Photos from the new camera
I took these shots one-handed out the windshield driving home today. I was surprised to see the sun and was shocked when I realized that the sun was still shining when I got home. That means longer days. And longer days mean time for post-work disc golf. And that makes me unbelievably happy.
Captain of our souls
While reading the great and small work (112 pages) of The Practice of the Presence of God (the cover of this new printing is creepy–the old cover was better) by Brother Lawrence, I came across these nuggets of gold:
The time presses, there is no room for delay; our souls are at stake … Not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back. But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the Lord, who reposes in it, and He will quickly calm the sea.
and
I know that for the right practice of it [enjoying the presence of God] the heart must be empty of all other things, because God will possess the heart alone; and as He cannot possess it alone without emptying it of all besides, so neither can He act there, and do in it what He pleases, unless it be left vacant to Him … Knew we but the want we have of the grace and assistance of God, we should never lose sight of Him–no, not for a moment.
Passages from Brother Lawrence such as these may become my standard weekend entry for the next few weeks. The book aims to teach how to be in the presence of God regardless of one’s surroundings. Its truths are worth loads more than whatever it costs – pick up a copy.
The Umbrella and the Bible
It rained on my drive in to work this morning, but after I parked, the rain tapered off and it was only spitting as I walked to my building. I carried my umbrella, but didn’t open it for five or seven minutes. Instead, I carried the umbrella under my arm with my arms stuffed in warm coat pockets.
I didn’t use the umbrella because I didn’t think it’d make much difference since there was barely any rain. Instead, I squinted against the wet slapping wind and trudged on. When I finally began walking under my umbrella, I noticed just how much it had been raining and how much the umbrella did help.
How many of us do the same thing with God’s word? I assume most houses in America have Bibles. I also assume that most people don’t read them–they just sit there like a dead pet (as Don Miller says) and collect dust* If this is how we treat God’s truth, what good is it to us? If you see other people trying to live according to it, like I saw other people using umbrellas, and just paint them with the “hypocrites doing the double-standard thing” brush, God won’t be able to affect your life much.
But, if you only open and read the Bible and ask for understanding, God will use it to speak to you. That’s not a bunch of wishful thinking. Truth was true 4,000 years ago. It should still be true today, right?
Well, the rain is here. Open that umbrella and see the difference it makes.
*On a side note, is it possible to collect dust in the same way one collects coins or stamps? I know someone who once had a herd of dust bunnies under his bed. Now he’s in the Navy.
Fasting is like surgery
I wanted to write about fasting last night but didn’t have time before sleeping. Interestingly, I ran across this post on the Resurgence site this morning.
It seems most Christians today view fasting is a ritual from the Old Testament, right up there with ash and sackcloth and sacrificing goats. Or it’s viewed as something you do before surgery. I think this second thought is more accurate.
As told by Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples “when you fast.” He says “when” and not “if.” And, as told by Mark, Jesus explains that when he’s no longer on the earth, his disciples will fast. These two passages, together with many instances of fasting in the Old Testament convince me that fasting is still an act of obedience.
Fasting allows us to understand others’ pain. Our stomach never forgets it’s hungry. A North American stomach knows it will receive food from above about three times a day. The stomach takes the food for granted. From where does our real thankfulness for this food come? It’s similar to Emily Dickinson’s surmising that those who don’t often succeed enjoy success more than those who succeed all the time. Can a satisfied stomach emphasize with one that hasn’t been filled in days?
So maybe fasting isn’t only to allow God to grow our faith, but it gives us a faint glimpse into the eyes of those who are suffering.
Fasting allows us not to be slaves to our body. We spend many hours heeding our body’s demands–think about all the time you spent this morning in the bathroom before going to work or school or to the store. (One of the awesome things about God is that we don’t need to pretty up for Him. Actually we can’t clean ourselves up enough before approaching His throne. Instead, we just need to drag our crap with us to His feet and ask His help.) Denying yourself food frees you from one of these bodily commands and opens you for God’s words. Leaving our fleshly demands and moving toward serving God is a step toward not caring about the physical things of this world and instead striving to glorify God.
And back to my fourth sentence that fasting is surgery preparation. Fasting shuts out one of our main human desires–food. When you go without food, the stomach empties. In the same way, we need to empty ourselves of all our earthly desires, all selfishness and arrogance. It is only when God helps us drop these tangled encumbrances that we are free to run to Him, to rest in His acceptance and to rely on His all-knowing judgment. And it is in this time spent with God that molds us and shapes us into vessels that can serve Him. In this process, many things, mostly involving our selfishness and arrogance, need to be cut away if we are to be God’s instruments.
We must become less if God is to become more in our lives. We can’t serve both ourselves and God. By weakening ourselves through fasting, we rely on God to help us through the day–His words (the Bible) can shape us better because we become more desperate for them.
Stay tuned
If you’re interested, I’ll post some of my thoughts tomorrow on fasting.
On second thought,
I will post these thoughts regardless of your interest:)
A Better Mediator
Jesus: Our High Priest, our Passover Lamb, Our Salvation
Goal: Point out with scripture how Jesus is our perfect priest, our perfect sacrifice and our way to connect with God. Since Jesus walked with us, experienced and beat every type of temptation and then bore them on the cross, He can understand and emphasize our struggles, hurts and impossible situations. Since Jesus is eternal, so is His sacrifice and, in His blood, we can boldly approach the throne of God. Wow.
Job 9:32-33 I tried to mediate between two people a few years ago. I was living in a cabin in the wilderness in new mexico and two guys were mad at each other. they went back and forth all summer, but one time it was really comical and i just started making fun of both of them. they got ticked–one just walked away and the other guy swore at me so i walked away. Why the need for mediation between people? because there are unresolvable differences
in the Old Testament days, people were in a similar position before God. in the temple, which only the high priest could enter, God met with His people once a year. not that God didn’t like OT people–on the contrary, the Levitical law was really God showing grace. it’s unthinkable that the creator of the moon, planets, trees and everything else would care about people, but he did. but God is holy and perfect. people aren’t. God’s holiness would be tainted by human contact and people wouldn’t be able to handle the encounter. no one could see God and live. because of this there was a heavy veil that only the high priest could pass through once a year and into God’s presence.
Hebrews 7:23-28 Why is Jesus a better priest for us? Jesus was a better priest than these men because -After He died on the cross, He rose and lives eternally. He is able to save forever. There never needs to be another person between us and God -He is perfect–holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners–He doesn’t need to sacrifice for His own sins. And since His sacrifice is perfect, we don’t need to worry about yearly sacrifices. He did “once for all”
John 2:19-21 We don’t have to go to travel anywhere to meet with God. it doesn’t say much for a god if you have to look a certain direction when you talk to him or go to a special place to meet with him. “When Christ died and rose again, the old temple was replaced by the globally accessible Christ. You may come to him without moving a muscle. He is as close as faith.”
Hebrews 4:15-16 What do you expect when you come to God? Do you think He’ll laugh at you/ignore you/listen to you? The less we know God, the less confident we will be to bring our concerns before Him. Think about a strong temptation you faced. Did it increase or decrease over time? How did it end? We usually give in when the pressure is building, but if Jesus never gave in to temptation, and we know that He didn’t, those temptations reached a level we’ve never known. Jesus is able to relate to any trial or hardship we go through. His life and death were full of pain. he was forsaken when He died and bore the agony of all history’s sins.
i have trouble with that one sometimes. does anyone else wonder if God really does understand what I’m going through?
We can approach God confidently and directly.The veil separating us from God was torn when Jesus died. God’s holiness isn’t affected by our presence and we don’t need to worry about being struck dead because when we accept Christ as our savior, His blood covers us and His perfect life counts for us.
Hebrews 10:19-25 So where are you with God. Are you at a distance because you’re afraid of Him? He doesn’t want you to clean up before you go to Him. He’ll clean you up. Do you have confidence to come close to Him? what is your confidence lie? your own goodness or in Christ’s perfection? if you don’t have confidence, ask God for it. if we humble ourselves before God and ask for the confidence to draw near to Him, He will give it to us. He will point us to the cross and say Jesus is the mediator between us. when I see you, I see My son’s perfection.
Golgotha Real Estate
How we view the cross determines how we view other people
Goal: Too often we believers put ourselves on higher ground than non-believers. We don’t see the situation the way God sees it. We judge others based on our ultimate priority. We forget from where we came. And most importantly, we forget who pushed us in the right direction (God and the Holy Spirit). These feelings of superiority, albeit under the surface, lead to believers looking down on non-believers with the haughty attitude of “What’s their problem?” or “Why don’t they just understand?” or the hateful apathy or not caring about their salvation.
Luke 18:9-14
the pharisee was wrong in thanking God that he wasn’t like the tax collector. we are wrong when we don’t realize we have a lot in common with non-believers. we both need God and we both need to place at the center of our lives.
what the pharisee tells God about doing (with a bragging attitude) is good stuff. he sees the tax collector who doesn’t tithe or fast and who cheats people out of their money. Jesus says that’s not an accurate picture.
“a cold self-righteous person who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute”
––c.s. lewis
Matthew 9:9-13
Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy. we’re all sick and none is healthy. He came for everyone (God is not willing for any to perish but for all to come to a saving acknowledgement of Jesus)
in verse 13 Jesus quotes Amos 6:6 & 1 Samuel 15:22
if your religion makes you self-righteous and holier-than-thou, your sacrifices are worthless
we remember we’re saved, but we forget what we’re saved from. often we forget our former ways, our former destiny and in doing so, we forget how desperate we were and continue to be for God’s sovereign love and His mercy. when we take our eyes off Jesus’s transforming work, we fall into the trap of performance-based grace, which is an oxymoron.
we are headed to hell until we accept Jesus’s death as our punishment for our mistakes. Jesus lived a perfect life and died on the cross for our sins because they are too much for us to ever make up. the debt would be too much for us to pay. we can’t pay for our sin. Jesus paid it for us.
this makes the ground at the cross level––none of us deserve Jesus’s salvation. a pharisee can’t earn it more than a tax collector and vice versa. a Christian doesn’t deserve salvation more than a Hindu. deserve’s got nothing to do with it. our only hope of rescue is Jesus’s death. all we need to do is accept it as a gift.
“The heart of the gospel is not a teacher whose standards we live up to, but a savior who died for His enemies and opponents––us.”
if that, the cross of Jesus, isn’t our ultimate focus, we’ll see through dirty and out-of-focus lenses. if the most important thing to us is our family or our job (not necessarily bad things), we will view others through those lens. If i see someone who puts something before his family or before his career, i’ll view him as beneath me.
But, if i realize the vital part Jesus’s cross plays in my life, i’ll be closer to seeing people how God sees people. God is not a respecter of persons. everyone is equal before Him. the ground at the cross is level, because we all fail when compared to God’s standards.
if i listen to the lie that God and I are tight and i don’t need to talk to Him today or ask His help for something today at work, i will slip away from communion with Him.
the most important thing about a person is what he or she thinks about Jesus. we either have accepted Him as our saviour and Lord, or we need to. But we all need God’s transforming power in our lives if we want our lives to count for God’s kingdom. we can’t be ambassadors if we’re not in constant communication with God. we can’t represent someone we don’t know or don’t trust.
A bill of goods
Jesus came not to make us feel better and rich. He came so we can live this life free from the clutches of sin and so we won’t rot in hell, eternally separated from God. Hell is what we earn, but Jesus came to give us new life, a fresh hope, a mediator between each of us and God. He loved us first. We must respond to that love and accept it, then we must turn away from our sinful lives and begin walking toward God, asking for Jesus’s help the entire way. That is the Good News of Christmas. Nowhere in Scripture does Jesus say His followers will get rich.
Below is the e-mail I sent to Living Word Bible Church after reading its pastor quoted in this story. This kind of scripture misinterpretation for the sake of numbers (the church’s Web site brags repeatedly of the number of attendees) and money in the administration members’ pockets make me furious. And that’s evident in my writing. So be it. Martin Luther got ticked, Paul was a house of fire, Nehemiah spread the pain and Jesus kicked some tables. Maybe lost people are attracted to this message and are coming to church for the first time. But I don’t think it’s the Gospel of Christ that is bringing them. I think it’s the man-made gospel of cash.
Is my attitude the right one? Should we tolerate this “interpretation” as merely that? This isn’t just one guy and his wife; it’s him, Joel Olsteen, Creflo Dollar and many more. Should we call it out publicly for what it is–a half-truth and whole lie?
Rev. C. Thomas Anderson,
I had the misfortune of reading about your interpretation of Scripture in the Dec. 25 CNN news story.
This is a quotation from that story:
“Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the finest transportation of their day was a donkey,” says Anderson. “Poor people ate their donkey. Only the wealthy used it as transportation.”
Please cite me the passage that mentions Joseph and Mary traveling anywhere with a donkey. (The Passion story doesn’t count because that donkey was borrowed.)
Have you taken your craft to poor countries? Have you spoken to believers from places like China and North Korea where Christians are routinely hunted down and killed for their faith? What are they doing wrong that they aren’t getting rich?
I’d love to hear you preach a sermon on 1 Timothy 6:6-7. If you have, please send it to me.
Why did Jesus tell the rich young ruler to sell everything he had?
How big is your camel, Tom?
My brief Christmas prayer
Dear Lord,
Thank Your for the humility You showed when You sent Jesus to this earth and thank You for Your awesome faithfulness even when we are faithless. Convict us of our sin. Convict us of our desperate need to make a decision to accept you as our King and Savior. Help us to realize that we will spend eternity separated from You if we reject You now. Thank You for all our family members and I ask You to give us all good health with which we can glorify Your name.
We pray in Jesus’s name,
Amen.
