Admittedly,
I have always been a very open, honest person-perhaps to a fault. There
is really no reason not to be, I find. It’s easy for someone to like
(and love) a person who seems perfect and flawless. It’s fun to have
shallow “friendships” and relationships with which to entertain
ourselves…but not so fulfilling. It’s not easy, but satisfying, to truly know
someone, faults and all, and to come to like them not for who they are,
but for who they are becoming in Christ, and to love them for who they
are.
“In Christ?” you say…”another one of those people.”
But before you navigate away from this page, I would like you to read
to the end of this initial post, that‘s all that I ask of you.
This
blog isn’t a dream of mine (in fact it’s almost embarrassing to be
taken up in such a fad) but in the age that we live in where every man
feels as though he is an island unto himself, in the age of “social
networks” and shallow inter-personal relationships, and in these times
of religious freedom and skepticism, I have to ask myself, 'is there a better way to share our testimony as Christians?' Yes, I said “Christians”.
“A living sacrifice”. Perhaps a strange title for a first post, but allow me to explain:
First and foremost, I believe in God, the creator of all things. I
believe that the bible is the living Word of God, and that "His divine
power has given us everything we need for life and Godliness through the knowledge of Him who’s called us." (2 Peter1:3) Simply put, knowing God is everything! and
He has given us everything we need to know Him. The law that God gave
the Israelites (the Old Testament scripture) is a picture of God, a
picture we can look at to see just how incomprehensibly holy and good God is and
how utterly hopeless we are, being measured by the standard He's set. The
scripture is God’s word given to us so that we can see His power, His mercy, and
unfailing love for us His creation. Therefore I believe Romans 12:1-2 and this is a main purpose for this blog:
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that you may prove what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect,
will of God.”
So,
this is my story, this is the road that is unfolding towards the perfect will of God for my life.
To
you skeptics who have continued reading to this point, here is what I
yearn to say to you, to admit really. Many “Christians” do not practice
what they preach. Many Christians refuse to be honest about the life
they lead both publicly and within their own minds and hearts. We are meant
to be a living sacrifice, but what that means to us true believers is
that we are living in bodies that need to be put to death! We are not
perfect, nor will we be until we have left these bodies. An aside for you intellectuals and philosophers out there, Socrates
mused about the very same thing years before Christ came and taught
this, suggesting that we cannot live the life we are meant for, and all
desire to live, until we can shed our mortal bodies which enslave us to
continual mistake and limit our potential. Even Freud in a moment
of wisdom, noted that ‘to uncover human nature is to lift the lid
on Hell itself.’ (I paraphrase). We are all
sinners and fall short-- pathetically, hopelessly short-- of the glory
of God. (Romans 3:23) The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23a). BUT the
gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord! (Romans
6:23b)
My
goal in writing this blog, in exposing my heart and my life to whomever
is floating through this vast community, is to show that God is real, God
is faithful, and to be a true example of a born-again, bible believing
Christian; with all of my faults and failings, glorying only in God’s
grace and mercy.
As
a “born again” follower of Jesus, I have experienced growth from a new
born spiritual babe to what I am today. I am the first to admit that I’m
best likened to an immature teenager, awkward and clumsy, but one who has experienced the grace and mercy of God in ways
that a “good” person will never experience….I will clarify, by “good
person” I mean those Christians who you see living the “perfect” life,
unwilling to acknowledge the depth of their own sin and troubles (and
judging everyone else by their unreasonable standard). Whether that sin
be a singular lie, or lust, or hatred…many don’t seem to understand the
verse in the bible which says, “though a man keep the whole law and yet
stumbles at just one point, he is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James
2:10) nor do they seem to feel the dread and sorrow that comes with
disobedience to our holy, just God.
Because
of my many sins, because of my struggles in life, God has shown me
grace that is unspeakable. Though I have fallen, I have not been utterly
cast down, for the Lord himself upholds me with his hand. (Psalm 37:24) God has never
given up on me, even when I knew I deserved it and couldn’t fathom
being forgiven, let alone restored and placed back on the narrow path.
It is my prayer that my thoughts and experiences will be an encouragement to others, perhaps even empower some of you believers to open up to others and experience a depth of grace, mercy, healing, and LOVE that you’ll never experience until you do.
--------------------------------
For
you skeptics who remain, consider this. Do you believe that there is a
God? Or is your skepticism based on one of the many typical objections,
such as, ‘how there can be a good and sovereign God who allows such
evil and suffering in this world?’
There
are a few assumptions in this typical question (or objections) that I’d
like to address quickly. The first assumption is that God created the
world to be as it is today.
I urge you to open a bible and read Genesis. God created this world and looked and saw that everything was good. Then God created man and woman and saw that they were very good.
Then God gave them a beautiful garden to live in. There was no need for
shelter or clothing, no need for hard labor, for the fruit of the garden was theirs. God created each plant to reproduce itself, anyone who has taken an elementary science class knows this!
But
God gave man a boundary. They had everything they needed, everything
they could think to want; but the tree of “knowledge of good and evil”
was not to be touched. This was God’s singular command. The “tree of the
knowledge of good and evil” wow. What a name for a tree. What’s in a
name? Well, here the name truly speaks for itself. For the moment that
our original ancestors questioned God and chose to disobey his singular
command, they gained knowledge of evil. God IS good. God IS the standard
by which we measure goodness. We can’t arbitrarily define “good” and
“evil”; evil is simply going contrary to God; EVIL is disobedience to a
holy, perfect, God.
After disobeying God our original ancestors experienced something that is so familiar to us. Shame.
In shame they hid from God, in shame they denied what they’d done, in
shame they shifted blame, in shame they even blamed God! “That serpent YOU created made me do it”, “that woman YOU
gave me made me do it!”. How true is that example still? Can we not see
that just as we inherit traits like eye color and stature, we inherit
our ancestors sinfulness? Do we really think that we teach our children
to sin? In my experience with my own four children- which I’m sure I
will touch on throughout the life of this blog- I’ve seen clearly that you DO
NOT need to teach a child, even a baby, to sin. At 18 months old, or
younger, my children have all shown their true sinful colors with
selfishness, covetousness, and greed! Those innocent, beautiful babies
are natural born sinners...As hard as that may be to wrap your mind
around as they wrap their tiny fingers around yours.
The
result of mans first act of sin was a curse. Death. Instead of living
forever with God, their creator, they were removed from the Garden and
were left with a world that groans from the weight of sin. God also removed His presence from them, no longer to dwell in perfect peace with man. That perfect,
fruitful ground was cursed to produce thorns and weeds, sickness,
catastrophe, disaster. Not because God created it that way, but because
man chose to defy God’s singular command and thus “sin” entered the
world.
Another question you may have is “How can God let things get so bad? Why does He let evil go on and on?"
Examples of human wickedness like the Holocaust or the civil wars in
Africa, or any act of terrorism causes us to question these things.
Catastrophes like Katrina and the devastating earth quake in Haiti all
cause us to question God’s love and sovereignty. But the answer is
simple, God lets the world go on because he loves us and wants to give
us all a chance. He has the power to wipe us all out, completely and
utterly, forever. But we are his creation! He cares. The problem is
this: God is holy and we are sinful. A Pastor that I know gave a message
about this very thing at a funeral recently and said this about God’s
holiness (I paraphrase):
God
cannot tolerate sin just as person with severe allergies cannot
tolerate an allergen. He used his sister who is allergic to walnuts as
an example. Laughing, he told the crowd that if he simply opened a bag
of walnuts within ten feet of her she would break out in rashes and have
trouble breathing. It’s not that she doesn’t like walnuts, he assured
us, it’s simply that she cannot tolerate them. God’s holiness makes him
intolerant of sin. But he loves his sinful creation.
God’s
justice also necessitates judgment of sin. We inherently understand
justice when, in a case like that of Casey Anthony, a beautiful life is
ended tragically and no one is held responsible. It keeps us awake in
the wee hours of the night, longing for justice. For someone to pay the
consequence for the evils in this world. Just the same, there are
consequences for disobeying God. There has to be punishment because God
is JUST. “the wages of sin is death”-eternal separation from God (again,
because God cannot tolerate sin he must be separated from it).
"How can a loving God send all of those people to go to hell?" You may still wonder.
If
you haven’t followed the points above, then perhaps the simplicity of
the Gospel will help. The Word of God (John 1:1-3), God’s own son,
Jesus, came to earth to live as a man, but to lead a perfect life of
obedience to God. Jesus was obedient even unto death; though he felt
pain and anguish as any of us would. He was tempted and tried in the
manner of everyone here and yet remained faultless. Jesus died the death
that we all deserved. But Jesus raised himself from the grave, came out in victory over death, and there is an empty tomb to prove it. Jesus said, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.
No man comes to the father except through me” (John 14:6). He has taken he penalty
for our sin and all that we have to do is accept it with humble hearts.
“Christ died for our sin according to the scriptures, that he was
buried, that he was raised, according to the scripture.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) The entire
bible speaks of God’s promised savior, from Genesis to Revelation, of
Christ himself. It all boils down to this fact: Someone has to pay for your sins, it’s either going to be you or Jesus.
God
allows the evil to continue to give those of us who are willing a chance to
follow him, to choose to accept his plan to save us. “God is not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”. (2
Peter 3:9) As always, from the Garden of Eden until now, God has given
us a gift of free will. God wants more than anything for us to choose to
follow Him, to choose to serve Him, and to choose to trust Him. To lay
down our lives to live for God gives Him the glory that He’s due. It is,
“our reasonable service”. and it is truly not about living a perfect
life. Christ has already done that for us, and what God sees when he
looks at us is Jesus’ sinless, perfect life. All my righteousness are
as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) But God’s gift to me was Jesus, and faith
in Him, and now his righteousness is my own. Withing the book of 1 John 1 is an amazing message of hope.
This is the message which we have heard of him and we declare to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. IF we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us for our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
1 John 2
My children, these things I write to you so that you sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate (a heavenly defense attorney!) with the Father. That advocate is Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world…
We won’t live sinless, perfect lives, but Christ did
and we get to claim his righteousness as our own. And when we sin and
confess it to God, Jesus is at the right hand of the father defending
us, saying, “I paid the penalty for that sin, Father.” and we are
forgiven. The bible says that we are adopted by the Father in heaven, co
heirs with Christ. What's more is that we can cry to Him "Abba,
Father", daddy.
This
life is our road home. All I aim to do, writing here, is to share mine
with anyone God leads here. Make no mistake, if you’re reading this it’s
for a reason. Romans 8:28 says that “All things work together for good,
for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose”.
“All things” means just that, all things! Everything from the most
important life experiences to the minutest of details such as reading
this post, has a purpose. And not just a randomly attributed
coincidence, but a genuine purpose that you will see unfold as time
passes. Are you being “called”? Know this, God is faithful and his
promises are sure.
----------------------------
Dear Lord,
Dear Lord,
In
many ways this is so unlike me, blogging. But as I’ve found
throughout my life, God, you use me in ways that I’ve never foreseen.
You humble me and glorify yourself which is so perfect and right. I ask
Lord, that if it’s within your will, you will reach people through this
blog. I pray God, that you will be glorified here and that when people
read these posts they will be pointed to you; that they will see the truth
and the process of sanctification in my life and glorify you because of it, that they will see your goodness and grace as you lead me. I pray Lord, that anyone who reads these posts
will be spoken to by you, that not only my words will reach their hearts
and minds, but yours. I pray that you will draw people to you, that you
will strengthen and empower fellow believers to become more real, more
genuine. More willing to surrender all to you.
God, the harvest is ripe but the workers are few. I pray that this ‘work’, getting the Gospel out in this avenue, with reap much fruit. In my life, Lord, be glorified. Magnify your name in all the earth!
God, the harvest is ripe but the workers are few. I pray that this ‘work’, getting the Gospel out in this avenue, with reap much fruit. In my life, Lord, be glorified. Magnify your name in all the earth!
In Jesus’ name and for his sake,
AMEN
Let it be.
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