Solid Rock

When we first moved to Houston, in 2005, we were greeted with a hurricane.  With 3 million other people we fled the city.   The storm downgraded and the destruction was less then expected.  It created a resolve, however, that if another hurricane came, they would stick it out.  We were one of those people.  If the next hurricane was less then a level four, we were staying put.

Another hurricane came and strengthened only to a level three, and we bunkered in for what turned out to be a very long night.  Rebecca had us all safely barricaded in the downstairs hallway.  We were away from most windows, under multiple supports, and huddled together.  As the winds picked up we could see debris begin to fly.  The sky was an eerie color and the electoral boxes on the outside poles were buzzing, popping, and sparking, all together creating and ominous atmosphere. 

Mysti, my poor dog, paced and panted making it hard for everyone to sleep.  So, I sacrificed myself and took here upstairs, where I slept in the bed while she paced the floor.  The rest of the family restlessly slept downstairs.

The wind beat against the house, the trees beat against the roof, and occasionally lawn furniture would fly by.  Then it all stopped.  It was the eye of the storm.  It was ghostly and unnerving.  You knew the storm wasn’t over by you felt relief.  But then it picked up and again the wind assailed against the house, but from a different direction.  The wind had shifted.  It was as if it were trying a new tactic to get into the house.

Eventually morning came, and though electricity was out, there was little damage to our house.  We had weathered the storm, I thought, as I drowsily walked down the stairs. 

Jesus said that when the winds come, if we have not built our lives on a rock, a sure foundation, the house would fall.  First, Jesus doesn’t diminish the fact that the winds will come.  Conflicts between people, marriages with difficulties, rebellious children, wars, murders, greed, hatred, and immorality will beat against the house of God.  Then, when we least expect it, the wind will shift, come from a different direction, try to find our weakness and bring us to our knees.  Secondly, Jesus expects hope for people.  If our foundations are good the storms are temporary problems.  The damage will be different for each of us, but in the end the house will not fall. 

The only strong foundation is Christ.  Jesus said that if we bring our anxieties to him, cast them at his feet, that he will give us peace, hope, and a future.  The winds will still come, but the house will remain.  I’m just saying…..

Fighting The Battle Together

I have been preparing for my sermon on spiritual warfare, and I have been meditating on the nature of the battle. Popular books have given us demon skulking, fear provoking, aboritions that hide behind every nook and cranny of lives. The spiritual nature of the conflict is difficult for me to wrap my head around. Paul speaks about powers and authorities but he doesn't paint a picture of what it looks like. We are left to our imaginations. What he does is refer to his schemes, as if those schemes are obvious, and they are obvious. In Ephesians, he has spent the whole book talking about the importance of who we are in Christ and how we should live in community. The Schemes of the Devil is to thwart and destroy the community of believers. His tactics are many, and our defense is specific.

The spiritual armor, that Paul describes, is an illustration from the military uniform of the Roman soldier. Often, believers take the admonition to donn the armor seriously in order to stand firm and resist. However, the soldier in the Roman army never went into battle alone. He was a part of a unit, a division, a cohort, and a legion. They marched and fought as a well oiled machine. Their ability to fight as a whole caused fear in the heart of their enemies. They could fight individually, but they were at their best when they were fighting in unison. They literally had each others back.

The modern, American Christian, lives in isolation from other believers. I know we go to church together, we learn in Sunday School good things, and we even get involved in serving others by giving our time and money. But there seems to be something missing. We wrestle with the deep hurts and temptations of our lives in secret. We are too proud to confess our sin before each other, and we fight genuine accountability. Celebrating blessings is often difficult because we are afraid of being thought too proud. A transformed life is a meditative life lived in concert with other believers. We fight best the Spiritual Battle when we do it together, when have intimate prayer together, when cry together, when strive together, when we seek God together, and when we proclaim His goodness together. This doesn't happen in isolation. This takes effort and defining life changing priorities.

Not everyone will find intimate, authentic, community of value. Our lives are so defined by the neccisity of work and family that we neglect the importance of biblical community. We give our individual time to God, when God would have us find joy in the working of His body in community, and its not just about going to Sunday services. I want to know my brothers and sisters have my back. That doesn't happen accidentally. It happens through living the disciplines of the Christian life in such a way that we stand shoulder to shoulder. It happens when we have God's vision for the world and strive together through prayer and sweat to see God work. It happens when we fight against the evil one's attempts at disunity. It happens as we lift each other in life giving prayer. I am so glad I don't have to resist the Devil by myself. I'm just saying....

Being Occupied With God

Recently I spent a few days alone with the Lord meditating and seeking His presence and direction.  One of the themes of my time alone was “being occupied with God.”  What does it mean, what does it look like, how does it happen?  Being occupied with God isn’t something that comes naturally.  The Spirit of God indwells us, but most of the time we are very good at pushing His presence to the background.   We are occupied by so much, and so many things are vying for our attention, and they are not all bad.

However, good things that take the place of God are idolatrous.  So what does it mean to be occupied with God?  One day I was riding my motorcycle home and it began to rain.  Rain and motorcycles can be a dangerous combination.  The wind from trucks pushed me from side to side.  Standing water threatened to cause my tires to hydroplane.  Spray from cars splashed my helmet visor obscuring my vision.  These treacherous conditions were like perfidious predators, crouching to pounce at any moment.  The key was concentration.  I had to occupy myself with nothing but the task of riding my motorcycle.   There was no any room for watching the passing scenery.  I could not allow errant thoughts to distract me from this one task.  The stakes were too high.  One slip and the bike would slide out from under me and the results would be disastrous.  Every muscle, every skill, every thought was dedicated into one action – riding the motorcycle. 

Being occupied with God is similar.   Peter says that the devil is like a roaring lion seeking whom he might devour.  Even in our best moments he desires to bring destruction to our lives.  When we let our guard down, when we become occupied with anything but God, we are open to his schemes.   All our spiritual skills, disciplines, and thoughts must be occupied with the one task of knowing God and being occupied with Him. 

Whenever I have imagined a total, God occupied person pictures of monks praying in continuous silence come to mind.  We need not cloister ourselves away to be occupied by God.  In fact the disciplines of occupation are a mixture of isolation and presence in the community of believers.   In a fast paced culture there is a need to be isolated from its distractions so that we can be totally focused and occupied with God.  Silence and meditation is a lost discipline in the Christian life.  We rush, rush, rush and think that we can find God in the seconds we offer Him each day.  We have bought into the lie that 5-minute devotions are sufficient to hear the voice of God.   We need to spend extended time thinking deeply on His Word and listening to His voice.  For most of us this can’t happen everyday.  But regular times of silence and meditation are essential to truly hear what God has to say.

Silence and mediation, however, are not enough to keep us from the devils schemes.  To truly be occupied with God we are called to live in authentic, healthy community.  Most Christians don’t live in healthy community.  We pick and choose what we want from a smorgasbord of activities and walk away losing out on true community.  The New Testament letters were either written to churches or to leaders who were leading communities.  American Christianity reads the New Testament as a letter to them personally and they tend to apply it in isolation to the community.  The reality is that these letters were written to communities of people, and though individuals will apply the principles, it should be done within the context of community.  We are occupied with God when we are occupied with His body.  Jesus said that when we minister to the least of these we are ministering to Him. 

This does not exclude our involvement with work, family, and leisure.  Never the less, if our focus is not on the disciplines and practices of being occupied with God, we have elevated good things to the status of idols.  So how do the two worlds collide?  That is for another blog.  I’m just saying….

Why I Am A Christian: It Just Makes Sense

I stared a long time at the mathematical equation.  I don’t care how long I poured over the symbols I was never going to understand what they meant and how the outcome was achieved.  It’s not that I am ignorant or unintelligent; it’s just that I don’t have basic information; a grasp of simpler formulas; a foundation that will lead me to the truth.

Understanding is a difficult concept to grasp.  Different people can look at the same set of facts and come to greatly different conclusions.  And people who have great intellect can still miss understand simple truths.  So, I am not under any delusion that just because something makes sense to me that everyone will come to the same conclusions.

It just makes sense to me that when you look at the universe, both meta and micro, that its complexity, diversity, creativity, and order points to an intelligence that designed and set it into motion.

It just makes sense to me that a creator with such infinite capabilities would want those who he has created to get to know him.

It just makes sense to me that a creator who loves his creation would give them the freedom to follow or not to follow.

I just makes sense to me that at some point there would be those who would chose not to follow.

It just makes sense to me that there are consequences for those decisions.

It just makes sense to me that as he made himself known to his creation that what he had said would be muddled, perverted, confused, and misused by generations of people who had not sought after him.

It just makes sense to me that a creator how loves his creation would want them to have a correct view of him and provide a way for that to occur.

It just makes sense to me that a creator who loves his creation would provide a way for those who have turned their back on Him to return and not suffer the consequences of their choices.

It just makes sense to me that this plan would have a singular path.

It just makes sense that out of all the options in the world that the path is through Jesus. For in Jesus man is set free from the bonds of sin and death.  In Jesus man no longer has to strive for God’s acceptance because in Christ he is accepted. In Jesus man is able to see the creator who has become man in order to relate to His creation.  In Jesus there is life, hope, and a future.  In Jesus the fullness of meaning and creation come together.

So why, if this makes sense to me (and to other Christians) do not all people come to faith?  I was visiting my mother-in-law the other who is beginning to suffer the advance stages of dementia.  On the end table next to her chair was a word puzzle book.  She had done these many times and for many years.  She sat there staring at the words and said, “What am I suppose to do with this, it doesn’t make sense.” Like the advancing dementia of my mother-in-law, sin has darkened the minds of sinful man.  Even the most intellectual among us cannot escape its debilitating effects.  The darkness blinds the eyes of the world so that when they look at creation they say, “Who am I, why am I here, it doesn’t make any sense.” 

Unlike my mother-in-law who will not regain her capacity to understand, the world is not left without hope.  By stepping out in faith, believing in Jesus, and accepting the reality of God’s presence, love, and forgiveness their eyes will see the light and their minds will understand.  It will all make sense.  I’m just saying…..

Why I Am A Christian Part IV: Do All Roads Lead To God?

The evidentiary proof leads me to acknowledge the existence of God.  However, as I contemplate the nature of creation and the vastness of God’s handiwork I am left with an inevitable question.  If a God exists (and I believe he does) who has created all that I can see or more is He too big to get to know?  Or, is He too big to care?  Man likes to believe that he has the capacity to understand and reason the complexity of all that he investigates, but if God has created such an extensive universe He is, most assuredly, beyond our ability to comprehend, at least without His intervention.

The Bible says “God has set eternity in the hearts of man.”  It is for this reason that man craves a spiritual experience.  Throughout the ages and cultures people have looked to the spiritual realm to answer the question of our existence.  The atheist would say that ancient man sought explanation in the ‘gods’ for natural phenomena that once explained scientifically made God obsolete.  To a degree that is true, but there is something deeper inside the psyche draws people to the spiritual, even when science ‘seems’ to explain God away. One psychology article’s title read, “People are hired wire to believe in God.” 

So, if we have eternity in our hearts and the world is full of spiritual experiences, what makes my spiritual experience better or more valid than theirs?  There are a lot of different and conflicting experiences.  One thing is certain, all religions can be wrong, or one can be right and others are wrong, but all cannot be right. 

The Bible says that God created a couple through whom the whole world was populated.  They had a relationship with God because he revealed Himself, and they passed that knowledge of God from generation to generation.  As a result of sin people turned from God and as they populated the earth the original knowledge of Him was changed, perverted and even forgotten.  The apostle Paul points out that they knew God but because of the futility of their minds they exchanged their knowledge of God for gods made by their own hands and in their own image. 

God chose a man, Abraham, to begin his plan of reconciling the world to himself. Through Abraham’s descendants God would correct the distorted view of Himself that has occurred as a result of distance, time, and sin.  Also, through Abraham’s descendent Jesus, the problem of sin, which keeps us from knowing God personally, is remedied. 

The incomprehensibility of God is expressed by the Apostle Paul,  Rom. 11:33   “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  34 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?  35 Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN?  36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”

The Judeo/Christian faith rests on the fact that God desires to make Himself known and be reconcile to His creation.  Through Christ God reveals Himself further and provides a way to complete the process of reconciliation. All roads can’t lead to God, but there is a road that is paved by God through faith in His son Jesus. (NEXT: “It Just Makes Sense). I’m just saying....

Why I Am A Christian Part III: Does God Exist?

I was watching the first episode of Discovery Channel's new show "Curiosity".  It featured reknowned astro-physicist Steven Hawkings.  Hawkings is an outspoken atheist who in this espisode declared that God (if he exists and Hawkings doesn't believe so) isn't necessary for the creation or maintanance of the universe. He raises some interesting and imporant questions, but what he doesn't do is admit that he has presuppositions that he accepts by faith.  His first presupposition is that the "laws of nature" never change.  Though I would agree with this he never answers the question as to where these laws come from.  He assumes that they are the natural by-product of the big bang and as such have always existed within the construct of time.  This however is a faith statement.  As Hawkings guides us backward to the inevidable big ban he is left with an unanswered question.  Where does the super dense sigularity of the big ban and the subsequent "Laws of Nature" come from?  His answer is that it came from nothing.

As an example he shifts from astrophysics to quantum physics.  At the quantum level protons' behave in an unusual and unpredictable manner.  They appear, disappear, and then reappear in a totally different place.  Hawkings gives this as an example of something that appears out of nowhere.  The problem is that just because the proton acts unpredictable doesn't mean its origin  or destination is "nowhere" or out of "nothing".  Hawkings in a feeble attempt tries to bridge the holy grail of physics; a unifying theory that bridges the gap between astro and quantum physics.  His faith assumption is that before the big bang there was no time and out of this nothingness a sigularity appears and explodes into the known universe, creating both time and Natural Laws.  In the end Hawking declares that there is no God and no afterlife. All that is left to him is to enjoy this life and marvel in the universes grand design.

I am not a mathmatician so I can't speak to Hawkings math, which I am sure is sound.  But I do know a little about faith.  I know when people take a set of facts, interpret them and then step out in faith to answer certain unexplained aspects of those facts.  I enjoyed Hawkings science because it speaks, not to chance, but to design. And though there are those who reject intelligent design as a viable theory of our existence, they are the same ones who will dismiss they idea that when it comes to existence they have faith. 

Most atheistic scientist will disclaim the existence of God based on their inability to reproduce any evidenc of Him in the laboratory.  The existence of God, to them, is an unprovable axiom. So if God can not be proved  scientifically how do we know that he exists?  Good question.  The bible says, "From the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse" Romans 1:20. I know for many the bible isn't a starting point for understanding the existence of God, but this verse succinctly illustrates my point.  If the universe was created by a God who stands out of time and is big enough to create the grand expanse of our universe, then we as humans would be incapable of comprehending the complexity of his nature, just as an ant would have difficulty comprending us.  But just because I can't comprehend His complexity doesn't mean I can't know something about Him by exploring what He has created.  In the human experience nothing of complexity has ever come into existence (that we have observed) through chance.  Everything has its genesis by an arbiter of what is known.  Even when scientists try to recreate "evolution" in the laboratory by "creating" the ideal evniroment, if life could "evolve" it would only do so through the scientists manipulation of the enviroment. 

So does God exist? That is the question.  I cannot prove him scientifically, but neither can Hawkings prove his exnilo proto-proton. But I think Christians can make a stronger cased based on evedentiary evidence.  So, as I look at the complexity of the universe's design, the intellegent curiosity of man, and man's inherent moral and spiritual proclevity I accept by Faith the existence of God. What I can't know from this is the personal nature of God.  Because if God exists what is He like, can I get to know Him, whose God is the real God, and does it really matter anyway?  That will be exploredin Part IV. I'm just saying....

Why I Became A Christian Part II -- Crisis of Faith

It is said that faith and reason are incompatible, and that reason has made faith irrelevant.  As a first year college student I was intent on becoming a marine biologist. The science department was hostile to my new found faith and as one professor said, “to make it in this department you must accept the fact of evolution, even if it can’t be proved.”  You got the feeling he wasn’t totally convinced himself. In the end the rigors of science wasn’t for me and I changed my major to theater.  I went from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

If the science department was scientifically hostile to my faith the theatre department was so morally.    I loved the stage, the drama, the art but it was difficult to stand firm in my faith.  I remember taking my bible to class as a statement of my faith only to be scoffed and isolated from the others. It was during my stent at the University that I attended a conference in Atlanta, Georgia with some of my theatre colleagues.  Out of the four three of us roomed together.  I was determined not hide my faith but to display it in front of them.  Each morning I would rise and read my bible. 

One morning my roommates approached me and asked what I was reading.  I told them, which initiated a conversation on the validity of certain biblical facts that conflicted with conventional scientific thought. What struck me was that they seemed to have a better handle on the nuances of the Bible than I did, and their contrary faith in science more reasonable. They questioned the account of creation, the historicity of Adam and Eve, the Flood, and the veracity of miracles. I sat dumb founded as their questions brought only a feeble attempt to express any understanding of my faith.

Upon returning to my church the voices of my colleagues echoed in my head and became bitter expressions before my friends.  I recall sitting with my friends mocking the pastor’s sermons.  The change in behavior was so pronounced that my friends confronted me with my attitude.  I explained to them my doubts and what I believed the fault of the church to ill-equip me for facing those who apposed the faith.

My friends were patient and encouraging.  One suggested that I go somewhere to have my questions answered.  It was that simple suggestion that once again changed the direction of my life. It seemed obvious, there was no hesitation, and I left my friends and my family and sought the answers at a Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina.

There are many who question truth, but few who truly seek it. A seeker searches and would scour the earth to plumb its’ depths. I didn’t know what the future held but I knew that if I were to continue faithfully on the path my faith had set I needed answers that were reasonable and sustainable. I no longer would be satisfied with simplistic answers of “just believe.” I didn’t know where my quest would lead but it had now begun.  I’m just saying…..