A Defining Characteristic Of Christianity.

I don't know if someone out there has a list of reasons why to like Christianity, but I'll say this next reason lands at #12. Why #12? I wore it in little league. Now you know.

Reason #12 why I like Christianity came to me while I read Isaiah 46:3-4. It says, "Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save."

Think about the above passage as if God said this about you:

"Listen (your name), I came up with the idea of you before you were born. I will take care of you from conception to death. Never at any point in your life will I not help you and carry you."

God might not use a double negative like that, but whatever. Aesop said God helps those who help themselves. God here simply says he helps you in everything throughout your entire life.

Over the last few years, I've written plenty of posts taking shots at my Baptist upbringing. But strict, behavior-focused, follow-the-rules-for-holiness lifestyles exist outside of Baptist churches. Maybe the Assemblies Of God church I attended in middle school had more fun singing and dancing during meetings, but they still didn't want me to go to the movies.

Most, if not every, world religion tells people to do and say certain things to achieve holiness. In Isaiah 46:1-2, God points out how the idols of the surrounding culture place burdens on people and offer no help or freedom. Then God says, "I'm not like that. I want to take those burdens from you. I want to carry you through the hard days you encounter. I want to do the work of your salvation."

Reason #12? I like Christianity because God doesn't expect me to live a perfect life. He wants me to pursue Him and allow Him to do the rest.

Letting Transformation Happen - Or, how I learned to look at Romans 12:2 in a new way

As a person who sometimes writes words, I try to pay attention to grammar. I mean, sometimes I try to pay attention to grammar. Other times, I toss formality to the side and say to heck with it.

Thanks to great English teachers, though, I gained a keen awareness of overusing passive tense. See how I tried to avoid the landmine there? "I am keenly aware" to "I gained a keen awareness", aaaand sidestep...

But sometimes we need to use passive tense. Sometimes it's the best way to say what needs to be said. Like the two passives in that last sentence. And now two sentence fragments which would probably have passives. Did anyone else start counting? Okay, I'll stop doing that now.

As I prepared my discussion notes for a youth group meeting, I learned how Paul intentionally worded Romans 12:2. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

In Enjoying God's Grace, Terry Virgo highlights the phrase "be transformed" and says this comes through God's work in us. At various stages of my life, I've taken this verse to mean I had to try very hard to renew my mind by changing my behavior. Without exception, this led to disappointment. My behavior couldn't bring me salvation, so how could I expect it to sanctify me as well?

I had one of the youths read Proverbs 23:6-7 and we talked about how our thoughts reflect what's in our heart. And if I've learned anything about grace, I've learned I need to let God change my heart.

So how do we let God transform our hearts and our minds? One youth said we have to have a humble and responsive attitude to whatever God might put on our hearts. In other words, don't resist the changes He wants to do in you.

Anyone else out there try really hard to change themselves? Have you ever experienced God changing your heart and mind outside of your own effort?

A Memorable Object Lesson - Part six and a half of Questions From The Lifehouse Youth Group

Where have I been? Bed-ridden. Possibly as a result of hanging out with the very youths I speak of today.

What did I have? I'm not sure, but you don't want to hear about it. It would gross you out.

And yet, I'm about to tell you the grossest object lesson I ever gave the youth group. It happened at the end of the meeting I mentioned in the last post.

Someone brought up the point, "If we don't have to worry about losing our salvation or having God get mad at us because we've sinned, is it a big deal if we just keep sinning?"

Okay, yes. The answer is yes. But only because understanding the magnitude of God's goodness in offering salvation and the full depravity of our sin should make us want to live a different kind of life. It's the same kind of answer I would give to someone who asks, "Can a person sin in Heaven?" Well, yeah, I guess. Satan and the other demons did. But if you were in the presence of God and aware of the consequences that come with it, why would you choose to sin? It'd be like watching someone lose their leg during Shark Week and then thinking, "Yeah, maybe I'll cut off my leg. Just to see what it's like." You'd probably have lost your mind, right?

Paul made a similar statement in Romans 6:1-2. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?"

After reading this in the youth group meeting, I had a thought. "I'll tell you how I think about this personally.

"When I was in high school, I didn't always cut my toenails. I ran around the beach a lot, swam in lakes, and never thought to wear sandals in the shower after gym class. So I ended up getting a pretty nasty fungal infection in both of my big toenails. They got all yellow and think and ingrown."

"Did they hurt?" Someone asked.

"Yeah, they hurt! After a few years, they hurt so bad I decided something had to be done. I didn't have insurance, and I didn't want to pay full price at a hospital, so I asked my friend Dale to pull them off with pliers."

A few of the kids paled. Awesome, I thought. Nothing like a gross object lesson during youth group. "I bit down on my bandana, gripped the sides of my chair, and Dale tore both of those suckers off my feet.

"I won't go into the part where I went to the emergency room the next day. The point is, it hurt worse than any pain I've ever felt. And I've had to go through this four times at the clinic since Dale first pulled them.

"Now, if I knew for sure after the first toenail pull I would get clean and healthy nails in their place, would I take care of them differently? Or would I live my life of poor foot hygiene like I did in high school? I can tell you this, I would I clip them regularly, wash my feet intentionally, and wear sandals in public showers. I would want to live differently."

And like I told the youths that night, I hope this story sticks with you.

Are You A Sinner Or A Saint? - Part six of Questions From The Lifehouse Youth Group.

If you don't know, let me tell you. Teaching theology to teenagers presents some challenges. How do you sum up enormously important topics like grace in a way that doesn't sound condescending? Here's one way in which I tried.

Since we're reading his book, Enjoying God's Grace, I borrowed an example from Terry Virgo. I asked the youths if they've ever traveled a long distance into another time zone. Most of the kids raised their hands. "The car radio clock or your wristwatch might say it's 3:00 PM, but anyone in Atlanta would tell you it's 4:00 PM. Which is true? Is it 3:00 or 4:00? Or maybe some of you have flown several hours and gone into another part of the world. Now, not only does your watch tell you a certain time, but your body feels like what your watch tells you. It may feel like bed-time, but it's early in the afternoon where you've landed. Which is true, what your feelings tell you or the time set for that zone?"

After becoming a Christian, I still sinned. I was and continue to be kind of a bonehead. So which was it, was I a sinner or a saint? I asked the youths this question. Most of them said "sinner". One kid said, "both".

The Bible tells us when we put our trust in Jesus and make him the Lord of our lives, we go through a transformation. Paul said in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Paul further describes this change in Romans 6:6-11. "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."

After having one of the youths read the passage from Romans 6 aloud to the group, I asked them the question again: Are you sinners or saints? You may feel like a sinner, but scripture says your old self has died and you are no longer enslaved to sin. You've been set free. Death no longer has dominion. It doesn't rule over you. "It sounds like it's one way or the other," I said. "You're either a sinner or a saint. That's your identity. The Bible says I don't have to pay for my sin or carry the shame of it. Which should I trust more, what the Bible says is true or how I feel?"

I told the youths I knew it was a lot to take in. I'm nearly thirty and I still have a hard time remembering all of this. I told them to think about our discussion and talk to me if they had questions. After the meeting, one of the guys thanked me for leading the discussion. "Yeah, thanks," I said. "I don't know how well I explained it."

"Even if we don't get it all right now," he said, "it was good just to talk about it."

Maybe it would be good for the rest of us to talk about it as well.

Next I'll talk about the other object lesson I gave them. It'll be shorter and more disgusting.

I Need To Stop Playing Catch Alone - A non-legalistic type of discipline

Recently, I heard a comedian say he had no toy more pathetic than a bounce-back. If you aren’t familiar with this product, you probably had more friends than I did as a child. Basically, it's a trampoline set on its side. When you throw a baseball, it'll "throw" it back to you. When my brothers didn't want to play catch with me, I hauled out the ol' bounce-back.

As you might imagine, it's accuracy in rebounding the ball made me jump and dive for a lot of catches. This helped me on the field when I needed to snag line drives, but my throwing accuracy was only so-so. And hitting? I was probably somewhere around .250 in my little league career. Not exactly the Mendoza Line, but nothing to crow about either.

Even though I knew my weaknesses, I kept practicing with that bounce-back. I didn't tape off a box on a backstop or hang an old tire to get better command of my throws. I spent more time on Mike Tyson's Punch-Out than I did swinging in the batting cages. Those wild throws and swinging strikes embarrassed me, even when no one saw them. So I kept practicing what I knew I could do well.

Okay, in terms of my life as a Christian, this analogy breaks down. But I did think about the bounce-back this weekend when John Privett from Lifehouse Church taught through Luke 5. Then he read verse 16, "But he (Jesus) would withdraw to desolate places to pray." John stopped and asked, "Now why would Jesus need to take time to pray? Why did he need to go off by himself in solitude?"

Lots of people object to the "do-this-don't-do-that" image of Christianity. In a way, they should. We're saved entirely because God offers to remove our sin and also credit us with the righteousness of Jesus. If we've accepted this forgiveness and receive His grace, we don't have to earn God's favor by doing all of the right things.

This went entirely against the four-point "what it means to be a Christian" lesson I learned in Sunday School. We would count them off every week: 1. Accept Jesus into your heart (always confusing concept) 2. Pray 3. Read the Bible 4. Go to church.

Maybe the list could have been cut in half and simplified. 1. Repent 2. Make Jesus the Lord of your life. Or maybe 1. Become a Christian 2. Try to live the way Jesus taught his disciples to live. I don't know. Maybe that's not helpful. But I think it gets more to the point.

Whatever the case, Jesus is my example. He knew God was pleased with him (Matt 3:17 and 17:5), so the fasting, prayer, and times of solitude weren't ways in which he made God happy. I think Jesus did it for at least two reasons. First, I'm sure it helped his growth and the strength of his relationship with God. When Luke 2 says Jesus grew in wisdom and favor with God, I doubt this happened without any action on his part. Earlier in the chapter, he's in the Temple keeping up on discussions with the Bible teachers as a twelve year old. The kid hadn't even been Bar-Mitzvah'd! How did he get to that point? Wouldn't it make sense he spent time in the Bible?

Second, I think Jesus practiced these spiritual disciplines because they didn't fit in with the demands of his schedule. It seems he wants to get away and pray right when there's the most demand for him. With so many people to heal and so many messages to teach, where does a guy find time to sit and pray in peace? He had to make time. He had to say no to demands.

There, right there I thought about the bounce-back. I rely on what comes easily. I study the Bible. I pray. I worship. These are all acceptable. People tell me I do these things well and I know God is already pleased with me.

But then again, I don't necessarily see growth in other areas of my life. If I say I want to be a more humble person, then maybe I should practice doing something good without announcing it. If I want to grow in wisdom, maybe I could learn how to spend time with men who will actually challenge me and help me mature. If I want to have more joy, maybe I should learn how to celebrate my relationship with Jesus and demonstrate it once in a while. All of those things might be hard or embarrassing, but I need to show some initiative.

Sometimes you have to get over yourself and ask someone to play catch with you.

Nobody Here But Us Paralytics - How I recently discovered a new way to look at grace.

Lately, whenever I feel like a failure for missing my (self-imposed) weblog deadlines, I tend to think of posts on the subject of grace. If it's a pattern, I've only just now begun to realize it.

Patterns are fun, right? I get pretty psyched about palindromes and finding abecedarian words. But I've never taken the time to look back through my now 150 posts to see if there are any long-running themes to The Press.

Do you know how many times I think I've written a post before, but don't take the time to confirm my suspicions? I'm on a tight schedule most days. I'm busy. Or my wife wants me to watch Battlestar Galactica with her.

If I were to look back through my posts, I wonder how many of them would have comparisons of how I understood the Bible as a kid and how I understand it now. Having read the Bible a few times already, I became familiar with many of the passages. While that's sort of a goal in reading the Bible, I also find it's easy to skim over the familiar parts because I don't think I need to learn the same thing twice.

But then, if I take the time, I always learn something new in the familiar. This time it happened while I read the story of Jesus healing a paralytic man in Luke 5:17-26.

A large crowd had gathered around a house where Jesus taught and healed people. "And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you." Then Jesus heals the guy. The dude carries his own bed (I imagine it was more like a rug I slept on for a few months) out of the meeting.

Now this is interesting. Jesus forgave the sins of the man and healed him. But this could give you a theological headache if you think about it. What did this guy do to receive either forgiveness or healing? Did he pray a certain prayer of repentance? Did he even ask for healing? Based on the text, it looks like they just wanted to be near Jesus.

Here's my new reason for loving this story. The guy couldn't do anything for himself. He was completely helpless. Just like me. By forgiving and healing this man, Jesus gives an amazing demonstration of grace.

Now I'm sure there's more to this story, more lessons, more ways to understand my relationship with Jesus. I expect this story will get more interesting the more familiar I become with it.

Were We Set Up To Fail? - Some thoughts on the purpose of the law and grace.

We all know of the common objection to the rules of religion. Don't do this. Don't do that. As a kid, I remember neighborhood friends telling me they didn't like the focus Christianity put on following rules.

Today, I started thinking, "Maybe God doesn't like the focus Christians put on the rules either."

There was a period of my life where I resented God for the Law. If He knew nobody could ever keep it, didn't that mean He set us up for failure? Did He really expect us to keep trying to be perfect even though He knew it was impossible?

In Enjoying God's Grace, Terry Virgo writes, "The law was never intended to be a way of salvation. Salvation is entirely a matter of grace." Romans 7, if you have the mental endurance to read it, gives an excellent explanation of the law's true purpose.

I'm wondering if the purpose of all those rules was like a window and a mirror both at the same time. It opened a window to show us God's goodness, but then acted as a mirror to show us how much we sucked. I don't know how the mechanics of that mirror window would work, but then I'm not an engineer.

If God proved to be the only person capable of keeping it perfectly, I think the law was put in place as a way for us to recognize Jesus as God. He said as much himself in John 5. Virgo explains the law was meant, "to show people their need of a covenant of grace."

So what do you think? Is it fair to say God doesn't like the focus Christians put on rules? If we're saved by grace and not by following rules, is it okay to act as if the opposite were true?

Two Stories of Poor Behavior - Why motive matters more than rules.

At this time, I would like to thank the Lifehouse youth group with bringing me back down to earth. That is all. Moving on...

I still think Christians ought to ask themselves why they hesitate to talk to their friends and family about Jesus. But how should we look at this from the perspective of grace? I'm not saying you have to tell a certain amount of people about Jesus in order to consider yourself a "good Christian". I want to know why people who experience something as great as salvation wouldn't want to share that with the people around them. 

In the wake of all the discussions I've had since Monday, I'd like to tell two stories. One of them happened and I made up the other. Maybe I won't tell you which is which so you can figure it out for yourself. 

My brother went to Dallas to attend a church leadership and mission school. They had more rules than the Bible. I don't think that's an exaggeration. If you set the rule book next to an NIV, the NIV would look like the Cliff/Spark Notes. One rule said all men had to remain clean shaven. My brother thought this sounded harmless enough until one of the campus leaders ran the edge of a student ID along his cheek to test for stubble. 

Every failure to abide by the rules resulted in demerits. Earning enough demerits could get you kitchen duty or some other kind of Beetle Bailey punishment. My brother and his friends were constantly following rules because they didn't want to scrub burned chicken grease off of pots. 

When I went to visit during my spring break, I knew I didn't have to worry about those rules since I wasn't a student. I walked into morning chapel with my shirt untucked. A buttoned up, smiling man said, "Good morning, brother! You should tuck in your shirt." And like a smartass, I said, "I'm not your brother. And I like how my shirt looks." Later, I walked outside and cut across the lawn toward the parking lot. A campus leader on the sidewalk stared holes through me. "You're not supposed to walk on the grass," he called out. So I obliged. I laid down and barrel rolled the rest of the way to my brother's car. 

I realize I acted like a jerk. But the point is, I didn't have to listen to them. The rules didn't apply to me. 

Much later in life, so much later, I met my future wife at a birthday party. We began talking that night and then talked nearly every night afterward. Within a few months, we decided to start dating. 

That first week of our new relationship, we ran into an old crush of mine. And, like a stupid sitcom actor, I introduced my new girlfriend by saying, "and this is... my friend... Chelsea." Of course the old crush could see the BS all over me and the perturbed look on Chelsea's face. 

Which story do you think is true? I'm curious to see what you say. 

But assuming both stories were true, why would I be more ashamed of the one boneheaded move with Chelsea than breaking every rule on the campus of my brother's school?

"Does It Bum You Out?" - What The Violet Burning taught me about grace.

First, let me say, I realize I'm a bad blogger. I totally neglected to write Monday's post. But since we've talked about grace so much on the Press, I've decided to not feel bad about it.

As I've thought about last Friday's post, I remembered a story from my past and realized how bad I am at receiving grace sometimes.

I've played music for a long time. I mean, if you want to count the birthday parties I played at the age of twelve, I've done this for seventeen years. For over three years, I only asked for recording time as Christmas and birthday presents. I spent two savings accounts on DIY tours. So I like to think I appreciate what musicians put into their work.

In 1998, I saw The Violet Burning play at a festival. Their show blew my mind despite the tyrannical heat and mid-afternoon time slot. I really wanted to get one of their albums, but I only had a few extra bucks to spend before the end of the week. Getting an album seemed even more hopeless when I saw their prices. They weren't especially unreasonable, but everything cost five or ten dollars more than what I expected.

Meanwhile, Mike Pritzl, the singer, stood there as I examined everything on the table and put it down. Finally, I picked up a cassette and asked how much it cost. "Six dollars," he said. I put the cassette down, feeling totally bummed and embarrassed. As I began to walk away, he stopped me. "How much do you have?"

"Five bucks."

"Here," he said, "you can have it."

"Have it?"

"Yeah, have it." Then he handed me two of their CDs and asked what size T shirt I wore.

"I can't afford these," I said.

"I know that," he said. "Come on. What size shirt do you wear? You look like a medium." And he handed me a rolled up black T. I tried to give him the five dollars, but he refused it. He said he wouldn't take my last few dollars.

The next year, I saved fifteen dollars to buy one of their CDs. When Mike saw me at their table, he sold me the CD and gave me a live VHS. "I don't need that," I said.

"You don't want it?"

"Well sure I want it, but I only saved enough to buy an album."

"Don't worry about it. You can have it."

I took the tape and said, "One of these days, I'll make it up to you."

A few years later, my band had signed a record deal and our label got us a spot at the same festival. We played to a good crowd. We met a lot of people. Things were going well.

Then one day, I saw Mike walking near a friend's campsite. I chased him down and began rambling, "Hey I'm sure you don't remember me but you give me free stuff every year and I told you I would get you back one day so here's my band's album and ten dollars to use for whatever you want or need." I put the disc and ten dollar bill into his hands and felt awesome. I had finally given back to a dude who gave me so much.

But Mike didn't look quite as happy. He stared at the CD and money in his hand. Then he said, "Does it bum you out when I give you free stuff?"

I was stunned. I expected him to appreciate it. I wanted him to thank me, dang it! The question stung. I didn't know how to respond. I murmured something like, "I don't know, I guess." We walked away from each other without another word.

I wonder if God asks us this question when we expect our behavior and will-power to please Him. In Isaiah 64:6, we're told all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags. I've heard more than one person say "filthy rag" was a polite way of saying "used menstrual pad". Imagine putting that in God's hand and expecting Him to be grateful for it.

How many of you struggle with feeling like you need to pay God back?

The Total Unfairness of Grace - Part five of Questions From The Lifehouse Youth Group.

I know some of the youths at Lifehouse struggle with the concept of grace. I notice when they feel like they haven't been "good enough". I see the look on their faces when confessing something in small groups. I've heard a few talk about observing the Sabbath as if they were wizened Hasidic men arguing over different Rabbinical interpretations. "Nu, does it begin when three or four stars appear in the sky on Friday night?"

So our youth group began reading Terry Virgo's book Enjoying God's Grace, a summarized version of his book God's Lavish Grace. As we talked, the youths asked a lot of questions. We talked for so long parents and younger siblings poked their heads in to gauge how long they would have to wait.

I think our youths expressed widely shared concerns. Teenagers, adults, Christians, we all want to perform well. I'll bet even Stephen Malkmus practices that sweet adolescent crack in his voice. In Enjoying God's Grace, Virgo writes, "The Old Covenant focus was on performance, and Jesus's performance completely satisfied his Father. If God looks on his Son and through him accepts us, how can we gain God's extra approval by returning to a treadmill of dead works? We can't."

People often criticize Christianity as an endless set of rules, and some denominations aren't helping to set the record straight, but I don't think God cares how well we perform or how much we produce. I don't think we'll get a bigger and better golden mansion with hot chocolate fountains in Heaven just because we swore less or refused to drink (let alone enjoy) beer. I have no idea where the concept of Beverly Hills Heaven developed, but I don't buy it.

One of the youths asked if Christians went straight to Heaven after they died or if they would first be judged. As if striving to be good in life wasn't hard enough, he wanted to know if Heaven had a waiting room. I asked him if he remembered the two criminals who died next to Jesus. One of the criminals said they deserved their punishment but Jesus had done nothing wrong. Then the criminal said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom." I asked the youth if he could remember Jesus's reply. The youth couldn't remember. I told him, "Jesus said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise.'"

What did that criminal do to deserve paradise? Nothing. Why did he get to go there? Why does anyone get to go there? It seems unfair, doesn't it? Well, grace is unfair. No one gets what they deserve when it comes to grace because grace by definition is an undeserved gift.

In Jesus's parables, was it fair for the landowner to pay all the workers the same wage, even though some only worked an hour while others worked the entire day? No, it wasn't fair. The man doesn't even argue the point. He simply says, "Don't I have a right to do what I want with my own money?" I can see God saying the same about grace.

Do you struggle with performance? Do you constantly feel like you blew it or that God is disappointed in you?

Do you have a hard time understanding God's total disregard for fairness?

Or do you celebrate it?

Rejoicing Insofar - Typing out loud about suffering.

This is going to sound gooshy. Gooshy to the point, the threshold, of bragging. I'm warning you now.

I have an incredible wife. It's true. If you met my wife after meeting me, you would soon use the words "married up" in your inner monologue. And I would agree. If we want to discuss deserving, I admit I don't deserve her. The guy who was once called King of the NCMO (Non-Commital Make Out) by his friends, who didn't have a savings account until he was 25, who drank too much and cussed out strangers? That guy doesn't deserve a beautiful, intelligent, and lovely wife.

That's why I often tell my wife she's evidence of God's grace in my life. Not only has God forgiven me of all my youthful (and adult) foolishness, he gives me wonderful gifts.

In Raised With Christ, Adrian Warnock tells this story. "I remember trying to explain grace to a room full of children. Without warning, I took a large chocolate bar and gave it to the child who had been misbehaving the most all morning. The look of surprise and pleasure on the child's face told me he understood that this was far from what he deserved. A chorus of howls from the other children of 'That's totally not fair!' told me they had grasped it too. 'Exactly,' I said. 'That's grace!'"

But what about when terrible things happen? What about when you or a loved one is sick or hurt? What about disappointment, heartbreak, or betrayal? Does God give me that, too?

Pastor Mark Leech asked that question at The Livingwell House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "How many times have I had this conversation, even with myself, when you start to feel an ache in your body or something begins to go wrong in your finances? Immediately, our brain goes to the Accuser and says, 'What have I done? What is God trying to teach me? I must have done something wrong. He's punishing me for this sin.' He's not. If He was, you'd be dead. Because there is no other punishment. There is no other judgment. The wages of sin is death. So you'd know if God was exercising judgment because you would be dead."

I know this bell rings a lot here, but I feel like many Christians (and I sometimes include myself in this group) don't understand why God would let us suffer. For some reason, we tell ourselves it doesn't seem fair to have eternal life and yet still have to deal with pain like everyone else.

1 Peter 4:12-13 says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed."

This passage used to baffle me. Rejoice in suffering? Christian masochists? But then I caught the word "insofar". When I had my big toenails pulled off for the third time, and the anaesthetics weren't working, I didn't rejoice at the pain. I didn't love the suffering itself. But I'll admit that at one or two points while the doctor used her foot on the table for leverage, I thought to myself, "If this is bad, I wonder how bad it was for Jesus." Maybe that's rejoicing "insofar" as sharing in Christ's suffering. Whether I'm wrong about that or not, I hobbled away appreciating more of what He did for me.

This isn't a simple topic. I know it isn't. But here's where I've landed while I think about it today. If we've sinned, and we have, then we deserve death. But I'm still alive and I have so much good in my life. I feel like God demonstrates His love for me constantly. I don't understand why the hard stuff happens, but I know He loves me and wants to do good for me. I know that Jesus cried when His friend died, even though He knew He was about to resurrect the guy.

I Teach More Than I Speak - Part four of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

In my youth group, all those years ago in the 90's, a guy named Tim helped lead during the meeting. He wasn't a pastor, but he had a little more authority than the twenty-something college intern leaders. And on the four or five Sundays when he gave the message, I sat on the edge of my seat. If beanbag chairs have edges.

Did Tim have really compelling, life-changing messages? Yeah, definitely. Was he just young enough to know what music and movies to reference? Enough, sure. But that's not why I got excited to see Tim take the microphone. On those Sundays, I thought to myself, "Oh dang, anything can happen. Five bucks says he accidentally swears again."

As a youth leader myself, I like to think I'm the Tim of the Lifehouse youth group. Yes, I also have accidentally sworn during a meeting. Apparently Apples To Apples can occasionally pull the "D" word out of me. This past Wednesday, I learned of one huge difference between Tim and myself. Tim may have been a bit of a wild card and have fun with the youths, but he also had great leadership in his teaching.

The elder who oversees the Lifehouse youth group was away on business and gave me the responsibility of leading the meeting. We planned on beginning a series on grace, but I let myself get so busy I forgot to plan an actual message.

My solution? Buy candy as an object lesson, give a three paragraph explanation of the difference between grace and mercy, then ask "any questions?" Guess how many questions I got? Not as many as I needed to fill time. Mostly crinkling Starburst wrappers and smacking noises. Instead of pulling more teaching out of thin air, I decided the best thing to do was play games for an hour and a half.

James 3:1 says, "Let not many of you become teachers, my brothers, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment." I used to read that passage and tell myself he was talking to people who thought they wanted to be teachers, but it applies to anyone. Even if you don't want to be a teacher, think about how much advice you give, or think about how people might watch what you do and adopt your traits. We're always teaching, even if we're not speaking.

Now, I thought I was doing the right thing and not imparting half-thought-out teaching to impressionable teenagers, but I forgot that people teach way more than they speak. Did the youths learn more from how I forgot to pray before the message? Did they learn that having fun is more important than digging into the subject of grace? I don't know, but I hope not.

Thankfully, verse 2 of James 3 says, "For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well." So I didn't get a hit this time at the plate. I've taught at least one good message out of the three I've now given, and that's a good average in baseball terms. I'm still learning. That's why church leadership only has me pinch hitting once in a while. They don't just forgive me for the blunders, they keep giving me opportunities.

Now that's a gift I don't deserve. I wonder if maybe I learned more about grace from this experience than any of my youths.

Have you ever found yourself on the spot and unprepared? How did you handle it?

Image vs. Person - Considering the possibility that I am not a fraud.

After my house caved in a few months ago, I got a job as an office administrator. I say that as if I realized I needed better work so I could give my wife a new home, but that's not how it happened. I got the job because a guy saw something in me and offered me the position. I wasn't even looking for it, but then, that's how God blesses people sometimes. Theologians call it "providence".

This post isn't about providence.

I didn't want to confuse anyone when I told you about a startling realization I had as I walked into my office building. It's one of those fancy places with huge windows and glass doorways. I caught a glimpse of myself as I approached the door and thought, "Geez, do I really look like that? Didn't I have a huge beard and limp mohawk earlier this year?"

I sort of felt like a fraud. I'm not a corporate kind of guy. What happened to the fifteen year old kid who sang this song after school?

So this has me thinking about the idea of image versus person. Who I am and what I do doesn't match up to the image many people normally give Christians. I smoke a pipe and drink bourbon and listen to Planes Mistaken For Stars. Those are parts to Isaiah the person. I love Jesus and have given my life to serving him. That is also a part of Isaiah the person. But when people see me shouting on a stage, they might not think of me as the typical Christian. And when people read my weblog or meet me at church, they probably don't picture the dude with a tallboy of PBR singing T Rex on karaoke night.

Does that make me a fraud? Before you decide, let's look at this good idea/bad idea list I made:

1. Having a glass of bourbon and smoking a pipe with other adults, maybe after a meal: Good idea.

2. Drinking/smoking around kids who might already struggle with staying clean and sober: Bad idea.

3. Cranking Mastodon on my turntable: Good idea.

4. Sneaking Mastodon into the pre-service mix on the church iPod: Bad idea.

I don't think of this as hypocrisy. I think of it as a mature sensitivity to the people around me. My co-workers would have a hard time working around a guy who doesn't shower. Clients might not know what to think of the dude at reception with a viking beard. Likewise, there are some people I know who have a hard time with alcohol, rock and roll, my wife in a skirt, and other things I think God made for me to enjoy.

Here's my point. We're taught to consider who we're around in Romans 14:13-23. We're supposed to live in grace and pay attention to our conscience, but still consider how it will affect the people around us.

How do you deal with image vs. person? What do you think about it?

Still Sacrificing? - A word about shame.

On a handful of occasions, some well-meaning people have asked me this question, "You seem like a really smart guy, so why are you a Christian?" And when this happens, I try to remember one of my favorite quotes from Charles Spurgeon, "Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose and it will defend itself." It's a good thing for me to remember in those instances because I've sometimes succeeded only in stumbling my way through a quick explanation of some philosophical part of Christianity while somehow leaving out the gospel.

But the Bible is powerful and alive. It is truth which can speak for itself. As my friend Luther would tell his muslim friends back in Africa, "Just read it, and then you can disagree with me." So for this post, I'm going to leave out most of the rambling stories and shoe-string references. Instead, I'll type out a passage which hit so hard I had to stop after only eight verses.

Hebrews 10:11-18 says, "And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

"And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 'This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,' then he adds, 'I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.'

"Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin."

Here are a couple of questions I want you to think about: If you accept the sacrifice Jesus made for the wrong you do, is it right to ever feel ashamed? Do you ever try to "do better" to "make it up to God"?

Rules Taught By Men - Why Christians need to lighten up.

...As an end to this series on basic Christian living, I thought I might talk a little about the Pharisees. Pastors and teachers can easily portray bits of the gospels as "Jesus vs. the Pharisees", even though it seems theologically He identifies with them more than the Sadducees or Essenes. During a time of an elitist priest class (typically Sadducees) and intense cultural pressure to become more like the Greeks, Pharisees devoted themselves to living God's law, not just reciting it. The word "Pharisee" means "set apart".

Jesus didn't have a beef with the existence of their sect. He had more to say about how their hearts had become hard and proud regarding their righteousness. In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells a story about two men praying in the temple. The first, a Pharisee, thanks God that he is not like the sinner standing with him in the room. The second man, a tax collector, pleads for God's mercy because he recognizes his own sin.

Coming home from a Torah study group one night, my mother told me about how some rabbis "built a fence around Torah". This means if the law says you're responsible for the death of a man falling off of your roof, you should build a fence around your roof so you don't accidentally break the law. If Torah says something like "don't cook a calf in its mother's milk", then the fence would keep all meats away from dairy, so they don't even come close to breaking that rule of Torah.

So what do you call a Christian who speaks of Pharisees like demons and Christians who say you can't go to the movies or listen to non-church music? There's nothing in the Bible about the Cinema or Slash Records, but I know kids who couldn't appreciate either because their church said it was evil. They didn't want to listen to Pennywise and backslide.

I can understand creating reminders and safeguards for ourselves because every one of us struggles with sinning. Many men, including myself, have software on their computer to alert others when I may be looking at a dirty website. However, if my church said it was mandatory for every man to have accountability software on their computers, I would totally have a problem with that.

Some churches culturally dress in nice clothes because they want to express their reverence of God in that way. In the book Breaking The Missional Code, Ed Stetzer and David Putman tell of churches with cowboys reserving seats for their hats and holler at every good point in the message. That sort of thing wouldn't have happened in my grandfather's church. But is one church right with how they celebrate God's presence and the other wrong? Is it sin?

The Bible tells us to remember Jesus through communion, to be baptized, to give generously. How we do these things is not so explicit. Is it wrong for the Presbyterian church I visited to dip a hunk of fresh baked bread into wine while another church might opt for a cracker crumb and thimble of grape juice? No. I don't think God frowns on either because He wanted people to remember Jesus by communion. Yet, nations fought wars over this stuff.

The Pharisees tried hassling Jesus about something like this in Matthew 15. They ask Him why His disciples broke the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating. Jesus then points out how the Pharisees had chosen tradition over God's commands. For the Christian today, this begs the question, are we trying to build a fence around God's commands or are we building a cage of man-made laws? Christians would do themselves well to remember the grace by which they've been saved from their sins. It is possible for one to never even realize his heart has hardened in self-righteousness.

Now, I'm aware that some can take the idea of grace too far and forget Romans 6:1-2. By no means should we intentionally live in sin and ignore the Holy Spirit's conviction. Scripture says this too will harden the heart. All I'm saying is that Christians shouldn't build a cage of rules to guard against grace itself. If a person genuinely wants to follow and serve Jesus, we should believe the word in Hebrews when it says Christ's sacrifice has made us perfect and blameless before God. I think the proper attitude would include encouraging, challenging, and praying for God to work in the hearts of our fellow believers.

Six of the Twelve - Micah and the high places.

A girl I knew in college asked me to proofread a paper she wrote for class. The narrative told of a formative childhood moment. At a local market, she stuffed one of her mittens with loose birdseed out of a barrel. She wanted to give her parakeet a gift. Mom and dad caught her and explained the word "stealing". They brought her back to the market so she could return the birdseed and confess her crime. She described the event as if this naive theft were the worst sin she committed as a child. Knowing her, it may have been. Me, I would have written about cigarettes, porn, or doing whip-its at Bible camp. She took three ounces of birdseed from a barrel.

We may as well admit that we place sin in categories from tolerable to most heinous. The majority of people reading this, I assume, haven't burned down day-care centers or assassinated world leaders. But I'll bet you speed once in a while.

Micah addresses this issue of subtle sin in the first chapter. The book opens as a word of the Lord concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. According to David Stern, the Samaritans were "a mixed ethnic group descended from Jews deported by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C.E. and other peoples ruled by the Assyrians. (They) followed a religion combining pagan and Jewish elements." After Solomon's reign, his kingdom split in two, Judah in the south and the northern kingdom of Israel. From this moment in 1 Kings 12, we read about the leaders of each kingdom. Of all the rulers in Israel, the region that became Samaria, not one of the kings lived in a way pleasing to God. They set up alters in high places that served the God of Abraham in word, but also allowed elements of idol worship. When I visited the city of Dan in 2000, my guide told me of how the kings and priests eventually worshiped a golden calf.

Micah 1:7 says of Samaria, "All her carved images will be smashed to pieces, all she earned consumed by fire. and I will reduce her idols to rubble. She amassed them from a whore's wages, and as a whore's wages they will be spent again." The people of Judah probably applauded this word concerning their hostile, idol-worshiping kinsmen. But remember that the prophecy also concerns Jerusalem, in Judah. Micah gives them equally hash treatment in 1:8-16. I mean, just check out the heavy imagery of verses 8 and 9 as he turns the focus from Samaria to Jerusalem. "This is why I howl and wail, why I go barefoot and stripped, why I howl like the jackals and mourn like the ostriches. For her wound cannot be healed, and now it is coming to Judah as well; it reaches even to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem itself." In verse 13, Micah expressly traces the line of sin from Lakhish in Assyria to Samaria to Jerusalem.

I remember reading Kings in my early twenties and noticing their track record with God. Israel consistently angered God, never serving Him. One king at least had this said in his favor, "He wasn't as bad as the other kings of Israel". But of all the kings of Judah, nine alone served God. Of those nine, only two removed the high places and banned idol worship, Hezekiah and his great-grandson Josiah. Ahaz, one of the kings ruling during Micah's ministry and Hezekiah's father, was especially evil. Unlike his God-fearing father, Jotham, he sacrificed one of his sons to Molech and made sacrifices on the high places. Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, was especially wicked. He rebuilt all of the high places and everything his father had destroyed. He also sacrificed his son to Molech like Grandpa Ahaz and got involved in a cult worshiping "the army of heaven". 2 Kings 23 details all that Josiah destroyed in his pursuit of holiness. It's a lot. Some of it very weird stuff. But like the last two God-fearing kings, his sons totally blew it. They ruled until Babylon seized Jerusalem and put the people into exile.

The overwhelming majority of men who led God's people led them away from God. Seven of the "good" kings, while not engaging in evil practices themselves, still tolerated idolatry in their kingdom. The other two good kings may have worshiped God but failed to raise their sons in righteousness. They didn't get high at Bible camp but they let their kids steal birdseed. This realization broke my heart.

And so Micah denounced them as well. In 3:11-12, he tells them, just because you claim to serve God doesn't mean your sin will go unnoticed. "(Jerusalem's) leaders sell verdicts for bribes, her priests teach for a price, her prophets divine for money - yet they claim to rely upon the Lord! 'Isn't the Lord with us?' they say. 'No evil can come upon us.' Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed under like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house like a forested height."

And yet Micah also gives hope for redemption. In chapter 4, God promises to restore the temple of Jerusalem where the people would again worship Him, rescued after their exile to Babylon. Yes, there is a messianic prophecy in chapter 5, where Micah tells of the Messiah coming from Bethlehem. But as I read this book recently, I noticed another messianic prophecy. This one far more subtle. In 7:9, the prophet says, "I will endure the Lord's rage, because I sinned against Him; until He pleads my cause and judges in my favor. Then He will bring me out to the light, and I will see His justice." Here, I saw a thread of the Trinity. God the father as one who demands justice for sin, and God the son as the one who pleads our cause and redeems us from darkness. As Paul said in Romans 3, Jesus justified us to satisfy His own demand for justice.

The book closes in 7:18-20 with a breath-taking prayer of praise. "Who is a God like you, pardoning the sin and overlooking the crimes of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in grace. He will again have compassion on us, He will subdue our iniquities. You will throw all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will show truth to Jacob and grace to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors since days of long ago."

We can easily beat ourselves up when we're convicted of sins both large and ignored. The truth is we all deserve to die for rebelling against God, the source of life. And yet He knew we couldn't be holy as He is holy (Leviticus 19:2). Through Jesus, the one who throws our sin into the depths of the sea, we come to know that He alone makes us holy. In Him alone do we have hope for righteousness.

Three of the Twelve - How God used a working man to dismantle the myth of bad things happening to good people.

I have always loved Amos as a character. Most prophets were recognized by the people and quite often had access to royalty. These prophets carried the title of Prophet, sometimes belonging to a small band, or guild, of prophets. In the first verse of the book of Amos, the text lays out a beginning unlike any other in the Bible. God gave prophetic words to a shepherd and farmer from Judah. Amos the shepherd then went to Israel, the northern kingdom, and began to prophesy. The name of my weblog sings of this idea. God uses the ordinary and unlearned to speak truth.

Amos 7:10-15 gives a good example of how the rulers in Israel felt about this blue-collar prophet. "Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent this message to Jeroboam king of Israel, 'Amos is conspiring against you there among the people of Israel, and the land can't bear all that he's saying. For Amos says: "Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will be led away from their land into exile".' Amaziah also said to Amos, 'Go away, seer! Go back to the land of Judah! Earn your living there; but don't prophesy any more at Bethel; for this is the king's sanctuary, a royal temple.' Amos gave this answer to Amaziah: 'I am not trained as a prophet, and I'm not one of the guild prophets - I own sheep and grow figs. But the Lord took me away from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, "Go, prophesy to my people Israel."'"

I like to imagine Amos as the classic John the Baptist looking-dude. Wild hair, hard features, uncommon clothes. It's fun to think of that kind of man walking around the streets of foreign cities talking about their coming destruction. But in actuality, Amos probably looked like an ordinary guy. It's more like a gas station attendant walking around the mall telling people of God's word. Not so romantic an image, but unusual all the same.

God likes to do this. He likes to take unexpected people and use them in unexpected places. I think this is why Jesus answered his critics in Luke 4:25-27, "But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." And just like Amaziah in Amos 7, Luke 4:28 says, "And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things."

But what was it that Amos said that so offended the king and high priest? A lot of things, probably. Here's one. Consider the possibility that God does allow "bad" things to happen to "good" people. Consider even the possibility that God does these "bad" things Himself. In Amos 1, God tells of coming punishment for several cities and nations because of their crimes. These crimes include horrors like cruelty in war, exile, and ripping open pregnant women. I can see it now, the Israelites hearing this prophecy and enjoying numb feelings of self-righteousness. Then in Chapter 2, Amos says, "For Judah's three crimes, no, four - I will not reverse it - because they rejected the Law of the Lord..." And later, "For Israel's three crimes..." Suddenly those self-righteous feelings turn cold. Israel has been indicted alongside their neighbors, their enemies. God was against them all. Sure, Israel and Judah didn't spill pregnant ladies' guts, but their sins were equally deserving of God's wrath. They didn't follow His commands. They took advantage of the poor for business opportunities. They gave in to sexual deviancy.

The past few conversations I've had with unbelievers about God usually start with, "If God were good, why would He let bad stuff happen to good people?" In the Old Testament, who was better than the people of Israel and Judah? They were God's chosen people, set apart from the other nations, enjoying His blessings. But Amos calls them out on their wickedness. The fact is, we've all committed the "three, no, four crimes." Our sin deserves the punishment of death that God promised Adam in Genesis 2. If this is true, and we all demonstrate the wickedness of our hearts to some degree, why doesn't the truly good, righteous, and holy God kill us on the spot? Why do any of us still have the ability to live and breathe?

Amos knows of Israel's sin. He talks about it at length before a series of visions in the beginning of chapter 7. God shows Amos His plan to punish His people. Amos pleads, "Lord God, forgive - please! How will tiny Jacob survive?" Twice, God promises to stay His hand and show mercy. Eventually, though, God tells the prophet how He will soon refuse to overlook Israel's offenses. For the time being, God demonstrates what theologians call "Common Grace". Even for those who God knows will not come to repentance and saving faith, He still blesses both by providing good things and withholding bad things from them. This is much harder for me to understand: God gives good things to bad people. But as we see in Amos, it won't last. Paul says of those who will remain unrepentant in Romans 2:5, "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God".

Yet for all this, God promises in Amos 9:8-11, "'Look, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom. I will wipe it off the face of the earth, yet I will not completely destroy the house of Jacob,' says the Lord. 'For when I give the order, I will shake the house of Israel, there among all the nations, as one shakes with a sieve, letting no grain fall to the ground. All the sinners among my people who say, "disaster will never overtake us or confront us," will die by the sword. When that day comes, I will raise up the fallen tabernacle of David. I will close up its gaps, raise up its ruins and rebuild it as it used to be.'"

Amos tells of a day when God will restore the house of David to its kingship, which we now see in Jesus as Messiah, the King who will come again to rule the earth. Jesus will shake the sieve of humanity separating the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12). In Christ's kingdom, God will reestablish the people of Israel.

Common grace is all well and good, but it doesn't necessarily mean we have saving faith. God is good to everyone, but only those who put their trust in Jesus will stay in the sieve, so to speak. I know, in my heart, I have committed those three, no, four crimes. And I am so grateful to Jesus for paying the penalty for my crimes. I know that His grace, for me, is more than a mere demonstration of His goodness before the coming wrath. It's a taste of the joy I will one day experience when I am fully in His presence, secure, no more to be uprooted.

Be Holy – Some thoughts on punishment vs. correction

Somewhere around nine months ago, and once or twice since then, I’ve offered to answer any reader’s question in the form of a post. So far, Adam has been the only one to ask anything. It turned out to be a pretty good post, although I might explain the point differently now while using the same metaphor. Well, Adam, ol’ buddy, you wanted to know if I thought God still punishes us for our sins. I’m glad you asked…

For anyone who has read my weblog over the past few months, you know how I feel about God’s sovereignty. He’s perfect, self-sufficient, and ultimate. I talked about His glory as the sum total of all His attributes. I’ve written on how these things relate to us. In order to talk about God’s justice, I’ll have to make clear what I believe defines His holiness. Where God’s glory is everything about Him, His holiness is the perfection of His presence.

Throughout the second half of Exodus, God talks of making the Hebrews a holy nation and a people unto Himself. He instructs the people on how to build and use the tabernacle so that His presence might dwell among them. The people could come near God’s presence to worship Him in the Holy Place and God’s presence resided in the inner room called the Holy of Holies. What made these things holy? His presence.

Before God came to dwell among His people, He made a covenant with them, a contract that set up the rules of their relationship. In order for God to give them His presence, they needed to observe His law because sin separates us from Him. This, in itself, shows God’s graciousness. Man had previously proven himself to break covenants when Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3. The covenant given to Moses, much like the one given to Adam, essentially says “Obedience to the Law will bring life, disobedience will bring death.”

Some might object to the logic of this covenant because our relativistic society finds offense with anything so rigid. But for those who accept God’s perfection and self-sufficiency, its necessity becomes clear. Since He is perfect, His ways are perfect. Anyone who denies God’s law and goes his own way has challenged God and denied His sovereignty. They have given themselves over to idolatry not realizing how their idols will fail.

So, after God comes to dwell among the Hebrews, they continue to sin and break the covenant. God sometimes held back His anger in mercy, other times He punished their disobedience. But the people seemed to sin persistently. Even as God gave Moses the law (everyone clearly agreed to follow and obey God in Exodus 19), the people made an idol to worship. Moses told the people in Deuteronomy 9:8, “Even at Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you.” God loves His people and they continued to treat Him with contempt. According to the covenant, this brought death. Ezra 5:12 says about the sins of Israel, “But because our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, He gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this temple and deported the people to Babylon.” Why would God send an invading army to kill and destroy His own people? Because for Him to overlook sin would be the same as an earthly judge releasing a known rapist without penalty. It would be injustice for Him not to punish a lawbreaker. Paul writes in Romans 4:15, “for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.” It seems no one escapes this responsibility. Romans 1:18-19 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.”

History shows how man, on his own, will sin. We are incapable of true righteousness apart from God. And God knew this. In Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham symbolically promising to take responsibility for the sin of him and his descendants. This covenant was fulfilled in Jesus, who never sinned and lived in perfect obedience to God. Yet He died in our place, sparing us the punishment demanded for sin (Romans 6:23).

Now the rules have changed. A person can be justified through faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection. Romans 3 explains this. The gift of salvation is given, not earned, through our faith in Jesus. But, as Wayne Grudem says in Systematic Theology, it isn’t enough for us to have the slate wiped clean in a legal sense. Adam had that advantage and blew it. Eventually, we would most certainly blow it. Nobody’s perfect, right? Then God did something so beautiful. He placed us “in Christ”, or as Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul made this statement to support what he told the Colossians in chapter 1 verses 21-22. “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”

The question was, “does God still punish us for sin?” In the case of those who have accepted Jesus, I ask, “how can God make us pay a penalty for sin when Jesus took our punishment on the cross?” The answer is, “He can’t, but better yet, He won’t. We’re hidden in Jesus and God sees us as perfect, blameless, and beyond reproach.”

However, this doesn’t mean life’s a gas from here on. Hebrews 12 describes God disciplining us as sons. Think about it, a good father doesn’t punish for the sake of rules. He disciplines in order to train his son to do good and avoid evil. The father does this out of love for his son. Again, in Revelation 3:19, God says, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” Another word for “discipline” is “correct”. Correction means taking something wrong and make it right. Proverbs 22:15 says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and the theme of proverbs revolves around a loving parent talking to a son. God has used hard situations to reveal areas of anger, unbelief, etc in my life. As one of His foolish children, I need this correction.

Now, hardship isn’t limited to either punishment or correction. Sometimes it’s accusation or condemnation from the enemy. Revelation 12 says that Satan accuses us day and night. Certainly he wants us to believe that God’s correction is punishment. To agree with such a thought would deny the completion of Christ’s work on the cross.

More importantly, I think we need to see that Jesus never eliminated the law of sowing and reaping found in Galatians 6:7-8. There were a lot of mornings that I reaped hangovers after a night of heavy drinking. Would you call that punishment or the fruit of a seed? God set this in place to help us recognize the consequence of sin and encourage us to reap the benefits of righteous living.

There are Christians who think God changes how He feels based on their behavior. Consider this: if your behavior didn’t save you, does behavior un-save you? According to Scripture, we’re kept by God’s power, hidden in Jesus, where nothing can separate us from the Father’s love (Romans 8:39). Romans 8:1 is very clear that God does not condemn us, and we even have His promise of renewal in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Going back to the old covenant, God gave a command in Leviticus 19:2, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Think about that in terms of God’s presence and, as Graham Cooke says, it begins to sound more like a blessing than a stern rule. Through Jesus, God gave us the presence of His Holy Spirit, thus making us holy.

Fruit is important. What fruit comes out of the trials you face? If you are a believer who struggles with addiction, depression, impure thoughts, and so on, seek God’s correction knowing His love for you. Learn the difference between the accusing voice of Satan and the (mostly) gentle conviction of the Holy Spirit. One produces despair and a feeling of hopelessness, but godly sorrow is always meant to lead us to repentance and life.

God's Merciful Use Of His Mercy - Or, how a seven-year-old can slam-dunk.

A man once approached me at a conference in Indiana and asked if I was Isaiah. When I told him that he’d found the right man, he held up a copy of Stark Raving Obedience and began to thumb through many highlighted pages. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” he said. “You talk a lot about both ‘Faith’ and ‘Belief’.” He read from a passage that talks about a person’s lack of faith versus unbelief. Then he asked, “I still don’t understand the difference between ‘Belief’ and ‘Faith’. You use the words interchangeably throughout the rest of the book. Could you explain this for me?” The best answer I could give him at the time was that he had a copy of the first edition, a three-year-old version full of hilarious typos and half-explanations. Which was more of a commercial for the second edition than an answer.

To be honest, it took a full two weeks before I could confidently define my use of the two words. Belief is when a person mentally ascribes themselves to a system of thought. Faith is when the person begins to apply that system of thought to their lives through action.

Many Christians have historically used the words “Grace” and “Mercy” interchangeably as well. I want to make sure you know what I mean when I say these words. As I understand it, grace is a gift freely given to one who did not earn or deserve the gift. A good example of this is how Boaz treated Ruth in the book of Ruth. She was a foreigner, a widow, and a woman. In that culture, she had no rights, and yet Boaz showed her favor without asking for anything in return. That’s grace.

I’ve heard a few people teach on God’s messy covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. I first heard it from Ray Vanderlaan, so my credit goes to him here. God promises Abraham that he and his descendants will possess the Promised Land. Abraham asks God, “How am I supposed to know you’re telling me the truth?” So God has Abraham split a cow, a goat, and a ram into halves, placing the halves opposite of each other. This would allow for the animals’ blood to run together and form a sort of path.

Vanderlaan taught that this was a common Bedouin custom for making a covenant. One man would walk through to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the deal, you can split me in two and walk in my blood.” The other man would do the same. An admittedly severe agreement, but this is what God asked of Abraham. Instead of allowing Abraham to walk through the bloody path, God caused Abraham to sleep and spoke His promise. When Abraham awoke, he saw a smoking pot, and then a flaming torch, pass through the halved animals. By doing this, God passed through the path Himself both times as if to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the agreement and uphold my promises, you can kill me and walk in my blood. And if you don’t keep your end of our agreement to follow me as your only God, you can kill me and walk in my blood.”

Of course, Abraham would be the one to break the covenant, but God’s promise was to take the punishment for our failure Himself. This promise was fulfilled with Jesus’s death on the cross. This is the free gift of grace, and it’s ours to accept or deny.

When we do accept Jesus and His forgiveness of our sin, Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Many sections of the New Testament teach that our righteousness, justification, and holiness are found in Jesus. This works because we’re hidden in Him. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our mistakes, our trauma, our sickness, our wounds, or any of that stuff. He sees Jesus. The Old Testament prophets, when telling of the coming Messiah, said He would suffer, be broken, bruised, striped, crushed, and slaughtered for our iniquity, sin, transgression, illness, and infirmity. God doesn’t want to punish us because He already punished Jesus. When we place ourselves under the covering of Jesus’s blood, we’re, well, covered. In 2 Timothy 2:11-13, Paul wrote, “It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

Of course, just because all of our sins are forgiven doesn’t mean we use grace as an excuse to live an intentional lifestyle of sin. Paul explains this gorgeously in Romans 6. To be sure of God’s grace is to be sure of our salvation in Jesus and this understanding is foundational to the life of every believer.

Mercy is more of a head-scratcher for people, I think. I see mercy as God’s affectionate attitude toward us, His goodwill, and the help He wants to offer. When explaining my idea of mercy to a close friend, I compared it to the brief period of my life when I wanted to play basketball. I was, I don’t know, seven or so, and I wanted to try dunking the ball. I don’t even know if I was four feet tall at the time, but I kept trying to dunk. And I mean repeatedly. I probably stuck my tongue out a few times thinking that was Michael Jordan's secret. My dad laughed as he watched, and I kept saying, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” But, come on, there was no way I would dunk that ball. So my dad stepped in and said, “Let me help you.” He lifted me up as I jumped and I was finally able to dunk the ball.

Now, I could have refused his help and insisted that I was going to dunk on my own. But it would have been pathetic of me to really commit to that kind of denial. And it would have been cruel of my dad, or at least way less cool of him, to watch me struggle in futility and demand that I do the impossible without his help. When I let him help me, though, I wanted him to help me over and over again. It was more fun for both of us.

Some people think that God is like the dad who forces the kid to dunk the ball on his own. They feel like failures when they can’t do everything right, or they imagine that God views them as failures, too. But Jesus didn’t come to make us feel like failures. The angels in Luke 2 proclaimed God’s pleasure for us when Jesus was born. God is pleased with us because we’re hidden in Jesus, His beloved son, with whom He is very pleased.

There are parts of scripture that tell us believers should spread the gospel, baptize people, make disciples, heal the sick, and yeah, sometimes, raise the dead. Many Christians don’t see that happening around them. It’s possible that when we try to do these things, we’re under four feet tall and trying to dunk, assuming we’re trying at all. We have to accept the truth that we can’t do it on our own.

But God is there, waiting for us to let Him help. As I read through the book of Isaiah last month, many passages reassured me of God’s mercy. In Isaiah 41:13 says, “For I am the LORD your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, Do not fear, I will help you.” Later in Isaiah 46:3-4, God tells His people, “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; and I will bear you and I will deliver you.” And still later in Isaiah 49:15-16 when Israel says God has forsaken them in a time of need, the Lord replies, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.”

God wants to help us, to carry us. And He won’t forget us. It’s not possible for Him to forget. Whatever situation you may struggle with, the problem is not on His end. I learned this recently while listening to a recording of John Wimbur. He’s the guy that started the Vineyard Fellowship. He spent a year in agony from the time he began to pray for healing to finally seeing someone healed.

“I mean, God was at every meeting,” he says toward the end of the message. “A wonderful presence. We would worship in total abandonment and weep. People would be converted. It was wonderful. The air would thicken up with His presence. God was with us! We knew it! But we would pray these pitiful prayers. ‘Oh God, if you’re up there, anywhere... If you’ve ever done anything at any time...Here is a worthy subject...’ Have you ever prayed prayers like that? You have too. You’ve prayed prayers just like that. You’re just like me.”

Finally, God miraculously and hilariously healed someone that he prayed for one morning. That day, he said, “I had a vision, a really graphic one. The first I’d ever had before. I was in my car driving. It was a beautiful morning, of course it would be. And all of a sudden, superimposed over the landscape, as far as I could see, is what looked like a cloud bank. It went all the way across the sky. As I looked at it, I realized it wasn’t a cloud bank, it was a honeycomb. It was dripping. And below the honeycomb are people. They were in all kinds of different postures. Some were reverent. They’re weeping. They’ve got their hands out catching this honey. Some are sharing with their friends while others come by and dipping their fingers other peoples’ honey. And still other people are really irritated. They’re trying to get out of this honey because they don’t like it. I pulled over to the side of the road to sit and look at it and said, ‘God, what is this?’ He said, ‘John, that’s my mercy. For some people, it’s a blessing. And for some people, it’s not. John, don’t ever beg me for healing again. Look at it. There’s plenty for everyone. The problem isn’t on my end. The problem is down there where you are.’ Our God sent mercy in His son. He sent His Word to heal them. The problem we have is receiving it.”

Our Father, God, is favorably disposed to us. He wants to help us live and thrive and walk with Him. Sometimes we don’t accept His help because we want to do it on our own. Sometimes He’s waiting for us to drop that victimized, weak sort of prayer that Wimbur described and come to Him confidently as His children, knowing that dad wants to help. Other times, He’s asking us to learn how to remain in Him through the Holy Spirit as Jesus taught in John 16 because that’s where our joy is made complete. But whatever your circumstances are, His grace is available to you through Jesus and His mercy is so abundant it drips down from heaven. It delights Him to lift you high in the air and let you hang on the rim.

The Triumphant Chord – Thoughts on Motive and Grace.

(A guy named Adam left a comment on the tithing post, and I promised to give a response in the form of a post. Adam, I hope I’ve given a worthy answer.)

Over the course of time, I’ll use a lot of the same words to describe God. This can be credited to the fact that, while God is infinite, I am finite and unable to properly describe His complexity. Any Bible teacher will use pictures to portray the different facets of His character, including the writers in the Bible. God is our father, our Lord, our shepherd, our shield, our loving provider, etc. In some periods of our life, we ascribe one of these aspects of God to the situation and assume His attitude accordingly. In terms of sin, we imagine that God is our dad. We just broke a window playing ball in the backyard and He’s going to be pissed when He gets home. Then in terms of repentance, God is like our mom reassuring us that dad really isn’t that mad, that He forgives us. Then she gives us a popsicle and sends us back outside to play.

The fact is that we can’t always assume how God feels about a situation. For example, in Jeremiah 25:9, God calls Nebuchadnezzar “my servant”. This came as a shock, I’m sure, to the Judeans. They were God’s chosen people, but here He was calling a pagan imperialist his servant as if he were chosen instead. In Isaiah 44:48 and 45:1, God calls Cyrus, king of Persia, his “shepherd” and his “anointed”. Calling a goy (a non-Jewish peron) anointed, “messiah” in Hebrew, must have really spooked the Jewish people. It spooks some Christians, too, when they realize the connection. This isn’t to say that Cyrus was THE Messiah, but God chose him for a special purpose in the history of His people.

There you have two examples of people who didn’t serve God, and yet God used them. In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, he devastated Jerusalem and killed a lot of people. When thinking about God as a loving parent, this looks confusing. When thinking about God as the Righteous Judge, it makes sense, but then He seems cruel.

Sometimes God is just God. In some circumstances, there are no sufficient comparisons that exist to explain Him. I love this part of God, the inexplicable God, because it means He’ll still surprise me. On a recent family road trip, my mother brought a pile of book-on-tape. For a majority of the drive, we listened to The Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien. This extensive mythology begins, like other mythologies, with the story of creation. Creation is represented through a song. God comes up with a melody, a theme, and invites his angels to help build the song. Then one particularly prideful angel has creative differences and tries to make the song dissonant. Instead of letting this jerk ruin the song, God reinvents the theme so that the song resolves out of the dissonance. The magnificence of His resolution causes the whole of heaven to fall down in worship.

I could have wept at the lesson in this nerdy fantasy book. No matter how much evil tries to screw up the beauty of God’s creation and order, He’ll always turn it around and make it good. I often talk about the story in John 9:1-3. “As He (Jesus) passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” God didn’t strike this man with blindness as punishment, as the disciples thought. And they had a right to think this way, because their question came from laws in the Torah. But God is more than the Judge. He is also the Redeemer. Surprise! The song just resolved into a major key again.

Now when he writes in Phillipians about those teaching the gospel for selfish reasons, Paul acknowledges the fact that God will use everything for His glory. If these teachers tell people the truth, then the truth is heard and God is glorified. Their motive can be inconsequential for the result. Now, their motives don’t please God and they risk His judgment for their actions, but I seem to remember a parable where Jesus spoke of weeds planted among a field of wheat. Instead of tearing out the weeds, and thus damaging the grain, the master of the field waits to separate the good from the bad at harvest time.

As a believer, I grieve that weeds are in the field. At the same time, I am thankful for the good that I see growing in the same field. In everything, God will be glorified. I think Paul also talks about this in Romans when he says that sin allows for greater measures of grace, although people shouldn’t sin as if it enhances grace. What a remarkable thing if one of those selfish teachers suddenly heard the truth in his own teaching and came to know Christ!

So don’t worry about the hearts of others. Pray for God’s glory to be done in everything, and it will come. The Farmer will eventually separate the wheat from the weeds, and the Master Composer will finish His song with a triumphant chord.