Monthly Archives: September 2012

Radical Focus

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In our church-wide study of Radical by David Platt, he asks, “Do you really believe this Book [the Bible]?” While we usually give mental assent to its truthfulness, do we always demonstrate agreement by our actions? That has been the challenge this week.

It has been interesting to hear the comments and challenges that we are encountering through this study from the Word of God. The comments run the gamut from this being a totally new teaching that is being met with skepticism to the view that “this isn’t ‘radical’… it’s ‘ordinary’ Christianity.” I think the variety of responses speaks to a couple of things.

First, we are all at differing levels of maturity or “completion.” Some need the “milk” of the Word, while others can handle the “meat” of the word (see Hebrews 5:13-14). While some may not be at a point of fully assimilating God’s truth, we must not be content to remain “bottle-fed.” Just as this would be a physical abnormality, it is a spiritual anomaly, too. Paul said:

3:1 Brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as babies in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, because you were not yet ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready, 3 because you are still fleshly. For since there is envy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and living like unbelievers?                                                (1 Corinthians 3:1-3, HCSB).

Therefore, we need to lovingly acknowledge our different levels of spiritual maturity, but always strive for growth under the Spirit’s tutelage through our exposure to the truths we are learning.

Secondly, a healthy dose of uncertainty/curiosity/skepticism is good. You have heard me say, “Don’t take my word for it, search out the scriptures for yourself.” If you’re not sure what David Platt says is true, check it against the Bible. That’s exactly what the Bereans did:

10 As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas off to Berea. On arrival, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 The people here were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Consequently, many of them believed, including a number of the prominent Greek women as well as men.                                                                   (Acts 17:10-12, HCSB).

I continue to be excited by what God is doing and pray that you will “hang in there” as we seek to be transformed by a radical focus on God through His Word, enabling us to be seen in a way that looks radical to the world.

Rural Iowa in the Fall

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I’m not sure why, but fall has always been my favorite season. In spite of the seasonal allergies that come with it, fall’s first chill after a long, hot summer, the changing colors of the leaves and a bowl of hot chili all lend themselves to a season of aesthetically pleasing experiences.

Creston High cheerleaders and football players lead a pep rally at Mayflower Heritage Christian School on Friday

Then, add the rural component to fall. Yesterday was homecoming for Creston High School. Homecoming festivities in a small community are totally different from what I experienced in a metropolitan school. From fireworks* at the pep rally on Wednesday night to hundreds of people lining the streets for the parade on Friday, the week builds to a heightened expectation for victory on Friday night. Fortunately, our boys proved up to the task as they beat the #6 team in Iowa 3A football, Harlan, with a final score of 34-14. Creston Panthers, rated #8, have always considered beating Harlan their gauge of success, having only done it three previous times in the history of Panther football. With a win at Harlan’s home field last year (42-20), current players are the only ones to boast of back to back wins!

My participation in homecoming this year had its firsts. This was the first time I’d been asked to judge the class floats. At the request of Michelle Powers, a junior class officer, the local radio newsman and I carefully scrutinized the floats for creativity, originality and theme interpretation (board games). The freshman float came in first with a Monopoly theme, placing a Harlan “Cyclone” (a replica of a tornado) in the dreaded “jail” of that board game .

Next, Michelle’s dad, Joe, invited me to join him on the parade route as he pulled the junior class float. Having previously just taken a place on the parade route as a spectator in the downtown area, I was amazed to see the number of people, easily over a thousand, who turned out for the parade in the residential part of the parade route – a mile long trip from the high school to the downtown district. It was a great thing to see the number of adults with no current family connections to the school come out and support the youth.

Calico Aster along Redwood Ave

Back to the beauty of fall. The photo that serves as the header of this blog has been changed. The first picture was taken on July 5, 2011 (seen below) as we returned from a trip to Arkansas. I stopped 10 miles east of Creston to take a pictures of a fleeting sunset. Looking north, I took a few more pics of the road. When I started the blog earlier this year,  I thought the road picture would make a great representation of 1) rural life and 2) the idea of our spiritual journey with its ups and downs but generally staying straight and on course. It has been my intent to return to the spot on Redwood Ave, east of Afton, and take new pictures for each season of the year. So, this may be the fall header…or I may go back and see if the colors are better in a week.

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Redwood Avenue, Rural Union County, IA, September 28, 2012

Redwood Ave, Rural Union Co. IA, July 5, 2011

*I wish I could share these experiences with my grandchildren, but after being with Charlie for the 4th of July, it may be a while before she enjoys the noise of fireworks. Months later she still remembers that “wireworks hurt my ears.”

A Distorted View of God

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Last Spring, a book was published by a popular pastor/author, causing quite a controversy in evangelical circles. Rob Bell’s Love Wins suggested that a literal Hell does not exist and that ultimately everyone will experience eternity with God. However, this belief – Universalism –  does not line up with orthodox Christianity. Just as the title of Bell’s book focuses on God’s love, many Christians focus on that attribute of God to the exclusion of His other attributes. Thus, the same Good News that God has entrusted to us to share with others for their salvation can be distorted, ensuring that they never hear it in its completeness. Indeed, God is love, but He is also holy and just (“the wages of sin is death,“ Romans 6:23).

In this week’s Radical workbook study, we were asked how many verses of Scripture we know that relate to the love of God. Next, how many verses do we know that relate to other attributes of God. Most people I asked said their lists were heavily weighted to the “love” side.

Is there a problem when we emphasize one character trait of God over the others? Yes! Although we struggle with God being a wrathful, jealous, and an angry at sin kind of God, failing to balance our understanding of Him may cause us to lose the sense of concern and urgency about the plight of those around us. While we may theoretically deny universalism, we may be practical universalists. We like to focus on the “but [God] is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), but forget verse 7:

the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

Are you a functional universalist? Do your interactions with others represent a belief that apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ they are destined to spending an eternity in hell?

Take a look at this video by David Platt on the subject.

David Platt on Universalism from Vimeo.

Radical Grace

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We are into our second week of the church-wide study of Radical by David Platt. This week we have been considering the radical nature of grace. If you’ve been in church for any time you have heard the word used in relationship with salvation – “God’s saving grace.”  We might say it this way: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Ephesians 2:1-10 is perhaps the best, condensed passage that describes our need, God’s work and our response to God’s grace:

2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler who exercises authority over the lower heavens, the spirit now working in the disobedient.3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, 5 made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6 Together with Christ Jesus He also raised us up and seated us in the heavens, 7 so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10, HCSB)

Ray Pritchard suggests that the whole gospel message can be seen in just six words in this passage: You were— 2:1; But God— 2:4; Through faith—2:8. 1 [1]

“You were” dead in trespasses and sins. Because in Adam all have deviated from living according to what was revealed as the proper way of living and have failed to reach the mark of the true purpose of our lives, we all were (or still are) spiritually dead. A Scottish expositor related the event of a stranger in the county of Ayrshire dying and being buried in the church parish’s graveyard. It so greatly distressed the people of the parish that they posted a sign outside the cemetery that read:

“This graveyard is reserved exclusively for the dead who are living in this parish.” [2]

There are dead people walking all around you today (and you don’t have to have a “sixth sense” to see them.) Just as Adam was physically alive after he had sinned, yet spiritually dead, many around you are alive physically but dead spiritually. Note Paul says “you were.” Every individual must personally acknowledge his own sin and rebelliousness before God…admit that he is dead in his trespasses and sins. However, the “were” is good news for those who have come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Our spiritual deadness is a thing of the past only because of the next phrase.

Thus, “But God” made us alive with Christ. Never has such a conjunction meant so much. When I looked up the conjunction “but,” I found this definition: a conjunction is a joiner, a word that connects parts of a sentence. There is no truer definition than this, in that God connected us with Him through Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are joined with Him as together with Christ we have been raised and seated in the heavens! And why… that for all eternity we might be on display as evidence of the immeasurable riches of His grace shown through the kindness of Christ Jesus’ substitutionary atonement. Nothing we did or could do merited such favor…it is all because of His mercy, love and grace.

Finally, “Through faith”  speaks of our response. Saving faith has been explained as “trust in Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and for eternal life with God.” [3]   It is not merely belief in facts but personal trust in Jesus to save.

Chuck Swindoll gives an excellent illustration to point out the difference between belief in facts and personal trust. Ann Seward, a resident of Portland, Oregon, was asked to co-star with high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who gained fame by crossing between the World Trade Center buildings. Petit was to walk on an eighty-foot wire between the Portland Center for the Performing Arts and the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with Seward on his back. High above the street, Seward placed her ninety-one pound life on the back of Petit and he successfully performed his high-wire act. Seward said that her performance had a lesson for those who watched from the street. “I think that one of the most beautiful things about the performance was that it took a lot of trust—absolute trust—to do that. I think in the world that is a very profound issue….Here it is—I’m putting my life in someone else’s hands and trusting the whole crowd not to do anything to distract him.” Swindoll gives this closing application:

Many of those who witnessed the performance “believed” that Petit could successfully complete the performance with someone on his back. But their belief was merely intellectual and did not feature the absolute trust and total commitment exhibited by Ann Seward. She expressed her belief by placing her very life in the hands of the artist. This is the kind of “belief” referred to in the words of Paul, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). This belief is not merely head knowledge; it is the response of a heart to the person of Christ saying, “I trust Your redeeming work to deliver me from sin and carry me safely to heaven.” [4]

What about you? Are you able to say with certainty that you were, but God and as a result of His grace, through faith you have placed your very life in Him? God’s amazing grace has the ability to take the deadest of sinners and make them alive for all eternity!

YOUR RESPONSE:

  • Have you trusted in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross to take the penalty you deserved to pay?
  • As you consider your daily sphere of life, who do you know who is currently walking in spiritual deadness? Pray that God will give you opportunities to share the Good News of salvation with them, so that through faith they can experience salvation from sin and the certainty of eternal life with God.

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1  Pritchard, Ray from sermon “Amazing Grace”

2  Johnson, S. Lewis, from sermon “His Power, Our Salvation”

3  Grudem, W.A., Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Zondervan Publishing House, 1994. p. 710.

4  Swindoll, Charles, Zuck, Roy, Understanding Christian Theology, Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2003, p. 240-241.

Radical Abandonment

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On Sunday, we began a church-wide study of David Platt’s book, Radical. With the subtitle “Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream,” this book calls for a serious look at the level of abandonment to which Jesus’ early followers understood His call to mean.

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. Mark 8:34, 35 (NIV)

This call to radical surrender is not the typical invitation heard in most U.S. churches. We would say, “It’s obvious that Jesus never took the Dale Carnegie class, How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Or, we seek to diminish its seriousness by rationalizing that “Jesus didn’t really mean you have to give up everything.” However, Jesus is  brutally honest. “Following me,” He says, means: deny your self-directed life, aspirations, and ambitions; take up an instrument of death and die to yourself; follow my footsteps as a humble servant. This is a radical departure from the way many of us live out our comfortable Christianity.

Every generation needs it own clarion call to return to the radical claims of Jesus, and it is often best made by ones living out that radical abandonment to the call of Christ. Late in the 4th century, just a few hundred years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Rome was officially Christian. No longer were Christians thrown to the lions for the entertainment of the populace, but there was still a blood-thirsty bent for amusement. The gladiatorial games now pitted those captured in war against one another in a fight to the death. Thousands crowded in arenas to see these spectacles.

At the time, a monk, called Telemachus, sensed that his isolated life of prayer, meditation and fasting in the desert was doing more to satisfy his own selfish love of God than to demonstrate a selfless love of God. It was revealed to him that if he was to serve God he must serve men. In order to do that, he must go to the cities where the need was, and he determined to go to Rome, the greatest of cities.

Upon arriving in Rome, he went to the stadium where eighty thousand people had gathered for their entertainment of gladiatorial combat. Appalled by the conflict, Telemachus jumped over the wall and came between two gladiators, separating them by his own hands and rebuking them for shedding innocent blood. He then reproved the crowd by saying, “Do not repay God’s mercy in turning away the swords of your enemies by murdering each other!” The crowd demanded that the games go on and began to hurl stones at the interloper. He was finally stabbed by a gladiator and died.

Fox’s Book of Martyrs concludes the account of Telemachus in this way:

His dress showed him to be one of the hermits who vowed themselves to a holy life of prayer and self-denial, and who were reverenced by even the thoughtless and combat-loving Romans. The few who knew him told how he had come from the wilds of Asia on a pilgrimage, to visit the churches and keep his Christmas at Rome; they knew he was a holy man, and that his name was Telemachus-no more. His spirit had been stirred by the sight of thousands flocking to see men slaughter one another, and in his simple-hearted zeal he had tried to convince them of the cruelty and wickedness of their conduct. He had died, but not in vain. His work was accomplished at the moment he was struck down, for the shock of such a death before their eyes turned the hearts of the people: they saw the hideous aspects of the favorite vice to which they had blindly surrendered themselves; and from the day Telemachus fell dead in the Colosseum, no other fight of gladiators was ever held there.[1]

Edward Gibbon said of Telemachus, “His death was more useful to mankind than his life.” [2]  A martyr of the last century, Jim Elliot, expressed his understanding of abandonment for the cause of Christ: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” [3]

Does abandonment to Christ always lead to death? I think we see stories like this and shrink away from that kind of surrender because we fear the loss of property, ease, relationship and even life. We must remember that for every martyr there are perhaps thousands (even millions) who are ultimately influenced for all eternity and, in turn, carry out a life of abandonment without facing a horrific death. But, are you willing to abandon your life to the level to which Jesus called his original disciples?  Who will be the Telemachus or the Jim Elliot of this generation?

YOUR RESPONSE:

  • Have you ever found yourself bargaining with God as to the level or location of service  to which you’re willing to go?
  • What keeps you from total surrender?
  • As an immediate reference to his quote above, Jim Elliot added this verse to his journal entry: [I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so]* that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings (Luke 16:9). How are you wisely using your earthly possessions to store up treasures in heaven?

* Omitted in journal entry; included for context.

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1  Fox’s Book of Martyrs, The Last Roman “Triumph” online version.

2  Edward Gibbon,The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 3, p 210.

3 Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty, Harper and Row (1958), p 108.