Red Moon Rising

“Prayer rooms are places of direct encounter with God.  So much of our faith, if we are not very careful, can be second-hand experience.  We listen to talks that tell us what to think.  We read books that inspire us with other peoples’ experiences of God.  But alone with God in a prayer room, it’s time to get the Bible open for yourself, going straight to the source.  It’s time to dialogue directly with God face to face without a middleman.  In such a context, God often is able to speak to us and touch us in a way that no ministry session could ever achieve.” p130

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So this guy comes up to me and says “what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?” I open my mouth and words come out like this…

The vision?

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision ?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don’t need fame from names.

Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.

Winners.

Martyrs.

Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?

Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.

Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide.

Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them.

Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.

On the outside? They hardly care.

They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives – swap seats with the man on death row – guilty as hell.

A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don’t you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo’s!

Summon the losers and the freaks.

Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.

They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today.

My distant hope is his 3D.

And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

pg. 199-122

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“The most amazing thing of all has been the hunger, so many people from such different backgrounds just desperate to pray. We’ve never tried to persuade anyone to open a prayer room. People just do! This is remarkable because you can’t make people want to pray. You can make people feel like they ought to pray. But when thousands of people all over the world spontaneously develop such a longing for God’s presence that they will rise in the night and sacrifice food, such a hunger comes from God alone.” pg. 251

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“The Moravian church, which had become, under Zinzendorf’s renewal, a power house of prayer and mission, had from the beginning held its highest allegiance to the ideal of Christian unity. To this day the denomination is known as “The Unitas Fratrum”: The United Brethren. It was a passion reflected in Zinzendorf’s motto:

“In essentials, unity;

in non-essentials, liberty;

and in all things, love.”

What  great guideline for us today. 24-7 Prayer is not a new organization or an alternative church. We are not part of the Moravian denomination or any other tradition. We are a renewal movement, rather than a replacement for existing expressions of faith, our sense of identity is generational rather than denominational, and it is a generation more concerned with finding common ground and celebrating diversity than with dividing over religious tags. This is not to say that we are unaware o where we have come from, nor that we are ungrateful for the ways in which our predecessors have pioneered. But as we learn from the past, we find heroes and villains in every tradition, and as we look to the future, we know that Jesus is still praying that his broken body might be one. It’s time to widen the gene pool, to learn from each other, and to come together in love without losing our sense of tribal and personal identity along the way. And if the tribes of Israel can’t come together in prayer and mission, there is little hope for an immanent “Amen” to th Lord’s last longing before the cross.” pg. 148

The Law

How does the law relate to us today? In some ways, Jesus says that the law is all-important – it shows us our sin, it provides guidelines to keep us holy, and those who disobey the law face eternal punishment. In other ways, he abolishes the power of the law – he condemns those who follow its rules “to a t”, and he says that righteousness is through him alone, not by works. This just seems contradictory. Why would God create a law and then abolish it years later with Jesus?

In many ways we are too stuck in the moment. Right now, we are living in the age of forgiveness through Jesus, where our debt has been paid and we are free from guilt. But God was forgiving even before Jesus came, because he is outside of time. Yes, he created this thing we call “reality” – the physical world and time and what happens in physical places at a given time – and so he did actually have to send Jesus (ever ask yourself “why doesn’t God just come down and how himself? he did!). At one time and place he came down as Jesus, Jesus intersected with our reality. He sent him to sort of “make him real.” But the power of Jesus was present even before he came, and those that had faith in God were still able to be saved. The whole term “righteousness by faith” started with Abraham (Abram), an Old Testament figure.

Genesis 15:6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 22: 15-18 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by mysef, declares he Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offsping all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.

People in Old Testament were also very aware of their need for a Messiah, or a savior. And, like us, they were saved by faith through him, because we all have fallen short of the law.

Matthew 11:16-17 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

God was also forgiving in the Old Testament. Prophets reminded the people that God is just and that there are consequences to their sins, but they also reminded the people that God gives second chances, if they will only turn their hearts to him. This is evident in God’s faithfulness to Israel, even as the people often made idols and disobeyed God.

Joel 2:12-14 “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not you garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing –  grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.

This is consistent with Jesus’ mission on earth. He makes it clear that God has no tolerance for sin – wrong is wrong. But he has also chosen to be a forgiving God, with Jesus as a provision to satisfy judgment to allow this forgiveness.

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already bcause he has not believe in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Why then, did God not just send Jesus right from the beginning? I don’t exactly know the reasons for God’s specific timing, but the Bible does record all of history as one cohesive story of God’s workings. First, sin comes into the world, then God gives guidelines for living in a world of sin, promising all the while to pay for sin, then he send Jesus to satisfy justice and also conquer sin and death, then he calls us to spread the good news, and one day he will establish his kingdom for eternity. Any of the later parts wouldn’t make sense without the earlier parts. Why would God give us guidelines if we didn’t even know we had a choice? Why would God send us a savior if we hadn’t proven that we couldn’t save ourselves? Why would God send us to preach the good news before we understood it? Why would God bring the kingdom of God before the good news had been preached to the whole world?

Romans 15:8-9 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name.”

God’s story of the coming of Jesus was entrusted to the Jews, but I firmly believe that salvation through faith is available to all people at all times in all places. It’s essentially this giving up of oneself as God and following the higher calling of living a “right” life.This I think, is essentially the law. Some of us have been blessed to have read Jesus’ teachings, but the core of Christian doctrine is that there is a “right,” a standard separated from any cultural influence, that one starts to discover when they turn to the Lord. We can never fully live this on our own, so we can never be “self-righteous,” or justified in thinking we are superior to someone else.

2 Corinthians 3 ¹ Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? ² You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. ³ You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. ⁴ Such confidence we have through Christ before God. ⁵ Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. ⁶ He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Pride is just as much a sin as apathy. However, Jesus has paid the price for all who trust in God, wherever they are from, whatever language they speak, whatever books they’ve read. Salvation is not culturally dependent. A heart seeking after truth will recognize it (or recognize what is falsehood), whether it is experience or reading. The amazing things is that we do have a lot of written law, which is an extremely valuable thing.

2 Chronicles 34 ¹ Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. ² He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and followed the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. ³ In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles and idols. ⁴ Under his direction the altars of the Baals were torn down; he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them, and smashed the Asherah poles and the idols. These he broke to pieces and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. ⁵ He burned the bones of the priests on their altars, and so he purged Judah and Jerusalem. ⁶ In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them, ⁷ he tore down the altars and the Asherah poles and crushed the idols to powder and cut to pieces all the incense altars throughout Israel. Then he went back to Jerusalem. ⁸ In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the temple of the LORD his God. ⁹ They went to Hilkiah the high priest and gave him the money that had been brought into the temple of God, which the Levites who were the gatekeepers had collected from the people of Manasseh, Ephraim and the entire remnant of Israel and from all the people of Judah and Benjamin and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ Then they entrusted it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the LORD’s temple. These men paid the workers who repaired and restored the temple. ¹¹ They also gave money to the carpenters and builders to purchase dressed stone, and timber for joists and beams for the buildings that the kings of Judah had allowed to fall into ruin. ¹² The workers labored faithfully. Over them to direct them were Jahath and Obadiah, Levites descended from Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam, descended from Kohath. The Levites—all who were skilled in playing musical instruments— ¹³ had charge of the laborers and supervised all the workers from job to job. Some of the Levites were secretaries, scribes and gatekeepers. ¹⁴ While they were bringing out the money that had been taken into the temple of the LORD, Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the LORD that had been given through Moses. ¹⁵ Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the LORD.” He gave it to Shaphan. ¹⁶ Then Shaphan took the book to the king and reported to him: “Your officials are doing everything that has been committed to them. ¹⁷ They have paid out the money that was in the temple of the LORD and have entrusted it to the supervisors and workers.” ¹⁸ Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king. ¹⁹ When the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his robes. ²⁰ He gave these orders to Hilkiah, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Abdon son of Micah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king’s attendant: ²¹ “Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the remnant in Israel and Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD’s anger that is poured out on us because those who have gone before us have not kept the word of the LORD; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written in this book.” ²² Hilkiah and those the king had sent with him went to speak to the prophet Huldah, who was the wife of Shallum son of Tokhath, the son of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter. ²³ She said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me, ²⁴ ‘This is what the LORD says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people—all the curses written in the book that has been read in the presence of the king of Judah. ²⁵ Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and aroused my anger by all that their hands have made,^[e] my anger will be poured out on this place and will not be quenched.’ ²⁶ Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says concerning the words you heard: ²⁷ Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me and tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you, declares the LORD. ²⁸ Now I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place and on those who live here.’” So they took her answer back to the king. ²⁹ Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. ³⁰ He went up to the temple of the LORD with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites—all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the LORD. ³¹ The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the LORD—to follow the LORD and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book. ³² Then he had everyone in Jerusalem and Benjamin pledge themselves to it; the people of Jerusalem did this in accordance with the covenant of God, the God of their ancestors. ³³ Josiah removed all the detestable idols from all the territory belonging to the Israelites, and he had all who were present in Israel serve the LORD their God. As long as he lived, they did not fail to follow the LORD, the God of their ancestors.

Notice that Josiah turned to the Lord before he had the law. God did not judge him on what he did not know, however Josiah knew in his heart just by praying that certain things were wrong, and started making changes before hearing the written law. When he did hear the law, he immediately recognized it as truth, because he was already walking with the Lord. He recognized it as a valuable thing and immediately made all of the changes necessary to fill it. In return, the Lord blessed him. Josiah was still accountable by faith even before he heard the law. Had he not been following God, he probably would have heard the law and found it offensive or he might not have had the proper fear of the Lord to follow it. He was saved through faith, but he recognizes that God has a standard, a law, and that this is always good. It is what creates the need for a savior. Good does not change, God does not “bend the rules” for us. When we sin, we sin. How amazing that he loves us enough to give us a chance at forgiveness!

1 Corinthians 10 ¹ For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. ² They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. ³ They all ate the same spiritual food ⁴ and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. ⁵ Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.  ⁶ Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. ⁷ Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” ⁸ We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. ⁹ We should not test Christ, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. ¹⁰ And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel. ¹¹ These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. ¹² So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! ¹³ No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

We are saved by faith in God and in Jesus, not by hearing the Old Testament law like the Jews and many Bible-literate Christians have. We can all discover the law – what is right and wrong – with the help of the Holy Spirit. But the Old Testament law and history is also a valuable thing to know, and it often provides ways to practically honor God. If someone holds the law and recognizes it as truth, it can radically change their life, even though we are all held accountable to faith whether we are Jewish or Bible-literate or not.

(P.S. Anytime you want to start reading the Bible, you can! It has a lot of recorded truth that can change your life when you accept it. www.biblegateway.com.)

Falling in Love

Deciding to follow God is like falling in love more than anything else (it is a relationship, anyways – if it’s not, it’s just religion). The reason I’m writing this post is try to explain that deciding to follow God is both the best thing that will ever happen to you and the last thing you want to do. You decide to follow God because it is “right” and not for any other reason, though at the time you might try to reason everything out and say that living a right life makes it “better” and you’ll be “happier.” Well, it does make it “better,” but not in the sense that everything will go your way or you will have wild success in everything you decide to do, and you most certainly won’t be “happier” although when you’re happy you are filled to the brim with joy which might feel like you are happier, and when you are in sorrow you are still filled to the brim with joy which might feel like God is comforting you, but in reality deciding to follow God has got nothing to do with yourself and this is making little sense which is why I should stop writing and just go with the post, since clearing up confusion is why I started this in the first place.

Deciding to follow God is a decision that God is incomprehensible, but everything we need. Made-up Gods fall into several generic categories – two of which are “Gods” who directly reward for good works and “Gods” who are fallible. These lead to religious reliance, instead of bringing us face to face with our need for a relationship with our creator.

A “God” who rewards for good works is a pretty logical thing to make up. It is a great way to give a higher authority to the laws of a country and encourage people to follow them even when law enforcement isn’t looking. Also, most people have a general sense of right and wrong, so they are already living pretty good lives, and having a “God” reward them for this sounds like a good idea. They are “better” than most people – they donate and volunteer and bit their tongue and go to church, so they are covered, and no real lifestyle change is necessary. They are certainly sacrificing to do the right thing – they want to do the wrong thing but they choose to do right – but they started doing this to avoid consequences or because they were worried about what people would think and now use religion to simply validate and give deeper meaning to their choices.

God himself has no list of our good deeds. He simply knows if we are in love with him or not – our names are written in the book of life or they aren’t. It’s sort of a trick statement, because it is impossible to be in a healthy relationship with God and doing evil in the same way that it’s impossible to be in a healthy relationship with your neighbor while you are stealing from him. When you stare God in the face you can not comprehend doing wrong, because you were made by him and in this way he exactly what you need, and since wrong is simply the absence of him, when you are staring at him it is painful to imagine the absence of him, and furthermore choosing the absence of him! Most of us won’t stare God in the face before we die, but we are given the choice to hold his hand and let him pull us further and further towards it. Of course this is all metaphorical – God is immaterial and is very hard to explain, much to the annoyance of those who pester “religious” people with questions about their reasons for things and find only “flaky” answers. Let’s just say that the more good you do, the more you hate evil, and the more evil you do, the less you hate it so that you do more and more of it and also begin to be angry at those who do hate it. And since God is good, knowing God leads to good life. But again let me emphasize – God loves you no matter what you do, and you can not earn your way into heaven with good works. No one is “ahead” of anyone else in God’s eyes, some are only closer. This is what we need because 1 – It takes into account the fact that sometimes we do things wrong and need to be forgiven. 2 – It takes into account the fact that people are born into different circumstances and have different callings to “do good.” Can you really compare one good work to another, or say that someone has done “more” good than another, and that one should go to heaven and one shouldn’t? and 3 – It gives due credit to God – we are only able to have a relationship with God because he chooses to, and the only reason we deserve a relationship with him is because he has made us valuable. We can do nothing to impress God, because he is a thousand times greater and more powerful and more loving than we are. Only by putting God in his place can we see things as they are, and so this is what we need.

This is like falling in love because when you fall in love it has very little to do with what the person has done for you. You don’t love a person because they send you flowers, though they make you feel good and a person who loves you probably will send flowers. You love the person just because they are who they are – they are intrinsically valuable. If they are having a bad day and they fail you, you still love them just as much, even though you are hurt. And this is how God looks on us. We also fall in love with God simply because he is who he is. Unlike our end of the bargain, however, he will never fail us, though sometimes we may not understand him and this can cause anger and disappointment. But because he is who he is – our Holy, powerful, loving creator, lover, and savior, he is always worthy to be loved.

A “God” who is fallible is a pretty logical thing to make up. First of all, you are drawing on yourself as a reference, and you are fallible. Secondly, you really have no duty to live a perfect life because even “God” doesn’t. And thirdly, you have someone to blame for the misfortunes in your life, since some of them come directly from “God.”

God himself is nothing like us. We are something like him, but he is totally incomprehensible to us. It’s like a mirror – we are nothing like a mirror because we are living and warm and 3D and it is dead and cold and flat, but the mirror is something like us when we stand in front of it because it shows our reflection. We are created in his image, but he is Holy and separate, not just a “superhuman.” He is perfect and he asks perfection – there is no excuse not to treat one another with love. This is what we need because it causes us to stop at nothing short of truth, and truth is the only real thing. It is also what we need because it challenges us to live how we were made to live – in perfect union with God. It is intrinsically good to love – God decided that it was good to love, and he is the one who created both concepts so he gets to decide. He also decided to allow the world to reject him. The world is in a state of war between God and the absence of God – good and evil. There is still good in the world because God is working here. But he is also allowing evil to work, to the extent that we ask it to. That doesn’t mean that someone who has a relationship with God won’t experience the consequences of sin – we are all in the same boat, and the boat is not in union with God.

Why doesn’t God just take us up to be with him immediately? God asks us to stay and remain as witnesses to him. Why doesn’t God just be a witness to himself? This one is a little more difficult to explain, mostly because God’s methods are just that – his methods and I am only a human in a relationship with him attempting to explain them. Bottom line is we need to accept that he is in charge and knows what he’s doing whether we understand it or not. But here’s my best stab at it. 1 – Why would God create life on earth if he was just going to take us out of it? And why would God create natural ways of doing things if he was just going to do supernatural things all the time. Life on earth obviously has a purpose. And if he made the blueprints, why wouldn’t he build in a natural way for us to come to know him? It would show a lack of foresight on his part for him to always have to break his own rules.  2 – He was a witness to himself. He came in human form, his full glory masked in human form, but fully God nonetheless. People with open hearts (notice, open before Jesus came, giving some insight into people who have a relationship with God before Jesus came or in areas of the world where he is not known) recognized Jesus immediately and fell flat at his feet. People with closed hearts looked right at God and rejected him. People with half-way open hearts swayed and then chose one side or the other. Direct signs like Jesus gave do not always save. If we choose, we can still reject them.

This is like falling in love because it involves trust. You trust that the other person will be faithful even when you don’t know what they’re doing and even when you are angry with them. Secondly, doing is good is not like following a rule book. God gave us lots of good rules, but Jesus himself broke them if they were obstructing the way of good. It’s like the closer you get to God the more you “know what he would do in this situation.” And the more you are sure that it is worth sacrificing for him, though he is worth sacrificing for right from the beginning. It’s a lot easier to break up with someone two days into the relationship than two years into it because you’ve developed a deeper relationship, you’ve started to become one. And yet in the first days you can more easily see that you are made for each other because you remember what life was like without the relationship, whereas two years into it you might take the relationship for granted. And just like any relationship or marriage, we can choose to become self-absorbed and separated from God.

Deciding to follow God is like falling in love because in some ways life goes on as before. You still live in the same world. But your actions and attitudes reflect your relationship. You make sacrifices for each other and you spend time with each other. In some ways you are still separate and can decide things apart from each other, but in some ways you are one.

Isaiah 54

⁵ For your Maker is your husband—
   the LORD Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
   he is called the God of all the earth.
⁶ The LORD will call you back
   as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
   only to be rejected,” says your God.
⁷ “For a brief moment I abandoned you,
   but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
⁸ In a surge of anger
   I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
   I will have compassion on you,”
   says the LORD your Redeemer.

 ⁹ “To me this is like the days of Noah,
   when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
   never to rebuke you again.
¹⁰ Though the mountains be shaken
   and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
   nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
   says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

Isaiah 61

 ⁸ “For I, the LORD, love justice;
   I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
In my faithfulness I will reward my people
   and make an everlasting covenant with them.
⁹ Their descendants will be known among the nations
   and their offspring among the peoples.
All who see them will acknowledge
   that they are a people the LORD has blessed.”

 ¹⁰ I delight greatly in the LORD;
   my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
   and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
   and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
¹¹ For as the soil makes the sprout come up
   and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness
   and praise spring up before all nations.

Isaiah 62

³ You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD’s hand,
   a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
⁴ No longer will they call you Deserted,
   or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah, 
   and your land Beulah;
for the LORD will take delight in you,
   and your land will be married.
⁵ As a young man marries a young woman,
   so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
   so will your God rejoice over you.

Matthew 22  

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

1 John 4

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

 ¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

   God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

 ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Trinity

One particularly confusing concept known by those who know the God of the Bible is the “trinity.” This means that God is one God in three parts, but that each of these parts is fully God. There a few reasons why people struggle with this concept. The first is that it seems that there are multiple Gods here. Which one do you pray to? Which one came first? Which one is most powerful? In reality, all three parts are one God, and all have been present since the beginning of time.

Genesis 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let then rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Not only is the Spirit mentioned in the first verse, but there is some very interesting grammar going on in verse 26. Singular God (not “the gods”) said let us (not “me”) make man in our (not “my”) singular image (not “images”). Clearly, there is only one God here – the God who would later command “You shall have no other Gods before me.” He is the only real God – other “gods” are the product of human imagination. But by taking on different “forms” we can better understand three aspects and three roles that God plays in our lives. Only of these forms is physical.

Matthew 1:18-23 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, and angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.”

 How can a sovereign God be in the form of a human – who has such limits? The following dialogue between God the Father and Jesus Christ (God the Son) can help clarify.

John 17 ¹ After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:  “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.  ⁶ “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸ For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. ⁹ I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. ¹² While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.  ¹³ “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. ¹⁴ I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. ¹⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. ¹⁷ Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.  ²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. ²⁵ “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

Clearly, Jesus Christ is a man. He is praying to a sovereign God, asking for his blessing and protection. It is this sovereign God who has granted Jesus authority and sent him – it implies that Jesus is not all-powerful, but rather doing the work of an all-powerful father. Yet Jesus also makes several bold claims in this passage. While he asks for protection, he asks for protection “by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so they may be one as we are one.” God’s name is given to Jesus, and Jesus is one with God. He also makes a distinction between himself and humanity – “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.” So we are similar to him in that we are not of the world, but we are not the same as him, or we would just be grouped (“We are not of the world”). He asks that all of us be one, just as he and the Father are one. In addition, he asks for glory. For someone who is clearly intent on glorifying God and following God’s plans, it would pretty prideful of him to ask for glory. But because he is God, just in human form, this is not prideful. Why was it necessary for God to take on human form?

Isaiah 49: 5-7 And now the Lord says – he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength – he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” This is what the Lord says – the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel – to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servants of rulers: “Kings will see you and rise up, princes will see and bow down, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Isaiah 48: 17 This is what the Lord says – your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.

John 18 ³⁶ Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” ³⁷ “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.  Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Jesus came to save mankind. As a man, he took the place of every man (us) when he died on the cross. If we have faith in God, this means that our punishment is paid for – we are completely forgiven. In addition to redeeming us, Jesus was a living testament of the only source of truth – God. His teaching and example are a great guide to us if we have the privilege of being able to read or hear the accounts of his life. But we must always remember that, while Jesus was fully human, he was also fully God. He did things that none of us ever could without his help, like conquer death and live a perfect life, and he is the sovereign king over the heavenly kingdom. Before Jesus left this earth, he spoke of the third part of the trinity, which was mentioned briefly at the beginning.

Acts 1 ⁴ On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. ⁵ For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” ⁶ Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷ He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The Spirit ensures that God is always with us, even though Jesus is no longer on this earth. But the Spirit was on earth before Jesus as well.

Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Isaiah 59  ²¹ “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the LORD. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,” says the LORD.

So then, we have one God in three parts, but not parts in the sense that we know and understand here in the physical realm. Each “part” is the fullness of God, and has existed since the beginning of time, but each plays a different role in history, or illustrates a different aspect of God, or is a “form” of God. It is not quite within human comprehension (God, being not of this world, never is), but he has offered us with some insight into this aspect of God’s reality.

In the end, we must accept that only God fully understands the Trinity

Luke 10 ²² “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

The following are a couple more (of the countless passages) which discuss the multiple aspects of the trinity.

Matthew 2: 11-4:1 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, who sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Then Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil.

Acts 2 ²² “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. ²³ This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. ²⁵ David said about him:   “‘I saw the Lord always before me.
   Because he is at my right hand,
   I will not be shaken.
²⁶ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
   my body also will rest in hope,
²⁷ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
   you will not let your holy one see decay.
²⁸ You have made known to me the paths of life;
   you will fill me with joy in your presence.’ ²⁹ “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. ³⁰ But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. ³¹ Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. ³² God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. ³³ Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. ³⁴ For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,   “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
   “Sit at my right hand
³⁵ until I make your enemies
   a footstool for your feet.”’ ³⁶ “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” ³⁷ When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” ³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

My Testimony

            I grew up in a Christian home, so I’ve known about Jesus since I could speak. I learned the stories, the steps, the rules. I was not necessarily bombarded by Christianity and church life, and I was not always surrounded by Christians, but my family went to church consistently and attended Christian events regularly. At about age seven, I made the decision to ask Him into my heart. Although I was young, this was definitely a turning point in my faith. I realized that there was someone out there who loved me, and someone who I could pray to. I could ask for protection or help with a problem. I call this my acknowledgment of God. God was real.

For a while Jesus was just another story, a story of a hero like Martin Luther King Jr. and George Washington – figures that I couldn’t really personally relate to – adults whom I aspired to become like but had no real grasp of the reality of their situations. I had acknowledged God’s existence, but as for trusting him – taking a “leap of faith,” I had not done this yet.

 In 6^th grade I went on my first youth group retreat, where I discovered that my faith in God could go beyond belief in stories. We were sitting out at the end of a pier on the lake at sunset, and I was overwhelmed by the natural beauty of the landscape and the overflowing love and acceptance of the people. I was filled with gratitude towards the one who had made this vast and beautiful earth. My creator had been so generous, made a world with beautiful plants and animals and water and sky, filled with people who could laugh and love and grow and learn. I heard the gospel that night. The world was a battleground – a place that God had made perfectly, but which could only be perfect when united with him. He had created humans and presented them with a choice – to follow him or to reject him. Humans had decided to reject him, and our relationship with God was soured. But God did not want to leave us like this. Though we had sentenced ourselves to eternal separation from God and his perfection by tainting ourselves with sin, he came to earth as a man and died the death we deserve, canceling out our sin so that, if we accept it, we can have a restored relationship with God and live in eternity with him. His forgiveness healed me. I realized that having faith in God also meant committing my life to Him. More was required of me than to just sit back and watch. Christianity became my way of life, my hope, and my purpose. Jesus was more than my creator, he was my savior and he was a standard to live by. Most importantly, I saw that night the impact that Jesus had on the way those people lived. Not everyone has access to the Bible or has heard about Jesus, but everyone has the opportunity to invite God into their lives, and I saw how knowing God changed people into walking lovers.

My commitment was by no means perfect. I had a constant faith, a constant knowledge he was there, and I was always saved, but I went through phases of following God and ignoring him. During retreats, missions trips, camp and Flower City Work Camp, I got a shot of encouragement in my faith, and a new passion for Christ that would last me for a period, but I often did not maintain my faith myself, and started following my own selfish desires. In middle school, I became addicted to porn and masturbation. It eventually progressed so that I was in a very dark place, until one day, through God’s grace, and through my willingness to take a step back and look at the world honestly, I realized how selfish I was being. Here was this God who had sacrificed his own life for me so that I would not have to live under the curse of sin, and I was voluntarily throwing myself head first into it. I felt like I had slapped God across the face. I was torn with guilt and decided to stop wasting my life and start thanking God by living for him. The next few years were rocky, and I did not always stick to my resolution, but God reached out his hand and pulled me up out of the darkness and into the light. I can never repay him for that. During the period of darkness, I had been convinced that I deserved that cheap, physical euphoria, that I was in control, and that I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t to blame. It’s only by admitting and regretting that we can find a solution and starting healing. While it’s unfair that we live in a world where uncommitted sex is glorified and porn is readily available, it’s our choice to feed that and be fed by it, or to be fed by the Lord and feed his love to others. Again, his forgiveness healed me. Every day I feel so grateful to be living a life out in the open, filled with love and acceptance and accomplishment. My faith grew stronger, and now I can say that He is with me every day. I talk to God all of the time – about problems I’m facing, about blessings I’m receiving, about how I’m happy to be alive, about how my life isn’t going so well right now… I can tell Him anything, and I feel so blessed every day because of it. My faith is built upon the fact that he is my savior, but my favorite part about God is that he is also my best friend.

This past year was full of the unexpected. It’s funny how I actually planned for disasters – for tragedies to befall my life, but I planned for specific ones – a break-up, the death of a loved one, perhaps a friend who disowned me. But God reminded me that what I see of life is only a very small window. The world is huge – and no one person will ever completely understand it, so no one person can ever know how their life is going to go. My sister unexpectedly developed severe depression and made a few suicide attempts. While my school life was incredible, my home life became about locking up pills and scissors, visiting hospitals, writing notes, praying, crying, hoping and then having my hopes crushed. The person I loved most in the world was both a perpetrator and a victim of the deepest evil I had ever seen in this world. I was stretched – all sorts of questions opened up about whether what I believed was due to experience or due to truth, whether people even had a fair chance to know God or whether he was a grand concept created by people who wanted humans to be more than they actually were. I devoured apologetics books and books on other religions and I started writing down all my thoughts and ideas and analyses. The problem was that my conclusion was often that Christianity had the “best” backing. While I was surprised at the logical and “scientific” proof for Christianity, which was more than I had expected to find, I had objectified God into something I could prove. I cannot prove God. God can prove himself. He is already working, and it’s up to us to let him into our lives, to climb aboard with what he is already doing.

She made it through, and through God’s love is still recovering, gaining back her strength and love for herself. Hopefully one day she will see herself for the beautiful person that she is, and our relationship can be fully restored.

Flower City Work Camp (hundreds of teens from the Rochester area come together and fix up homes in the inner city, where poverty is rampant), which was essential to the start of my faith, helped remind me of the personal relationship with God that I had been neglecting. One of the biggest proofs for God that I see is simply the way that God personally impacts people’s lives. People crave love, and He loves them. People are racked with regret and He forgives them. People want to know what to do with their lives, and He tells them to share His love. People are arrogant and He tells them to bow down to Him, they are self-loathing and He tells them that they are His valuable creation. He is the solution to every problem.

If there is one thing I have learned about God it is that he is unfathomable. If we completely understood God, then we would be God, and then nothing would make sense. But this also means that we have to go directly to God if we want to get answers – not just to other Christians or to ourselves. And we have to be willing to submit to his timing and his will, because he understands truth, right, and wrong – not us. While I took a saving leap of faith in 6^th grade, my perceptions of God and of reality have changed drastically since then. After a missions trip to Costa Rica, I believe in modern-day miracles. After working at Camp Cherith, especially in summer 2010, I believe in God’s complete sovereignty. After coming to college, I believe that God requires every single ounce of my life, not just most of it. I now believe that this is and should be hard, because this is what produces such beautiful things as faith and self-refinement. I have grown in my understanding of the three aspects of God – the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. I have grown in my understanding of pain, and of denial, and of God’s love for every single person. I have grown in my understanding of his forgiveness. You are saved once – but you must take a leap of faith every day, otherwise this learning will cease.

It is my hope that as problems and challenges arise in this world I can seek them out and share with people the solution which works every time – faith in Jesus Christ. His love has worked in my life. I would like to close with my favorite passage of scripture from 1 Corinthians 13.

 

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

 ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The Need for Jesus

 There are several needs that humans have. There are physical needs like good health and nutritious food. There are emotional needs like laughter and touch. And there are spiritual needs.

We can be deprived of these needs. We can live quite a while without excercise, we can eat unhealthy things, we can use our bodies for pleasure and subject them to drugs. We can hole ourselves up with books and refuse to be touched and insist that all we need is ourselves. And we can live here on earth ignorant of the deeper truths that control our lives. But these things will kill us eventually. The more we deprive ourselves of our needs, the quicker we die.

Some people deny the existence of these spiritual needs, but everyone has them. For example, humans need justice. We may want to do whatever we please and get away with it, but overall we need to see justice served both to ensure our safety against others wronging us and to be assured that we are good beings. Now different people construct their own unique ideas of what justice is, a lot of which contradict, but it is impossible to live without some idea of justice. We have all felt wronged at some point in time, and we wouldn’t be able to be angry at that person or vent to other people if we didn’t have a sense that their action is inherently wrong which means you have the authority to call them out on it. Another spiritual need is love. Isn’t this an emotional need you ask? Love actually changes definition when you bring God into the picture. People have varying ideas of what love is, from a feeling to a deep friendship to the admiration of another. Some people say you can fall in love multiple times, others that you will only truly fall in love once. Some people think that real love is being content with the person you are with, others think that once the person you are with stops filling your desires you are free to stop loving them. But the biblical definition of love is an unconditional value of a person – no matter what they do – and a wish for the well-being of that person above all else, including your own wishes and wants. We all crave that love, and we would not continue living if we didn’t have some sort of hope that that love is out there somewhere – that some day we will be appreciated for who we are. We may want to hate others when they wrong us, but we know that when we do something wrong only love gives us the opportunity to make it right again.

Where do our needs come from? From the absence of something. This implies that this thing was once there. We hunger because there is food, we thirst because there is water. This works with wants, too, but all wants reflect a deeper need. For example, we want fame because it is possible to famous. But if we feel that we are making an impact on the world, then we no longer want to be famous. We want to be gluttonous because it makes us feel satisfied, but if we feel that our bodies deserve to be healthy, then we no longer want to be gluttonous, because our desire to feel healthy overpowers our desire to feel full. We want porn, but if we feel that porn degrades people and that people deserve to be valued then we cease to crave it. In other words a want, no matter how strong it is, can eventually be replaced by a bigger need if we stop feeding the want by giving into it. If you spend your whole life trying to be famous, and never stop and try to just have an impact on the world around you, you will never discover the benefits of it and will probably die thinking that if you had become famous you would have been satisfied (which you wouldn’t). If you constantly eat whatever you feel like and never spend a few months eating healthily, you will never feel the vigor that comes with a healthy body and think that the sugar rush and flow of flavor over your tongue is the most satisfying thing that food can give you. If you insist that porn is fine and continuously feed your sex drive with cheap fuel, you will never discover the freedom that comes with being able to control it or the delicate beauty of the human body. You will think that the ultimate orgasm is the most satisfying thing you can get out of sex and that the best way to be sexy is to look great and know all the right moves. And if you’ve read these descriptions and said “Hey, wait a minute, that is all you can get out of that,” then ask yourself if you’ve ever tried. If you’ve ever really experienced the other side. Because the other side is hard, but anything worth having is hard to get. If we continuously give in to “easy” and justify ourselves by belittling the other side as “prudish” or “lame” then we will never see the long-term benefits of fulfilling the need and never develop the hindsight to see that what we were chasing after was detrimental to us overall.

But does God really fill these spiritual needs? Or are they figments of our imagination? After all, if God made the world, then he is clearly not just, because there is little justice in the world. And if God is just, then he is clearly not unconditionally loving, because we’re pretty screwed up. And why doesn’t he give us what we want, or send us a sign or something? In other words, do we really need a God to fill these “spiritual” needs? Can’t we fill them with real things, not “divine” things?

There is an interesting thing about physical and emotional needs. Even if we fill them, we will still die. It’s really a hopeless situation. As far as this universe is concerned, the human race is really nothing. Each generation will die, and though it gives birth to a new generation, eventually the sun will explode and the earth will shatter and the last generation will be gone. What then? Where is the justice in that? We worked all that time, discovered so much, learned so much, and no one is even there to remember it? Where is the love in that? Why should I love people who bother me if they’re just a product of chance and when they die they won’t remember my love anyways? God is the only real chance there is for life everlasting. The God described in the Bible reveals that we can never fully fill our physical and emotional needs without him. When we tried to, we told God to get out of the world, and as a result we will never live forever, no matter how healthy or kind we are. And we will never live in a just world unless every single person acknowledges God and his justice. We need God. God gave us the free will to reject him, but he also created love, which led him to deliver us from the just punishment we deserve. He put himself in human form and lived a perfect human life, one that could have gone on forever, and then voluntarily chose to take on the evil we brought into the world and die to appease God’s wrath towards it. God hates evil. He wants us to love, he wants us to be perfect. He created us to be beautiful. And it pains him when we are anything less. And God meets the needs of his children, because he is their father. And with Jesus, he satisfied our need for justice and love in one stroke.

People apply an interesting principle to belief in Jesus – they demand complete scientific proof before they will believe. Yet this is really just a testament to fact that following Jesus is a personal, life-changing, free-will-deciding, good vs. evil decision. Because we prove all sorts of other things by faith. For instance someone teaches you how to do something. As they give you step by step instructions technically you have no proof that they will work (you have good reason to believe that they will work, but you don’t have complete proof). But as you listen to the instructions you do what they say, and in the end the product is what you wanted, and so in a backwards way you have proved the instructions to be true. Most science is theory. There is no actual way to “prove” that the law of gravity will still apply to tomorrow. We’re not there yet, and something could change. But we treat it as fact, because the law of gravity has been around since the beginning of the universe, and there is no good reason why it shouldn’t apply tomorrow. In all likelihood it will, and it would actually be kind of ignorant to say that it won’t. And then waking up tomorrow and finding that the law of gravity does still apply sort of confirms your theory in a backwards sort of way.

In the same way, by trusting Jesus. you can become fulfilled and experience the power of the holy spirit as he restores you to the person you were created to be. But you have to take that first step. We live in a fallen world, one in which we will all die someday, but in Jesus we have a spot reserved for us in heaven if we claim it. It is ours – God wants us to have it. Don’t let anything tell you otherwise – that you don’t need it, that it doesn’t exist, that you can claim it later. Claim it now, while you have the chance. You need Jesus. I need Jesus. I need Jesus and admitting that is so hard, and yet as I painfully let God break down my walls and feel the scars as he tears away the pride and lust that I’ve so carefully sewn to my skin it becomes apparent that I was foolish to think otherwise. It was foolish to think that I could do anything apart from my creator. That I, a mortal being, could make up a meaning for my life and have it actually be true. Then what was true before me? Truth must be outside of me. Admitting this is not some sort of medieval practice which devalues me and says that I am worthless and powerless. It frees me from the impossible goal of filling all of the needs of the world and of myself on my own, and lets me take part in the bigger movement. I am a valuable child created by God to peform good works and restore this earth and the people in it to reestablish their God-given relationship with him. I need him, because at one point he was absent from my life. And when I called him in he met my need. And the longer I run on his fuel, the less I crave the rotting fuel that I let the world feed me before. And one day, when I am in heaven, God is all I will eat – I will spend eternity worshiping him and nothing else. And I will no longer feel need, because nothing I need will be absent.

Dear Lord,

Thankyou for sending your Son Jesus, the physical manifestation of you and your Holy Spirit, to meet my needs. I accept them, and ask that as I now move forward in faith, in the trust that you will always be there for me, for which I have no “scientific” proof, but only the proof of truths that you have spoken to my heart as I examine the needs I see in the world and your ability to meet those needs, I ask that as I move forward in that faith that you would reveal yourself to me. Since you have met my need for justice and my need for love I will accept whatever tasks you give me, and trust whatever truths you teach me, and I will open myself up for change, to become one with truth instead of trying to make up my own. Thankyou for creating me and for loving me enough to want a relationship with me.

Amen.

Mark 9:2-13

The Transfiguration

 Mark 9 ²After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. ³His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.  ⁵Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” ⁶(He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)  ⁷Then a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”  ⁸Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.  ⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. ¹¹And they asked him, “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?” ¹²Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? ¹³But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.”

Matthew 17 ¹After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. ²There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. ³Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.  ⁴Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” ⁵While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” ⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. ⁷But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” ⁸When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.  ⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” ¹⁰ The disciples asked him, “Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?” ¹¹ Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. ¹² But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” ¹³ Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.

Luke 9 ²⁸About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. ²⁹As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. ³⁰Two men, Moses and Elijah, ³¹appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. ³²Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. ³³As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.) ³⁴While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. ³⁵A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” ³⁶When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen.

First of all, I would like to preface with a definition of transfiguration: to exalt, glorify, to emit divine radiance. Because of the appearance of Elijah and Moses and the root meanings of “trans” and “figure” I wrongly assumed that this was talking about Jesus transforming into Elijah and Moses, but this is not the case. The title “transfiguration” is referring to the part of the passage when God exalts Jesus.

Okay, so now we have the weirdness of the appearance of Elijah and Moses. It is important that Jesus establishes historical credibility. If God is real then he should have been at work long before Jesus – he should have been present since the beginning of time. Jesus is saying that he is the God of Moses and Elijah, men of the past. Moses brought the law of God, which showed that 1 – God has a standard for righteousness and 2 – that we can never please God by our works. The law was never meant to save, but rather to bring attention to our need for a savior. Jesus is that savior. Elijah was a dedicated prophet who may simply represent all of the prophets – all of whom pointed to our need to acknowledge God, our need for a savior, and the anticipation of the coming Messiah (again that is Jesus). Also, we see Jesus clearing up some confusion from the literalist interpretation of the Pharisees of Malachi 4:5. Elijah was persecuted by his king, and John the Baptist was persecuted by his king, both were pushed into the wilderness, both were bold in their message of repentance.

So why does this event happen? In this scene, we are given a glimpse of the glory of heaven. Here we have two men who have passed on from the earth but have/will go to heaven through faith in God’s promise of the Messiah. One has died before the Messiah, one was taken up directly to heaven without dying, and the disciples present will one day go to heaven through their faith in the power of Jesus’ sacrifice which will take place soon. And God exalts Jesus, also showing us that he more than just a man – he is worthy of our praise. He the Son of Man – God in the form of a human.

Another important point to take away from the event is righteous fear of God the Father. When God’s cloud appears, the disciples are literally knocked to the ground. We should always remember to fear the Lord – fear his perfection because when we hold up our lives to it we fall so short. Fear his love because of its great power. Fear his power because any pride we have in our own abilities apart from him is completely unjustified. Because of Jesus we need not fear condemnation from God,  but that should not lessen our awe of him, we shouldn’t feel too comfortable, too “buddy-buddy” with God. God is more amazing, more clever, wise, and knowledgable, more loving, gracious, and good than we can ever imagine – and this should strike righteous fear into our hears – fear of living any life that is not focused on him – fear of dishonoring such an amazing God. We need not fear his wrath or his opinion of us – he holds us in the highest esteem – but we should fear ourselves and the ability we have to reject God from our lives.

Why needn’t we fear his wrath? Because of Jesus. Through Jesus, and Jesus only, not because of any good work we’ve done can we have a relationship with God. And Jesus illustrates this in this passage as he is the one who gently touches the disciples and says “Get up, don’t be afraid.” We should rejoice when we hear these words – by ourselves we can only fear God’s perfection as we realize that we have willingly brought destruction upon ourselves by denying it – but with Jesus we can rejoice as our sinfulness is taken away and God in his glory looks at us as completely clean and his spirit takes root in us and transforms us to live for God’s perfect will and brings us closer and closer to God our Father, whom we were built to be in a relationship with.

Jesus is preparing the disciples to understand what is about to happen. They clearly still don’t fully understand, as they come down the mountain after conversing with Jesus, Moses and Elijah they discuss what “rising from the dead” meant, but they can look back on this event after the fact and see what Jesus was trying to show them, and use it to spread the word, so that one day Matthew, Mark and Luke include it in their Gospels as an event important to understanding Jesus’ story.

References:

http://www.easyenglish.info/bible-commentary/mark-lbw.htm

http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/index.php?action=getCommentaryText&cid=49&source=1&seq=i.48.9.1

Majesty

Here I am

Here I am, shaped by my past, but at any given moment able to choose… Able to choose from an infinite number of future courses. Straight, a little bit shifted, towards a person, towards knowledge, towards myself. Here I am, with the ultimate question facing me every day – what is my life worth, what is it, why do I have it, whose is it, and what am I going to do with it? You are. Don’t take this simple fact for granted. You could have never been. But you are. Why?

Humbled by Your majesty

One you encounter truth, you realize that it is unknowable. You realize that truth is more beautiful and more complex and more sacred than you ever imagined. It is humbling – I am nothing without truth. Truth made me. Why me? What processes are at work here?

Covered by Your grace so free

God’s grace is not dependent on us. We can not earn it. We do not deserve it. It is completely dependent on God, and what an amazing revelation it is to discover that he has given it to us freely. His love is unconditional. It does not change in its nature – when you make a good decision, a bad decision, when you learn, grow, regress, hurt, give, love, mature. He looks at you the same way. He does not grow in appreciation of you, he does not grow in love for you, he does not grow in desire for you. His grace is constant, what changes is whether we accept, listen and submit to it.

Here I am
Knowing I’m a sinful man

Everything tells us that we are not sinful. We are shaped by our upbringing, we are stressed, its my life – what I do works for me even if doesn’t work for you, we can never know for sure. Bullshit. We are already much too self-centered – owning 10 times what we need to survive while others are starving, only making friends with people who make us feel happy and leaving alone those poor unfortunate souls who failed to develop social skills or who never talk because they’re going through a hard time, being aggravated when we have to take a minute out of our day to check in with family… adding that we don’t have a problem with sin adds insult to injury. Who are we, who have lived on this earth less than a century, who were created without our own effort, to claim ourselves as Gods? It is our duty to learn, not make up some random theory that makes us feel good and then stubbornly stick to it. This is just purposeful ignorance.

Covered by the blood of the Lamb

And yet, no matter what sins we have committed, Christ died for us. All of us. We all have chosen evil over God at some point in our lives, and none of us are “more” of a sinner than the next person. And Christ chose to come down and suffer the punishment sentenced to us, he literally took our place, so that if we accept his gift our relationship to God is completely restored.

Now I’ve found

I did not create this worldview. I learned it, from words written by those who have known God, who have recorded God’s workings and, in the case of Jesus, his very words. Sometimes I don’t completely understand it, and sometimes, if I have been feeding my pride and lust, I don’t like it, but it’s there. And at any given moment, all I have to do is look, and it’s there waiting to give me insight and understanding. This is why my worldview is sometimes hard to explain. It is outside of myself. If had made it up or if man had made it up it would be easy to explain. But I did not create it, so I can not fully explain it, I can only experience it.

The greatest love of all is mine
Since You laid down Your life
The greatest sacrifice

Only God’s love could go so far as to sacrifice his very life for the lives of people who have openly rejected and even persecuted him. It is truly unconditional. And it is mine! He gave it to me! And he gave it to you.

Majesty, majesty
Your grace has found me just as I am
Empty handed but alive in Your hands

We truly have nothing without God. If the world is created by chance, then when the world ends it will be like we never existed – the past only exists in our minds and in the minds of those who learn about the past by reading and studying. Once the last human is gone, if there is no eternity it will be like we never existed. Furthermore, if there is a God then he is creator, and therefore everything we “have” was originally created by him, including ourselves. So by ourselves we are empty-handed. But when we live for him all of a sudden we have access to his power. The Bible says we are co-heirs with Christ – we are meant to have a complete and full relationship with God and to live in the way that he made us to live – with pure love and pure goodness. And when we ask for these things, God gives them to us graciously and without question, because that it his will for us. He can make us alive.

Majesty, majesty
Forever I am changed by Your love

It is true that we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love. He loves every single person the same “amount,” no matter if we’re following him or denying him. His gift of eternal life is readily available to both sets of people. However, you can’t truly acknowledge him and continue living in sin. When you acknowledge God and his complete goodness and the fact that he gave his whole self for a second chance to have a relationship with you, you will hate sin and hate evil and the way it pulled you away from God and the way it is destroying our world. You can not do anything to be “saved,” God saves you, but you can not look love in the face and continue to hate. If you do still hate, then there is a part of yourself that you are still keeping from God. Knowing God changes you – every day you should be living more and more like Jesus.

In the presence of Your majesty

God is working, he is revealing himself day by day. We don’t have to just “hope.” We can come into his presence – through prayer, through calling on the Holy Spirit, through learning more about him, through gathering together believers. And one day we will be fully in his presence.

Here I stand
Humbled by the love that You give

 That I could bring myself to sacrifice my life for love… yet I don’t even give up the small things like comfort and impure thoughts… Oh God tear my world apart so that I am forced to rely on you and then you will make my life holy. That I could love the world like you love it. That I would cry for those who are lost, that I would give unsparingly of my time and money to restore it to the way you wanted it to be, that like Jesus I would not condemn anyone in it but leave all condemnation to God, simply hating the evil that has stolen your people from you.

Forgiven so that I can forgive

Can we ever really know something without experiencing it first hand? Can we ever truly know what it was like to live during another time period? Can we ever truly know what it is like to grow up under different circumstances? We can only know a reflection of their lives, we can imagine, but its only a reflection. In the same way, if we only know forgiveness from the forgiveness of men, we are only learning from a reflection. Only by knowing the source of forgiveness can we truly learn to forgive.

Here I stand
Knowing that I’m Your desire

Why me, Oh God? I can not comprehend why you want me specifically, why you search after me and call me and rejoice when I come back to you no matter what I have done while I’m gone. But you have told me that you yearn for me, that you love me like a bridegroom loves his bride, you have wooed me with your righteousness and love. What can I do but desire you?

Sanctified by glory and fire

The moment we think we have God figured out is the moment we can be sure that we know nothing of him. As life goes on we should be continually changed, day by day, entering his presence and coming away more like him, facing the fires of evil and coming away relying more on God than ever before to defeat them. God should never stop astounding us, there is an infinite amount to learn about him.

And now I’m found

If there’s one thing I know – that I was lost, but now I’m found.

Mark 4:10-12

Mark 4 ¹⁰When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. ¹¹He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹²so that,
   ” ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
      and ever hearing but never understanding;
   otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ “

Other translations of the last line are “lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them,” and “so they will not turn from their sins and be forgiven.” Lest their sins be forgiven? Doesn’t God want to forgive us? Why does it seem like Jesus is trying to prevent people from being forgiven?

Well, we know that Jesus does want us to be forgiven from passages like

Mark 3 ²⁸I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them.

Mark 5 ²²For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. ²³If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

Matthew 26 ²⁸This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Luke 7 ⁴⁷Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.

So how do we reconcile this passage? First of all, who is the “they” in the passage? Let’s take the “they” to mean just the Pharisees and the teachers of the religious law, rather than an all-encompassing “they.” This would actually be right in line with Jesus actions in these passages

Matthew 12 ¹³Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. ¹⁴But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. ¹⁵Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. Many followed him, and he healed all their sick, ¹⁶warning them not to tell who he was.

Matthew 16 ¹⁶Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. ¹⁸And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. ¹⁹I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” ²⁰Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.

Mark 3  ¹¹Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” ¹²But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.

Why was he hiding his identity? Didn’t Jesus want all people to come to know him?

John 7  ⁶Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right. ⁷The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil. ⁸You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.” ⁹Having said this, he stayed in Galilee.

Jesus knew the hearts of the Pharisees.

Matthew 23  ²⁵“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

He did not come for earthly glory, he came to humbly submit himself as a sacrifice for his creation.

Philippians 2  ⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!

And so, until his resurrection, he kept his identity very secretive – both to avoid encouraging his followers to look at him as an earthly king

John 18  ³⁶Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

and to avoid a run-in with the Pharisees until he had done everything he needed to do. When they finally came for him, he went willingly, but until then he refused to make scenes unnecessarily. As God, he knows the Pharisee’s hearts. He often talks of them as self-righteous and hypocritical – although he wants the Pharisees to come to know him he perhaps knows that they will not no matter what he says. Therefore, he is content to hide truths from them that would cause an uproar and hinder his plan for his life here on earth. And the Pharisees that do seek him out are able to come to know him – as shown by the brief mention of the Pharisee Nicodemus bringing burial spices to Jesus’ tomb.

Another way to read the last line of Mark 4:12 is that if they did perceive and understand, they would be forgiven. We often think of perceiving and understanding as involuntary things – you either get it or you don’t, and you can’t blame someone for not getting it. But perhaps it is a choice. You know those people who, when they listen to something, are not thinking about the other person’s train of thought, but rather thinking of how to refute each thing the person says. There is usually some sort of refutation to made for anything – even true things. We know that the Pharisees have been playing their game of trying to trick Jesus into saying something false. Perhaps they are seeing but not perceiving and hearing but not understanding of their own accord – they aren’t trying to perceive and understand, they are just trying to refute him. And this would work for anyone who was listening, not just the Pharisees. The “they” could be the Pharisees or it could be a more general “they.”

The last way I want to look at this passage is in Isaiah, where it is quoted from. These few lines are the beginning of a prophesy in Isaiah which talks about a purifying destruction from the Lord, that the cities lie ruined and less than a tenth of the population remains

Isaiah 6 ^13b  But as the terebinth and oak
       leave stumps when they are cut down,
       so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.

 So here again, Jesus is showing that in order to truly know him you have to actively seek him out – otherwise you will be among those scattered and destroyed. Jesus’ parables require the listener to question and ask and submit and discover. And only because of God’s grace and mercy and love, not because of anything any person does, those that accept faith are made “holy seed” (this can happen to ANYONE).

–> for the next post, the passage I will be looking at is:

Mark 7 ²⁴Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. ²⁵In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet. ²⁶The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.  ²⁷“First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”  ²⁸“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  ²⁹Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”

Read it and start thinking about what YOU think it means! (I have no idea yet 🙂 )

Sacrifice

Is it worth it? Is it worth the sacrifice? How big is the sacrifice? Is it worth commending? Is what I’m struggling for worth the cost of the struggle?

I think that too often we assume that if someone has overcome a struggle, then it wasn’t much of a struggle to begin with. For instance you have heard success stories of people overcoming drug and alcohol addictions, and now it is your attitude that everyone who has drug or alcohol addiction should be able to overcome it with a little effort, and if they haven’t yet they are stubborn and lazy. Or you may have heard of the man or woman that stood up against slavery or some other form of discrimination, and you give them a mental pat on the back, but inwardly you feel as though you would have done the same thing. Or you have heard a man or woman give a speech about how they grew up in horrible times with abusive parents and each bad thing after another, and how it was faith and love that got them through it, and you sympathize with them, and maybe even give them some props, but you don’t sit down and cry at the tragedy of their life because you know where it ends – they became a good-looking adult with a beautiful spouse and kids living in the suburbs and giving a speech to you on a sunny Sunday morning.

But a struggle that requires immense sacrifice is a struggle that can be life-changing if it is overcome. The drug-addict gives up getting clean because it is too hard. They just can’t. When in fact they can, but the challenge is a thousand times harder than anything they have ever done before – heck it’s a thousand times harder than anything anyone they’ve ever known has done before.  It’s a fine line between the hypocritical “If I were in his shoes I’d be over it by now,” when in fact you have no idea how hard the challenge is to overcome and would likely be in the same place if it happened to you, and the “It’s too bad – I don’t blame him, I mean look what he’s been through.”

But ridiculous odds does not equal impossible. It simply means that life isn’t what you thought it was.

Life was supposed to be being responsible so that your world doesn’t fall apart. Sure there will be a few dips here and there, but be responsible, treat others kindly, and it’ll all work out. Life is about you – you only have one life so make the best of it. Follow your heart, dream big and don’t let anyone stop you. You, you, you, you, you. And why shouldn’t it be about you? You’re all you really have, and furthermore you’re stuck with you for the rest of your life. And it’s important to be considerate of all the other “you”s out there, but no one has any right to tell you how to run your life.

Are you sure? Why are you here? What did you do to deserve life? What will happen when you die? Will you go down in history for living the funnest most amazingest life ever? You got good grades, you treated others kindly, you weren’t too selfish but you followed your own path. Now what? Don’t you see that a life centered on you will get you no where? The world lived long before you came and after you leave it will continue to ebb and flow. By yourself you are barely a ripple.You are here because you were created. You were made from the outside, and you had no say over when or where or how or what you are made out of. You were made because someone thought you were worth making. And although part of this is your parents, a lot of it isn’t. A lot of your creation happened without their say, without their plans. You were made because the world was designed so that you would be made. And you were made with a purpose. You were made with a will by a Will, and unless your will is in tune with that Will, you will constantly be fighting a losing battle. It is when your will is in line with that Will that you start accomplishing things. Because it’s not just about you. By yourself you are barely anything. But someone thought you were worth making, and when you work together that Will you are everything. When you let the Will work through you you are fulfilling your purpose. You are made complete in him. You are made clean, made holy (holy means “set apart,” not of this world), you are made valuable. And no one has the right to tell you otherwise. You are free from the wills of men, from the wills of lust and anger and jealousy, from the wills of pride and self-loathing. When your mind says “why, why is it worth all this trouble to get rid of these wills running my life?” you finally have an answer.

Because someone thought it was worth it make you. Someone thought it was worth it to give you a free (not forced to do good or evil) will, one that could love and obey or hurt and reject. Someone thought it was worth it to come down to earth and live a life like yours and show you the way. And someone thought it was worth it to die the death that was created as a just consequence of your sin, so that you might have the opportunity to start anew. That’s what makes it worth it surrender your will to another Will – because your soul is that valuable. You can’t give anything for your soul except your will – nothing else is valuable enough. And your soul is what lives on. That’s what makes it worth it.  

Just because something requires immense sacrifice doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, or that it can’t be done. It just means that you have to be willing to make that sacrifice.   

Mark 8  ³⁴Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ³⁵For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? ³⁷Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? ³⁸If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”