Corruption

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV)

A recent development in the prevention of the spread of disease in medical settings as well as in businesses and homes is the availability of waterless hand cleansers, usually available through dispensers located in strategic locations within the various environs.

As I entered one of our office buildings recently and pushed on the lever which dispenses the hand cleanser from the supply just inside the building door, I was chagrined to note that the dispenser was empty. I wondered at that moment how many others had, as I had, placed their less than clean hands on the dispenser, expecting to receive the benefit of its contents, only to become aware that rather than receiving benefit, they had actually increased their need for the product they sought.

The experience made me wonder: How many other things intended for good in our lives become vehicles for contaminating our emotional, physical, and spiritual lives? And how often do we recognize this phenomenon and turn to the Provider so that He may redeem our perversion, restoring the relationship between creatures and Creation to that which He intended?

If all of God's creation is good, and He said it is, then nothing He created is intrinsically evil. Evil arises when we, the creatures, presume that we are minor gods and decide we know better than He how to use His creation.

Food is good. God gave it to us to nourish us, to give us pleasure, to provide fellowship with each other in partaking of it. We eat ourselves into poor health, either through our choice of foods or our total intake. We ignore or give scant attention to those who go hungry because the ample food in the world is poorly distributed.

Sexual pleasure is good. God gave it to us for our enjoyment and to populate the world He had created. We misuse it by objectifying another person as a means, a tool, instead of honoring the unity of spirit in which it was intended to be enjoyed. We mock the example of the Church as bride of Christ through the perversion of God's greatest gift and example of that relationship.

Spirited drinks are good. God gave them to us "to make our hearts glad". We begin there, but we over indulge either by pure choice or by choice combined with genetic predisposition to intolerance. The result is emotional, physical and spiritual devastation, disruption of families, death, and destruction.

Entertainment is good. God gave us creative minds to beautify the world and stimulate the mind, through the visual arts, the written word, music, and the spoken word. We misuse those gifts by creating idols of the art or the artist, by using those gifts to appeal to centers of our mind that lead to lust and evil thought, and by dishonoring the God of Creation in misusing the forms of expression that He gave us to praise Him.

Competition is good. God gave us minds and bodies that derive great pleasure from exercising the abilities He has given us in enjoyment with others. We make gods of bodies, the competitors, and victory; rather than valuing the opportunity to participate, finding satisfaction in the victory, and contentment in the legitimate effort, we idolize the outcome and lose the joy found in the process, robbed of holy pleasure by our pride.

Religion is good. God gave us minds to seek Him, to study His ways, to study His word, to discern our place in His world using our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. He reached out to us, offered Himself in our place to save us from our sins. As in the Garden, we have tried to become our own god, rejecting His overtures, and assuming wrongly that we need to "do" in order to reach up to Him. All false religions, and virtually all the misdirected practices of Christianity have come from man's attempt to overlook God's offer and create our own salvation.

Compassion is good. God is love, and part of His love involves compassion for us, and His love in us compels us to have compassion for our fellow travelers. But undisciplined compassion, truly false compassion, arises out of our desire to please others instead of God. For a myriad of reasons we enable others to do harm, to themselves and/or to others and call it compassion when in truth we would rather avoid confrontation.

Discipline is good. God is righteous and expects obedience to His commands and for us to establish practices which lead to righteousness, including counseling our fellow man. But unmerciful discipline, really false, self-righteous discipline, comes from our need to control. Its purpose is not to help others please God, but is legalism designed to promote our own misdirected image of ourselves as creator, not creature.

Pretty depressing! How do I avoid jumping off a high bridge after considering this corrupt world and my participation in it?

By remembering that real love is good, that God is love and God is good, and that we have no power to corrupt Him, even if we in our self-delusion as "god" fear inadvertently doing so. God knew all of His Creation would be corrupted before He ever contemplated creating the world. He knew the Fall would occur. He knew we would pervert the good, idolize the Creation, deceive ourselves in attempts at self-salvation--He knew we would sin--yet He created the world and all that is in it because He had the plan of redemption that would undo all that we have done.

My job is the daily renewing of my mind to understand my position as creature, as dependent on Him for my sustenance, as forgiven and in need of a forgiving attitude, in need of His deliverance from all my tendencies to corrupt what is good. My job is to be a disciple, to exercise discipline, to wait on Him, to ignore the cacophony of the world and wait to hear His whisper.

Lord, forgive us for misusing Your Creation; thank You for Your redemptive gift in Christ Jesus. Give us all, young or old, regardless of our abilities the discipline to be humble in your presence and to live our lives with the goal of honoring You; not focusing on avoiding misuse of the Creation, but focused on worshiping You and receiving Your forgiveness when we stray. Help us to find freedom in that discipline and joy in that freedom. Amen.

Glory

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled His temple. 1 Kings 8:10-11.

In this passage and in others, particularly those associated with Moses in the wilderness, God's presence is presented as an incalculable source of energy and light, so powerful that humans could not survive its effects. That makes sense when one considers that the same God whose Presence created such fear and care among the Israelites was the God who initiated the Big Bang we read about in science.

If God can speak and have the universe explode into being from nothing, if he can create an intensely dense particle and then, exerting His infinite energy, cause that particle to expand into the growing universe in which we dwell, then is it so surprising that the power that surrounds His Presence when He makes Himself visibly present to man could be lethally overwhelming?

Scientists are increasingly aware of facts that support a beginning event several billion years ago, an event from which our universe has come. Most philosophers who study the possible origins of that beginning agree that there had to be a cause for the effect. They debate as to whether that cause was a personal God, an impersonal god, or some other force, but fewer and fewer espouse the idea that the universe is self-creative or self-existence, both intrinsically illogical ideas.

If the universe was begun by a single action, and that is what scientifically appears to be the case, then something or someone had to preexist that beginning to set things in motion. Because time began with the creation of the universe, that something or someone would of necessity be eternal in nature.

If that person or thing can create with a single act what we see all around us, above and below us, in the precise manner to have it all continue to exist and not collapse, knowledge of physics beyond our comprehension would have to have existed, for the room for error was essentially non-existent according to modern calculations on timing and rates of expansion. A tiny fractional difference in either direction and the universe would have collapsed back into dense matter or disappeared into the granddaddy of all explosions.

If a planet with the capability of sustaining life is so improbable as to defy any random chance of its occurrence, located precisely in the Milky Way, our galaxy, in a manner that gives our solar system a view unique among solar systems, one which allows our scientists to study the universe and arrive at proof of beginning events, does that not imply the creative energy of an intelligent person who wants us to discover the "how", but more importantly the "Who" of the Creation.

Scientists generally agree that there have been no new species since the beginning of recorded time. Alterations in species have occurred and species have disappeared, but no purely new species have appeared. The God Who created for six "days" and rested on the seventh, is still God of the Seventh, the "day" in which we live. He most often speaks with a "still, quiet voice", sustaining His Creation with the enormous energy at His disposal: He causes our hearts to beat, our minds to process thought, our cellular factories to turn substrate into energy, our souls to seek someone or Someone outside of ourselves as a source of Authority.

When one considers that the unimaginable amount of life and energy it takes to sustain the universe, to sustain life on this planet, to sustain life in each of our loosely bound amalgams of chemical compounds we call bodies, is it so surprising that He might need to shelter us from a direct view of Himself as God the Father.

Yet He loves us and desires for us to know His love. So he divested Himself of that incredible majesty, was born in dishonoring circumstances, lived a pure and perfect human life, subjected Himself to terminal injustice, and overcame death to show us the way to live with Him in all His glory, where we will stand in His Presence and not die or be afraid, but in awe, will see Him as only those made pure and perfect through His power are allowed to see Him.

I pray that anyone who reads this will know God and know His Son, will accept the power of the Spirit He has sent to reside within us, God in us, and will allow God to be sovereign in their lives, so that, in death, as we go to Him, or if we are still on earth at His coming, we will stand in loving awe and behold the full display of His power without suffering harm or being afraid. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Suggested reading: Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe, Edited by Hoffman and Geisler
Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apolgetics; R. C. Sproul

An Advent Prayer

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." Matthew 26:39 (NIV)

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8 (NIV)


Holy Father, we thank You for Your Son, Jesus, whose birth we remember and celebrate in this Season of Advent. We thank You for Your righteousness that provides for the boundaries of a pure and holy life. We thank You that You are Love, Who knows our intrinsic unrighteousness yet loves us in spite of all our shortcomings. We thank You for the love that caused You to sacrifice Your only Son to bestow His righteousness upon us, to save us from our sins, to return our eternity to one of hope and peace and glorifying You rather than one of dark, endless and painful hopelessness.



Help us, Lord, to seek communion with You daily; to praise You in adoration, to confess our sins, to express gratitude for all You have given us, to plead for the healing of body and mind and spirit--for ourselves, for those who surround us in life, and for the world that so needs and hungers for You--even when the world does not recognize the Person to Whom their hunger directs them.



Teach us to have faith that endures when our prayers seem unanswered or unfulfilled. Teach us the faith that understands that our prayers rise in ignorance of Your omniscient and omnipotent will; that He Who allowed His own Son to die a painful and shameful death on the Cross after denying His petition to deliver Him from that death, has ways that are above our ways and purposes that are infinitely beyond our understanding. Teach us that our prayers offered in any manner but complete submission lack the humility of Jesus, for He prayed ultimately that the Father's will be done, not that His own petition be paramount.



Teach us the humility of Jesus and the confidence of Jesus: to offer our prayers without hesitation and to offer them with both the expectation of a response and the acceptance that the response is good, no matter the appearance to our dimly lit vision. Give us grace and love for others, even as they struggle to accept Your answers to their prayers, knowing that when we are strong, we are the Body of Jesus to strengthen others, even as we are strengthened in our weakness by that same Body.



We love You and adore You; we ask for Your blessings in the Season of Advent and throughout the year. Let our focus always be on Jesus, He Who authored and sustains Creation and is the Savior of our souls. We pray all of this in His name. Amen.

Thoughts for Thanksgiving

The sum total of my sins is sufficiently great that I should have no time to keep track of the sins of others. The grace I have received is sufficiently and infinitely great that I have no need to question the quantity given to others.

A grateful heart cannot keep being grateful and keep score at the same time.

A joyful heart cannot be changed except by changing its focus from the Giver of Joy to circumstances.

Hope comes when we need nothing to change because we believe in the omniscience and omnipotience of the Giver of Life.

Love and grace are gifts that are given freely but received only when we are willing.

The Lord is my shepherd; the implication is that I am a dumb animal in contrast to God, and that is not just true, but infinitely and eternally true.

Freedom is not living without limits; it is living within the will of the Giver of Life and desiring nothing outside His will.

Thank you, Lord, for grace, for friends, for family, for loving us first. Amen

Regrettably, The Last to Come and the First to Go

If I.....have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 1st Corinthians 13:1 (in part)



As Paul in 1st Corinthians 13 points out, I can have many manifestations of my faith, but if I do not have love, then my faith, in expression at least, is empty and useless. The faith with which God gifts me gives me hope; the hope we have in Christ causes us to seek to be like Him, to seek to know His mind; and if we truly know His mind and seek to emulate Him, then we will love.

Talents such as great oration, eloquent writing, wise understanding of life and its intricacies are a resounding gong if they are not used in the context of love. In fact they are frequently misused if not used out of love, becoming weapons with which others are abused. This has been true in my life, and is notable in the lives of many who are public figures professing Christ as Lord.

Generosity, self-sacrifice, attention to tithing, all of these, if not motivated by love are just a clanging cymbal--noisy, drawing attention, but ineffective as witnesses to the love of Christ.

To know the mind of Christ requires we know how He loves. If we do not know how He loves, then we do not know His mind. We may have accepted the facts: God created us, man sinned and we along with everyone else are sinners, Christ came to redeem us out of obedience to the Father. But until we understand His love, we cannot really know Him and try to be like Him.

For some, love is a natural response to many circumstances. God has gifted many non-believers with the ability to love; that gift is part of His prevenient grace. But we may be, in our minds, committed believers, without being committed to loving like Him. If we are not naturally endowed with that gift, we have to cultivate it by asking God to shower us with His grace and love, asking Him to make us vessels of His love, to give us understanding of how He sees those around us. For many Christians, for me, loving in that way was the last thing I really understood and am still struggling with understanding.

More importantly, or as importantly, understanding and applying His love is the first thing I lose sight of when the stresses and struggles of daily life impact my emotions. I may still speak or write or read with comprehension about God and His Son, but as soon as I cease to seek to love as He loves, I become just a noisy nuisance to the cause of Christ.

For me, and I suspect for you, having the mind of Christ is an intentional act: praying in supplication daily in a quiet time; praying to act lovingly in circumstances that cause me to want to do anything but act lovingly; seeking to take an eternal perspective on things that seem so important now but that will have little significance in just a day or two except for the relational benefit or damage that can be done in the moment.

When Christ told us in Matthew to "seek first His Kingdom" I believe He meant the most significant aspect of that seeking was to know His mind, to view others as He sees them, and to change our conduct to so that we are vessels for His love. Do we risk being used by others if we do that? Absolutely. Will it matter in eternity? Well, yes, if we are self-protective and do not love for fear of being used, we will be ignoring the needs of others. Christ was used by all mankind; if He had been self-protective, we would have no hope at this point, Paul would not have had the Damascus road experience, would not have written First Corinthians, and I would not be writing this. Might we enable someone to be irresponsible and cause themselves harm? Yes, and we should guard against that; but first I have to check my motive: am I protecting another from harm or protecting myself from some imagined disadvantage?

Love, the last thing I really understood about Christ, after all the reading and studying, the thinking and writing, love was the last thing I got and am still getting. My goal now is to not let it be the first to go when life is not as I wish.


Pray that will be true for me as I pray for you.

Thank you, Jesus, for loving us first. Help us to love You and to allow our lives to be conduits of love to others. Amen.

Identity

Was at our Wednesday morning group meeting. We wear name tags and mine kept slipping off my shirt onto floor. After several times of bending to pick up the tag and replace it on my shirt, I began to think: Is this how our identity is in a fallen world?

Do we wear a label that is supposed to be our identity: Is it what we do---doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, (apologies to Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster); is it what we have---car, house, wealth, where we were born, reared, educated, what club or church or even charity we belong to; is it our favorite hobby, food, drink, book, television show, sports team; what/who is it for you that is your false identity?

The common theme in all of our false identities is that they are like my name tag---they are part of the creation--removable, lacking permanence or transcendence, having no eternal significance,falling away when the hot fires of life's stresses reduce false identity to ashes.

They are all replacements, imitations, of our true identity as children of the Most High God. He gave us all of those things and pronounced them good. But good has an extra "o" and while God is definitely good, good things are not God, they are gifts to be enjoyed, not who we are and not things to be worshiped.

Well, what label is permanent? What is your and my true identity if we are children of God? We are His creation, His beloved, the heirs of the New Earth, His Redeemed, those saved by the blood of the Lamb, those made in the image of God, the work-men and -women of God who He assigned the duty of having dominion over all His creation.

We may choose to ignore our identity; we may choose to allow the pleasures and passions of the flesh to obscure our intended purpose; we may allow the stresses of life and the worries of the day to make dim the Light that has been give to us; but He is sovereign and His purposes will not be thwarted. Our identity is not changed by our failure to see or acknowledge it.

Each morning as you go out, take time to know Whose you are; wear proudly the brand name of your Designer and Maker. Your identity, who you are--and Whose you are--has been ordained before the beginning of time. What you do today is not who your are; what you buy or sell, who you see, what you eat, what you drive, where you live, is not who you are. You are a child of God, indwelled by His Holy Spirit. True identity.

The Result of Delayed Gratification

The account of Christ’s temptation in Matthew is the greatest example that can be told in trying to understand the discipline required to delay gratification for a greater purpose. Imagine being the creator of the entire universe, the very Son of God, and then imagine willingly coming to earth to live with the limitations of humanity but with the ongoing awareness that all that you see was originally yours.

Would it not have been a natural response to Satan’s temptation to accept his offer to rule what was yours to begin with? That would have allowed Jesus to dispense with several more years of living in an arid land, with having to put up with uneducated, dense disciples, from suffering the challenges of the religious hierarchy, from being physically killed in a tortuous manner at the hands of the Romans, and from suffering spiritual separation from His Father in Heaven.
Yielding at the moment Satan tempted Him would have been pleasurable and would have bestowed earthly power unmatched in all of history.

But Jesus saw beyond the moment. He knew the price that would be paid by all humanity should He give in to Satan’s offer. Worst of all, He knew He would be disobedient to His Father and would have thwarted God’s plan for reconciliation of humanity to Himself. Jesus’ ultimate purpose in coming to earth would have been defeated just by accepting His rightful place in a manner and at a time that was not the Father’s will.

Well, how am I to apply that to my life? I think it has daily application. God bestows upon all of us great opportunities and resources. But our choices in how and when to avail ourselves of those gifts is not preordained and mapped out in a manner that is readily visible to our limited human viewpoint. In a sense, He gives us much in the way of raw material without an obvious blueprint or master plan for how to use them. There is a reason. He desires that we seek Him in the use and enjoyment of all that He has given us.

Our temptation, a microcosm of the temptation that Jesus faced, is to take shortcuts. We are prone to use His gifts in a manner that leads to temporary pleasure but defeats the ultimate satisfaction of experiencing God’s pleasure. In our seeking Him and in our obedience is the ultimate satisfaction, not in the pleasure itself.

One cannot name a pleasure—productivity in work, food, visual beauty, sexual pleasure, the beauty of music, even service to God—that cannot be perverted if the pleasure begins to be god instead of God the Father. A saying that seems to apply here is: What God has given us for our delight was never meant to satisfy*. The corollary of that saying, the Law of Diminishing returns, states it in another way: The more you do anything, the less it satisfies*. (*from Everlasting Adventures: JH Ranch.com)

Only in submitting to the Father, only in submitting all of the resources He has provided to us to His control do we have hope of achieving satisfaction, of achieving a permanent and eternal victory over the temptation to make the creation into a god. Christ knew all of this before Satan approached Him in the wilderness. We would be best served by preparing ourselves with the same knowledge. Only then can we live in the peace and joy on earth that is a foretaste of Heaven. An apparent delay in gratification, one long enough to be assured of the Father’s pleasure in our activity, ultimately results in the greatest pleasure—the pure pleasure that comes through pleasing our Father.

Lord God, help us to see beyond the immediate to the eternal. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.