to her on the radio and loved the sound of her odd little voice, you could pack in thousands and thousands more people, and still it wouldn’t feel full, not full enough to take up every square inch of her loneliness. Lucy thought that all she needed was one person, the right person, and all the empty space would be taken away from her. But there was no one in the world who was big enough for that. (Emphasis mine.)

Lucy did need only one Person, and there is only one Person in the world who is big enough to have met Lucy’s need.

The title of the book is based on a passage early in the story wherein Patchett allude's to Keats's “Ode to a Grecian Urn”:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

How different Grealy’s life would have been, had she come to know the Truth (John 14:6).

Book Review: At the Corner of East and Now

2006-06-26T12:00:00.001-04:00

Several months ago, I read a wonderful column in Christianity Today by Frederica Matthewes-Green (FMG) that led me to purchase her book, At the Corner of East and Now. I’ve been reading this book off and on for some weeks, and I finally completed it on Sunday.

The subtitle of Facing East is “A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy.” FMG’s husband is an Orthodox priest, and the book is a collection of essays organized around the author’s recounting of an Orthodox worship service.

I enjoyed the book for several reasons. First of all, I love spiritual memoirs. If you like Kathleen Norris, Lauren Winner, and Anne Lamott, you will like FMG. Second, the only thing I knew about the Eastern Orthodox Church before reading this book was a vague memory from tenth grade world history about there being a schism with the Roman Catholic Church. I had never given the Orthodox Church much additional thought, but I suppose I assumed that it just another version of the Catholic Church. The book corrected my misconceptions. Finally, FMG has a way with words that enable her to articulate spiritual truth in an interesting way. I will share some examples in a moment.

The substantive differences I was able to ascertain between Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestant Evangelicalism are as follows.

Worship is high-church liturgical with incense, icons, and chanting.
The icons are paintings of saints and Biblical characters, and they are a significant part of worship.
Orthodox venerate the virgin Mary, the Theotokos or “God-bearer” in a way similar to the Roman Catholic Church.
Orthodox believe in transubstantiation.

Otherwise, the doctrine and theology seem quite sound. There is no Orthodox equivalent of an infallible Pope, no confessing to priests, no works-based righteousness. I was recently told that Orthodox do not believe in the Trinity, but that is clearly not the case here. In FMG’s cburch, they recite the Nicene Creed, and Facing East includes several Biblical references to the Trinity.

The basic position of Orthodoxy is that it is the direct descendant of the first century church. FMG writes:

While the initial schism between East and West led to further divisions in the West, as new Protestant denominations continue to emerge, the Orthodox Church remained intact. The Church is kept from significant change by its characteristic governing principle: conciliarity. Unlike religious bodies where a single powerful leader dispenses the faith, in Orthodoxy it is believed that the Holy Spirit guides the whole community of believers into the truth (as Jesus promised in John 16:13). Faith is a treasure jointly possessed by all believers, not one guarded by a powerful few; it accumulates over the centuries, never contradicting what has been previously held…What diverges from this shared faith would automatically disprove itself, even if it was urged by high ecclesiastical authority. No authority is greater than the common faith.

Since there is no locus of power where the faith may be tailored to fit current fashion, it doesn’t change in any significant way—not over long centuries or across great geographical distances. The faith of the first century is the faith of Orthodox today. When we meet in this little stone church outside Baltimore, we celebrate a Liturgy that is for the most part over fifteen hundred years old. We join in prayers that are being said in dozens of languages by Orthodox all over the world, prayers unchanged for dozens of generations.

Before he became an Orthodox priest, FMG’s husband was a mainline Protestant pastor. The following passage provides some insight into her conversion to Orthodoxy:

Orthodoxy initially struck me as strange and off-putting: beautiful but rigorous, and focused much more on God than on me. Western Christianity of many stripes has tended in recent decades to become somewhat soft and emotional—in a sense, consumer-focused. Orthodoxy has missed that bandwagon and still stubbornly addresses its energy toward worshipping God; every believer’s primary need, Orthodox would say, is to come further into this union with God, and the whole work of the faith is to enable this. It didn’t take long for me to be won over, as I found this God-focus was what I’d hungered for all along.

In this passage, she explains icons:
…the icon is a manifestation of the Word of God. In an illiterate culture, these scenes from Scripture and the lives of saints were the only Bible many could read….In painting icons, we affirm the Incarnation and God’s will to be visibly revealed to human eyes. Destroying icons indicates a desire to overspiritualize the faith and reject the body.

Here are a few other especially good passages:

Anyone who has attempted to live the spiritual life, in fact, knows this; we don’t dwell in a theoretical world where it is either all grace or all laborious will, but in a middle-in-between where vigilant effort repeatedly discovers that enabling grace has already gone before…The child works hard to learn to walk so he can learn to walk. He wants to move toward his mother’s arms; that is reward enough…When I follow the practices the community has found, through trial and error over long centuries, are helpful in drawing closer to God, I get the only reward I want” I get closer to God.

People newly coming to church should have an unfamiliar experience. It should be apparent to them that they are encountering something very different from the mundane. It should be discontinuous with their everyday experience, because God is discontinuous. God is holy, other, incomprehensible, strange, and if we go expecting an affable market-tested nice guy, we won’t be getting the whole picture. We’ll be getting the short God in a straw hat, not the big one beyond all thought….The well-intentioned idea of presenting the appealing, useful side of faith fails, I think, because it doesn’t question deeply enough the basic consumer ethos. The transaction that takes place between a shopper-seeker and the goods acquired (groceries, furniture, the key to the meaning of life) is one that leaves the seeker in control, in a position of judging, evaluating, and rejecting the parts he doesn’t like. But entering the faith is more like making a promise or beginning a marriage. It involves being grafted into a community and requires a willingness to grow and change. If it didn’t, if it merely confirmed us in our comfortable places, how could it free us to be more than we are?

It’s only when those emotions fade and you get down to the business of doing the work, following the way, saying the prayers even when you don’t feel like it, that your stony heart begins to budge. It’s only the offerings done from deliberate will that end the will and shape it to fit the will of God, Giddy emotions feel good, and all of might need a bowl of ice cream from time to time, but they don’t produce spiritual growth.

Somehow our willingness to receive was preceded by the grace to be willing, and the faith which results is brought to fruition by means beyond our own powers—sometimes, as in my case, mostly against our will. One inside the faith, many have a dawning realization that they were being sought all along, an experience poet Francis Thompson describes as being pursued by the “Hound of Heaven.” It’s been said that on the outside of the house of faith the sign over the door reads “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15) and on the inside the sign reads “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). All I know is, I came home, and I don’t ever want to be anywhere else.

It’s good for well-grounded, thinking Christians to read books like this because it broadens our understanding of who God is and how He works. Because of my particular history, it’s been especially helpful to me to expose myself to Christian thinking from other traditions.

This is actually FMG’s second memoir. Her first, Facing East, recounts her conversion to Christianity and her family’s switch to Orthodoxy. It’s in the ever-growing stack on my bedside table.

"What It Means to Be Reformed"

2006-06-26T10:21:00.001-04:00

As you may have noted in the "100 Things About Me", I describe myself as a Reformed Southern Baptist. Following is a link to an excellent post at Challies.com on "What It Means to Be Reformed"—for those of you who are not familiar with the term.

http://www.challies.com/archives/001926.php

"Give to Everyone Who Asks of You"

2006-06-21T15:37:00.001-04:00

He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor
Will also cry himself and not be answered.
Proverbs 21:13

Give to everyone who asks of you…
Luke 6:30

In November of 2004, I was blessed beyond measure to travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico to attend the annual RZIM Founders’ Conference with a friend who supports that ministry. On our free morning, we decided to take a taxi downtown to the historic district for breakfast and some shopping. We wanted to find a local café rather than McDonald’s or the like, so we walked for a little while before we found a busy hangout. We chose pastries from the window display and ordered café con leche to go intending to find a park bench so we could people watch while we ate.

We had barely stepped out of the door of the café when we were approached by a young man who asked us to buy him something to eat. He pointed to the pastries in the window and looked at me expectantly. I can’t remember what I said to him, but I refused him, walked quickly down the street, and dashed into a drug store because I needed to buy a toothbrush.

I immediately turned to my friend and expressed dismay at what I had done. She said that she thought he looked genuinely hungry, so we decided to go back out onto the street and look for him, give him our breakfasts, and then go back and buy something else for ourselves. Unfortunately, we didn’t find him. However, we did stop and pray for him—that someone else would be used by God to meet his needs.

I was haunted throughout the day with the image of that hungry young man. In fact, when I couldn’t even put the thoughts from my mind during a wonderful presentation by Beth Moore, I knew I was being hounded by the enemy. Since I couldn’t speak out loud, I wrote on my note pad: THERE IS THEREFORE NOW NO CONDEMNATION FOR THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST JESUS (Romans 8:1).

I cannot adequately describe the way I felt. I don’t think it would be going too far to say that I was sick at my stomach for what I had done, and I determined never to let it happen again. Jesus makes the standard very clear in Luke 6:30 when he says, “Give to everyone who asks you…” There are no qualifiers here. He doesn’t say that we have to be sure the person’s not a swindler or that they won’t use the money to buy alcohol or drugs. The burden to act is placed upon us, and God will be the judge.

It was almost a year before God gave me the opportunity to make up for that day. Our family was on a trip and we stopped for coffee. My husband went in and left the children and me in the car. An elderly black man approached the driver’s side window, which I appreciated because I didn’t feel threatened. He told me he was a Hurricane Katrina victim from New Orleans and that he needed a dollar for bus fare to get back downtown to the Salvation Army. I joke all the time about being a banker’s wife and never having any cash, but that day, as always, God was in control. I handed the man a five dollar bill and watched as he went into Mc Donald’s before catching his bus. Thanks be to the God of second chances.

Favorite Passage from Acts

2006-06-18T14:20:00.001-04:00

One more thing from Acts, and then it's on to Romans.

My favorite passage is in chapter 26. Paul is presenting his case to and sharing the gospel with King Agrippa and the Roman governor, Festus.

While Paul was saying this in his defense, Festus said in a loud voice, "Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad." But Paul said, "I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth."
Acts 26:24-25

No deep thoughts here. I just get a kick out of it.

Reflections on Acts, Part 3—BELIEVE

2006-06-18T14:13:00.001-04:00

My final thoughts on our Acts study are about belief. During the weeks of the study “believe” was on my mind a lot because the word is used by Luke so frequently. Here are some examples:

Acts 4:1
But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

Acts 4:32a
And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul;

Acts 8:12
But when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized men and women alike.

Acts 10:43
Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.

Acts 14:1
In Iconium they entered the synagogue of the Jews together, and spoke in such a manner that a large number of people believed, both of Jews and Greeks.

Acts 16:30-31
And after he brought them out, he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Acts 28:24
Some were being persuaded by the things spoken, but others would not believe,

If I am not mistaken (Someone please let me know if I am.), all forms of the word “believe” used in Acts are derived from the Greek root word “pistis,” which Strong’s defines as follows:

1) conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man's relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it
a) relating to God
1. the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ
b) relating to Christ
1. a strong and welcome conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God
c) the religious beliefs of Christians
d) belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same

2) fidelity, faithfulness
a) the character of one who can be relied on

Those of you whom I know are reading this are probably thinking, “Yeah, so what?” The emphasis in Acts upon belief and believers and those who had believed made me think often about the jargon we use in our postmodern Christian culture. We ask people if they are saved, if they have asked Jesus to come into their heart, when did they dedicate their life to Christ, and so on. Acts is about BELIEF. Why have we gotten away from using the word “believe”?

I think it’s because the common use of “believe” in our culture doesn’t mean very much any more. People go from religion to religion saying they believe each one as they experience it, but that can’t be true because if they really believed they would never walk away from a faith they claim to believe. Also, postmodern culture accepts that what each individual chooses to believe is okay and that there is no objective truth. Therefore, to believe in something is of much less consequence today than it would have been in the early church when believing on Christ could result in death or imprisonment.

“Believe” no longer has any weight, but “pistis” is weighty indeed because those who believed in the first century church were very different from the people around them. Their lives changed as a result of their believing the gospel, and the gospel spread because of their dedication to Christ and their example in the way they interacted with each other (See Acts 2.).

In Believing God, in her discussion of “pistis,” Beth Moore says, “…faith is not something that you have. It’s something you do.” True belief results in action, and anyone who claims to believe but doesn’t live like a believer cannot be a believer according to the picture of belief painted for us in Acts.

All this talk of belief makes me want to veer off into the direction of Christians not really knowing WHAT they believe, but I will save those musings for another day.

I am INDEED a Crunchy Con

2006-06-17T10:20:00.001-04:00

I bought Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher with some of my birthday money, and I finished reading it Thursday night. I did not jump the gun in describing myself as a crunchy con after reading the review in Books and Culture. Following are some excerpts.

(Of course, for me, the “Permanent Things” pertain to God, and “ancient wisdom” to the Bible.)

A Crunchy Con Manifesto

We are conservatives who stand outside the contemporary conservative mainstream. We like it here; the view is better, for we can see things that matter more clearly.
We believe that modern conservatism has become too focused on material conditions, and insufficiently concerned about the character of society. The point of life if not to become a more satisfied shopper.
We affirm the superiority of the free market as an economic organizing principle, but believe the economy must be made to serve humanity’s best interests, not the other way around. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
We believe that culture is more important than politics, and that neither American’s wealth no our liberties will long survive a culture that no longser lives by what Russell Kirk identified as “the Permanent Things”—those eternal moral norms necessary to civilized life, and which are taught by all the world’s great wisdom traditions.
A conservatism that does not recognize the need for restraint, for limits, and for humility is neither helpful to individuals and society nor, ultimately, conservative. This is particularly true with respect to the natural world.
A good rule of thumb: Small and Local and Old and Particular are to be preferred over Big and Global and New and Abstract.
Appreciation of aesthetic quality—that it, beauty—is not a luxury, but a key to the good life.
The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important.
We share Kirk’s conviction that “the best way to rear up a new generation of friends of the Permanent Things is to beget children, and read to them o’evenings, and teach them what is worthy of praise: the wise parent is the conservator of ancient truths…The institution most essential to conserve is the family.”
Politics and economics will not save us. If we are to be saved at all, it will be through living faithfully by the Permanent Things, preserving these ancient truths in the choices we make in everyday life. In this sense, to conserve is to create anew.

A Crunch Con political agenda might look like this:

Abolish or greatly restrict abortion and the death penalty.
Ban cloning, strictly limit human genetic research, and closely regulate the biotech industry.
Pass laws making it easier to home school, create alternative schools, or otherwise opt out of public education.
Make commonsense environmental protection a legislative priority.
Reform the agricultural, health, and commercial regulations to permit and encourage the flourishing of small farms and producers of local foodstuffs, and in turn repopulate rural America.
Shape zoning restrictions to favor the preservation of old buildings of historic value, require new development to conform to high aesthetic standards, and provide more public spaces for human interaction.
Adopt an attitude toward business laws that favors small business over large corporations.
Strengthen local prohibitions against pornography, and appoint judges who believe in the rights of communities to set their own standards.
Use government, within limits, to look after the poor and the weak without creating a culture of dependency.
Reform the tax code to offer extra support to married couples who choose to have larger families.
Orient government toward encouraging an expansion of the role of civil-society institutions—religious, fraternal, and service organizations—particularly at the local level.
Discourage “one-size-fits-all” national standards in education and other areas. Devolve control from Washington to states and localities.
Impose an energy policy designed to sharply reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and to develop alternative sources of energy.

As I anticipated, Dreher referred to and quoted Wendell Berry extensively. I will save a discussion of his works for a future post. Here are a few of my favorite passages:

The truth is, liberalism—if liberalism is understood as the setting free of people from all limits—has triumphed. Most of us do not believe in restraining our appetites; our politics merely concern which appetites ought to be restrained. Most conservatives believe that sexual appetites should be held in check, but on evidence, they don’t really believe it, and our side is virtually silent on the matter of our desires to get rich (except for a certain strain of religious conservative, for whom prosperity is next to godliness). Liberals believe that consumer desire and the ardor for wealth should be reined in, but it’s hard to see that they take their own rhetoric seriously. And they are silent about the social and personal destruction wrought by the institutionalization of the sexual revolution.

If crunchy conservatism stands for anything, it’s the questioning of Progress and thoughtful but radical dissent from an ideology that believes that the material universe is ours to manipulate to suit our ends.

The most important thing we can do is toss out the television of commit ourselves to drastically curtailing its use. Putting ourselves and our families on a strict mass-media diet is vital; how can we ever hope to think on the Permanent Things if we fill our minds with nothing but ephemerality?

I really could go on and on. There are some areas wherein my personal convictions are not as strong as Dreher’s, but there was nothing that I thought he was actually WRONG about. If you think you may have some crunchy con leanings, you definitely should read this book. However, I recommend that you wait until it comes out in paperback. I read on Dreher's blog this week that the paperback edition will be revised and updated.

(In the event that some of you are concerned that I may be turning into a “tree hugger,” you will note in the photo of my Birkenstocked feet that my toenails are painted. Also, I might add, that I still wear make up as well as all necessary undergarments.)

Abomination

2006-06-17T09:21:00.001-04:00

(See post below, “What It’s Really All About,” for context.)

I’ve been thinking about the word “abomination” ever since I used it to describe God’s feelings towards homosexual acts, as described in scripture. I was prompted to use this particular word because it was used during the program. However, brief research reveals that abomination is used more frequently in the King James Version than it is in modern translations. The New American Standard uses “detestable acts” rather than “abomination” in the Leviticus passages I noted.

Anyway, to the main point of this post. Last night, God brought to my mind another passage that uses the word "abomination" in the New American Standard translation:

There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

Hmm… Hard for us to feel so self-righteous now, isn’t it?

What It's Really All About

2006-06-16T10:36:00.001-04:00

Last night, against my better judgment, I watched Larry King Live to see Dr. Albert Mohler, along with a panel of leaders from other denominations, discuss the ordination of gay priests/pastors/ministers. I usually avoid watching these types of debates because I get extremely frustrated with the inability of those that represent the conservative evangelical Christian side to effectively present our side’s case. By the end of the program I am ranting and raving and my blood pressure is up considerably. Last night was no different.

Not to say that Dr. Mohler didn’t do a good job. He did fine until his last opportunity to speak when what he said made it SOUND like he was saying, “All you people need to do is get saved. Then you’ll be fine.” Yikes! Whether or not they are saved is NOT the issue in a debate like this because regardless of their actual spiritual condition, not only do they think they are saved, but several of the panel members were leaders in their respective churches, and they consider themselves to be much more enlightened than our side.

First, their position. The side supporting the ordination of homosexual church leaders’ position is as follows:
*They recognize that the Bible teaches homosexuality as sin.
*Their position is that they didn’t choose to be homosexual. God made them this way, and God loves them anyway.
*They do not take the position that the Bible is not God’s word, but that His truth is continuing to be revealed through the Holy Spirit, and the ordination of homosexual church leaders as well as gay marriage are areas where new truth is being revealed.

Of course, the position of our side, is:
*The Bible is God’s unchanging authoritative word, and it teaches that homosexuality is an abomination to God. (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 (KJV); See also Romans 1:26-28.)
*Natural law demonstrates that sexual union was made for male and female, and that it ultimately results in reproduction.
*Any sexual practice outside of marriage disqualifies a person to be a church leader.
*Marriage is defined by God as the union for life between and man and a woman.
*Believers are equipped through the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in them NOT to sin. (This point was never brought up last night by our side.)

My frustration with these types of debates stems not from what is being said but from what is NOT being said. When the lesbian pastor from the United Church of Christ responded to the Catholic priest’s natural law argument that her relationship was completely natural for her, I wanted to shout: "It’s completely natural for me to want to sit around with my head in a book all day and to ignore my house and my children, but that would be sinful for me to do!"

Just because something comes naturally doesn’t make it right. In fact, when something comes naturally to us, it should be highly suspect. The reason God gave us His word for a guide is that our feelings are not reliable. Jeremiah 17:9 says: The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

Homosexuality itself is not the problem, but is a symptom of the problem. The problem in a debate such as this is that the participants on their side are trying to justify their sin rather than to mortify it. Our side must present our case not from the standpoint of the sin, but from the standpoint of the provision God has made for us NOT to sin.

The other side knows the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong, but they have allowed Satan to delude them into thinking that they can’t do anything about it. He has convinced them that God has made them this way, and that God loves them anyway, and that it’s okay. God does love them. Whether or not He made them this way is a moot issue (Please don’t keep arguing about this, people!). Sin is not okay.

This type of thinking is used by Christians all the time to make excuses for their sin whether it be homosexuality, fornication, alcoholism, stealing, whatever. But the TRUTH is that those who are truly saved, do not have to sin. I must include a lengthy passage from Romans (6:1-14) to make my point:

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

This is what it is really all about. Most Christians, including practicing homosexuals (Yes, I do believe a homosexual can be saved.), do not understand what has happened to them. Believers have died to sin, and they must constantly make the choice to not present their bodies as instruments of unrighteousness, but to present themselves as someone alive from the dead. We must continually make the choice to present our bodies as instruments of righteousness. It is simple, but it is not easy. However, another thing that we must understand and believe in order to be successful is the extent of the power which is available to us in our efforts not to sin. Ephesians 1:18-20 says:

18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might 20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,

The power that resurrected Christ from the dead is available to us in our quest to mortify sin in our lives, but we must believe it in order for it to be effective. It is possible according to I Corinthians 6:9-11:

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Such were some of you. Fellow conservative evangelical Christians, let’s steer the conversation away from the particular sin and toward the transforming power of Jesus Christ. Let’s adequately teach the Word of God so that people truly understand what has happened to them in Christ and what they are capable of becoming through His power in their lives.

Something to Add...

2006-06-13T21:12:00.001-04:00

... regarding meeting physical needs. At our old church, the Lord's Supper was held on the first Sunday in the month, and the offering collected that day was set aside for ministries of mercy. The rationale was that as we reflected upon the mercy Christ had extended to us, we should desire to extend mercy to others.

Indeed.

Reflections on Acts, Part 2

2006-06-13T17:23:00.001-04:00

This is my second attempt at Part 2. The first attempt, begun more than a week ago, sounded harsh and judgmental, and while there is a place for righteous anger towards today’s church, I doubt that expressing it here is ultimately very beneficial. I also thought some of my comments may have been construed as criticisms against my own congregation, and I have no desire to go there. So I’ve decided to approach this from the standpoint of how God has convicted me personally in recent years regarding certain practices in the church as presented in Acts 2:42-47.

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

I’m going to avoid the urge to discuss Biblical illiteracy, church disunity, Christians living just like the rest of the world, and virtually nonexistent personal evangelism. I will concentrate on fellowship/hospitality and meeting physical needs.

Fellowship and Hospitality
I saw Biblical fellowship and hospitality in action in the church my husband I were members of when we first married. Most Sundays, the pastor, elders, and deacons would open their homes after morning worship and invite visitors and other church members for lunch. In my first weeks at the church (my husband-to-be was already a member), there was an invitation to a different home every Sunday. In this way, I got to really know a large number of people in a short period of time.

This practice emanated from two areas of conviction among the church leadership. First, a Biblical observance of the Sabbath that included avoiding eating out in restaurants; and second, a priority placed upon Biblical hospitality and fellowship that was demonstrated from the top down as well as taught from the pulpit. The church leaders lead by example and the example was followed among many members of the congregation.

All of this was a revelation to me. I was taught that observing the Sabbath was something that only Jews did; and fellowship meals were quarterly or monthly pot luck affairs at the church building. Despite my past experience, or perhaps because of it, I bought into the Sabbath observance/hospitality concept hook, line, and sinker. Unfortunately, before the practice could take hold within our own home we moved away.

Our transition to our new home was difficult, and had we not already had friends in the town to which we moved and family nearby, I don’t know that we would have stayed. It was impossible not to compare our new church to our old one, and one area in which the new church compared extremely unfavorably to the old one was in the area of fellowship. The only invitations we received to dine in other church members’ homes were from our Sunday school teachers and people with whom we were already friends. We decided there were a number of reasons for this. First, many people went to church with their extended families and ate Sunday lunches with them. Second, many people ate out after church. And finally, there was an altogether different definition of fellowship.

In his book, Simplify Your Spiritual Life, Donald S. Whitney explains the problem. Here is an excerpt from the chapter, “Seek True Fellowship, Not Mere Socializing.”

…socializing is not the same as fellowship. Unbelievers can socialize, only Christians can truly fellowship. But far too often we think we’ve enjoyed the rich feast of fellowship when we’ve only snacked on sometimes tasty but spiritually empty socializing.

At its simple best, fellowship involves two or more Holy Spirit indwelled people talking about God and the things of God…

A significant part of the Lords’ ministry to us comes through others in whom He lives. And He intends for us to experience much of this comforting, encouraging, instructing, reproving, guiding, and sustaining ministry through fellowship. But if we talk with our brothers and sisters almost exclusively about things even worldlings can discuss and understand, we deprive ourselves of many touches from Heaven.

True fellowship seldom occurs unintentionally, especially from those who do not yet see the difference between fellowship and socializing. Enjoy socializing with other Christians, but discipline yourself to talk more about things that matter, and talk about them as though they do matter.

Based on Whitney’s definition, greeting people at the start of worship is not fellowship but socializing. The weekly breakfast with the guys wherein nothing but football is discussed is not fellowship but socializing. Hanging around after church talking could be fellowship, but it is more likely that it is socializing. Even having people in your home can simply be socializing if you are not intentional in your efforts to provide true fellowship.

Those Sunday lunches in the early years of our marriage still inspire me. I have especially fond memories of having lunch in the pastor’s home. The food was always delicious, but never complicated, and the conversation was stimulating. My husband and I decided that instead of just pining for the past, we would do what we could do to follow that model in our new home and church. When it came time for us to purchase dining room furniture, we bought a table that would seat ten. I have been collecting recipes for dishes that can be assembled the evening before and that feed a number of guests. The homes we have built have large living areas conducive to entertaining modest crowds.

At this time, the reality of our practice has not matched our vision, but now that our children are getting a little older, our vision should become more of a reality. (Tired children don’t make for good dinner companions.) My prayer is that we would bless others as we have been blessed and that true fellowship would exist within the church.

Meeting Physical Needs
In recent years, God has made me sensitive to the lack of emphasis in the church upon meeting physical needs. Evangelical churches do not do nearly enough to meet physical needs and do not teach their members the importance of meeting physical needs. It is at best an afterthought. In Acts, Luke makes it clear that in the early church, things were much different: And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.

In his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, Ron Sider writes of the early church:

The picture of the first Christians in Jerusalem presented in the early chapters of Acts is one of astonishing love and joyous fellowship. Dramatic economic sharing was the norm… From later sections of Acts, it becomes clear that families retained private property. Membership in the fellowship did not mean one must place all property in a common purse. But the economic sharing was so extensive that observers were compelled to say that “there were no needy persons among them” (4:34). This astonishing economic sharing produced powerful evangelistic results!

Anyone with a heart for meeting physical needs cannot but refer to Christ’s own emphasis on the subject in His description of the judgment in Matthew 25:35-36:
For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; I was naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick , and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.

It is interesting to note that in this description of the judgment, God doesn’t judge based on effectiveness in sharing the gospel but on efforts at meeting physical needs. I think this is because the two cannot be separated. A concern for physical needs is inherent in the gospel message. In His “mission statement” in Luke 4:18-19, Jesus, quoting Isaiah, says of himself:

The spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
Ad recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

Meeting physical needs is another area in my life wherein the reality doesn’t match the vision, but at this time, we are doing what we can. We are supporting a Romanian family monthly through World Vision, and we are responding to other needs as God directs us. Also, in serving as president of my WMU group for the past two years, I have been able to lead in making meeting physical needs a priority for our group.

I will close with something to ponder from Ron Sider:
The World Bank reports that 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people try to survive on just one dollar a day. At least one billion people have never heard the gospel. …if American Christians just tithed, they would have another $143 billion available to empower the poor and spread the gospel.

God is Not Subtle…

2006-06-13T10:46:00.001-04:00

…and there are no coincidences in the Christian life. When God wants to communicate something to me, I will encounter it in my personal study time, we will talk about it in Sunday school, my pastor will preach on it, and I’ll hear Charles Stanley talk about it on the radio. To top it all off, I’ll encounter it again in My Utmost for His Highest (MUFHH). All of this will transpire over the course of a few days.

Do you read MUFHH? If not, you need to. I never cease to be amazed by Oswald Chambers’s wisdom and spiritual insight. He has a way of saying things you have heard countless times before in a whole new way. I don’t read it every day, but it is uncanny how when I do read it, it speaks directly to something I am dealing with. Here is an excerpt from today’s (June 13) reading:

There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself (see Romans 12:1). If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you—and His experiments always succeed. The one true mark of a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ. … A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus. Never try to make your experience a principle for others, but allow God to be as creative and original with others as He is with you.

I know that an aspect of my struggles is an unrealistic expectation that my FEELINGS will go away, but surrender is doing what you do and thinking what you think regardless of your feelings. I want to be in the place where my will is always conformed to that of Christ’s and my feelings are always in subordination to my will.

Here’s something I wrote on November 19, 2004 that articulates how I feel about this process:

Last night,
As I lay in bed
Contemplating my life,
I concluded
That my SELF
Is dying a
Long,
Slow,
Painful
Death.

I realize that I’m doing this to myself because He says, My yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:30). Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief (Mark 9:24 KJV).

All Fundamentalists are NOT the Same

2006-06-07T09:17:00.001-04:00

I keep reading here and there that there is no difference between differnt forms of fundamentalism whether it be Muslim, Christian, Buddist, whatever. Even Kirby Godsey, outgoing president of Mercer Univeristy, said it in a May 28, 2006 article in the Macon Telegraph. (The article is no longer available for free. It's a shame because the article leaves no doubt that he is indeed a heretic.)

I haven't taken personal offense at this because I consider myself to be orthodox rather than fundamentalist, but it hasn't set well with me. This post by Cruchy Con illuminates the problem with this thinking. Read it. But in the meantime, this is the point he closes with:

Funny, but whenever liberals I know say there is no difference between Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists, I ask them if they had to choose, would they prefer to ride on an airplane piloted by graduates of Bob Jones University, or graduates of a Pakistani madrassa?

Eternal Significance

2006-05-30T21:12:00.001-04:00

I must take a break from Acts to write about something that has been on my mind in one form or another for several years now. A crisis of sorts—not significant, thankfully—has brought me to this point. But more about that in a moment.

For several years I have been praying off and on for God to enable me to care about the things that really matter and not to care about the things that don’t matter. I have asked Him to give me an eternal perspective and to help focus my attention on things of eternal significance.

Following are some verses I have memorized to help me become eternally minded.

Set you mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:2-3

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lost heart.
Hebrews 12:1-3

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:19-21

Despite the fact that I have been praying about it and thinking about it for some time, I still struggle desperately in this area. I am far too easily entangled in and encumbered by the things of this world. I especially struggle with (1) being controlled by my circumstances and (2) by materialism. I also have a strong tendency to obsess over a particular interest until I wear myself out over it. Hence, the crisis that has prompted this post: THE KNITTING OBSESSION HAS GOTTEN OUT OF HAND AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

I don’t want to stop knitting, but knitting and related activities (such as reading knitting blogs and magazines and looking at patterns) are taking up way too much of my time and mental energy. This evening, I ripped out a project because it wasn’t PERFECT. This is the type of crisis that usually gets my attention and enables me to adjust my perspective.

A few months ago, God revealed to me the obsessive nature of my interests, and I shared this realization with my small group. I told them that now that I understood this about myself, I wanted the Word to be what I obsessed over, not other temporal things. Once again, I have gotten off track. It reminds me of one of the verses from Come Thou Fount:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let they goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart. O take and seal it;
Seal it for thy courts above.

If the Spirit brings it to mind, please pray for me in my efforts to “set my mind on things above” and to “lay up for myself treasure in heaven.” I would be glad to pray the same for you.

Reflections on Acts, Part I

2006-05-30T16:17:00.001-04:00

This spring, our small group studied Acts using Kay Arthur’s New Inductive Study Series. Being a “doctrine girl,” I was afraid I would get bored, and although there were times it dragged a little for me, the study was much more of a blessing than I anticipated. Following is the first of three planned posts highlighting some of the things that stand out from the study that I have thought about and that we discussed as a group during our last meeting.

God is Working His Plan
God has a plan, and He will carry it out, and He usually does it in ways that are completely unexpected (Isaiah 55:9). First, growth of the church and the spread of Christianity were prompted by persecution that began with the stoning of Stephen (8:1). Jesus told the disciples in 1:8, “and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” Persecution was the means God used to relocate the first believers so the gospel would spread.

Persecution as a catalyst for the spread of the gospel reminds me of our recent missions conference. Carmen Hale from Elam Ministries spoke to us about their work in Iran. She told us that when the Shah was in power and there was religious freedom in Iran, no one was interested in the gospel, but since Islamist fundamentalists have been in power the church has been growing. Several Iranian pastors have been martyred in recent years, and people are now flocking to the churches. A new translation of the New Testament into Farsi (Persian) was recently completed and published. Carmen showed us a video of the clandestine arrival of the new Bibles, and you have never seen more beautiful, joyful people as those who were waiting expectantly for their new Bibles—in the knowledge that their presence at this event could cost them their lives.

A second observation about God working His plan relates to Paul and his intentions to go to Rome. Romans 1: 9-17 and Romans 15:20-33 make it clear that Paul planned to stop off in Rome en route to Spain NOT to spend several years imprisoned there. However, God in His infinite wisdom provided the circumstances for Paul to author Ephesians, Philemon, Colossians, Philippians, and II Timothy through Paul’s imprisonment. (Paul was imprisoned twice in Rome. First, from ~60 A.D. to 62 A.D. and, then, from ~63 A.D. to 64 A.D.)

God Keeps His Promises
In Genesis 12:3, God tells Abram, “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” A brief online search gives an approximate date of 2147 B.C. for God’s calling of Abram. More than 2,000 years later, we begin to see this promised fulfilled in Acts chapter 10 with the Roman Centurion Cornelius’s conversion.

This brings to mind 2 Peter 3:8-9: But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

I am someone who often FEELS (herein lies the problem) that God is not moving quickly enough for me. I would do well to remember His word and how He has worked in the past.

Next time, I will examine the first church as presented in Acts.

I'm a "Crunchy Con"

2006-05-04T15:02:00.001-04:00

I've finally found out that there is a demographic group out there to which I belong: "crunchy cons". Crunchy, as in granola, and con, as in conservative. The term was created by Rod Dreher, who wrote an article in National Review that received tremendous positive response, which lead to a book, Cruncy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America (or at least the Republican Party). Dreher also has a blog that I have really been enjoying. In fact, it has replaced Albert Mohler's as my favortie in this genre. (I also read a few knitting blogs.)

I haven't read the book yet, but from what I've read by Dreher and reviewers, in a nutshell, you are a crunchy con if you wear Birkenstocks, shop at Whole Foods, are concerned about the environment and the poor (all generally associated with liberals) AND you are pro life, churchgoing, and tend to vote Republican.

It's always good to know you're not alone.

Considering Christianity? Try the Tao

2006-04-04T12:04:00.001-04:00

…the attempt to practice the Tao is certainly the right line. Have you read the Analects of Confucius? He ends up by saying “This is the Tao. I do not know if any one has ever kept it.” That’s significant: one can really go direct from there to the Epistle to the Romans.
—C.S. Lewis, from a letter to Sheldon Vanauken

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:23

I am currently reading A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. It’s the autobiographical love story of the author’s relationship with his wife, but the most significant aspect of the story is that the couple converted to Christianity while in graduate school at Oxford in the 1950s. Their conversion was the result of an intellectual inquiry into Christianity in an effort to be “fair." Following is a quote that demonstrates Vanauken’s philiosphy: If minds like St. Augustine’s and Newman’s and Lewis’s could wrestle with Christianity and become fortresses of that faith, it had to be taken seriously. I writhed a bit at the thought of my easy know-nothing contempt of other years. Most of the people who reject Christianity know almost nothing of what they are rejecting: those who condemn what the do not understand are, surely, little men.

In the midst of his study and many questions, Vanauken decided to write a letter to C.S. Lewis, who was teaching at Oxford at the time and whose books Vanauken had read extensively. In the first letter to Lewis, Vanauken asks a number of questions including ones regarding Eastern religions. The quote above is from Lewis’s response. When I read it, I shouted, “Yes!” If it isn’t obvious to you (and it hasn’t been to several people I have read it to) the point Lewis is making is that if you are considering Christianity, a good place to start is by attempting to live by the moral code of an Eastern religion such as by the Tao. Even Confucius basically said that it can’t be done. Such an exercise will demonstrate your sinfulness as explained by Paul in his letter to the Romans. One you are aware of your sinfulness and your inability to live up to God’s standards, that only viable alternative for salvation is faith in Christ.

I have read several of Lewis’s books, but the content of the eighteen letters excerpted in A Severe Mercy makes me want to read more of his nonfiction. I was impressed with Lewis's character as demonstrated in his letters and his relationship with the Vanaukens. Not only was Lewis instrumental in leading them and others to Christ, but he also continued to pray for them daily for years, and his letters ministered greatly to Vanuaken after his wife’s death.

If you’re interested in reading A Severe Mercy, I must warn you that the first chapter is a little hard to take. The pagan exultation of romantic love and “The Shining Barrier” were bizarre to me. But once the story shifted to England I loved it. I have a couple of chapters left to read. If there’s anything else I feel compelled to share, you will see it here soon.

Beloved Disciple Study Completed

2006-03-30T10:20:00.001-05:00

…His name is called the Word of God.
Revelation 19:13

Last night, my group finished Beth Moore’s Beloved Disciple study focusing on the life and writings of John. It was my first experience leading a Bible study, and God taught me as much through teaching as He did through the study itself. When I think of this study, I will always remember what God taught me about the Logos and rhema (See “Logos and Rhema” in the February 2006 archives.), but just as important is what He taught me about how the Holy Spirit works through the Word. If you are not diligently studying the Word, you are limiting the opportunities for the Spirit to work in and through you.

I have also been overwhelmed by the love and encouragement expressed by the study participants. If any of you are reading this, thank you for your kind words, your enthusiasm, and your faithfulness in your participation. And thank you for the lovely oil lamp you gave me last night as a parting gift of appreciation! (See photo above.) I will treasure it always.

I have been hesitant to study Revelation because, frankly, it makes me uncomfortable. I think one reason is because my eschatological leanings differ from the majority of Christendom and from my denomination in particular. My general feeling about eschatology (the study of last things) is that it is somewhat pointless when we will never be able to figure out what prophetic writings really mean, and there is so much Scripture that is perfectly clear in its teaching. I don’t know about you, but I will spend the rest of my life learning to walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16).

Preoccupation with last things is a distraction in the body of Christ. Just watch Christian television for five seconds and you will understand what I mean. What we do know is that Jesus is coming back, and that the bride (the church) should be making herself ready (Revelation 19:7). However, instead of making herself ready, she is spending too much time trying to figure out when he is coming back. This is bewildering to me in light of I Thessalonians 5:2: For you yourselves know full well that they day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.

But, as usual, I digress. Despite my hesitancy to study Revelation, I truly enjoyed and was blessed by the last three weeks of Beloved Disciple. Rather than concentrating on the potentially controversial aspects of John’s Revelation, Moore examined the general truths that could be gleaned. She is blessed with an imagination that enables her to draw lessons from imagery that I would never come up with. (At least, I don’t think I would. But now that I’ve seen the Spirit work in teaching preparation, there’s no telling what I may come up with in the future.)

When I read Revelation 19:13, …His name is called the Word of God, I experienced something akin to butterflies in my stomach. The Logos again. It’s all about the Logos.

Sola Scriptura

2006-03-29T16:04:00.001-05:00

It’s been several weeks since I completed Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace by James Montgomery Boice, but I’m just now making the time to sit down and report on it. As you might guess, my favorite chapter was “Scripture Alone,” referred to as “sola Scriptura” by the Reformers. Following are two of my favorite passages.

The Reformers wanted scripture to stand alone as the church’s true authority. Today, at least in the evangelical church, that is not our chief problem; we assert biblical authority. Rather, our problem is in deciding whether the Bible is sufficient for the church’s life and work. We confess its authority, but we discount its ability to do what is necessary to draw unbelievers to Christ, enable us to grow in godliness, provide direction for our lives, and transform and revitalize society. …in the sixteenth century the battle was against those who wanted to add church traditions to Scripture, but in our day the battle is against those who would have us use worldly means to do God’s work.

Referring to Romans chapter six: Paul’s “method” for sanctification is biblical doctrine. That is, to live as Christians we must know what God has done to us in making us Christians. We must know what has happened, and the only way we can know what has happened is to know the Bible. …This has nothing to do with either a method or an experience. It has everything to do with knowing and living by the sufficient Word of God. Is it not true that one reason we see such immature and even sinful behavior among Christians today is that they have not really been taught what God has done to them and for them when he saved them? And aren’t our churches immature precisely because the pastors are not teaching Bible doctrines?

I thank God that since my conversion I have been in churches that preach Biblical doctrine!

I could sit here and type for the rest of the day and not include everything that I want to share with you. I highly recommend this important book.

Evangelicial Climate Initiative

2006-03-14T22:15:00.001-05:00

The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains,
The world, and those who dwell in it.
Psalm 24:1

Those of you who know me well are familiar with my granola leanings. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to see an ad for the "Evangelical Climate Initiative" in the most recent issue of Christianity Today (CT). For me, concern for the environment is a stewardship issue, and apparently, there are plenty of belivers out there who agree with me. Please go to the website and read their statement and see the signatories. There's also a list of ways we can help solve the global warming problem: http://www.christiansandclimate.org/action.

My prayer is that Christians who have claimed that there is no global warming problem will examine the evidence for themselves and change their minds. See this editorial from the August 2005 issue of CT.

Was Job Sinless?

2006-02-28T14:51:00.001-05:00

…that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.
Job 1:1

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:23

There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks after God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.
Romans 3:10-13

My Sunday School class is reading through and discussing the book of Job. This past Sunday, when we came to chapter 9 verse 23, our teacher asked for our thoughts on “He (God) mocks the despair of the innocent.” I responded that what comes to mind is that no one is innocent. One can only be declared righteous by God and that is based on one’s faith in the substitutionary death of Christ. Another person in class whose opinion I respect replied, “But it says in chapter one that Job was blameless. In fact, God says so Himself (Job 1:1, 8).” I resisted the urge to respond, but now I think I should have because whether or not Job was sinless has extremely significant implications.

What immediately came to mind were the verses in Romans 3 quoted above. Paul maintains that all have sinned and that no one is righteous. In fact, in verses 10 through 13 Paul is quoting David in Psalms 14 and 53, so on the face of it, it is not simply Job verses Paul but Job verses David and Paul, and if I were a betting person, I would put my money on David and Paul over Job any day. If scripture doesn’t contradict scripture (which I believe it cannot), then Job can’t be blameless in the sense that he was sinless because if Job was sinless, then man is capable of attaining moral perfection on his own, and there is no need for God’s grace—no need for Christ. I figured that it all hinged on the Hebrew word for blameless, but of course I didn’t have a concordance and Hebrew dictionary with me. (I’m thinking of carrying them with me from now on.)

I suffered through worship and lunch at my in-laws itching to get home to my computer and books to determine what blameless really means. The Hebrew word for blameless used in Job 1:1 and 1:8 is “tam.” It is actually translated in the King James Version as “perfect.” Strong’s defines it as follows:
1) perfect, complete
a) complete, perfect
1) one who lacks nothing in physical strength, beauty, etc.
b) sound, wholesome
1) an ordinary, quiet sort of person
c) complete, morally innocent, having integrity
1) one who is morally and ethically pure

So when the writer used “tam” to describe Job, it is likely he meant that Job was a person of integrity. However, I knew that Katy Sammons’s opinion on the matter wouldn’t carry much weight, so I continued researching.

Matthew Henry explains “perfect” as: “not sinless, as he himself owns (ch. ix. 20): If I say I am perfect, I shall be proved perverse. But, having a respect to all God’s commandments, aiming at perfection, he was really as good as he seemed to be, and did not dissemble in his profession of piety; his heart was sound and his eye single. Sincerity is gospel perfection. I know no religion without it.”

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary says: “Perfect—not absolute or faultless perfection (compare Job 9:20, Ec 7:20), but integrity, sincerity, and consistency on the whole, in all relations of life (Ge 6:9, 17:1; Pr 10:9; Mt 5:48). It was the fear of God that kept Job from evil (Pr 8:13).”

The New Geneva Study Bible (R.C. Sproul, General Editor) includes this comment: “blameless and upright. This ordinary language does not mean that Job was sinless.”

How did we get to chapter nine without addressing what “blameless” really means? Based on my knowledge of scripture and understanding of doctrine, I suppose I simply assumed that blameless could not possibly mean sinless and that everyone else thought the same way I did. The lesson I gain from this is that there can be no assumptions. I must be diligent to “accurately handle the word” (2 Timothy 2:15).

So Many Books

2006-02-25T16:16:00.001-05:00

…excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.
—Ecclesiastes 12:12

So many books, so little time,
So many hunger, so many blind
Starving for words, they must wait in the night
To open a Bible and move towards the Light.
—Michael Card

I am very tired this afternoon. Indeed Solomon was correct when he wrote “excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body” because my devotion to reading Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace by James Montgomery Boice has kept me up late the past several nights in a row. I will provide a complete report when I finish the book, but for now, my being tired and the arrival of my Amazon.com order this afternoon prompted me to write this post.

My Amazon.com order included When Life and Beliefs Collide by Carolyn Custis James and Encountering John by Andreas J. Kostenberger. Beth Moore mentions both of these books in Beloved Disciple, and despite the fact that the stack on my bedside table is getting out of hand (see photo), I ordered them anyway. It’s easy for me to justify buying books that relate to the Word or that contribute to spiritual growth.

From looking at my bedside table it may be difficult for you to believe, but I actually buy far fewer books than I used to when I was employed outside the home. Back then, I bought books almost indiscriminately. If I wanted it, I bought it. Thankfully, about the time I stopped earning a paycheck, Georgia Library PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services) became operational, and now, instead of ordering books I’m interested in, I USUALLY check PINES first. If a book is available in the system (which includes most of the public libraries in Georgia), I request it, and it is sent to my local branch. When the book arrives, one of the librarians calls me, and I go pick it up. With this approach, I can at least review a book thoroughly before buying it, and there are many fewer instances of buyer’s remorse.

I can’t remember the exact moment, but at some point during the past several years, God convicted me of obsessive reading as a result of a thirst for human knowledge. I was spending too much time with books other than the Word. I have not been moved to read only the Word or Christian books as a relative has, but I am much more discriminating than I used to be, and I prioritize Bible study over reading. My reading is pretty much limited to an hour or two before bed time, while time during the day is devoted to Bible study. I am now capable of actually leaving Barnes and Noble empty-handed.

When I’m tempted to get off balance in my reading and study habits, I remember Colossians 2:3—in [Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Mudhouse Sabbath

2006-02-23T15:52:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week, I read Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner. I was introduced to Winner through a Christianity Today review of her first book, Girl Meets God, which I read and enjoyed immensely. Girl Meets God recounts Winner’s conversion from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, and Mudhouse Sabbath continues her reflections by examining how Jewish rituals inform and enrich her Christian experience.

She says in the introduction:
…I miss Jewish ways. I miss the rhythms and routines that drew the sacred down into the everyday. I miss the Sabbaths on which I actually rested. I have even found that I miss the drudgery of keeping kosher. I miss the work these practices effected between me and God. … Jews do these things with more attention and wisdom not because they are more righteous nor because God likes them better, but rather because doing, because action, sits at the center of Judaism. Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity. This is not to say that Judaism doesn’t have dogma or doctrine, It is rather to say that for Jews, the essence of the thing is a doing, an action. Your faith might come and go, but your practice ought not waver. (Indeed, Judaism suggestions that the repeating of the practice is the best way to ensure that a doubter’s faith will return.)

This reminded me of what I love about liturgical worship. To me, saying the Lord’s Prayer, Apostle’s Creed, corporate prayer of confession and other regular aspects of a liturgical service, better enable me to focus on God, and they are especially beneficial on the increasingly rare days when my heart’s not really in what I’m doing. It has been almost eight years since I’ve worshipped regularly in this manner, but I still miss it. Reading Winner’s thoughts on “practice” enabled me to better articulate what I appreciate about this type of worship.

Here are some of Winner’s thoughts on the Sabbath:
…my Sunday was more an afternoon off than a Sabbath. It was an add-on to a busy week, not the fundamental unit around which I organized my life. The Hebrew work for holy means, literally, “set apart.” In failing to live a Sabbath truly distinct from weekly time, I had violated a most basic command: to keep the Sabbath holy. … In observing the Sabbath, one is both giving a gift to God and imitating Him. Exodus and Deuteronomy make this clear when they say, “Six days shall you labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” To the Lord your God.

On hospitality:
To invite people into our homes is to respond with gratitude to the God who made a home for us. … We are not meant simply to invite people into our homes, but also to invite them into our lives. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right is not an imposition, because we are not meant to rearrange our lives for our guests—we are meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are.

On fasting, a former rabbi once told her, “When you are fasting and you feel hungry, you are to remember that you are really hungry for God.” She later adds, “When I am sated, it is easy to feel independent. When I am hungry, it is possible to remember where my dependence lies.”

Unfortunately, one practice that Winner does not write about in Mudhouse Sabbath is studying the Word. However, her discussion of her studies of the Torah and the Talmud in Girl Meets God is fascinating. I highly recommend both books. Check the library.

Taking Issue with Beth Moore

2006-02-15T23:11:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am leading a Bible study for women entitled Beloved Disciple: The Life and Ministry of John by Beth Moore. First, I must say that I have been blessed tremendously by Moore as I have completed most of her studies, the first of which sparked my passion for studying God’s Word nearly seven years ago; and I have the utmost respect for her calling and her love for teaching the Word. That being said, in the course of this week’s study, I encountered something that caused me to nearly come unglued.

The third sentence of the fourth paragraph on page 107 in Beloved Disciple reads as follows: “They [God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] knew that equipping people with their own will would necessitate a plan for redemption, because they would ultimately make some very poor choices.”

My first reaction was to write in the margin: “Yikes! Ephesians 2:1!” I was able to calm myself down enough to complete the day’s lesson, but I was really disturbed, and I didn’t know what to do. My husband suggested writing to her, and I think I will, but at the time, my primary concern was how to handle this situation with my students. I didn’t want to appear to be criticizing Moore, but I knew that it had to be addressed. As I prayed and thought about it over the next few days, God lead me to prepare a handout that included the diagram below and other comments. I reviewed the handout during class and then asked the students to place it in their books between pages 106 and 107.

The problem with Moore’s statement is that it is a completely inadequate explanation as to why a plan of redemption was needed. Our relationship with God is never about what we do (“poor choices”); it is about who were are—our condition. And how bad we are cannot be overemphasized. To say that we need redemption because God knew we would make poor choices is fundamentally incorrect. We need to be redeemed because we are separated from God, condemned to hell, and spiritually dead. Following is the diagram I prepared.

We are not lost because we sin; we sin because we are lost. And we are not saved because we do good works; we do good works because we are saved. It sounds simple, but I believe much of Christendom doesn’t really get it. Many people recognize that they are sinful and that they need forgiveness, but they look to Christ as a way to help them get to heaven rather than as the means to redeem them from a state in which they are utterly incapable of doing anything to earn God’s approval.

Moore states that her goal for weeks five and six is for us to have “more.” She wants us to be satisfied in and to have an abundant life in Christ. We cannot have this kind of relationship with Him if we do not fully apprehend and appreciate what he has done for us. Only an understanding of our complete inability to earn favor with God apart from God’s gift of salvation (Ephesians 2:8) through Christ’s atoning death on the cross can motivate a love for Christ that enables us to live an abundant life of obedience wherein our purpose is to glorify God.

Why the Bible is Not My “Favorite Book”

2006-02-12T13:26:00.001-05:00

If you have looked at my profile, you will have seen that I have listed my favorite books as being Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Personally, this is interesting because I actually read more nonfiction than I do fiction with biography being my favorite genre by far. (The best biography I have read is John Adams by David McCullough, in case you’re curious.) In light of the fact that the focus of this blog is the Word, you may have wondered why I didn’t include the Bible among my favorite books. The answer is simple to me. Just as I would never name the Person in whom the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwelled (Colossians 2:9 KJV) as being the greatest man who ever lived, I cannot bring myself to call God’s revelation to man my favorite book.

Referring to the Bible as a favorite book has for a long time not set well with me, even when I was at a loss to explain why. When I was in my early twenties and not walking with God, a Christian woman whom I knew at work was selected for the employee profile in the company newsletter. She listed the Bible as her favorite book. I admit at the time that I probably felt a certain amount of embarrassment for her as my division was rife with intellectual agnostics and atheists, but it was more than that. Favorite book? It’s the Word of God. I knew that long before I fully comprehended what it meant.

Now that I am studying John (see "Logos and Rhema", below) and have been a faithful student of the Word for some years, I can say with complete confidence that to name the Bible as my favorite book would be a gross understatement and misrepresentation. The Word is my reason to get up every day and keep walking. It is my life.

Morning Prayer

2006-02-10T09:38:00.001-05:00

On page 90 in Beloved Disciple, Beth Moore recounts a difficult time in her life when she began every morning with Psalm 90:14. I have reworded the Psalm in the form of a prayer to begin each day in the expectation that God will satisfy me with His unfailing love so that I will not go searching for satisfaction elsewhere.

Lord, satisfy me this morning with your unfailing love that I may sing for joy and be glad today.

Logos and Rhema

2006-02-09T22:55:00.001-05:00

I am currently involved in two Bible studies. My small discipleship group is studying Acts, and I am leading a women’s study on Wednesday evenings at my church. The study I am leading is Beloved Disciple: The Life and Ministry of John. The ten-week study includes five lessons per week to complete independently and a weekly 50-minute video to watch as a group. Beth Moore is the author of the study and the speaker on the videos.

The way I’ve been preparing is to complete the five lessons for the week a day or so before Wednesday. Then, on Wednesday mornings (“Mother’s Morning Out”), I prepare for a thirty-minute discussion to precede the video. As I prepare, I pray for God’s direction, and I look back over the week’s lessons at the passages I’ve highlighted and the notes and prayers I have recorded in the margins. So far, God’s direction has been very clear as to what He would have me discuss, and everything I have covered so far has taken almost exactly thirty minutes. As I make notes for our discussion, scripture is constantly coming to mind to back up the points I want to make. I usually know the book where the verse is found, but I don’t always know the chapter and verse. This is where the Blue Letter Bible comes in handy.

As I was preparing for this week’s meeting, God directed me to share a brief testimony with the group about my preparation process. The purpose of the preparation testimony was to demonstrate how the Holy Spirit applies knowledge of the Word. I shared with them how verses constantly come to mind. I never have to search for a verse to back up what I want to say. Rather, a verse initiates a point. I wanted them to understand that if they will commit to studying and knowing the Word, the same thing would happen for them. The Holy Spirit would bring verses to mind when they need them. I shared that I can’t take credit for it because my memory for the mundane has diminished significantly in recent years, but my knowledge of the Word has not. The explanation is found in John 14:26: But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

I never watch the videos in advance but I do usually go ahead and complete the Video Response Sheet using the leader’s handbook in case Beth goes too fast and we miss a point; but this week, I didn’t think to do it. So going into the video, I knew very little about what to expect, and it certainly didn’t inform my preparation for the discussion. The first part of the video discussed divine inspiration of scripture—doctrine about which I am well-informed and agree with completely. Part 2 was titled “Grasping God’s Primary Intention through His Inspiration of John’s Gospel.” Following is an excerpt from the completed Video Response Sheet (Week Five, page 92):

1. One of the overriding themes in the Gospel of John is presented from the very first verse: Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John wanted his reader to know and to recognize the Word.
2. The Greek term for Word is Logos. Basically, it refers to the expression of God revealed to man. God revealed Himself through His Son and His Word.
3. The only way we will ever really know the Word, both the Person and the print, is to know His words. Both of these verses [John 15:7, Ephesians 6:17] employ the Greek word rhema.

As Beth was reading John 15:7,—If you abide in Me, and My words [rhema] abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.—God spoke to my heart as clearly as any human being in the flesh has ever spoken. Something to the effect of “Katy, as you demonstrated in your testimony earlier, My words [rehma] abide in you. You know the Word [Logos]. It’s time to stop living in defeat and short-changing the work I have done in you.” It was all I could do not to jump up, pause the video, and testify.

To use a phrase my pastor likes to use, I was “freed up.” I tend to be extremely self-critical and to dwell on my sin and short-comings. I also have always been hard pressed to understand exactly what people mean when they talk about their relationship with Christ. It sounds so touchy feely. But later that evening, as I was reflecting on what God was teaching me, I wrote the following words in my journal: “Just as I was wrong to think that walking in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16) would result in some supernatural spirit/energy/ability-not-to-sin boost, I was also wrong to think that my relationship with Christ would be touchy feely. Why would He have a touchy feely relationship with me when I am NOT a touchy feely person?! Your relationship with me was designed for the way you created me!”

It is really hard for me to express exactly what I have grasped here and what it means to me. The bottom line is I have known for a long time that I am saved, and I also recognized that I have a better-than-most knowledge and understanding of Scripture. But now I can say with complete conviction that I know the Word, and because of faithful study, He has gifted me with knowing His words. Now I am prepared for Him to do far more abundantly beyond all that I ask or think according to the power that works within me (Ephesians 3:20).

Logocentric

2006-02-09T17:48:00.001-05:00

After creating this blog, it occured to me that perhaps logoscentric was a real word, and that I may be using it incorrectly, so I went back to dictionary.com to find out. There was an entry for "logocentric" (no "s"), which means "excessive attention paid to the meanings of words or distinctions in their usage." Interestingly, I could be described as logocentric. Thankfully, "Logoscentric" will remain the title of my blog.

Raison D'Etre

2006-02-09T11:16:00.001-05:00

In light of the infrequency of my posting to my other blog, on the face of it, it doesn't seem like the best idea to begin another one, but it wasn't my idea. I have been compelled (2 Corinthians 5:14 NIV).

Why the title "Logoscentric"? Well, "Walk in the Spirit" and "Walking in the Spirit" were not available, so I had to come up with something unique. You will see in a future post why "Logos" is on my mind right now. "Logos" is the Greek form of "word" that is used to refer to Christ in John 1:1. The suffix "-centric" is defined as follows at dictionary.com: Having a specified object as the center: geocentric. The specified object I want to be at the center of my life is the Word, Jesus Christ, hence the title "Logoscentric." I hope my writing encourages the same desire in you.