Getting Grace

OK, so it's been awhile.  I'm engaged to be married to a blogger on July 19, 2014, 59 days from now.  So here's finally another post!

“Black grace,” my realtor, Dave, quipped on our way to get coffee at the Tim Horton’s drive thru.  Is getting grace as easy as ordering it on your way to work?  Well, yes and no, says this non-expert on the subject.  Not an expert, but someone who’s been meditating on how to get grace lately.

Yes, grace is obtained easily, not by works, Paul says, otherwise, “Grace is no longer grace.” (Rom. 11:6).  You cannot work for grace, especially the grace of salvation.  Nothing could be truer, and yet I often witness this dictum leading to an undue sense of fatalism.  Kind of like the guy who, because God is going to save who he’s going to save, spends his hours on the couch without a twinge of compunction to evangelize.

“I can’t change what God has already foreordained,” the couch potato snaps off the self-evident truth with the moral force of saying: “A circle is round.”  Thus, both Jesus’ Great Commission and Paul’s wish for perdition if he could only save his brethren according to the flesh are dispatched in one brisk tautology.

We know from both Peter (I Pet. 5:5-7) and James (Jas. 4:6) that God gives grace to the humble and that He opposes the proud, calling to mind Proverbs 3:34, where God scoffs at scoffers, but shows favor to the afflicted.  Further, James says we can humble ourselves—commands us to do so, really, and He will exalt us.

So, can you get God’s grace by doing something?  Only in the way you can be saved by doing something.  I remember weighing the options, thinking I didn’t want to go to hell, and making a decision to put my faith in Jesus Christ and His substitutionary death for me.  This seemed like I made the salvation happen—sort of.   Later I found out I did this because God had chosen me before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:6).  I responded to His call and can only love because He first loved me (I Jn. 4:19).

I look at it this way: If God has chosen me and told me how I might obtain grace, that’s OK with me.  I have thought about the conundrum ever since I spent some time out in the desert fasting in February 2013.  Do I set aside time to listen to God?  To pray and attend to His word daily?  Not only this, but do I—like Nehemiah at court—listen at every crossroads to integrate what I have learned into my daily decisions and meditations?  Humility comes down to taking time to regularly hear what God wants and then doing what He tells you.  The opposite would be to go our own way and not take what God says into account.  I don’t think this is oversimplification.

When I shut out everything else in my life: food, technology, companionship, everything but water, clothing and shelter for several days, I experienced revival, a rebirth of love for God, and a surprising opportunity to share the gospel with someone whose siblings had been praying for her.  I sat next to this co-worker on a plane a thousand miles from home before I realized who it was.  Then I shared with her for two hours straight until the plane landed.

The trip to the desert was hard and a lot of it was unpleasant, but let me do that again!

We ought to be excited and motivated to pursue God’s grace, not passive and fatalistic.  Don’t we pray for grace even though it is by definition undeserved?  We can humble ourselves, and praying goes a long way in expressing our humility and dependence upon God if we do it from a pure heart.  God told Moses He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, but He also tells us He will favor the humble and needy.  So when we need God’s grace, we don’t need to throw up our hands and say, “Well, God’s going to do what He’s going to do,” even though that is obviously true.  What we should be doing is humbling ourselves, and having a conversation with God that prioritizes listening.  

LISTEN TO I CORINTHIANS MESSAGES HERE!

Why Does the Earth Look So Old?

Is it reasonable for the earth to "look old" if it has been created recently? Adam was not created a fetus. The garden was not seeds, but mature plants upon creation. It only makes sense.

http://www.challies.com/liveblogging
/why-does-the-universe-look-so-old

OK. I haven't finished this one yet. Ehrman says the writers of the New Testament documents are evil-motived forgers. This is better than saying they faked it and they're really well-meaning men, which is what my professors told me in college. However, as the link to a good review will show, the evidence for forgery does NOT withstand scrutiny.

Follow this link: http://www.patheos.com/community/bibleandculture/2011/03/30/forged-bart-ehrmans-new-salvo-the-introduction/

City on a Hill?

Time after time, men’s attempts to form a “New Israel” or God’s kingdom on earth have failed, which raises the question, “Does God want us—in New Testament times--to attempt a utopia where the church and state are fused? For Calvinists who knew about Geneva, were fleeing persecution in their home countries, and had seen eight centuries of a Holy Roman Empire, creating a new Promised Land did not seem like such a far-fetched concept.
However, the Baptist, William Backus believed that the church and state were to be separate institutions of God, never to be mixed. He didn’t like state authority in the churches of Europe and didn’t want it in America. This latter view won out in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, nor abridging the free exercise thereof.” There has never been a state church in the U.S., although for a time some individual states had an official church.

Whether or not the government has made good on the freedom clause: that it won’t interfere with the free exercise of religion is up for debate. In any case, is the best road to a Christian nation state coercion by the changing of laws? Or is it the revival of individual hearts through the gospel? I have to say that I think I wasted a lot of time in my life trying to get morality legislated instead of spending my time winning people to Christ. I never see Jesus trying to change the Roman government or protesting its laws. Neither do I see the apostles trying to set up an earthly kingdom without Jesus.

With these examples in mind, how should we proceed?

Readers,

Have you spent even 5 minutes in the Bible today? Please be honest with yourself. You can read through a couple chapters of the NT in less time.

As I read through Luke I am struck how easy it is for people to fool and deceive themselves. As I prepared to leave the house today, it surprised me how hard the pull was on my heart to rush ahead and not read my Bible. I had intended to pray as soon as I got out of bed, but somehow that got delayed by more than an hour and had several interruptions.


"Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." --Luke 12:1

* People were trampling over one another (like at a rock concert) to hear the words of Jesus, something we may easily do anytime we want. Are we that hungry for the Lord and his words? How else will we know him/have a relationship with him? Do you go days without listening to your wife? (Wait, don't answer that question!)

* What is the danger of the Pharisees? It is saying one thing and doing another. Do you say you are a Christian? Do you claim to have a relationship with God, with Jesus Christ? You are lying if you are not committed to consistent time in His word. But this is just the first layer of hypocrisy, because--behold--the Pharisees had the entire Pentateuch memorized! The Christian life is much more than just reading the word!

Readers, bear with me as I challenge you today. I am tempted with the same hypocrisy daily and often fail. Let's work together to be controlled by the love of Christ. (II Cor. 5:14-15)

Love,

Paul

Why we believe in Trinity

I am sometimes asked why I believe in the Trinity when the word, "trinity" does not appear in the Bible. A fair question, although not necessarily well thought out. After all I believe a lot of things that are stated or implied in the Bible without having terms or doctrines noted for them in the actual scriptures.

For instance, I believe that God is omnipresent, though that word or that concept is not to my knowledge specifically stated. "The eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good," Proverbs 15:3, comes close, but just says God sees everywhere, not that he is everywhere.

The concept of three persons in one Godhead is an inevitable conclusion of reading the Bible. When taken together, the clear sense is that three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. Deuteronomy 6:6 is clear enough, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one." So we only have one God.

Because the Bible does not contradict itself--never does, when we see the Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus at his baptism while the voice of the Father declares from heaven, "This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," we don't initially have a problem. Maybe Jesus and the Holy Spirit aren't really God or fully God, then we can maintain our "one God" theory and keep the inerrancy of Scripture.

However, the New Testament is clear that both Jesus (John 10:30) and the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3-4,9) are fully and interchangeably God. So we believe on faith that God is one God, manifesting himself in three persons.