A Counselor Reflects on Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
“But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on the stage the play is over… That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not (p. 65).” Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
This quote reminds me a bit of the reality television show “Secret Millionaire.” An immensely rich person moves into a new community. He/she interacts with the people and gets to know them. All the conversation and interaction are authentic. This millionaire wants to know who people really are; not be courted for a donation.
At the end of the show the millionaire reveals his/her identity. There is no name change or personality shift on the part of the millionaire. But once the millionaire reveals their identity, the show is over (except for a few tears of joy).
God has made Himself known except for displaying His overwhelming majesty. God came and walked among us, inspired a book full of His will and character, and left a community of believers to continue His kingdom. The spread, impact, and longevity of His book and community in the face of much oppression testify to their supernatural origin.
When God reveals who He is, the show will be over. God wants to receive genuine worship, not overpower our senses. It is quite prideful on our part to think that we could see God and still choose. In effect we are asking God to impress us.
We are like people revolting against a benevolent king. We dare the king to show his power if he truly wants us to submit to his authority. Yet if he unleashed his military against the people, he knows they would be destroyed and their perspective of him would be tainted forever.
Both of these metaphors break down if pressed too far, but both highlight aspects of the folly and pride in asking God to make Himself more known. If God went beyond revealing his character, will, and incarnation to revealing his majesty and glory, it would be the end of humanity as we know it. It would be the end of freedom and the end of choosing.
The freedom would not be stolen. It would be irrelevant. After God reveals Himself, asking “Do you choose God?” would be like asking “What time is it?” in Heaven. Heaven exists outside the temporal reality we measure as time. Heaven is eternal. God exists outside the competitive reality we know as comparison. God is good. Words like better and best are irrelevant to One who has no peers.
God has made Himself known perfectly. If He were more known, we would lose freedom and the ability to genuinely worship. A dignity of choice has been bestowed upon us that is far beyond our deserving (as we prove daily). We see God’s love and mercy even in how He restrains the unleashing of His glory for our good and in His patience.
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago at 12:40 pm. Add a comment
This post is meant to offer guidance to common “what now” questions that could emerge from pastor J.D.’s sermon “The Inauguration: Luke 3-4,” preached at The Summit Church Saturday/Sunday March 12-13, 2011.
Was there something about Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3 that helped him resist the temptation He faced in Luke 4? I believe the answer is yes. But I do not believe the answer is found in the ceremony or experience. Rather, I think it was the expression of the Father, “You are my beloved Son, with You I am well pleased (3:22).”
Hold onto that thought and go with me to Narnia for a moment. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Edmund wrestles with a large amount of insecurity – due to his parents being in harm’s way because of war, being displaced from his home, and rivalry with his stronger, older brother Peter. From the moment he steps foot on Narnian soil, he is a king. But he doesn’t know it.
When he meets the White Witch, she offers to make him a prince if he will do her bidding. As an insecure boy far from home, that sounded like a great offer. As one of the four ancient kings prophesied and appointed by Aslan, that should have sounded like a really lousy offer. But Edmund did not know who he was, so he took it.
Most temptation boils down to Satan offering us what we already have in Christ. Satan is always willing to sell us what we already possess at a “steal of price.” If we do not know who we really are, we’ll take the deal.
Return to the temptation account of Luke 4 now. Notice that Jesus does not doubt who He is and, therefore, does not accept the short cuts (which are actually radical redefinitions) to attain what is already His.
As you seek to allow your identity as a child of God (Eph. 5:1) to serve as a protection in temptation, use these four questions to guide you.
Question #1: How do you define who you are? Do you define yourself by a certain relationship, ability, failure, event, dream, or occupation?
Question #2: How does your relationship with God, as His adopted and loved child, change your sense of identity? Did you view your baptism as a watershed moment in your life that forever changed who you are?
Question #3: What insecurities or areas of pride does Satan use to tempt you or create a context of temptation for you?
Question #4: In those times of temptation, how is Satan offering you something you already have in Christ?
Allow these questions to enable you to approach moments of temptation with greater confidence; not in yourself but in the superior provision of God for anything you will face. When faced with these questions, temptation leads us to worship rather than sin.
When we see this, the fear/shame that we often feel at the moment of temptation (which is not sin) dissipates, because we now have a map to move from failure to worship. As we compare the best of what Satan has to offer with who we already are and what we already have in Christ, the response should be laughter. In which case, Satan is the one who slinks away in shame and embarrassment, not the child of God.
Posted 11 months ago at 1:23 pm. 1 comment
A Rash Oath (5:4)
Scripture is clear a rash oath is wrong whether the sworn action is good or evil. Rashness is in opposition to the character of God and, therefore, should not be in the character of God’s people. To make a rash oath is to make an impulsive promise of action/reaction based upon an intense emotion (i.e., anger, fear, jealousy).
“Oh! That’s not a threat. That’s a promise!” is the common reply when someone is called on the carpet about making a rash oath. Rather than repenting of their sinful response, they multiply their folly. Instead of allowing room for God’s wrath, submitting to God’s providence, or seeking God’s wisdom, the individual continues to play God assuming that without thought or reflection he/she knows the precise prescription for justice.
Reflection: What kinds of situations most tempt you to make rash oaths? Do these situations center on money, relationships, reputation, influence, or something else? As you examine yourself in this way, recognize that you may well be “right” in your vowed action but “wrong” in your heart motive of revenge or control. Allow the challenge of that thought to push you towards a greater trust in God.
Can We Sin Unintentionally?
(BCH_Leviticus_5_handout for Printable PDF Handout)
At first glance, reading Leviticus 5:14-16 would seem to indicate that we can sin unintentionally. With a bit of reflection, however, we might be more cautious in this assessment. The reference of “unintentional sins” in this passage has to do with ceremonial uncleanness. These laws were abolished by Christ (Luke 11:37-41). We no longer have fear if touching a vehicle which ran over a dead animal in the church parking lot puts us in bad standing before God as we enter the sanctuary.
In the New Testament sin was defined by heart more than action. This is not an excuse, but it does reveal that sin and redemption are rooted in worship not ceremony. We sin when we love, trust, fear, adore, rely on, hope in, or long for something more than God. Another way to say this is that we never break the Second Great Commandment without first breaking the First Great Commandment.
As New Testament believers, when we sin (whether there was malice aforethought or not) we are revealing that our heart was not fully loving/trusting God. If we are honest, we all do this quite often. So while our sin was not cognitively intentional, it still fully reveals the condition of our heart not just the clumsiness near unclean things.
While this should cause us to resist the urge to blame-shift (which has been a strong tendency since Genesis 3), it need not cause us to fear or live in shame. In Leviticus being unclean temporarily limited one’s access to God and God’s people. Because of Christ’s death on the cross, we do not live with those consequences to our sin.
Part of our continual growth as Christians is seeing the constant implications of loving/trusting God in the details of our life. Doubtless, as believers still in process, we miss many of these opportunities to love/trust God and, thereby, commit many sins. However, these still reveal our heart. Yet we can repent to a loving Father who is eager to forgive. The freeness of His grace makes even our repentance an act of worship when we see it as another opportunity to love/trust God.
Making Wrongs Right (6:1-4)
What am I supposed to do when I find a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk? This passage gives us the heart with which to answer this question – make every effort to ensure that everyone gets the money they have earned. The larger point of this passage is to ensure that our actions do not in any way defraud someone of their money.
At first this may sound like it is rooted in materialism. But consider that most every economy in history has operated on the same basic exchanges. We trade hours for dollars and dollars for stuff. Too often we only think of the dollars and stuff without considering the implication of the hours. To steal money is to steal life; not in the sense of murder, but precious time.
Reflection: Consider a caveat to the last statement, “To spend money is to spend life.” It is not a leap to say, “Spending is worship.” Dollars are a currency form of hours. How does this change the way you think of money (yours and others), budgets (personal and church), and everyday commerce? Financial integrity is not just about protecting one another’s assets, but also about honoring the hours/days someone has already lived.
Introduction to the “Living Our Faith” series.
TOOL: “Using Prayer Time to Cultivate Ministry”
BLOG POST: “Teachers Equipping Ministers Through Prayer Time“
Posted 1 year, 9 months ago at 1:02 pm. Add a comment
Commands From Freedom (20:2)
It is not natural to associate commandments with freedom, but that is what Exodus 20 is all about. Israel has just been given freedom. God reminds them of their new freedom as He provides the 10 Commandments. Unless we understand this connection between God’s freedom and God’s commands we will run from God in the name of personal liberty.
As human beings made in the image of God, we will worship and we will serve. For us to resist this in the name of “freedom” is like a fish who hates water because it wants to swim on its own terms. God does not take our freedom by giving us commands. His commands define the only environment in which our freedom can be satisfyingly and lastingly experienced.
Reflection: In what ways do you see freedom and commands as opposites? What authority figures contributed to this distortion? How have you made God in the image of those authorities? How would seeing the synonymous nature of God’s commands and God’s freedom increase your trust in God and reliance upon His Word?
A Jealous God (20:5)
God is the only being in existence for whom it is completely right and holy for Him to be self-centered. For God to delight in anything more than Himself would be idolatry. It is God’s mind and will that fill the world with beauty, order, and life. When every eye is upon God and every heart focused upon God the entire world runs without friction, resistance, pain, or sorrow.
For this reason, God is a jealous God. It is for the love and preservation of the world (God’s great masterpiece) that God demands no rivals, imitations, or off-brands. In this seeming contradiction (just like God’s grace and justice), God is both self-centered and other-minded at the same time. He delights in Himself and demands this of the world for the best interest of all.
Reflection: We are not called to be like God in jealousy for self. This can be hard and seem unfair. Imagine a parent and child on a plane. There is turbulence and the air masks have a reason to come down. The most loving thing the parent can do is put on their air mask first. Unless they do, the child is doomed. Once that is done the child can be served. While God does not have any of the survival needs we do, this captures some of the compassion of God’s jealousy.
In Exodus 19 God was reclaiming His children from exile. One of the first things God does with this unruly people was to establish the moral principles of His people. God’s instructions were more than “be nice, treat others well, and don’t get on my nerves.” After laying down 10 foundational laws, God spent three more chapters unpacking and illustrating them (Exodus 21-23).
Christian families need to establish and communicate their moral values. These values need to be well thought out. Notice the structure of the 10 Commandments – numbers 1-4 discuss our relationship with God and have the most detail; number 5 orders the home and has some detail; and numbers 6-10 cover broader social contexts.
Here are suggestions for establishing these types of values within your home.
- Parents should be able to demonstrate how they live out the values and be willing to be held accountable to the values of the home.
- During discipline the infraction should be explained in lights of its violation of the family’s core values. Specific rules may change with season of life, but emerge from the guiding values of the family.
- Occasions of blessing and joy within the family should be times when the effectiveness and “true freedom” of these values are discussed and celebrated.
- As more specific rules are developed (and they will be) time should be taken to show how the specific rule gives wise guidance to the current situation. By this process the values provide a way to teach not only what to think but also how to think.
- Parents should be able to use the values of their home as a basis for evaluating the balanced and complete character development of their children. These discussions between parents allow for discipline and instruction to be more accurate and concise.
As you seek to lead your family into a greater experience of God’s freedom, use these suggestions to evaluate how you use the core values of your home.
Introduction to the “Living Our Faith” series.
TOOL: “Using Prayer Time to Cultivate Ministry”
BLOG POST: “Teachers Equipping Ministers Through Prayer Time“
Posted 1 year, 9 months ago at 6:16 pm. Add a comment
“I Was Overcome by Trouble and Sorrow” (v. 3)
Have you every felt like you were suffocating in your sorrow? Like there was not enough air in the room? This is the experience described by the psalmist in verse 3. The impression of verse 4 was that it was his dying breath that called out, “O Lord, save me!” It is on this basis that in verses 10-11 the psalmist could assert his consistent faith through affliction.
Too often we believe faith is evidenced by the unshakable presence of peace. This is not the testimony of the psalmist. He was desperate, yet in his desperation he did not forsake the object of his only hope—God. Let us not feel guilty for being overwhelmed. If faithful believers never became overwhelmed, we would not need Psalm 116. Let us, in our most daunting afflictions, continue to cry out to our God so that our testimony can be added to the chorus of this great psalm.
“Be at Rest Once More, O My Soul” (v.7)
Will heaven be more heavenly because of our time on earth? Is peace more peaceful because of our trials? Don’t read these questions as a lead in to the, “Why does God allow evil?” question. Read them as a finger tracing the artwork of God’s redemption. The psalmist can (and does) praise God with greater passion, clarity, and conviction as a result of his “post-stress rest.”
Interestingly, the psalmist does not condemn his soul for its distress. Rather the focus has so totally shifted (from self to God) that his affliction is merely a canvass to display God’s goodness and faithfulness. Every indication in the psalm, however, is that this shift did not occur until after God’s deliverance and the psalmist’s reflection. During the affliction the psalmist had desperate faith. After God’s deliverance, the psalmist had to pause and intentionally call his soul to peaceful praise. Both are God-honoring responses given their circumstances in the life of the psalmist.
How Can I Repay the Lord?
(Click Here for Printable PDF Handout)
Is this not the very same question for which Naaman was rebuked (2 Kings 5)? No, this question is different. Naaman’s question wanted to compensate God monetarily for a service received—apparently to maintain independence (being debt free). The psalmist’s acknowledges an act of unmerited favor for which the only response is public and private praise.
Praise (in many forms) is the only acceptable response to God’s activity in our life. It is not payment but celebration and evangelism. We do not return goodness to God. We become intoxicated with God’s goodness until it spills out of our life and becomes contagious. Consider the following aspects of the response of praise found in Psalm 116.
- It was rooted in love for the Lord (v 1).
- It was humble acknowledging the need for mercy (v. 1, 16).
- It was highly relational with God (v. 2).
- It did not deny the harshness of life (v. 3, 10).
- It was vulnerable enough to acknowledge desperation (v. 4, 6).
- It was personally directive (v. 7).
- It was expressive (v. 8).
- It was willing to risk rejection (v. 11).
- It was public (v. 13)
- It did not compromise (v. 14, 19).
- It was sacrificial (v. 17).
- It was simple (v. 19)
Introduction to the “Living Our Faith” series.
TOOL: “Using Prayer Time to Cultivate Ministry”
BLOG: “Teachers Equipping Ministers Through Prayer Time“
Posted 2 years, 2 months ago at 3:12 am. Add a comment
Psalm 135 emphasizes many aspects of God’s character. The reader is called to praise and take comfort in these attributes of God’s character. The article “Learning God in the Midst of Life’s Struggles” is a reflective devotion taking you through 16 attributes of God and may be a useful follow up for members of your Sunday School class or home group.
“Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does” Psalm 135:6
God is free. That thought may first bring more fear than peace. Like the children in The Chronicles of Narnia, we ask, “Is Aslan (representing Christ) a safe lion?” The Bible chuckles as the beavers did and reply, “No, he is no tame lion (God), but he is good.
How do we try to control or place claims on God? When we get angry at God what does that reveal about what we think of God’s freedom? How would God be different if He were not free? How would our life be different if God answered to something other than his own pleasure (character).
Application: As you read your Bible and pray, resist the temptation to try to figure out how to make God do what you want. Read to know God for who He is and pray for the faith to trust the God who is free.
We Become Like Who/What We Worship
(Click Here for Printable PDF Handout)
Psalm 135:18 contains one of the great principles of change: “We become like who/what we worship?” We can use this principle looking forward or backwards. (1) We can ask—looking backward—how have I changed over the last year? From this we will see the nature of who/what we have worshipped? (2) We can ask—looking forward—what is most important to me at this time? From this—if we assess our hearts accurately—we will discern what we are becoming.
Use the following reflection questions (that reveal objects of worship) to help you assess yourself. As Christians, we know we should worship Christ and become more like him. However, unless we do the hard work of examining our own heart we may be disappointed in what we are becoming.
- What do you spend most of your time doing, especially your “free” time?
- When you face a challenge who do you want to talk to most?• When you are stressed where or in what do you seek comfort?
- What subjects do you enjoy talking about the most?
- What angers you most easily or most intensely?
- For what purchases/expenditures are you most willing to sacrifice?
- When, where, or with whom do you most naturally “lose yourself”?
- When you surf the internet what do you look for?
- When you daydream what is the common theme of the ideal outcome?
- What kinds of things do you find to be entertaining or funny?
As you have reflected on these questions, take the time to look forward and backwards. How are the answers shaping you? What changes need to be made to make these pursuits more God-centered and, thereby, make you more Christ-like?
Introduction to the “Living Our Faith” series.
TOOL: “Using Prayer Time to Cultivate Ministry“
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 2:20 am. Add a comment
What is the most common, most read, and sometimes most expensive publication of a local church? Answer: the bulletin. If this is the case, then it stands to reason we would want to get the most bang for our buck (and the most sanctification from our publication).
Attached is a sample bulletin structure that seeks to allow both worship leader and pastor to work together in discipling the congregation without adding significant work to their week. The goal is to make clearer (visually and theologically) what is already being said and sung.
This sample is not intended to take sides in any “worship wars.” It is style neutral. Various service structures could utilize the key principles of the sample.
One guiding conviction behind the same is that when we gather to worship, we gather to interact with our Heavenly Father in an intimate, informative manner. Therefore, God speaks and we respond throughout the service.
A Guided Tour:
Sample of a Proposed Bulletin
- At the top service is the church’s mission statement. This is to tie “what we do” to “who we are” as a church.
- The left edge of the service contains the themes of the service and the sermon. Many sets of key words could be used. The ones given are merely an example. Hopefully the flow of the service would mirror or accentuate the key points of the sermon. As they worship, the congregation would be more overtly prepared to receive and understand the sermon.
- The “dialogue” or relational nature of worship is emphasized by the identifying each aspect of the service as either “God Speaking” or “We Respond.” This draws the congregation out from a spectator mindset to a participant’s mindset.
- The service concludes with a call to response that is not merely for salvation (the minority population of most services), but also for lives of faith, obedience, and love. Other calls for a living response that relate to a given service or sermon could be included here.
- There is also a section entitled “How to Enrich Your Worship.” The eight items listed are not exhaustive. The goal of this section is to give the congregation practical tools to make God Kingdom and the ministry of the church more central to their weekly routine and planning process.
It is not being proposed that this sample is the ideal new bulletin model. Rather, this is an attempt to enhance the overall discipleship impact of a worship service by creating a greater visual and theological cohesion to the elements of worship.
Posted 2 years, 5 months ago at 2:01 am. Add a comment
Introduction to the “Living Worship” Series
Verse 1:
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing; Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing; Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet; Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise His name – I’m fixed upon it; Name of God’s redeeming love.
Verse of Discontentment:
Each new day I long for something; Hoping it will fill my heart
Desire drives me, peace forsaking; Yearnings cause my mind to dart
How many times I’ve thought “If only!”; God would give me what I ask
God’s patient with hearts so stony; Free me from repeating past
Verse 2:
Hither to Thy love has blest me; Thou hast brought me to this place
And I know Thy hand will bring me; Safely home by Thy good grace
Jesus Sought me when a stranger; Wand’ring from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger; Bought me with His precious blood
Verse of Contentment:
Resting fully in Your blessing; Desires ring with fresh “thank You’s”
For the first time now I’m seeing; What has been in clearest view
Every good thing flows from Your hands; Discontentment blinds my eyes
Now I’m free from my heart’s demands; Joy is contentment’s surprise
Verse 3:
O to grace how great a debtor; Daily I’m constrained to be
Let Thy goodness like a fetter; Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.
DEVOTIONAL:
“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
& Our Battle for Contentment
(Click Here for PDF Devotional Handout)
In a culture that is so marked by affluence that it might well be called “a land flowing with milk and honey” we struggle to be content. Often like young children three days after Christmas we are so saturated with blessings that we begin to grumble.
As we think about God’s blessing and our battle for contentment, it is helpful to consider the context in which Paul discusses grumbling in I Corinthians 10:9-13 (emphasis added):
We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
In discussing grumbling Paul emphasizes the faithfulness of God. A lack of contentment is a passive-aggressive way of calling into question whether God has been good and faithful.
In the application lyrics to this song the key points being emphasized are (1) that discontentment is a distortion of reality based upon the demands our heart and (2) that contentment unlocks the door to the only source of lasting and true joy.
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago at 8:19 pm. Add a comment
The following excerpt is taken from Eugene H. Peterson’s book Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids; 2006) pages 31-33. It is a lengthy quote and may need to be read several times, but it speaks with great clarity (at least in the mind of this blogger) to the times in which we live. The bold-faced, under-lined, and italicized text have been added to Dr. Peterson’s work to add emphasis to the portions this blogger believes capture the essence of texts meaning.
“Here’s how it works. It is important to observe that in the formulation of this new Trinity that defines the self as the sovereign text for living, the Bible is neither ignored nor banned; it holds; it holds, in fact, an honored place. But the three-personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is replaced by a very individualized personal Trinity of my Holy Wants, my Holy Needs, and my Holy Feelings.
We live in an age in which we have all been trained from the cradle to choose for ourselves what is best for us. We have a few years of apprenticeship at this before we are sent out on our own, but the training begins early. By the time we can hold a spoon we choose between half a dozen cereals for breakfast, ranging from Cheerios to Corn Flakes. Our tastes, inclinations, and appetites are consulted endlessly. We are soon deciding what clothes we will wear and in what style we will have our hair cut. The options proliferate: what TV channels we will view, what courses we will take in school, what college we will attend, what courses we will sign up for, what model and color of car we will buy, what church we will join. We learn early, with multiple confirmations as we grow older, that we have a say in the formation of our lives and, within certain bounds, the decisive say. If the culture does a thorough job on us – and it turns out to be mighty effective with most of us – we enter adulthood with the working assumption that whatever we need and want and feel forms the divine control center of our lives.
The new Holy Trinity. The sovereign self expresses itself in Holy Needs, Holy Wants, and Holy Feelings. The time and intelligence that our ancestors spent on understanding the sovereignty revealed in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are directed by our contemporaries in affirming and validating the sovereignty of our needs, wants, and feelings.
My needs are non-negotiable. My so-called rights, defined individually, are fundamental to my identity. My need for fulfillment, for expression, for affirmation, for sexual satisfaction, for respect, my need to get my own way – all these provide a foundation to the centrality of me and fortify my self against diminution.
My wants are evidence of my expanding sense of kingdom. I train myself to think big because I am big, important, significant. I am larger than life and so require more and more goods and services, more things and more power. Consumption and acquisition are the new fruits of the spirit.
My feelings are the truth of who I am. Any thing or person who can provide me with ecstasy, with excitement, with joy, with stimulus, with spiritual connection validates my sovereignty. This, of course, involves employing quite a large cast of therapists, travel agents, gadgets and machines, recreations and entertainments to cast out the devils of boredom or loss or discontent – all the feelings that undermine or challenge my self-sovereignty.
In the last two hundred years a huge literature, both scholarly and popular, has developed around understanding this new Holy Trinity of Needs, Wants, and Feelings that make up the sovereign self. It amounts to an immense output of learning. Our new class of spiritual masters is composed of scientists and economists, physicians and psychologists, educators and politicians, writers and artists. They are every bit as intelligent and passionate as our earlier church theologians and every bit as religious and serious, for they know that what they come up with has enormous implications for everyday living. The studies they conduct and the instruction they provide in the service of the god that is us, the godhead composed by our Holy Needs, Holy Wants, and Holy Feelings, are confidently pursued and very convincing. It is very hard not to be convinced with all these experts giving their witness. Under their tutelage I become quite sure that I am the authoritative text for the living of my life.
We might suppose that the preaching of this new Trinitarian religion poses no great threat to people who are baptized in the threefold name of the Trinity, who regularly and prayerfully recite the Trinitarian Apostles’ and Nicene creeds, who begin prayers with the invocation, “Our Father…,” who daily get out of bed to follow Jesus as Lord and Savior and frequently sing, “Come Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. . . .”
But this rival sovereignty is couched in such spiritual language, and we are so easily convinced of our own spiritual sovereignty, that it does catch our attention. The new spiritual masters assure us that all our spiritual needs are included in the new Trinity: our need for meaning and transcendence, our wanting a larger life, our feelings of spiritual significance – and, of course, there is plenty of space to make room for God, as much or as little as you like. The new Trinity doesn’t get rid of God or the Bible, it merely puts them to the service of needs, wants, and feelings. Which is fine with us, for we’ve been trained all our lives to treat everyone and everything that way. It goes with the territory. It’s the prerogative of sovereignty (pg 31-33).”
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago at 7:55 pm. 1 comment
Chapter 4 Verse 8:
“By Nature Are Not gods”
(Click Here for Printable PDF Handout)
How can you be a slave to something that does not exist? You bypass the question of truth and skip to the question of pragmatics. Can this (which is not what I believe it to be) get me what I want? If I begin to dream of the life I want and can imagine this thing giving it to me, I will serve it!
Didn’t this tendency die out with the advent of science? No! Do we really still do this? Absolutely! This is the daily, moment-by-moment functioning of the human heart. We long for things and look for ways to attain them.
What are the modern things to which we become enslaved? In the list below rank the items on a scale of 1 to 10. (1 least compelling; 10 most driving).
_____ Approval of Others
_____ Affection of a Loved One
_____ Power, Influence, Position
_____ Education & Knowledge
_____ Popularity
_____ Entertainment (non-boredom)
_____ Peace & Order
_____ Accomplishments
_____ Money & Nice Things
_____ Other: __________________
These are the kind of things that we tend to build our life around and think, “If only I had more of this my life would be complete.” When we begin to base our contentment, security, identity, or confidence around one of these items we begin to make them our functional god. They begin to determine right and wrong; worth my time and not worth my time; hope and despair.
“But, wait a minute, these things are not bad. I thought idols had to be evil or false. These things are good and real.” You are right on the last point. These things are real and good. But you are mistaken on the first point. To be an idol all something has to do is to take God’s place in our lives.
Begin to recognize what you elevate to the level of God in your life. Then your goal is to submit it (not eliminate it) to “the one who by nature is God.” The items in the list above are good desires but cruel masters. As idols, they make promises of fulfillment they can never keep. Monitor your levels of anxiety, depression, guilt, planning, hoarding, secrecy, and daydreaming regarding these items. When one of these levels become intense you likely need to take Galatians 4:8 to heart.
Chapter 4 Verse 17:
“The Danger of Isolation”
(Click Here for Printable PDF Handout)
Galatians 4:17 (NIV)
“Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good.
What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may be zealous for them.”
Isolation is a sign of danger in both relationships and religion. When a relationship, teacher, or organization begins to ask you to leave behind most or all of your relationships you should be very leery.
Isolation Red Flags (not meant to be exhaustive)
- Being asked to isolate from Christian because they are Christians
- Being asked to isolate from family for non-moral reasons
- Being asked to not participate in same sex social outings
- Being asked to not socialize with “people who do not like me”
- Being made to feel guilty or demanding to come on normal social outings (i.e., grocery, post office, family reunions, etc…)
- Posing your relationship as an all-or-nothing (i.e., “If you want to be in relationship with me, then you will not talk with [name].”)
- Being threatened about reporting or confronting illegal or immoral activities
Effects of Prolonged Isolation
- Increases the influence of the controlling person or organization
- No outside relationships by which to measure “normal”
- “Facts” of the controlling person or organization cannot be verified
- Legitimate and good social outlets/resources begin to feel threatening
- Self-doubt increases due to social awkwardness and fear
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