A Tribute to Johnny

A dear friend of mine is battling cancer. Not only that, but after years of being a wrestler, coach, teacher, soldier, and emissary to countless friends in far off countries, his weary body seems to be tired of fighting. But the hope of his soul is never, ever diminished by a physical affliction. So when the time comes, enjoy your rest, my friend.

"Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him."
1 Thessalonians 4:14

The words of Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

"Let us not imagine that the soul sleeps in insensibility. 'Today shalt thou be with me in paradise,' is the whisper of Christ to every dying saint. They 'sleep in Jesus,' but their souls are before the throne of God, praising Him day and night in His temple, singing hallelujahs to Him who washed them from their sins in His blood. The body sleeps in its lonely bed of earth, beneath the coverlet of grass. But what is this sleep? The idea connected with sleep is 'rest,' and that is the thought which the Spirit of God would convey to us. Sleep makes each night a Sabbath for the day. Sleep shuts fast the door of the soul, and bids all intruders tarry for a while, that the life within may enter its summer garden of ease. The toil-worn believer quietly sleeps, as does the weary child when it slumbers on its mother's breast. Oh! happy they who die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. Their quiet repose shall never be broken until God shall rouse them to give them their full reward. Guarded by angel watchers, curtained by eternal mysteries, they sleep on, the heritors of glory, till the fulness of time shall bring the fulness of redemption. What an awaking shall be theirs! They were laid in their last resting place, weary and worn, but such they shall not rise. They went to their rest with the furrowed brow, and the wasted features, but they wake up in beauty and glory. The shrivelled seed, so destitute of form and comeliness, rises from the dust a beauteous flower. The winter of the grave gives way to the spring of redemption and the summer of glory. Blessed is death, since it, through the divine power, disrobes us of this work-day garment, to clothe us with the wedding garment of incorruption. Blessed are those who 'sleep in Jesus.'"

I love and admire you, my friend. You truly are an inspiration. Keep worshipping with each breath that remains. I look forward to more long talks in eternity.

Leia Mais…

The Will of a Person

You've heard it said, "Where there's a will, there's a way." I've been thinking a lot about choices lately.

In his book entitled Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell does a masterful job in presenting several case studies that illuminate multifaceted and often unique paths to success, including both controllable and uncontrollable variables. (It is an intriguing and very interesting book that I highly recommend.) Indirectly, one aspect of his discussion on the controllable variables on the pathway to success is the impact of the choices people make. Some of the most successful people, for instance, in addition to some peculiar circumstances in which they found themselves, made choices to perfect their craft to the tune of 10,000 hours of practice before their opportunity for fame was presented.

Concurrently, I'm reading another book called, A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, written by former congressman, Mark Siljander. In his personal account of some of the diplomatic affairs in which he invested himself, the author clearly made a choice to act counter-culturally (biblically) by investing his time and energy into forging positive relationships, even friendships, with international leaders who are considered to be Muslim, anti-American terrorists. He made an intentional choice to [imperfectly] emulate the perfection of Jesus:

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Matthew 5:43-48
(see also Luke 23:34)

In agreement with Jesus' words above, Andrew Marin pleads with those of us who call ourselves Christians to do the same with people vastly different than ourselves, specifically those who are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender (GLBT). I have yet to read Marin's book entitled, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community, but Kattie is reading it and giving me brief synoposes of the content.

I have, no doubt, learned a lot about choices over the years. Of course, I have much more to learn, based merely on my lack of experience, but I have learned some already. Through my own experience, especially in my journey with Jesus, I have contemplated the theology behind choice. But the relationship between the will of man and the will of God in salvation is not so much what I'm thinking about now. What I've been mulling in my mind over and over again is the impact that a person's choices has on him/herself and the people around him/her. I don't think it's possible for me to completely comprehend the severity of those choices, from the most important to the most routine.

Once again, Gladwell illustrates this well in the case of Chris Langan, a modern-day genius whose IQ is supposedly 30% higher than that of Albert Einstein. Due to a dysfunctional upbringing that included a mother estranged from her family with four children from four different fathers, a father who left the house before Chris was born, and a step-father (the one who stuck around for a while when Chris was growing up) who was an abusive alcoholic that would go on drinking sprees and disappear, Chris made choices in his life that made him seem lost in the world, despite his brilliant intellect. Through little fault of his own, the ripple effect of choices affected a genius in extreme ways: he never earned a college degree, in spite of being more intelligent than all of his professors, and now he's a horse rancher in rural Missouri, living a simple life while working on an intellectual masterpiece that will never get published. Gladwell doesn't focus his sociological study so much on choice as he does on circumstance, but I'm proposing that the circumstance is bred from choice. Where did the choice that began the chain reaction begin? Was it with Chris's mother, choosing unsuitable men, or was it even before that with her parents or an influential person in her life? If Chris grew up in a stable, two-parent, wealthy, suburban family whose decisions were rational and healthy, would he then have become one of the most famous brilliant men in history? Perhaps. Where does the impact of choice begin? Where does it end?

Life is full of choices for each one of us. Subsets of life are full of choices: education, politics, healthcare, lifestyle, entertainment, religion, morality, etc. So how do we know what to choose?

Moses puts it like this:

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them."
Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I wonder, could this one choice perhaps be the beginning apex of impact for all other choices for each one of us? The end limit? Or somewhere in between? I urge myself, and my friends reading this to make choices that consider others, even if they seem to only involve self. Especially when communicating with one another, the way we choose to speak to or speak about others is critical. The tongue has the power of life and death. The choices we make now, regardless of how important or insignificant we perceive them to be, will certainly impact others at some point, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we see it or not. And the actions that follow may perhaps make an even more significant impact, but we'll save that for another snowy day.

Leia Mais…

The Paradox of Self-Promotion

When I started to seriously consider my employment status here in Fort Wayne, I realized that I had to update my resume and get it out there for anyone to consider for any number of positions. I am unable to recount the number of times I sent out my resume, along with tailored cover letters, promoting myself shamelessly in an effort to improve my financial situation. Through the providence of God, I have been offered a job in the field of education!

Jesus once said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Likewise, both James (James 4:6-10) and Peter (1 Peter 5:6-11) affirm that God desires humility for us more than our own self-promotion and conceited ambition. Yet it seems that our society is built around the opposite.

In addition to an overabundant distortion in the general perception of what constitutes true quality in a person, the behavior of so many people has tainted the trustworthiness of anyone desirous to complete any sort of transaction with another person. We're all suspicious of each other. As a result, we sometimes feel insecure when we introspect deeply about ourselves. So then there exists a need to promote the good qualities of ourselves to others so that we can seem more appealing for whatever reason or another, to meet our own ends. We tailor our cover letters and resumes in order to market ourselves to potential employers. We dress up in our best clothes, put product in our hair, paint on our faces, and wear bling around our wrists and necks so that someone else will think us more valuable. And the crazy thing is that the "someone else" is God on Sunday mornings or a date on Friday nights or an interviewing employer or, even worse, a potential adoptive family looking at our profile. Seriously, as my wife and I are planning to adopt children in the future, it is sad when I browse one of the Indiana state adoption sites that includes available adoptive children promoting themselves as if they need to in order to be successful in some sort of business transaction. What's even worse is that this type of self-promotion by these mere children is what appeals to some (not all) prospective adoptive parents.

Needless to say, we live in a twisted and crooked generation! We are told such things as: "put your best foot forward," "dress for success," "there's only one chance for a first impression," and "build your own personal brand." There are actually things called self-marketing plans! Now, I am not opposed to exhibiting a healthy inner confidence in the innate God-given qualities and talents that we possess. But we live in a self-help, self-promoting generation that excels in self-centered ideologies that attempt to cut out the "middle man," that is, God himself. Instead of "with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible," there is a pervasive mentality that, "all I need is myself because with me this is possible, and I don't need God." There are so many forms of man-made philosophy, religion, and programs available to use in hopes that we may achieve some sort of inner consolation within ourselves that might validate our existence and our actions. But the question is: Are any of them right? If so, what are they and why? What does God have to say about it all? This plays out in so many aspects of society, some of which I'm very excited to talk about in the coming weeks and months in our house church.

First topic: birth control. Any thoughts?

Leia Mais…

Desperate Times Call for Desperate _____________ ?

We've all heard it before: "Desperate times call for desperate" ... "measures." Even some movies are named based on this idea. My wife says we are nowhere near desperate, and she's right.

It's been nearly three months since we took a step of obedience to follow God's leadership into Fort Wayne, Indiana. We left Texas in June after purchasing a house a few months earlier for a small cost, knowing that much renovation needed to be done. Praise God for our friend, Bob, who has so generously donated his time and skills to almost single-handedly remodel our entire house! By the grace of God, HE'S THE MAN! We also left Texas not knowing what I would be doing for work, and three months into this new journey, I'm still looking. With our finances diminishing every day and the school year already underway, I'm still yet without a teaching job. Our circumstances seem bleak, but are they?

Psalm 94:18-19
When I thought, “My foot slips,” your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.

I cannot recall the number of resumes and applications I have submitted, but that means nothing to the infinite wisdom of God. Although I have been to several interviews, nothing has come of it all because God would not have it happen that way. Still, He reigns, not me. And He is my God, not a job or income.

A few times, I have felt desperate, knowing that, as the husband, father, and head of the household, I am responsible to provide for my family. It weighs heavily on a man, especially one without work for his hands. Yet God knows this. He is not unfamiliar with such a situation. In my desperation, I almost gave in to the temptation of the "riches of this world" that Satan offered Jesus during his time of testing in the wilderness (see Matthew 4:8-10). I went to an "interview" with a company on the north side of Fort Wayne, knowing nothing about the position. It turned out to be a sales pitch by a salesman for a sales position that would make me rich and happy. Sitting next to me was a young lady who seemed to be fresh out of college, devouring every word of the gimmick, growing more and more excited about the prospect of becoming rich. All I kept thinking was, "I don't care about that, or that, or that... I just need a little bit of money to pay the bills, nothing more." After some good advice from some faithful friends that included a reminder of the temptation of Jesus and the impatience of Abraham that produced Ishmael, I decided against attending the mandatory training. Desperate times... call for...

Today, I find myself in a dilemma I already faced a few weeks ago: I have an interview with the major school district in Fort Wayne for a position, and at the same time there's a potential temporary job at a company called Navistar that I found through a staffing agency. Last time, I was in this exact position, nothing came from any of it. But today, I feel different. I'm tired of being worried or stressed; it takes too much energy. Energy I'd rather spend enjoying my family. And what's the point anyway? Worry and stress don't change anything, especially when I'm convinced that God is going to provide for me regardless of my circumstances (Matthew 6:25-34).

So, I must pay attention. I must be sober-minded so that I may learn what God is trying to teach me in order to grow in my faith instead of idly standing by while it slowly withers away. So what am I learning? The saying goes, "Desperate times call for desperate measures." I disagree more and more as each day goes by. The reality is that "Desperate times call for desperate faith." In other words, desperate times require desperation, in faith, upon the providence of God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). But with faith, anything and everything is possible (cf. Matthew 17:14-20).

So, I have peace now. Upon killing the flesh with all it's worries, stresses, and anxieties, I may walk in the Spirit. But it must be death in one and life in the other. Oh, may it be that we would always remember to continually put to death the deeds of the flesh! It's not a one time thing, but a constant discipline.

The Lord's will be done -- now, in two hours when I have this interview, tomorrow, next week, next decade, and forevermore!

Leia Mais…

Embracing Guilt and Shame

Recently, a pastor at church posted a video-question on Facebook that asked people to comment on the reasons that we give for not confessing our sins. As I read through some of the comments, there was a recurring theme: guilt and shame cause our failure to confess our sins.

I decided to comment as well, but ommitted these two things in my response. Here's why... When I think about guilt and shame, I am first confronted with their definitions and then with their implications. Guilt, by definition, is the just conviction of transgressing a law. Shame goes a step further: not only does it embrace the guilt of breaking the law, but it also concedes that a particular party was offended, in this case God Himself. Whenever someone admits to doing something especially grievous (which is essentially confession), they usually say, "I'm ashamed," rather than "I'm guilty." The implications of guilt and shame are important, but only to an extent. They both seem to be a sign pointing to something more important, in fact, they are the means by which God reveals to us the gravity of our sinfulness and the necessity for our repentance, which begins by confession. In the same way that a burn on the hand indicates that the thing touched is fiercely hot, shame and guilt are the very feelings that our souls manifest in order to cope with the exceeding sinfulness that we battle against in the midst of a war being waged between the sinful nature and the nature that is being redeemed. Yet some would say that shame and guilt are hindrances to confession!

One person actually said that guilt and shame are crippling to us, which may be true for people who don't fully understand the benefits that guilt and shame can effect in our souls. Are they not actually spiritual warnings acting in us as healthy evidence that our consciences are not friendly with sin? If we so easily default to the cop-out of guilt and shame as the reasons for our lack of confession, the blame lies outside of ourselves, residing with these two intangibles, thereby essentially releasing us of any real responsibility. The thing to which these signs point, that is, the root of a failure to confess our sins is more simple than we may think, which may in reality bring more conviction, more guilt, more shame, and more personal responsibility within us, which is were the blame must lie.

The true reason for our failure to confess our sins is sin itself! Because of our sinful nature, our carnal desires are wholly enslaved to that sin, resulting in a will that is chained to sinful actions, namely concealing the very sin that torments us. Guilt and shame expose the sin within us, that we may confess and be cleansed. Therefore, guilt and shame are not agents of sickness that cause us to be spiritual paraplegics, but rather, tools of God that bring us to a place of desperation that would bring ultimate healing. In reality, though, for those of us who refuse to confess, sin itself takes us to a place of willing disobedience that would rather conceal sin and be tormented rather than reveal sin by confession that would have eternal cleansing effect on our everlasting souls through repentance.

So the root of our unwillingness to confess our sins ultimately boils down to the nature we've inherited from Adam, a corrupt nature that would persuade us to abdicate our own responsibility for sin, instead blaming things outside ourselves so that we never actually have to deal with confession. And if we never actually deal with the root of the issue, we'll only be producing rotten fruit.

For me, the message is simple: "MAN UP! Take responsibility for your sin, and kill it!" This is a war we're fighting here, and not one for the timid or weak (2 Timothy 1:7). Like John Owen said over 350 years ago, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." For centuries, men have searched for ways to misplace their due blame. It is far past the time of blaming anything other than ourselves for our sin, embracing the guilt and shame that comes with it, that we may find ourselves being led by the grace of God to the freeing power of confession, the beginning of repentance. Then, by the same kindness of God that leads us to repentance, we may attain an eternal inheritance kept in heaven for us where there will be no condemnation ever again!

Leia Mais…

God's Refusal to Leave Us Alone: Deliverance

This follow-up post from the previous one stems from some observations I've recently made about myself and others, along with some insightful help from a brilliant godly Puritan that died 327 years ago:

The hardening [by the deceitfulness of sin, see Hebrews 3:12-13] is to the utmost, — utter obduration; sin tends to it, and every distemper and lust will make at least some progress towards it. Thou that wast tender, and didst use to melt under the word, under afflictions, wilt grow as some have profanely spoken, “sermon-proof and sickness-proof.” Thou that didst tremble at the presence of God, thoughts of death, and appearance before him, when thou hadst more assurance of his love than now thou hast, shalt have a stoutness upon thy spirit not to be moved by these things. Thy soul and thy sin shall be spoken of and spoken to, and thou shalt not be at all concerned, but shalt be able to pass over duties, praying, hearing, reading, and thy heart not in the least affected. Sin will grow a light thing to thee; thou wilt pass it by as a thing of nought; this it will grow to. And what will be the end of such a condition? Can a sadder thing befall thee? Is it not enough to make any heart to tremble, to think of being brought into that estate wherein he should have slight thoughts of sin? Slight thoughts of grace, of mercy, of the blood of Christ, of the law, heaven, and hell, come all in at the same season. Take heed, this is that thy lust is working towards, — the hardening of the heart, searing of the conscience, blinding of the mind, stupefying of the affections, and deceiving of the whole soul.

-John Owen, excerpted from Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

Recently, I was curious to look back through my journals from the past several years in order to assess some evidence of my spiritual journey during that time. During the two years I spent living in Morocco, I wrote 111 pages of grace-filled, soul-changing, mind-enriching journal entries. For these past 2.5+ years since returning to the U.S., I have written only 40 pages, most of which are my wrestlings with myself and my sin. It seems like I have been behaving as a rebellious young boy, perhaps upset with my heavenly Father for one reason or another. As I think on this small statistic, I am greatly saddened by my neglect. What's worse, is that if I really think about these things, I might actually find that my sin has become exceedingly sinful, plundering my heart in its utmost affection for God. There has been this haunting suspicion in my heart that I have tried too hard to ignore, for the sake of rationalizing my idle behavior, that my heart has grown hard and cold, foremost toward God and consequentially toward virtually everyone around me. Thus, that deceitfulness of sin that Owen so eloquently described has subtly crept in, through my idle neglect, so that my heart has gradually become hardened to the things of God that He gives to us in this life to enjoy. Is it such a wonder to me why my life has seemed inconsequential for the sake of eternity! It's because it has for the most part, except for some supernatural work of the grace of God.

There is no new sin that is not common to man. I have seen firsthand instances of people close to me to whom this has happened. More recently, though, there have been students of mine, three in particular at present, going through this very thing. If we, as Christians, don't mortify our sin daily as Owen puts it, then it will overtake us, proving our faith to be a fraud. He says, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." In the same way that John Piper put it, we must wage war -- we are either fighting against our sin with the help of God, or are at peace with it thereby becoming an enemy of God.

So today, in remembrance of the day when Jesus was crucified, let us meditate on this:

...but the Lord delivers him out of them all."
Psalm 34:19b

The Lord delivers the righteous man from his promised affliction. Many evils assail the righteous and many wicked deeds accompany his carnal existence, yet his righteousness is not found there. Absent from all worldly deeds, his righteousness is stored up for him in heave as Christ Himself embodies it, preserved by the all-sufficient power of the Holy Spirit. It is from this man that deliverance comes. The embodiment of righteousness, namely Jesus Himself, is also the one true deliverer for those whose righteousness is held to the cross with the nails that pierced his hands and feet. If it were not for this sinless man who died on the cross, this Jesus whose divine authority would conquer the destruction reserved for all sinful men in death, there would be an eternity of despair for the soul of every man.

Every animal killed in the name of God, every sacrifice consecrated to the Lord, every offering burnt as a pleasing fragrance, and every prayer mentioned to the Almighty are but echoes of the true shout of Christ spanning the chasm of affliction that endangers every man's soul. Jesus is to us a friend, a help, a teacher, and a guide, but let us remind ourselves that he is our DELIVERANCE! Oh, to grace how great a debtor are we constrained to be!

So then those of us whose hearts have grown cold and hard, have hope, bound up with our Savior who, through faith, delivers us from all our affliction past, present, and yet to come. Were it not for the promise of redemption found in Him, my station as husband, father, son, brother, worker, worshiper, and saint would be vanquished by the otherwise overwhelming power of sin in my life. But as it is, God sees fit to look on Him and pardon me -- for the sake of His glory and my joy. May that be a greater reality day by day, as the coldness and hardness of my heart turns to warm, satisfying affection as it is inclined to our God!

Leia Mais…

God's Refusal to Leave Us Alone: Affliction

I must say that I thought of the following things while meditating on the Scriptures and following sermon excerpts from John Piper:

Until you believe that life is war - that the stakes are your soul - you will probably just play at Christianity with no bloodearnestness and no vigilance and no passion and no wartime mindset. If that is where you are this morning, your position is very precarious. The enemy has lulled you into sleep or into a peacetime mentality, as if nothing serious is at stake. And God, in his mercy, has you here this morning, and had this sermon appointed to wake you up, and put you on a wartime footing.... There is a mean, violent streak in the true Christian life! But violence against whom, or what? Not other people. It's a violence against all the impulses in us that would be violent to other people. It's a violence against all the impulses in our own selves that would make peace with our own sin and settle in with a peacetime mentality. It's a violence against all lust in ourselves, and enslaving desires for food or caffeine or sugar or chocolate or alcohol or pornography or money or the praise of men and the approval of others or power or fame. It's violence against the impulses in our own soul toward racism and sluggish indifference to injustice and poverty and abortion. Christianity is not a settle-in-and-live-at-peace-with-this-world-the-way-it-is kind of religion. If by the Spirit you kill the deeds of your own body, you will live. Christianity is war. On our own sinful impulses.

"Many are the afflictions of the righteous..." Psalm 34:19a

Different environments produce different afflictions. Dangerous places yield the earnest affliction of physical threat. Safe places yield the subtle affliction of complacency. Easy and comfortable places yield the creeping affliction of intellectual numbness. Oppressive climates yield the overbearing affliction of spiritual, social, emotional, or physical torment. The place of erudition yields the tempting affliction of academic pride. Countless and varied are the afflictions that assail the Christian soul. In such a twisted and broken world, our enemy never rests, using all manner of weapon to nullify the work of the Redeemer in our hearts and weaken the work of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. Not only that, but a constant torment of a battle within rages ceaselessly. That which is divine seeks to conquer the worldly desires of man, while that which is fleshly desires to take back its original possession.

Oh, for grace to endure such endless battle! The promised, precious land of the soul is at stake, no less, to be won by the victor! Yet the victory is already assigned to Almighty God, else there would be no use for affliction whatsoever. The affliction would be no torment to the wicked, but a delight and pleasure to him. His folly is for him his wage and eternal destruction his recompense from an all-conquering God, sufficient in His justice among men. However peculiar it may be, these various afflictions are reserved, according to God's perfect measure, for those who are righteous. If it were to be any other way, the fool would be always left to his own pleasures, at home in this world and satisfied by his own wickedness, which is, no doubt, not an affliction at all to him. Sin becomes exceedingly sinful only when it is seen to be sin! It is not until the repentant man meet his Savior that his wicked comforts turn to affliction.

It would be, as the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, "like a chasing after the wind" to attempt to fully understand the mystery of the Providence of God in afflicting the most righteous of men. But in His goodness, the Ruler of the Universe sees fit to chastise his chosen ones in every season of life, that they may be refined into His own redeemed image from one degree of glory to another. It is only left up to them to recognize and acknowledge the affliction as His divine, sovereign, loving care for us as our Father.

Upon re-reading these thoughts, I am compelled to remember my friends in Morocco, who have recently suffered God-ordained affliction that will work for their eternal good. We here in the safe arms of American freedoms are unable to grasp the reality of many persecutions and injustices that happen worldwide, like this one. Yet this is not a surprise to the Almighty, Omniscient God of the Universe who orchestrates all things according to His perfect purposes.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known"
(1 Corinthians 13:12).

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