Co-habitating with the Gospel

Those drives home from church are fairly typical. You talk through the sermon discussing those finer points of the message that you can sprinkle through your week like "love my kids more," "spend more time in devotions" or "doing more to serve those in need." But all of these mores usually disintegrate Monday morning on the drive to work. Today though, our drive home was different. The more I talked, the more passionate I became. The pastor today was talking about the explosive power of the Gospel and how regardless of whether the response is positive or negative, the explosion prompts a response. For some its fear, for some its joy and for some its opposition. I was thinking about fence-sitters like myself who find themselves often not responding as quickly or as strongly to the Gospel as I'd hope. And I was prompted to mind a modern-day metaphor to the "luke-warmedness" we read about in Revelation. It may sound strange but the reality is this: you cannot co-habitate with the Gospel. Either you're all in or you're all out.

Co-habitation involves reaping the benefits of marriage without the commitment of marriage. Its a lifestyle that has become more and more commonplace. It's a fence-sitting situation. Some might argue that it is about testing the waters of a relationship but the more I counsel people who participate in this lifestyle the more I see it being primarily a commitment issue. Basically, "I'll take the fruit of relationship without a commitment of caring for the tree."

The reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He asks for our lives by laying down His own first. By communicating to us, He's all in and inviting us to the same. "Take up a cross because I am fully committed to you." The Gospel reality, Christ's unfailing and unwavering commitment to us, has the potential to explode in us a response of "I do! I will! I'm yours!" I pray that God would move me out of a mindset and lifestyle where I reap the fruits of forgiveness without remembering the tree on which He hung. May the Gospel explode in my life and cause me to respond with utter joy and full devotion.

Protection from Exposure

I was spending some time this morning reflecting on a familiar passage - Psalm 121. "I lift my eyes to the mountains from where does my help come from?" And what specifically came to light today was my understanding of God as Protector. Often when I would read this Psalm I would find myself confused by the question "How in the world can the moon do any harm to us?" I get how the sun can harm or smite us but when we're out enjoying the light of the full moon, we're not dousing ourselves with SPF 30. The moon cannot do any harm to us unless...unless we're in hiding.

Darkness has the ability to protect us from being seen or discovered. Hiding keeps us in the darkness from an enemy pursuing us. Or hiding keeps our sin from the exposing light of God's truth and holiness. In the garden the first response to the enemy and to the sin was to cover up not only skin but our location as well. God asks the question "where are you?" knowing we are taking flight from Him seeing us in our true condition. The moon has just as much the ability as the sun to expose us to our enemies and reveal our sin. Day or night, our sin and our state as enemies of God has the potential to be exposed. Enter God as protector. We were his enemies. He protected us from himself through the covering of His Son Jesus' blood, from the judgment which was ours to deserve for ignoring Him and walking rebelliously away from Him.

Therefore we can say with confidence "The LORD will protect our comings and our goings both now and forevermore" because we are saved from God's wrath by God's covering for God's glory. No longer afraid of exposure, because we are shaded by His Son.

One Year Down

Monday morning after a summer of swimming through Hebrew, I came upon this poem a friend of ours gave us just after we arrived here. I'm amazed how the first year's experience continue to confirm these truths:

In heavenly love abiding
No change my heart shall fear
And safe is such confiding
For nothing changes here
The storm may roar around me
My heart may low be laid
But God is round about me
And can I be dismayed?

Wherever He may guide me
No fear shall turn me back
My shepherd is beside me
And nothing shall I lack
His wisdom ever waketh
His sight is never dim
He knows the way He taketh
And I will walk with Him

Green pastures are before me
Which yet I have not seen
Bright skies will soon be o'er me
Where darker clouds have been
My hope I cannot measure
My path to life is free
My Savior is my treasure
And He will walk with me

Anna L. Waring

Author of Salvation

After several years of failing health, my grandmother is nearing her end here on earth. Yesterday, when my dad called to ask if I wanted to talk with her one final time, I felt this incredible wave of responsibility and, to some degree, panic. Here's the moment when the soon-to-be pastor should have the right words, the eloquent prayer and the clearly-presented Gospel. But all that I wanted to say was how much we loved her and were going to miss her. Miss her terribly. I prayed with her and for her that the beautiful reality of being with the LORD on the other side of death would be hers to experience.

I ended the call and headed to my car to head to work with tears which turned to gut-level sobbing. I found myself praying and saying things like "I hate death!" and "This is not the way it is supposed to be!" And more than that, I found myself pleading with God to be merciful to her. "LORD, You are the one who wrote this story. And in Your story, you included an incredible plot twist to our sin called salvation. Please, do what you do best and write this story of salvation in the heart of my grandmother. I love her so much but I love you more. Be real to her by being gracious to her in being Savior to her."

God reminded me in my painful drive to work why I am in seminary and learning things like the diagnostic principles of strong verbs in Hebrew. Because the Gospel is a story rich and full but most importantly vital to our lives and also our deaths. I want the remainder of my life to be about telling this story to whoever will listen and even when I am on my deathbed remembering the story will not end here. It ends with a glorious beginning of things made new, death abolished and Jesus receiving all of the credit!

Children Born of God by God and for God

There is a distinct sense of gratefulness which comes at unexpected moments in the course of seminary. This morning was one of those moments. Being taught and equipped in the Greek language has a great deal of responsibility to it. I'm not learning this language to benchmark myself as more spiritual or better able to access the "real" Word of God. I've been given this opportunity to learn Greek in order to use it for equipping and teaching others the gifts and the treasures which are found in the original New Testament language. There is a sense of responsibility and gratefulness which comes when we realize that the opportunities and gifts which God gives us are to be used so much further beyond ourselves.

As my brain begins the aging process of shutting down and the amount of cells dying each day becomes exponential, I thought it would be helpful to remain in the Greek everyday in order to at least give some life-support to the cells that are still hanging on for dear life (and still hanging on to my beginning Greek). I spent this morning in John 1:12-13 looking at the Greek. What I saw there gave me a clear picture of this responsibility and gratefulness.

In this passage John is writing to remind the people of God that their adopted position before him is conceived and founded in the will of God and not in anything they bring to the table (their genetics, family line, self-discipline or self-will). We are children of God because He says we are children of God. In the birth of my sons, they didn't enter the world thinking "Cool. I'm glad I made this happen." They come into the world completely and utterly dependent on the the ones who have given birth to them. The verb John uses of "being born" is both in the Aorist tense (it happened at a distinct point in time) and the passive voice (it happened to us rather than by us). We have been born children of God because God made it so. What a privilege and an honor to be made His own child on His own will for His own glory. Thank you, Father.

"Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole."

This is Our God

After wading through, or rather trying desperately to keep my head above water, one of our books for this semester - Reformed Dogmatics (even the title makes me want to apologetically put a brown paper book cover on it) - my expectation was to finish the book with some understanding of at least the gist of it. I had no expectation that God would use a book, so dense and thick for this sparse and casual brain, to reveal Himself. Reveal Himself in way this brain could understand. That was basically the thrust of the book. God, infinite and incomprehensible, reveals Himself to His creatures, finite and limited, in ways in which we are able to understand.

Within His word we are able to begin to formulate our understanding of Him not through studying Who He is (which is ultimately impossible for us) but rather what He does (which is tangible to us). For example, when we see God deliver His people, Israel out of Egypt, we begin to form an understanding of God as Deliverer. When we see Him pull Joseph out of a death pit and into a king's presence, we see Him as Rescuer.

But what I didn't expect was, during worship last week, to use this same line of thinking in understanding God when it comes to the cross. The cross, at the center of the sanctuary's front wall, became a vivid reminder to me of not only what Jesus had done for us (which is typically the phraseology I use for the cross) but one of the boldest definitions and understandings of Who God is. As Christ is on display crucified, we see who God is. God is just. God is wrathful. God is humble. God is mercy. God is pursuer. God is rescuer. God is deliverer. God is perfecter.
God is King. God is love. At the intersection of the cross we see Jesus, through His actions declaring loud and clear "this is our God."

The God Who is and the God Who does

Today in one of our classes we talked about making the mistake of separating who God is from what He does. Basically, if you want to know Him, know Him through his actions, and the Bible is basically the long-form testimony of what He does. God is and God does. I think its difficult sometimes to understand who God is in our culture today because we base so much of understanding of God on our own here-and-now experiences rather than allowing the Word to reveal His character.

As God reveals Himself - so He truly is. Herman Bavinck

Clothing Us

I had a difficult conversation with someone last night who is struggling incredibly with their identity in Christ. Struggling with recognizing God as caring, as faithful, as protective. And then, as His providence would have it, I found myself reading at the front end of Genesis the account of the fall, fall of mankind that is. Often reading through these passages I would be struck by the serpent's deception, by Adam's finger-pointing or by the grief that must have come upon these two as they no longer were able to enjoy God's walking in their midst.

But today something else stood out to me. God, in the midst of being offended against, of being disregarded and ignored, of having two people want to have their own share of god-like power, did something that I found to be incredibly caring, faithful and protective. He gave them something to wear. Instead of forcing them to walk around in the shamefulness that their own actions had created, with a 'you made your bed, now lie in it' sort of attitude, He shows tenderness and compassion alongside his anger and justice.

What a picture of Christ's righteousness clothing each one of us. Not deserved. Not earned. But because of the great love with which He loves us, He covers us in our shame. Like the father of the prodigal son throws an undeserved robe around his own, God wraps Christ's perfection, Christ's righteousness, around us making us able to stand facing the world, who no longer sees our shame, but sees His son!