Membership vs. Ownership - Another look at the fan club idea.

Some of the first posts I did on the press came directly from my book, Stark Raving Obedience. I put it in there partly because I felt self-conscious about starting a weblog and wanted to appear authoritative. Also, I figured if I was going to say things like "God said such-and-such to me", I should probably have an explanation of my reasoning behind that before people started writing me off as a mentally ill slacker.

One of those early posts came from the introduction of the book and talked about how my relationship with God paralleled my membership in the Rachel Leigh Cook Fan Club. I read all the material, knew all the work, went to fan club chats, wrote her fan mail, but I didn't really know her. We didn't have a relationship, even though I did all the stuff and knew all about her.

Yesterday, MorsIndutus (whom I may or may not know in real life) left a comment which reminded me of another fan club analogy. I joined the RLC fan club at the age of 19 because I got a celebrity crush after watching Josie and the Pussycats. That same year, I joined the Kiss Army because I watched Detroit Rock City with a few friends one night. At first, I think I did it because I wanted to be outrageous and make people think I was interesting. But then, at some point, I thought it might be cool to legitimately get involved in the Army. 

If you're not in the Kiss Army, you're probably not aware that they do indeed promote you through the ranks based on a point system. I won't go into detail of what activities earned you how many points, but I will say that I worked on it for while. They start you out as a Kiss Army Recruit. After a few days of mild activity, you can reach the level of Kiss Army Private. I got there easily enough, but no one likes to walk away as anybody's private, so I felt determined to become a Corporal. I wanted to be able to tell people I was in the Kiss Army without sounding like a weekend warrior, so to speak. It sounded more genuine to say I'd been promoted twice.

But after I got that Corporal status, I didn't do anything, and I mean anything, with the Kiss Army. I did just enough to feel like I'd really been a part of things and then I let it go.

Again, like I said yesterday, I don't want to veer toward legalism. But I have paused to think about this.

Is the idea of "membership" so focused on me and what I get out of Christianity that I'm actually a follower of America's Biggest Religion instead of a Christian?

Or is it better to look at Christianity like ownership? Am I serving, contributing, giving, and sacrificing because Jesus has changed me? Does accepting Jesus include a responsibility for demonstrating my faith in Him?

If were to call myself a Christian because I've attended something, is that like telling people I'm a Corporal in the Kiss Army? Would I be fooling myself to say I'm a part of something when I've been inactive for nearly a decade? Is saving faith simply the recitation of a few certain words?

What do you think?

The Purpose Of Doctrine Is Not Doctrine Itself.

For those of you who read Stark Raving Obedience or maybe the first post in the Press, you may remember how I compared my relationship with God to joining the Rachel Leigh Cook fan club.

This morning, I heard pastor John Privett say something similar in his message. "It's one thing to know about a person but another to actually know them. Some people try to substitute the Bible for a dynamic, active relationship with Jesus."

At one point in time, I felt like I knew quite a lot about Rachel Leigh Cook, but I didn't know her. In fact, I sometimes think of how I could have only hung out with her if she initiated it. It's sort of like how Jesus told His disciples, "You didn't choose me, I chose you." But that's beside my point here.

I realize that I've put a lot of focus on the Bible lately. I've done so because people seem to have a lot of questions and want to talk about it. A Charles Spurgeon quote comes to mind today, "Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose. It will defend itself." Like Spurgeon, I don't feel like I need to defend the Bible. If you want to wrestle with it, you'll find it hard to overpower.

I mentioned having a point earlier, so here it is. I wrote about this stuff because I want to encourage you to have a dynamic relationship with Jesus. I think knowing doctrine allows this, which may explain why Paul told both Timothy to be nourished on sound doctrine (1 Tim. 4:6) and Titus to hold fast to the Word so he can teach sound doctrine. Now, the purpose of doctrine is not doctrine itself, but to explain how a person can know, love, and have a relationship with God in the way He wants. But it's the very fact of God wanting things on His terms which (I think) scares people most. G.K. Chesterton once wrote "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

What do you think? Would you rather know and love God on His terms? How would a person even know such a thing?

Does Jesus, or even the mention of Jesus, make you nervous?

Does the Holy Spirit scare you, even though He's offering gifts?

How important is your control to you?

Is This Thing On? – A brief message on why Christians pray.

I knew at some point in this series on basic Christian living I'd have to talk about prayer. Christians do it all the time. But has anyone explained to you why? Haven't we all heard people describe feeling like their prayers hit the ceiling and fall splat on the floor like an undercooked pancake? Haven't we felt once or twice like our prayers don't do any good? Still, those who read the Bible and live by what it says can't ignore verses like Psalm 5:3. "In the morning, O Lord, you will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to you and eagerly watch." Not only should a Christian pray, but he should expect God to both hear and respond to the prayer.

Early in the drafting process of Stark Raving Obedience, Dad and I added a Lily Tomlin bit somewhere in the text. "Why is it when a person talks to God it's called prayer, but when God talks to a person it's called schizophrenia?" The first half of our book deals with the reality of God speaking to people. I could easily rattle off the verses we cite about God speaking, people hearing His voice, the verbal guidance of the Holy Spirit, and so on. When I thought about verses talking of God hearing people, I had a harder time coming up with examples.

I mean, it's in there. The Bible definitely talks about God hearing prayers. In my search for good examples, I went where anyone would go: The Beginning. Nobody makes an explanation of prayer in Genesis. No, "Adam heard the Lord and called out, 'Who said that?' And thus did Adam speak the first prayer unto the Lord." Nope. People and God talk to each other as if that sort of thing happened all the time. Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, all sorts of people. It doesn't even sound like prayer was anything different than simply talking to God until Genesis 4:29, "At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord." I don't think this means God couldn't keep up with all the people trying to talk to Him at once. Prayer isn't like Santa's workshop, receiving millions of letters and sorting them based on importance and a naughty/nice list. It would make more sense to see this text as people realizing just how much sin had caused separation in their relationships with God. Maybe they felt like their prayers hit the ceiling and it freaked them out.

As my research went on, I found lots of passages where God hears the prayers of Kings and Prophets. In 1 Kings 9:3, God tells Solomon he heard the King's prayers. When King Hezekiah finds out he'll probably die of a particular illness, he prays for God to heal him. God tells Hezekiah in Isaiah 38, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life." The leaders of Jerusalem asked Jeremiah to give them a word from the Lord and Jeremiah, knowing they had wrong motives, responded, "I have heard you. Behold, I am going to pray to the Lord your God in accordance with your words; and I will tell you the whole message which the Lord will answer you. I will not keep back a word from you." I can relate to Jeremiah's frustration. Why didn't the rulers just pray to God themselves? In another passage, Ezekiel tells the people of Edom that God hears more than prayers when he says in 35:12, "Then you will know that I, the Lord, have heard your revilings which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel." In Micah 7:7, the prophet says with straightforward confidence, "My God will hear me."

But those men had special distinction. They were recognized Prophets and Kings. Of course God would hear their prayers. Then I reread a verse in Habakkuk 1. The Prophet feels like his prayers hit the ceiling, too. You can hear his confusion in 1:2 when he says, "How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and you will not hear? I cry out to you, 'Violence!' Yet you do not save." Once in a while, even men of spiritual distinction ask God, "What the eff?" This passage should give us some comfort. God never promises to answer our prayers quickly or in the way we expect.

Isn't that great? I spent all of July talking about the authority and need for the Bible because it lays a foundation for our understanding of a relationship with God. The Bible doesn't just say God will hear and prayers and respond to them, it also says we'll sometimes feel like He's not listening. But that's just how we can sometimes feel. Scripture is clear. God hears us. This is why He laid out the plan of redemption. It makes Him happy when we pray.

As for God talking back to us, I feel like I've written at length on that topic already. Suffice to say for now the Bible also tells us we'll hear from God. I bring up July's discussion on scriptural authority because some people have expressed concern over the topic of listening prayer. One lady told me I was playing a "dangerous game" listening to voices in the spiritual realm. "How can you know it's really God and not something evil?" She wasn't trying to put me in my place. The look on her face told me she genuinely cared about my soul.

I tried to explain, as I often do, "Everything spoken from God has to line up with the Bible."

She didn't seem comforted by my response. "I know you mean well. Just be careful with that sort of thing."

As long as I'm talking about prayer, I may as well attempt to clear this misunderstanding. God will only say things that confirm what He said in the Bible. Listening prayer, hearing from the Holy Spirit, isn't new revelation. It's just personal. It's as if the Holy Spirit was telling you a personal application of the Bible in a way that doesn't feel like a freakin' Sunday School lesson. The more a person reads the Bible, the more they recognize the voice of God because it agrees with what He said in scripture. It might even help us to get over that ceiling-effect. We'll always hear God respond to our prayers in the Bible, even if it's just to say, "Don't worry. I hear you."

Well-versed and Empty-hearted - Some thoughts on religious dullness.

Remember when I spent six months writing about the Minor Prophets (and yet gave you no links to Non-Prophets)? Instead of the now-familiar format where I share something I learn, I want to tell you about some meditations I've recently had while reading the Bible.

Last week, my friend Greg spoke at church about the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the message, he made two important points. One, the Bible is not enough. Yes, the Bible is completely necessary as a means for us to know God. But some people make the mistake of having a relationship with the Book and never get to know the Author. It's sort of like RLC Fan-club Christianity. There is a great danger in this. Modern man has tried for generations to understand God in strictly human terms. They use the Xerox copy as their standard of the total landscape. The picture is nice and all, but it's separate from their experience. So they use words like, "It's good to have faith, but..." As if faith were a pleasant virtue instead of a new way of life.

Two, the Holy Spirit changes lives. Some men from the church in Ephesus knew about repentance and baptism, they tried to "do" the stuff but hadn't received the Holy Spirit, let alone heard of Him. Acts 19:1-6 tells the story of these men finally meeting God, the Author, experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit. Their faith went from works to relationship in the space of a breath. Imagine watching this take place. They instantly began to speak in other languages and prophesy. How do you think they they would have explained it? Don't you think something like that would have changed their lives?

The Christian Church has seen its share of well-versed and empty-hearted people. In 2 Timothy 3:2-5, Paul warns the young pastor, "People will be self-loving, money-loving, proud, arrogant, insulting, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, uncontrolled, brutal, hateful of good, traitorous, headstrong, swollen with conceit, loving pleasure rather than God, as they retain the outer form of religion but deny its power." Don't slide your eyes over this list. I know I sometimes see words like "brutal" or "traitorous" and think the message couldn't possibly apply to me. The truth is I recently repented of a huge area of pride in my life, and I know I've insulted people. This warning should cause us to stop and consider if we are those who retain an outer form of religion while denying its power. Have our lives genuinely changed or have we merely memorized data about Him?

I grew up in dry and dusty Baptist churches and almost never heard anyone mention the Holy Spirit. This version of faith was a list of rules and guidelines, no matter how passionately I tried to tell my non-believing friends otherwise. Before I met the Holy Spirit, my faith, my life, was dull. I seldom repented because my heart was hard and I didn't understand the purpose of conviction. During a conference in 2004, Graham Cooke noted how Paul's last sermon in Acts was a message against religious dullness. "The Holy Spirit spoke well in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, 'Go to this people and say, "You will keep on hearing but never understand, and you will keep on seeing but never perceive, because the heart of this people has grown thick - with their ears they barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, for fear that they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and do repentance, so that I could heal them."'"

Since Greg's message, I have asked God to keep my heart sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to keep me from dullness. I don't want to go from a life of Stark Raving Obedience to the lukewarm, practical atheism of nominal Christians.

How do you feel about this? Are you content with once-a-week Christianity? Does the thought of God speaking to you fill you with anxiety? Do you want life with God, living in His presence as you work and eat and study and socialize, or do you just want to go to a nice place after you die?

Give Us a Sign.

A man I met at work recently read Stark Raving Obedience. After a few minutes of conversation, he made it known that he believed in God and worked as a missionary. A week later, he handed me a slip of paper. “These are some questions I have about your faith,” he said. Since my shift had not yet ended, I told him that I would read his questions later and write my answers. I planned on writing him a note, but after I read these questions, I decided to write a post.

The note reads, “If God really speaks to you, some questions.

1. My middle name.
2. My father’s middle name.
3. My grandfather’s names (father’s father and mother’s father)
4. Grammatical use of “dad and I” & “dad and me”
5. Where did you get a story of a woman standing on her head?”

When this man told me he wanted to ask questions about my faith, these were not the questions I expected. However, this is not the first time someone has asked me to prove that I hear God speak.

I want to make it clear that hearing God’s voice leads to a closer relationship with Him. The purpose of this dialogue is to develop intimacy and ultimately for God to glorify Himself. When God tells me to pray for a complete stranger’s healing, it can seem strange at first. But when it so happens the stranger has an ailment or injury, I’m excited by the confirmation. Then, if we see healing occur at that moment (which has happened on a few occasions), God gets the praise and I learn to trust His voice even more.

On the other hand, for the man who wants me to recite his genealogy, what does he hope for? If I give him incorrect answers, does that supposedly prove God’s silence and my delusion? If I answer correctly, what would that accomplish? Would it bring him closer to God? To be honest, I don’t want to treat my conversations with God like a game of Mind Reader.

Some Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign in Matthew 12:38-40. “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ But He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’” A chapter earlier, they questioned His divinity and now ask for a sign as proof. Jesus refuses to perform tricks and says, in essence, that His death and resurrection will have to do. As if that weren’t enough, right?

Four chapters later in Matthew 16, the text tells us that the Pharisees approached Jesus with some Sadducees and again asked for a sign as a test. In fact, the text in Stern’s translation from the Hebrew says they did this in order to trap Him. Again, Jesus rebuffs them and repeats himself in verse 4. “‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.’ And He left them and went away.”

The Lord brought two things to mind as I thought of these passages in Matthew. First, Pharisees and Sadducees were theologically opposed to each other much in the same way that we see opposition between Armenians and Calvinists today. I had to laugh. Isn’t it funny how Jesus can bring people together? Even if it’s to oppose Him? Just a thought.

Second, I wondered how they intended to trap Him with their request. Jesus, as God, had the power to show them His divinity. Hadn’t He performed signs and wonders throughout His ministry? Then I remembered some passages in John. First, in John 6, Jesus miraculously fed five thousand people then told them to seek Him and not the sign. Most of the people didn’t like this rebuke. In fact, even the disciples found it hard to swallow at first. Then in John 7, the Jews question Jesus’s education as He teaches in the temple. He responds in verses 16-18, “So Jesus answered them and said, ‘My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.’” Now in John 8:12-13, “Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’” In the following verses, Jesus explains how His relationship with the triune God allows the three parts to testify and glorify each other. They missed the point about His relationship with the Father, how He only said what the Father told Him to say, how He sought to bring glory to God.

I’m not Jesus. I don’t deserve the honor and glory and I shouldn’t do anything to seek praise due to Him. I want to point people to Jesus. I don’t want to waste time defending myself. When I read this man’s list of questions, I felt so much disappointment. Were these questions about my faith, I would have gladly answered them. But they seemed like a test of my truthfulness, sanity, and grammar. So, I respectfully decline to answer all but one of His questions. He asked where I got a story about a woman standing on her head. Fifteen years ago, a woman in a mid-Michigan church heard God and obeyed. My father came in contact with her through a friend of his, her pastor at the time. Since then, the story has grown legs and unfortunately suffered from a game of telephone. We are certain of the story’s accuracy as we tell it. If that isn’t convincing enough, we have fifteen more years of stories like hers.

I tell these stories in hopes that they will build people’s faith and come to understand more of the one true God who is both infinite and personal. Jesus forgive me for any other motive.

Trust and the Wall of Discomfort

Last week, my publisher sent me the galley proof of Stark Raving Obedience. I spent all weekend going through the text, taking time out only for baseball and church. While reading, the Holy Spirit used my own book to convict me. Several times in the book, I encourage people to act on the truth they read in the Bible. All I could think about were the times in the past month where I didn’t obey, missed my opportunity, or misunderstood the cue.

The top, number one, inexcusable excuse for my shortcomings? Discomfort. You could call it a host of other things. “Fear of man” “Fear of rejection” “Lack of faith”, all of which might describe what happens when I’m well aware of God’s will and still bail.

During the past week, a few things happened to reinforce what the Holy Spirit brought to my attention. First, I read a comment on Stuff Christians Like from this girl. She quoted from Kierkegaard’s Provocations by way of Shane Claiborne. “But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it (the Bible) because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?” At first, I laughed and copied the quote for my own use.

Two days later, I decided to give myself a break from work. I drove a mile down the road from my house to Greer Stadium, home of the Nashville Sounds, a Triple A baseball team. I asked for a seat all the way down the left field foul line, five feet from the bullpen bench. For most of the evening, I listened to the relief pitchers and bullpen coach analyzing the game. If anyone looked over my way, they may have thought I was keeping score. Actually, I was writing down bits of their conversation. At one point in the fourth inning, the starting pitcher came to bat. He took two strikes in bunt attempts then swung for strike three. Minutes later, the bullpen coach told one of the relief pitchers to start warming up for the next inning. The guys on the bench tried to figure out why their starting pitcher wasn’t finishing a decent game.

Later, they learned what happened from the backup catcher. Apparently, after strike two, the batting coach signaled for another bunt attempt. The pitcher looked at his coach like he must have lost his mind. If he missed another bunt, strike three, a wasted at-bat, another out. The pitcher shook off the signal and motioned back to the coach that he wanted to swing. To the pitcher, the coach’s sign looked like idiocy. Suicide. But then again, the pitcher’s solution didn’t work, either. Coach was so angry he benched the pitcher.

One of the relief pitchers started laughing. “Man, if coach calls for a bunt, you give him a bunt.” Then after a moment, he started analyzing the situation. “I can see why they guy decided to swing, but coach was right. One out with a man on first and third is a great bunt opportunity. Either he advances the runner from first to second and gets him in scoring position or we somehow manage to pull off a squeeze play and bring the guy on third home. We might have taken the lead.”

I can’t say this was the pivotal moment where the Sounds began to lose the game. It is minor league ball, after all, which has enough errors to make me believe I’m watching theater. Even so, from that inning on, the team trailed the rest of the game and lost.

Immediately, I wrote this conversation on my program and made the connection to my attitude in prayer. There are days where God signals for me to pray for someone or tell them about Jesus. It’s not always so drastic. Sometimes He tells me to send an email or make a phone call that I forget about. But there are times when I absolutely know what God wants. He made it clear in prayer and scripture. Proclaim the good news of Jesus, pray for the sick, that sort of thing. But then I’m shaking off the signal or pretending holiness by asking, “God, do you want me to pray for this person?” After a silence, God says “No” and I feel justified in my nervousness. But maybe God said no because I’ve proved my lack of faith by not acting on the truth I know in the Bible. Maybe I just got benched for that game.

Now before you think I’m sitting in a chilly Nashville coffee shop moping about my failures, I want to assure you that God has used me to pray for and minister to more people now than ever before. Because of this, though, I’m noticing more instances when I don’t follow through on what God puts on my heart. It’s like the difference between walking into a wall and running full speed into it.

As I talked with God about my attitude when I run into the wall of discomfort, He reminded me of a parable in Matthew 21:28-30. “But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’; but he did not go.” In the next verse, Jesus asks the religious leaders “Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.”

We can find ourselves asking God to speak to us, to give us a sign, but then shake it off when He tells us something. There are lots of people who would ignore parts of the Bible that they'd rather not confront. I’ve found myself with that attitude in the past. The Bible is offensive. What if you really did live by what it said? What would become of you? I can tell you. It will ruin you. You’ll end up sacrificing everything. But take comfort in what Jesus told Peter in Mark 10:28-30. “Peter began to say to Him, ‘Behold, we have left everything and followed You.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life.’”

It may be hard to reconcile with the hundredfold embarrassment, persecution, or other trials, but the promise outweighs the cost. I’d rather be the son working for God despite the discomfort or supposed inconvenience. I’d rather bunt and stay in the game than strike out and watch other men do what I should be doing on the mound. When I’m running that marathon and hit the wall of discomfort, I can remind myself that the wall isn’t made of bricks. It’s made of lies and orange gelatin. It might hurt a little and feel gross, but God has enabled me to push through and keep going.

A Working Faith

Even though I write about my life as a Christian, I spent a good deal of my life detesting books listed under “Christian Living”. The books I would take off of my dad’s shelf sometimes had phrases like “living by faith” or “taking steps of faith” or “developing faith”. There are certain phrases that I had heard enough Bible teachers say without ever explaining what they meant, eventually my mind would pass over the topic whenever I encountered it. So I could never explain “faith” whenever my friends outside of the church ever asked me about my faith. The word had meaning the same way that “glory” has meaning in some churches. They know it means something, and that it has to do with God, but they stutter whenever you ask them to define their terms.

I’ve begun to see the importance of defining terms. I recently told a story about a man challenging me on how I used the words “belief” and “faith” interchangeably. It took me months before I could understand the difference. I felt a certain satisfaction in finally understanding a word that I had used hundreds of thousands of times in ignorance while unknowingly (or secretly) hoping that listeners would understand.

Think about this in your own life. How many times have people asked you to explain or define faith and you find your mouth hanging open absolutely puzzled? And how about this brain bender: if we’re saved by grace and not by works, then why does the Bible say that faith without works is dead? Like a college essay question, I used to BS my way through the whole thing.

As I write this, I am sitting in the lower level of the library at Belmont University. They’ve hidden all of the theology, religion, and philosophy books in the depths of the building behind inconspicuous doors marked “Not An Exit”. Not many of my friends on campus are even aware of this place, which means it’s really quiet. I’ve been coming here nearly every day since last week to study and write. But today, for some reason, I’m unable to use my usual online study guides. I think maybe the shadowy lords of Belmont Wi-Fi have figured out that I’m not a paying student. All of this to say that I will be using the Complete Jewish Bible for my scripture references. For the sake of the reader, though, I’ll use the glossary to translate names and words that might not be familiar. I just made you read this whole paragraph to make that one point. Now, moving on…

Here are a few things Paul states in Romans 10. In verses 9 and 11, he says, “that if you acknowledge publicly with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be delivered.” Then, “For the passage quoted says that everyone who rests his trust on him will not be humiliated (referring to Isaiah 28:16).” If you read this in other translations, note how the Hebrew translation uses the word “trust” for “faith”. Many people have heard what Paul says a few verses later how faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17).

Hebrews 11:6 says, “without trusting, it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, because whoever approaches him must trust that he does exist and that he becomes a Rewarder of those who seek him out.” To restate my definition of terms, “belief” is mentally ascribing yourself to something. My belief rests on the truth that I find in the Bible. I demonstrate this when I tell people that the Bible is absolutely true. “Faith” is acting upon the truth to which I have mentally and verbally given myself. This is why the Bible can say, “believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” and that a public acknowledgement of Jesus as the risen Lord delivers us.

But “faith” is something else. Faith takes the truth of the Bible and stirs a real change in our day-to-day lives. That means we have to act as if we really believe ourselves when we say that the whole Bible is true. I mean, to say we believe it and live as if we don’t places us in a frustrating situation. That’s why James says faith without works is dead. Without evidence of some change by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, a person who claims belief in the Bible speaks empty words.

So if living by faith, as a Christian, means living in moment-to-moment reality trusting that the whole Bible is true today, this presents a question of responsibility to believers. Hebrews 11:6 made it clear that it is impossible to please God outside of faith. If faith means that we have to base our actions on what we read in the Bible (Romans 10:17 again), then doesn’t that mean it would be sin for us to read something in the scripture and not apply that to our everyday lives? If I make a decision about a situation on my own wisdom apart from the Bible, am I not basically saying that I don’t need God to figure it out? Isn’t that ethically living outside of faith? Isn’t that sin?

Now what if we could depend on the Bible as truth, that it does apply in reality today? Let’s look at a few verses. Matthew 10:1, “Jesus called his twelve disciples and gave them authority to drive out unclean spirits and to heal every kind of disease and weakness.” And what about the redemptive work of salvation? Because Jesus came to earth, lived, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven, those who trust in this have great promises. Not only will their sins be forgiven, but according to Isaiah 53:5 and Psalm 103:3 says that salvation brings physical healing. James 5:14-15 says, “Is someone among you ill? He should call for the elders of the congregation. They will pray for him and rub olive oil on him in the name of the Lord. The prayer offered with trust will heal the one who is ill – the Lord will restore his health; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” Notice also how salvation refers to sin and sickness each time. That happens a lot in the Bible. I think it’s safe to say that salvation and healing are not two separate things.

Beyond healing miracles, what about simply hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit? Isaiah 30:21 says, “With your ears you will hear a word from behind you: ‘This is the way; stay on it, whether you go to the right or the left.’” John 16:13, “However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative but will say only what he hears. He will also announce to you the events of the future.” That last part refers to prophecy. Paul talks at length about this and other gifts of the spirit in 1 Corinthians 12-14. And for you dispensationalists out there, was Paul writing about this for the benefit of the exclusively gifted apostles, or to a church of former pagans that needed to understand a reality that God had shown of himself?

Healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, prophesying, speaking in languages unknown to the speaker, a personal and verbal (even if unspoken) relationship with the Holy Spirit. I mean, even going out preaching the gospel, baptizing people, and discipling them. The Bible instructs people to do that stuff. If you say that you believe the whole Bible, are you willing to read it and trust that God will enable you to do it? Remember that only God makes us able to live by faith. But when we resist Him, what does that say about our belief in the Bible? I won’t demand that you answer for this, but I can tell you that one day you will have to give an answer, just like I will have to give an answer.

I’ll leave you with this, though, in hopes that you won’t be all bummed out at the end. There’s a reason I quoted Romans 10:11. If you do put your trust in God and live it, you won’t be humiliated. Well, that doesn’t guarantee you won’t be embarrassed sometimes. But God has stated the truth of the Bible and called us to live accordingly so that He will be glorified. Believers are a part of His plan to reveal Himself to the world because we demonstrate the reality of who He is in our lives. That’s the way He set it up. So when we live based on our trust in the Bible, we get to be a part of what He’s already going to do.

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 Importance of Being Right – Or, a possible path toward unbelief.

Recently, I considered the topic of predestination. Unless we’re talking about the movie 12 Monkeys, I don’t typically like discussing the hopelessness of man’s decisions. The topic surfaced again when my roommates and I read about the atonement in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. One roommate took the side of particular redemption. I told him that I could only, at this point, agree with particular redemption after the fact. That is, I will only tell a person that Jesus came to specifically save them, that God chose them from before their birth for salvation, after they have already accepted Christ. And consequently, I will regard every unbeliever as one who may potentially accept Christ. My roommates and I talked for about an hour and a half on the subject. I finished my argument later by saying, “Even if I’m wrong, I can’t be mad. Nobody deserves to be saved. One person receiving salvation is more than the whole of mankind deserves from God.”

The conversation ended well even though we didn’t come to an agreement. As I washed the dishes afterwards, I smiled at the thought that a room full of opinionated men could still be humble in their beliefs. There were no assaults made against a person who didn’t agree with one side or another. We tried to come to an understanding based upon what we know of scripture and cared only that we lived our lives in a way that honored God. I haven’t fully adopted Reformed theology, but I am still thinking about the points made in its defense. I want to know more about God. In order to make sure that I don’t become stubbornly proud in my faith, I have to remind myself, “I don’t know everything.”

At the end of Stark Raving Obedience, I spent a little time writing about Blaise Pascal. In the book Pensees, he said that man is a point on a line and limited in his ability to comprehend either end of the line. Man cannot comprehend the extremes of anything in nature. There are numbers so big and small that we have yet to count them. The Universe continues to expand, and we have only begun to chart the vastness of it. On the other hand, scientists keep finding smaller and smaller subatomic particles. Some light and sound waves are too high or low for our senses, and maybe our machines, to register. Yet these extremes exist regardless of our ability to know them. Pascal’s argument was that some Being must fully comprehend these extremes. This was one argument he made for the existence of God. He said that it was man’s great joy to discover more of what God had put in place, but man must humbly recognize that he will never arrive at full and complete comprehension. This belongs to God alone.

Toward the end of George MacDonald’s Lilith, the narrator struggles to understand a truth Mr. Raven tells him. Apparently, the narrator is in a dream, but everything seems quite real. He doubts that his senses deceive him. Everything feels real, so how could it not be real? If his current surroundings were a dream, how would he know if he ever truly entered the waking world? Mr. Raven explains, “Thou doubest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou are not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be forever dead.”

I often think about Pascal’s picture of humble learning and taking joy in discovery. But does this mean that any skepticism of new understanding puts me in the wrong? According to MacDonald, it shows that I have a love for the truth, a truth I can never fully understand apart from God’s illumination. I want my knowledge to form a complete whole instead of a pile of facts with which I can agree. I want to learn, but I’m trying to reconcile what I have already learned with any new information. If I’m going to learn anything, I sometimes have to allow for the possibility that I’ve previously accepted something untrue. This is the hard part. So hard, in fact, that I need the Holy Spirit to help me change my thinking.

I take this very seriously because of how easy it is to resort to an “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality. The danger in this attitude comes from a resistance to truth not previously understood. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s a breeze to disregard it as nonsense, right? Priests and bible teachers of Jesus’s day were arrogant in their knowledge of scripture, but they didn't see Jesus as the fulfillment of all those prophecies they had memorized. In John 8, they couldn’t recognize Him when He stood right in front of them. Jesus had come to the temple to teach and said in John 8:12-14, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.’”

Did you ever wonder why the Pharisees said, “You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true”? I think they were trying to trap Jesus with His own words. Three chapters earlier, Jesus said in John 5:31, “If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.” But then he says in verse 32, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.” This is why Jesus answered the Pharisees accusation by saying, “Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.” He knew that He was the Son of God, one in and with the Father, but these religious leaders had no understanding of the Trinity to know the truth when they heard it. It didn’t make sense, so they disregarded it.

My pastor pointed out that John 8 takes place in the temple court. The priests kept huge oil lanterns burning day and night to signify God’s presence in the temple. Here they stood, focused on the representation of God’s presence and unable to see God Himself standing before them saying, “I am the light of the world.” It probably would have been okay if they had responded by saying, “Huh? We don’t understand what you’re saying, Jesus. Why don’t you explain it to us?” The disciples said that all the time. But the Pharisees didn’t want Jesus to explain. They wanted to trap Him and prove Him a liar. They wanted to be right.

What did that leave them with? Unbelief, I think. Graham Cooke once said, “The Bible talks about ‘an evil heart of unbelief”. And it’s not that if you have unbelief, your heart is evil. What it’s saying is that the impact of unbelief on your heart is really evil. You commit yourself to a life of toil, struggle, and pain. It damages everything.”

What’s the opposite of unbelief? Faith. Then that probably means the impact of faith on your heart is lovely. I’m not going to say that thinking you’re right equals unbelief, and thinking you’re wrong equals faith. Put it in terms of the attitude you have towards knowledge. Is it arrogant and prideful? Then you’re in danger of unbelief just like the Pharisees in John 8. Is it humble, allowing for new understanding? I’d say that’s a good step toward faith.

Having said all that, I encourage you to both seek as well as stand firmly upon truth. People used to tell me that I had to be open minded. At the heart of their argument, they wanted me to admit that their version of truth was just as valid as mine. Which is funny because this meant they didn't think my explanation of truth was valid. I didn’t budge from my position that there is one eternal God. That not all gods were God. That truth was not relative. Absolutely nothing will change my mind about these statements.

So whether God knew (and therefore picked) who would be saved, or if He made a genuine offer of salvation to all, Jesus is the only way to salvation. I can stand on the truth of Christ and yet continue to learn more about this truth. At least on this, the roommates and I can agree.

If God Were Really Good At Playing Cards – A look at omniscience and free will

(I have since retracted some of my points here and here. I decided to leave this post in the Press so people might see how I have changed from thought to thought.)

I live within two miles of two Universities and school is back in session. It’s probably safe to say about half of the people in my church building on Sunday go to college. In the past few weeks, I’ve met so many new students that I warn them immediately “I might forget your name.” Sometimes that doesn’t offend them and we’ll get to talk. During these conversations, at least five people have brought up the subject of God’s will and how that works with free will. I’m not kidding. The conversations all had their own, unique subjects that funneled into stuff like Predestination. One began as a discussion on Descartes and why I hate his work. Here’s one way someone asked me a question on God’s will:

Me: So what do you want out of life? (I really ask this question, usually during uncomfortable pauses. If we ever meet and you run out of small talk, watch out.)

Them: I want to know what God’s will is for my life. Should I be doing this or should I pay more attention to that? I’m having a hard time telling if it’s God directing me or if it’s just what I want.

Me: It sounds like you want to know how to discern the voice of God and know when He’s telling you something as opposed to you telling it to yourself.

Them: Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Then after I tried to make myself look cool by telling them about my book, the person asked what I thought of Reformed Theology. I thought this was pretty funny, having moved from West Michigan, where the Reformed Church of America set up its headquarters, to Nashville, where Southern Baptists and the Church of Christ reign supreme. Then again, I don’t know what they think about Reformed Theology, either. There are too many denominations, huh? Moving on.

Me: I like some parts, but not other parts.

Them: What do you think about predestination?

Me: Ooh. Uh. Well, I seem to remember a verse that says God does not wish that any should be lost. So it sounds like it’s God’s will that all should be saved. But of course, not everyone will choose to follow God. Then the question is, if God is all-knowing, doesn’t He know if people will accept or deny Him?

Then I used a metaphor that has become very dear to me. I’m aware that some Christians will give themselves headaches when I compare God to a gambler, but stay with me. Imagine that God is a really good poker player. He could stack the deck if He wanted to, but then anything won would be meaningless because He set Himself up to win. So He has to set that ability aside in order to have true victory. At the same time, He can count cards. So based on what you throw out, He has a pretty good idea of what you’ll do next.

God’s omniscience is a part of His character, but then let me ask you an uncomfortable question: Was Jesus, God, omniscient while here on earth?

In Matthew 4, Jesus begins a forty-day fast after His baptism. Matthew 4:1 says, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” But if Jesus, God, were omniscient, why would He need the Spirit to lead Him anywhere? Wouldn’t He know where to go already? Or consider what Jesus said in John 8:28, “I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.”

Here’s how I see it. God the son had to willingly put His Omniscience to the side in order to become fully man. That way he could learn and live and make choices between right and wrong. He could be filled with the Holy Spirit (another theological knot I won’t try to untie for you right now) and operate as an example to His disciples of how to live by the Spirit.

I used this example to show that God is omniscient, but for the sake of truly winning our love, He is able to set his omniscience to the side in the area of our choices. This gives space for free will to exist. I think he did this so He could give us opportunity to choose Him. If He knew absolutely from the beginning that a person would not choose Him, two things would make me believe that God was cruel. First, God would have created a person to be damned. That goes against the scripture I referenced earlier, 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” Second, He’d offer salvation to people He knew were incapable of accepting it. That’s just, you know, a tease. And my new friend who got me started on this conversation said, “Exactly. Otherwise, what would be the point of praying for people? What would be the point of Evangelism?”

Now that I’ve come to the end of this post, I realize that I didn’t have an agenda when I started it. I can say for certain that I don’t want readers to think less of God’s power, but more. I don’t want to diminish the truth that God never changes, but emphasize the fact that God is not stiff and rigid. God is loving and will find a way to allow us to love Him. He wants you to seek His will, but He’s also able to work our own decisions to our good and to His glory. And He will be glorified. But that’s a different card game. God stacked the deck on that one. He will be glorified no matter what we do.

A Simple Guide to Overdoing the Great Commission.

Whenever pastors talk about missions, they will almost certainly talk about the Great Commission. Jesus gave this last command to His disciples before ascending into Heaven. In Acts 1:8, He says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” And in Matthew 28:19-20, He adds, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Growing up hearing this from pastors most of my life, I could tell early on how much they liked preaching this sermon. It was easy. They could recite Jesus’ command, tap their finger on the page, and then point that finger at the congregation. “You are all missionaries,” they’d say. I liked that. The phrase “a missionary in your own backyard” had a snappy ring to it. It lit a fire in me to raise money for faceless, starving children. Raising money from the neighbors up and down my street helped the children and let the block know that I loved Jesus. I truly was a missionary in my own backyard. Once, I even stood up with a Bible in my first grade class when my teacher had mentioned a certain crisis that existed in the world.

And then I got my ass kicked for five years. Although some of the kids in my school were pretty ruthless, I don’t think they were actively persecuting me for my beliefs. I get the feeling that I pissed something off in the spiritual realm.

The first part of Acts 1:8 should demand our attention. Jesus told His disciples not to spread the gospel until they had received power from the Holy Spirit. Some people have told me that Jesus said to because the signs and wonders brought by the Holy Spirit would make God’s power evident to people hearing the gospel. I suppose that’s true. Paul said in 1 Corinthians the signs were used to show the message through God’s power and not human wisdom. I think there’s something else to it, though. They needed His guidance.

In Acts 16, Paul and his companions are out on one of their missionary journeys. In verses 6 and 7, “They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them.” If people stopped to think about this, they might find it outrageous. “What? Didn’t God want the gospel preached there as well?” I think so, but through others and at a different time. The people in Galatia formed a pretty significant church. Paul’s letter to them may be one of my favorite epistles.

But this wasn’t the kind of mission trip where kids all wear the same T-shirts and build schools for impoverished communities. A lot people wanted to kill Paul and his buddies. Even in the cities he did visit, he faced riots and imprisonment and attempts on his life. But God miraculously saved him every time. Why? Because Paul went exactly where the Holy Spirit led him to go. He went into large, influential cities (cities, I should mention, that had more local authority to keep villagers from skewering the apostles) and shared the gospel to as many people as possible. This allowed others to share the gospel in turn with a common language and mutual history. “Hey Pete. Did you hear about that riot in town? You’ll never guess what this guy was saying to the people.” Voila! Ministry time. God put Paul in specific places to set other people in motion. His job wasn’t to save the whole world. I’d imagine that job would be very exhausting. And it would not have allowed more leadership to rise in the church. But people think that is their job. Save the whole world one backyard at a time.

For any of us who want to spread the gospel through full-time ministry (I wonder what “part-time ministry” means), we should consider this pattern. As we seek to do God’s work, we should listen for His voice and follow the direction He gives us. Otherwise we might take on burdens that are not ours and in turn place those burdens on our families and loved ones. I’m not saying that ministry never involves pain or sacrifice or hard choices that affect others. I mean to say we would do better to have God show us who to reach and then help them reach others. That way we don’t end up in Bithynia wondering why nobody’s listening or why those people over there are picking up heavy rocks.

When We Move, It's A Movement.

A friend of mine gave me the new John Eldredge book, Walking With God. Because my “to-read” list is pretty long, it can take ages before I finally get to the newest book. For some reason, I decided to upset the natural order of things and skip other books I had promised to read first. So far, I like Walking With God very much. It’s actually a little spooky how close Eldredge’s teachings mirror the life my family has lived for the past fourteen years. It’s like the guy’s been reading my mail, or at least my book. John, if you're reading this, let’s hang out.

Last night, I read the section “Until God Becomes Our All”. I tried not to get visibly excited while sitting in a hip café as I read these words. “The first and greatest command is to love God with our whole being. Yet, it is rare to find someone who is completely given over to God. And so normal to be surrounded by people who are trying to make life work. We think of the few who are abandoned to God as being sort of odd. The rest of the world – the ones trying to make life work – seem perfectly normal to us.” So help me, I almost said aloud, “That’s me!” I’m not saying that I get it right all the time, but my mistakes happen in the middle of my effort to live for God by the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Abe once told me that one of the most neglected commands in the Bible is to have no other gods before God. I think I agree with him. Millions of good Christian people just snarled at me, I know. But think about it. People will follow God as long as it doesn’t look foolish, jeopardize their finances, or interfere with any other plans they may have. They worship at the alter of money, image, career, relationships, or whatever else started as a gift from God. But I’m not writing about idols today. I had a long night, you know? I want to write about something exciting.

This verse comes from Stern’s Complete Jewish Bible. Acts 9:31 “Then the Messianic community (the church) throughout Y’hudah (Judea), the Galil (Galilee) and Shomron (Samaria) enjoyed peace and was built up. They lived in the fear of the Lord, with the counsel of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit); and their numbers kept multiplying.” Two things ought to stick out from that verse. The believers feared God, meaning they lived for Him above everything else, and they sought the direction of the Holy Spirit. When the church lived in this way, they grew. People came to Jesus. It sounds pretty basic, right? Still, why do I look at the church in the western world and see so little life? How much are these churches growing because people are giving their lives to Jesus and how many churches are growing because of the Fan Club?

At church yesterday, the pastor taught on John 8. This is the awesome passage where Jesus says in verses 28, “So Yeshua (Jesus) said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM [who I say I am], and that of myself I do nothing, but say only what the Father has taught me.’” Jesus lived this way. He served God first, and only moved with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He is our example, and all throughout the New Testament we are encouraged to live as Jesus lived. My pastor asked if anyone wanted prayer for that kind of relationship with God and a number of people responded. I prayed for one of my new church friends. He told me that he wanted a more dynamic, personal relationship with God. “I want that extraordinary life,” he said. Enough with that boring and normal and safe version of faith where we try to keep everything under our control. Let’s change the world.

This isn’t melodrama, people. I’m talking change. There is a reason the Gospel is called “Good News”. The world needs to hear this. And if people in the church are willing to sacrifice control of their lives (trying to make it “work”), giving all of themselves over to God, the world would take notice. The very thought of it touches my punk rock heart. Some people might say we need to take responsibility for our lives. I did that already, and I nearly ruined the whole thing. My responsible life didn’t mean much until I dedicated it to God in total surrender. Unless the church today begins to live as it did in Acts 9:31, it will become more inbred and ineffective. The church needs to move with the direct and personal guidance of the Holy Spirit. It’s like the Orchid song says, “when we move, it’s a movement.”

Remember the Sabbath and Keep It Holy, or some Gentile thoughts on the nature of rest.

Sometimes while reading the Bible, I’ll start laughing because I put myself into the story. Like here in John 5:2-17, I’ll insert my commentary throughout the passage.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.
What’s a portico?
In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.] A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
Drag.
When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”
No, He asked if you wanted to be healed, man.
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.
A drag no more.
Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.”
If Jesus knew that this guy had been lame for years, didn’t the locals notice the miracle? What a bunch of kill-joys.
But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?”
They still aren’t picking up on the part where the man was healed. Why are these guys so caught up in a dude holding his mat?
But the man who was healed (at least the writer insists on mentioning the healing) did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”
Wait, did anyone else catch that last part?
The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
“Alright, if you’re going to harass anyone for healing me of a life-long handicap, blame this guy.”
For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.
“Are you the guy who told that cripple to carry his rug?”
But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”
“Yeah, I’m the guy. What are you going to do about it?”

Jesus flat-out admits to their accusation by saying, “I Myself and working.” What a bad-ass! And when the scripture says the Jews were persecuting Jesus, that’s a nice way of saying they wanted to kill Him. He had to know that. And then, for the rest of the chapter, Jesus talks about His authority as the Son of God and chastises the Jews for rejecting Him. Ouch. There is a lot I could talk about here, but I’m going to stick with the Sabbath for now.

The subject of the Sabbath, or God’s appointed day of rest, can irritate a lot of Christians. Let’s be honest, how many believers really observe the Sabbath? What is the Sabbath, anyway? And for that matter, when is the Sabbath? We talk about it so little that it becomes easy to ignore. I’ve thought about it more recently because of an argument I had with a guy. He observes the Sabbath, and on Saturday. “The real Sabbath,” he said. He got mad at me because I didn’t think it was necessary to observe all the Jewish laws so strictly.

“But it’s one of the Ten Commandments. How can you ignore that? And don’t tell me that you pick your own Sabbath. God appointed Saturday, that’s when we’re supposed to rest. You can’t change God’s rules,” he said.

I responded, “You know how much I like Jewish people, but we’re not Jews. As far as I know, we’re Gentiles. When the early church wanted to know if the Greek believers should convert to Judaism before Christianity, James told the church leaders, ‘But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.’” That’s Acts 21:25, in case you’re wondering. “Of all the commands they could have given the gentiles, they pretty much said, ‘don’t serve other gods or do things that glorify death, and stay sexually pure.’ They didn’t mention the Sabbath.”

We never really came to an agreement. This argument gets sticky because the two sides are both technically Biblical. God did command His people to observe the Sabbath. And God was serious about it. In other portions of the law, He tells His people to execute other Jews who don’t observe the Sabbath. Hence the Jews "persecuting" Jesus.

At the same time, Paul talks about the different applications of the law for Jewish and Gentile believers in Romans 2. It’s a pretty complicated passage, so I won’t get too deep into it. But notice verses 27 through 29, “And he who is physically uncircumcised (which was technically against the law for Jews), if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”

The point I want to make is this: Jesus didn’t break the law by healing a man on the Sabbath, and the man healed didn’t break the law by carrying his mat. The Sabbath was put in place to remind men that God created them for more than their work. It was meant to allow time for us to focus on our relationship with God. Jesus did as the Spirit of God led him to act, and the crippled man obeyed the Messiah. So if both of them acted in obedience, and their actions glorified God, how is that sin?

Galatians 5:3 says if you take one part of the law, you take on the whole of the law. And the message of Romans 2 is that Jews shouldn’t judge the Gentiles because they themselves fail at keeping the whole law. People who claim to observe the whole law and do so without having “circumcised their hearts”, or dedicated themselves to their relationship with God, they bring judgment on themselves. Jesus says this to the kill-joys in John 5. Those men were caught up in their image of perfection. If they had been concerned with glorifying God, they would have recognized the miracle and praised Him. Their trust in Him would have grown. Their relationship with Him would have deepened. And it’s in this deepening relationship that we find a true Sabbath of the heart.

I'm Not Unemployed, I Work For God.

(This is a long post. And I'm saying it's long. I thought about breaking it up into two parts, but I don't think that would do much good. Most of you should read more anyway.)

People naturally ask me what I do for a living. I can't blame them. I only very recently graduated from sleeping on the floor to a camping cot. In the past, I would answer their questions by telling them that I get money from book sales and then sometimes play guitar for a certain gospel singer. While this is true, I do make money that way, it's not what I really do. I mean, that's not my primary occupation or what sustains me.

Here's the real answer. Every day, I ask God what he wants me to do. Then I do it. Because I live in obedience to Him, God sustains me both supernaturally and through my creativity. This answer doesn't satisfy everyone, but it's the truth. So I'm not unemployed, I work for God.

To illustrate this point, I'm including a story from a friend of mine. We both felt weird about using his real name, so instead of making you wade through the boggy mess of endless pronouns, I've changed his name to "Abe". Abe, if you read this, there's a reason I chose this name. Sorry if you hate it.

Abe needs God to bless him. He’s waiting on a deal to come through and is short on cash. Instead of simply blessing Abe and leaving it at that, God sent Abe on a road trip to help people.

Abe left his temporary home in North Carolina to help his dad with some things in central Ohio. At ten minutes to five in the afternoon, he blew a tire out on a busy highway. He towed the car to a tire shop just before they closed. On the way back to his father’s house the next day, God tells Abe, “Stay in Columbus another day or two.”

At three in the afternoon, Abe’s father handed over one hundred forty dollars and said, “Get the other tire replaced.” At the tire shop, the same man was behind the counter from the night before. He gave Abe a forty-five dollar discount on the second tire. When they tried to remove the old tire from the rim the sidewalls disintegrated.

The tire shop is near a cafe. Abe headed over there to do some work on his computer. About two hours later his computer ran out of battery power despite the fact that it’s plugged in. Abe saw a flyer in the coffee shop advertising a local hotel with a low rate. Remembering the hotel is between the tire shop and Coffee Shop, Abe asked God if he should stay there. God said, “Stop in,” so he checked the rates at the hotel. The only room available was very expensive.

There was another man in the hotel lobby. He dressed in motorcycle gear and appeared exhausted. The man looked familiar, and Abe asked, “Can I help you?”

The man shook his head. “I just drove 8 hours by motorcycle from Kansas City."

Abe then remembered him from the International House of Prayer in KC, which surprised the motorcycle man. Abe asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m headed to Cleveland, but right now I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do for dinner and a room.”

Abe recommended a restaurant across the road. “When you leave, head toward Cleveland, take the next exit and stay in the Hampton Inn. It’ll be about twenty dollars more than a normal room would cost here."

As Abe walked to his car, the man called out, “Why are you leaving me?” He asked this question three times.

Abe replied each times, “Because I’ve answered all of your questions and told you what you need to know. You will be alright!”

Eventually, the man said, “How did you know that I had just asked God, ‘what am going to do Lord? What do I need to do?’”

Abe laughed when he told me this story and then asked me, “So how useful was this ‘day of unemployment’ to God?”

Instead of answering this question for you, I'm going to jump into the story of Elijah. I heard a man named Terry Virgo give a message on this passage a few weeks ago at a conference in Western Missouri. The passage is from 1 Kings 17:1-16.

The prophet Elijah told the king of Israel, "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word."

Then God tells Elijah, "Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. It shall be that you will drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there." Elijah goes to Cherith and the birds meet him there with food morning and night.

After some time, the brook dries up (because, hey, there's no rain) and God tells Elijah to move on. "Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you."

Again, Elijah goes where God leads him. He sees a widow in Zarephath and asks her for food. The woman replied, "As the LORD your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die."

Elijah tells her, "Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. For thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain on the face of the earth.'" So she went and did what Elijah said, and they had food every day. The bowl always had some flour in it and the oil jar never ran dry.

Let me retell this story another way. Imagine God wanted you to have a meeting with the president. At the White House, you say, “Our economy is going to crash until I give the word. Then we’ll prosper again.” Soon massive flooding, early frost, and other natural disasters destroy the nation’s farms. Food prices skyrocket. Oil becomes so expensive that we see the Conestoga Wagon make a comeback. Dominos fall all over the place and crush everyone. The president remembers your crazy prophecy and adds you to the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Now you’re on the run, and all because you did what God told you to do.

God tells you, “Go to this one river in Montana. I’ve told an army of ants to carry food over to your campsite every day.” When you set up camp in Montana, sure enough, ants carry bread and meat and drop it off in front of your tent flap. Meanwhile, in a fit of panic, the government decides to build a dam on that river to form a reservoir for struggling farms. This simultaneously creates several jobs for the recently unemployed, which worked for FDR, right? Of course, your ants live in that valley and can’t swim. Now you don’t have a river or little ant servants and you’re starving in the middle of Montana.

Then God says, “Make your way to New Orleans. I’ve commanded a homeless man to take care of you.” You run into a homeless guy who insists that he’s Steve Guttenberg. He smells like the inside of a shoe, but he’s got a nearly empty jar of Skippy peanut butter and four slices of Wonder Bread. You ask him to make you a sandwich. When he agrees to feed you, the two of you somehow manage to make peanut butter sandwiches for months.

It’s crazy, right? But that’s what Elijah did. God took care of him because he obeyed. What if Elijah didn’t go to Cherith? He would never have met up with the birds God sent to feed him. And what about going to Sidon, a characteristically pagan region, to meet with the widow? Two people had to obey that one. First, Elijah had to go there even though hardly anybody followed God’s voice in that area. Second, the widow had to make Elijah's food first, trusting that God would provide for her family as well.

Now I’m going to tell my story. My car has been at an auto shop since mid May. God blessed me with such a rare car that I’ve had trouble locating a replacement part. Last week, a friend drove me to the auto shop in Franklin so I could get some things out of my car. She works at my church, which is about seven miles from the mechanic. Among the items I pulled out of my trunk, I felt compelled to put a few copies of my book into my backpack. I walked about three miles toward my church before I asked God if I could hitchhike. I figure, it’s Franklin. There are not a whole lot of ax-murdering ne’er-do-wells. But God said, “No, I’m sending someone to pick you up.”

Ten minutes later, a pickup truck pulled over. “Where are you headed? I can take you most of the way, hop in.” Of course, one of the first things he asked me was, “What do you do?” I told him that I follow God’s voice in obedience and I also write. I told him about my book. He said, “That’s interesting. I saw you walking earlier and something told me to pull over for you.”

I said, “Really? Because I asked God if I should hitchhike. He said, ‘No, I’m sending someone to pick you up.’ I think that’s you, mister.”

“Where can I get this book of yours?”

“I have some copies in my backpack.”

He pulled out cash and bought one. It paid for my lunch. He drove me the whole way to church so we could continue our conversation. This story is an example of how God blessed me obviously and immediately. There are other times, however, that are not so obvious or immediate.

One of my roommates moved back to Michigan yesterday. After I helped his parents pack their trailer, God wanted me to walk a mile and a half to a café. He said, “Work on the new book there. Don’t wear headphones.” I usually listen to music while I write, so I wondered what God had in mind. A little while later, my roommate came in and repaid me for a bill I had covered. I gave him a hug goodbye and he said, “Keep writing. Keep making the world a better place. You know that’s what you’re doing.” I thanked him and went back to work when he left.

An hour later, I asked God, “So... why did you want me here? Did I miss something?”

God pointed out that a man had been sitting in the chair next to me most of the afternoon. “He has been asking me a question and I put you in place to give him an answer. He heard what Dustin said to you. That was his cue and he didn’t take advantage of it. If you had put headphones on, you would have blocked him out. But now he has no excuse.” He was no motorcyclist from Kansas City, but my mission resembled Abe’s. God put us in place to do His work. I wonder if God had a backup guy in the cafe…

Now, this may seem silly. You might say, “Of course we should all obey God, but there comes a point in time when a man has to stand up and take responsibility, work the soil, earn his bread with the sweat of his brow.” If so, I would ask you to consider Matthew 6:31-34. Jesus said, “Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?' For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

When I seek God’s direction in my life and obey what He asks of me, I am actively seeking Him and doing the work of His kingdom. This is not passive. I have to do something in order to obey. God routinely tells me to write, or sing, or arrange meetings with people. It’s not all divine appointments and money falling from the sky, but my provision still comes as a result of obedience to God. Because I’ve learned to trust His provision, I have peace in my heart as I sleep soundly on my cot.

I have the best job ever.

God's Backup Guy

Even though I’ve known how to hear God’s voice for over a decade, I didn’t listen regularly until about five years ago. Dad and I had begun work on our book, Stark Raving Obedience, and I wanted to immerse myself in listening prayer. It was practice, research. I’m not sure if I knew how screwy a life of obedience could appear both to me and others. Every once in a while, God would ask me to go somewhere. Sometimes He’d send me to a park or a café, usually a public place. When I would arrive, I’d sit for a while, looking around to see why God wanted me there. Pastors and teachers had often talked about “divine appointments”, where God put people in place to do His work. I would ask, “What’s going on? Am I meeting someone here? Is there a baby about to fall out of its high chair? A fire I have to put out?” And all I would ever hear in reply was, “Wait.” After a while, He’d say, “Okay, you can go.”

You can imagine how this frustrated me. I mean, I guess I wasn’t very busy. I’d been kicked out of college, left my job, been dumped, and so on. I wanted answers from God. He should have guided me back into a stable life, given me peace and comfort, or something. So those times where I felt like God told me to take up space made me a little angry. Then, for a while, we moved on to the peace and comfort part. He brought people into my life who helped me through those hard years. He stopped asking me to “go here and there” to sit. I assumed my lesson was to obey even when it didn’t seem to have a purpose.

About a year ago, He told me to walk to a library. I sat in the main room and waited. Nothing. “Stop playing games, God. I thought we were past this already.” Then He said, “It’s time to go.” After this little episode, I had a conversation with my friend Bob. He told me about God sending him to divine appointments. Sometimes, he would sit in one place until God pointed out the person who needed to talk to him. Other times, God would show him other people He had sent to take care of the situation. If that person didn’t follow through in obedience, Bob would have to step in and do the job instead. I said, “So you’re saying that sometimes God needs a backup guy?”

At that moment, God reminded me of all those times He put me in a place and said, “Wait.” In those days when I needed answers and comfort, God wanted people to speak to me. Sometimes they didn’t obey. Others did obey, and they were the ones who prayed with me and encouraged my trust in God during difficult times. And then later, at the Library, after my trust in Him had strengthened, He needed me to help a person in case someone else didn’t obey. I was God’s backup guy.

It took some time adjusting to the idea that God has a bullpen, people in place and ready in case the starting pitcher leaves early in the game. But then again, it also gave me comfort. There are times when God asks me to call someone or pray for a person or give money to a guy, and for some reason I don’t obey. When I realized that I failed to obey God, I’d feel searing condemnation. It never occurred to me that God’s will for mankind would rest on more than my obedience. He’s got backup. Even if I totally miss my opportunity to further the work of His kingdom, I haven’t ruined His plans. And what about those times when I did obey and nothing seemed to happen? Maybe it was a matter of corporate obedience, like a secret team effort where a few people had to obey at precise times. Does God refuse to bless me because some other people didn’t listen to Him? No, it just means He has to call in other people who will take orders.

One of my favorite stories from the Old Testament takes place outside of a city called Kadesh-barnea. God wanted to give the land to His people after their time of wandering. In preparation for battle, Moses sent twelve spies into the city as reconnaissance. When the spies returned in Numbers 13 and 14, Caleb and Joshua said, “let’s go! The land is amazing, and God has promised it to us.” The other ten spies kept talking about giants and fortresses and convinced the Israelites to back off. God told the people that they wouldn’t enter the land and forced them to wander forty more years. Of that entire generation, only two were allowed to live in the Promised Land: Joshua and Caleb. And they lived out their years receiving God’s full blessing. The disobedience of others didn’t ruin God’s plan for their lives. He brought in another generation to take the Promised Land with them.

In Judges 4, several decades after the time of Joshua and Caleb, Canaanites had taken control of the Promised Land. A prophet named Deborah tells a man named Barak to gather an army and fight their oppressors. Barak says, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” Because he wouldn’t step into the authority God had given him and deferred to her, Deborah tells Barak, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the honor shall not be yours on the journey that you are about to take, for the LORD will sell Sisera (the Canaanite general) into the hands of a woman.” The Israelites are victorious in battle, but Sisera flees into a politically friendly area. A woman there takes him into her tent and gives him something to drink. When Sisera falls asleep, she drives a tent peg through his skull. Sometimes backup comes from unexpected places.

All of this makes me wonder if Jesus wanted God to find a backup guy for the cross. Maybe that’s why He prayed in Matthew 26:39, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” It was a part of Jesus’s humanity that He should desire to live. When He understood that no other person on earth could bring salvation to mankind, His willingness to obey under duress was the first part of His sacrifice.

I want to be the guy who obeys. I want to see the blessing God has promised to those who obey Him. But if I miss my opportunity, I know that God is bigger than my failures. This also means that I have to find patience in those times when His commands don’t make any sense. Who knows? I just might be God’s backup guy.

A Short Commercial.

The second edition of my book, Stark Raving Obedience, is now available.

In it, my father and I propose that God still speaks to people today on an individual basis. But how can you discern whether that's really God talking to you, or just your own head, or something else all together? And if God asks you to do something that seems crazy or stupid, would you be willing to obey?

You should be able to see the introduction and first chapter here. Those were my first few posts.

If you are interested in reading the whole book, you can buy directly from me for $15, or you can visit www.hearinggod.org and do that paypal business.