How glad are you?

I want to look at two verses today, both from within my daily reading, first is Colossians 3:1,2 and second is Psalm 4:7. Let me quote them both;

Colossians 3:1,2 “¹If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, Where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. ²Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”

Psalm 4:7 “You have put gladness in my heart, more than in the season that their grain and wine increased.”

As I meditated on these two verses I saw the deep relationship between them. I see these verses as root and fruit. Let me explain. Paul says that we should have our minds on the things of God, from above, not on the things of the earth. David says that God has brought him gladness, more than he received from earthly abundance. I think that Paul’s command is the root of David’s gladness. If you can cultivate in your life, or to be theologically correct, if you can submit to the sanctification of the Holy Spirit in your life to the point where your mind is not on earthly thing but on Godly things, then you will be able to say, with David, “you have put gladness in my heart, oh Lord.” Let’s look more deeply at David’s praise to God. Grain and wine was a livelihood to the Israelites. If the harvest of grapes and grain didn’t come in you very well might die, but if it came in, and came in abundantly, then not only would you live, you would have extra to sell, then you could acquire some wealth, some extra animals or clothes, etc. As king, David would have benefitted from this more than anyone else because he received a piece of all that was harvested. Imagine the amount a single man might gain from an abundant harvest, now multiply that times the entire nation of Israel and you may get a glimpse of what David speaks of in his praise to God. God brings him more gladness than all the abundance of the earth. This can only come from a heart truly dedicated to the things of the Lord, a heart and mind and life that are truly set on God and things from above. We should be seeking God and all that he is with every ounce of strength that we can muster, we should be pleading with God to bring our minds and our hearts and our lives to bear on things from above, on Godly things, so that we can cry out in praise with David, ‘Oh Lord, you bring me more gladness than earthly wealth or any earthly thing!”

I praise you Father, in heaven above, for your incredible mercy and grace. I ask that you would sanctify me through the Power of Christ at work in the Holy Spirit that my life would reflect you. Help me in all that I am to keep my eyes on you and to desire Godly things not earthly things. Give me a perspective of truth that will help me to see the nature of all earthly things, that they are temporal and will not last and help me also to see the nature of all that you are, eternal and timeless. Help me to always, in everything that I do, bring you glory. In Jesus powerful name I pray, Amen.

My way or the highway

As I meditated on 2 Kings 5 my spirit gave warning, or should I say, received warning, from the text. Too many times we do just as Naaman did, we risk missing the blessings of God because they did not come in the form or manner that we had expected, and therefore we do not believe it is God. Naaman came all the way from Syria to be healed in a miraculous way, but when Elisha told him to simply go and wash in the Jordan 7 times, he was angered. He tried to leave, but his servants convinced him to at least obey. As we see in the story, God was in the command of Elisha and Naaman was cleansed through washing in the Jordan. Once more, in the first century, the Jews missed the coming of the long awaited Messiah because He didn’t come in the manner that they had expected. They expected a warrior king to come and set them free, but instead they received a humble servant, come to die a cursed death on the cross for their sins. What scares me most is to think about what I would have done if I had lived in the first century. Would I have been like the Jews and missed the Christ because He was not what I expected or would I have been one of the few that did receive Him? This is a question to which I will never know the answer, but unfortunately the odds say that it is more likely that I would have responded as the Jews did, and rejected Him.

What can we do? How do we protect ourselves from missing God or His work because it is not in the form or manner in which we expect? My thoughts are this, instead of reading God’s word and trying to formulate what God’s plan is from it, in a sense trying to deductively construct His plan, let’s just wait on the Lord and as we see His plan unfold we can prayerfully weigh it against scripture, knowing that God will never contradict Himself or His revealed will. I think this is the answer because we do not have God’s wisdom and because God never tells us that He has revealed everything to us in His Word. This means that if we are trying to deductively construct what His plan is that we will have holes where He did not reveal. The Jews and their response to Christ gives evidence of this. They deductively constructed the coming of the Messiah from scripture, yet because they didn’t have God’s wisdom or all the information, they got it wrong, and therefore rejected the Messiah and murdered Him (all of this according to God’s will, of course). Instead, if they had waited on the Lord and taken the claims of Christ to the Scriptures, weighed them against God’s revealed will, they would have seen Jesus as the Messiah. They would have received Him. We know this because Jesus is everywhere in the Old Testament, Romans, Galatians and Hebrews give great evidence to this. Instead of trying to figure it all out and have every detail planned, trying to say that we know and understand what God’s will and plan are, let’s just admit that we are finite and that God is infinite and that we can never fully know or understand His will. Let’s wait on the Lord and as His will and plan are revealed we can prayerfully weigh them against scripture, knowing that God will never contradict Himself and never go against His own revealed will. Then we can pray and expect that we will not miss God or His work or His blessings because they did not come in the form or manner that we expected. How about we put our pride and ourselves down, lay them at the feet of God and simply receive Him, as He is, not as we want Him to be, in His time, in His way.

(Note- When I speak of deductively constructing God’s will from His Word I am not talking about formulating theology. We should and we must systematically approach God’s Word in an effort to understand theology so that we can adequately relate the teachings of Scripture to our lives and so that we can adequately teach them to others. I am referring to making a literal timeline of events for God in determining what must happen, when it must happen and how it must happen in order for us to believe that it is God, which you can clearly see has problems attached to it)

The Angels can't save you.

I want to meditate on Colossians 2:18,19. As I read Colossians 2:18,19 I catch a glimpse of a condition that I think affects 90% of Christians today, a false Christianity. Let me quote the verse,

“¹⁸Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, ¹⁹and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.”

I see several things, but the main thing is the false Christianity that comes from "churchgoing". Since Christianity has been the state religion of the US for the last 100 years many people attend because that is what they are “supposed to do.” This has led to a huge misunderstanding of what it really means to be a Christian, a true follower of Christ. This has led to ‘false humility and worship of angels’ as well as not ‘holding fast to the Head,’ which is Christ. People hold on to their rituals and habits and what they see as ‘keeping up appearances’ and thereby fall into a false Christianity. ‘False humility’ is the show that people put on, the façade they wear. ‘Worship of angels’ is the result of distractions in their relationship with Christ whereby something else takes the place of Christ in their worship. We get caught up in what we know and in what we think and get separated from Christ, the head. This is most readily seen in the mega-church and their programs, although this is not the only place that this can be seen. People substitute true Christianity for the appearance of Christianity by attending every meeting, serving on every board, and going to every function. The horrible thing is that most of the time they don’t even realize it. Doing those things isn’t bad, they become bad when they are done while not ‘holding fast to the Head.’ When these things become substitutes for a true relationship with Christ they become ‘false humility and worship of angels’, and can "cheat you of your reward". When these programs take the place of a consistent quiet time or they take the place of prayer they have disconnected from the Head, from Christ. The product of this is a modern day Pharisee, people who honor God with their lips while their hearts are from him. We need to be careful in everything that we are not led astray from the real focus of our worship and our service, the Head, Jesus Christ. The "angels" can't save us. We need to maintain our focus on Christ that our work might not be in vain. Reality check!

I praise you Father for your glorious work in the lives of men through your son Christ Jesus. You have given meaning to our lives and provided us a way back into your courts and into your presence. Help us to always maintain the correct focus in our lives, a focus on you and on Jesus. Let all that we do be for your glory and not our own, that your kingdom may be enlarged on this earth and your name praised. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

Wisdom and Folly

In my readings today I read Proverbs 18:2, which says, “A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart.” I thought this was a very telling observation of a fool and a wise man. As Solomon sees things a wise man will listen and desire to understand what is being said to him, or what is happening to him. (A side note about understanding. We can learn and gain understanding not just from people teaching us or from reading books, but also from circumstances and events as well. God seeks to teach us and sanctify us by events and circumstances just as much as he does from the mouth of other people.) Whereas a fool, while he may look like he is listening, is not actually paying attention. He is not concerned with understanding what is being said or what is happening, he is only concerned with how he will respond, what he will say next and how he feels. Which of the two men/people are you? Do you listen and seek understanding, in all things, or do you simply listen superficially, waiting for your chance to speak and give your opinion? I pray that God will mold you into the former and crush any resemblance in you to the latter.

Father I thank you for insight into the condition of man. I thank you for opening up my sins and flaws and showing them to me. Help me now to move forward with this knowledge in a way that brings you glory. Help me to be a wise man and seek to understand all things and to find you in them and help me to be humble, to crush my own desire to speak and say what I feel. What I feel is inconsequential if I do not fully understand your purposes in what I am feeling. May you always be my focus and my life’s greatest joy. In your name Lord Jesus I ask these things, amen.

That wasn't part of the plan

My reading in Proverbs brought me to 19:21, which reads, “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel– that will stand.” I want to just take a minute and think about the truth of this proverb. Many times each of the individual proverbs are read over with only a glancing view to the reality of their truth, I want to make sure not to do that with this proverb. I think that God offered Solomon a unique look into the heart of man and the sovereignty of God when he wrote this proverb. Something that the Bible tells us about men, and the way God created them, was that they are to be cultivators and managers, we were commanded by God to subdue and steward over the earth. So it is natural for us to plan and prepare and try to manage in ways to make this instinctual desire come to be. This is a fact that brings glory to God; we should not try to subdue these desires, we should let them glorify God. The problem that we see revealed in this proverb is not our desire to plan and manage and cultivate, the problem is when we do so out of our sinful nature. When God created us and built these instincts into us as a race He did so in view of His righteous and pure creation, but then due to Adam’s sin and rebellion against God all that was lost. We now have the same desires that God gave us for the purpose of stewarding and subduing the earth for God’s glory, yet we use them for our own glory. We plan and prepare and cultivate in ways that fulfill our own desires, which take the glory from God and gives it to us. Solomon cues in on this and offers some wisdom to us, he says that our plans are many but only God’s plans have any lasting value. To follow our own plans will only end in destruction and death. God’s plans are righteous and everlasting, so much so that to follow any plan other than God’s is futile. We can all speak to the validity of Solomon’s statement. We have all had our best-laid plans blown away with the wind. We have all seen hours, days and months of planning and preparing get thrown out like an old newspaper, worthless the day after it is printed. In our hearts we know this is true.

Now we face the real issue, due to our rebellious hearts and sinful nature we cannot follow God’s plan. All we see is our own glory; we can’t look to God’s. How do we overcome this? We don’t, we can’t, but God can, and did. Through the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, righteousness has been imputed to us and we can now look to the glory of God. Through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit we can look away from our glory and give glory to God. We can put down our plans and take up the plans of God.

As I meditate on this passage three questions come to mind. 1. What plans do you have in your life that are your own and that aren’t God’s? To these I would say, they will amount to nothing so place no weight on them because they will crumble. 2. Do you know Jesus as your personal savior? He is the only way that you can take up God’s plans and make your plans line up with His. He is the only way that you can have anything that will stand. 3. Do you now what God’s plan for you is, or even for life in general? Find out what God’s plan for your life is, this way you can begin to glorify him. The real question is this, do you want your life’s efforts to be a part of something futile or do you want them to be a part of something that will stand?

Father I praise you for the men that you have sent before us to pass on your words. I thank you for scripture and for the obedience of men like Solomon to pass on to us your very words. As I read your word and you reveal truth to me help me to apply it my life and stand on your teachings. Make my life a reflection of you, through Christ. Help me to pass on all the truth that you reveal to me that I can be seen as faithful in your eyes. May your plans be my life’s plans and may I always seek to give you glory. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

Christ's Wingman

Why is it that we must share the gospel for people to come to a saving knowledge of Christ? This is a question many Calvinists ask. Isn’t God sovereign? Can’t God just fill them with the Holy Spirit and they be saved? Why do we have to take part? I was reading in John 16 today and came across a verse that answers this question from one perspective (I believe that there are other reasons as well, this is just one of them). John 16:14 says, speaking of the Holy Spirit, “He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it.” The Holy Spirit’s main purpose is to glorify Christ. His work in salvation, through regeneration, faith and conviction of sin, is all purposed to glorify Christ. So it makes sense to say that if the Holy Spirit is here to glorify Christ then Christ must come first, otherwise the Holy Spirit has nothing to glorify. We see this in the life and work of Christ, he came and ministered and it wasn’t until after he left that the Holy Spirit came (in the fullness prophesied). He came after Christ. It is kind of like a kite with its tail, the tail can only go where the kite has already gone because it, the tail, is in existence for the kite. The same is true of salvation. The Holy Spirit follows behind Christ to glorify Him, so we must spread Christ to others before the Holy Spirit can come behind and do his work. If Christ has not been to a place first, through evangelism, then the Holy Spirit will not be there either, and we know from scripture that without the Holy Spirit there is no regeneration, no faith and no conviction of sin. This is why we must take part in evangelism and why we must spread the gospel in order for people to be saved. If people do not hear the gospel and do not know of Christ then the Holy Spirit has nothing in their life to glorify, i.e. Christ is not their to be glorified. This results in no Holy Spirit and therefore no salvation.

Father I give you praise and glorify your name because you are perfect and righteous and holy. You are the all that we need in life, your word is more precious than silver and even fine gold. You have given us your Son to bear our punishment and have given us your Spirit to follow behind and provide us with the tools necessary to be saved, and to glorify you as He glorifies you. Thank you for your provision of life, and it eternally. In Christ Jesus I pray, Amen.

A loss for words

I would like to write about Christ’s work on the cross, or more specifically his sacrifice of dying, what he went through, and all of his glory in sacrifice. But I cannot, because I do not have enough talent or skill in God’s gift of words to even attempt this endeavor. I do not even know where to begin to try and give God in Christ glory by speaking about his sacrificial death, I am overwhelmed at the mere thought of it. What I will say is this, human words cannot describe the pain of Christ on the cross, nor can they describe the gifts he gave by dying, nor can they describe the glory he received for his obedience. As I worship in Spirit and truth may the Spirit speak on my behalf and give God in Christ the glory in all the ways that I cannot.

Father, I thank you and praise you for your plan to redeem your children. Jesus, I thank you also for your obedience to the Father and for your willingness to die. As I ponder the redemptive work of the cross and all it contains I am overwhelmed, I am speechless before your glory. May I always praise you, even in my lack of words. Amen.