"Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie." Jeremiah 9:5 (NIV)
"They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator ---who is forever praised. Amen." Romans 1:25 (NIV)
Genesis 2:7 tells us that man was created from the dust of the earth. In all of the created world, this is the first thing that God finds in conflict with His plan. He gives to Adam the right to chose a suitable companion to offset the unbalance, but nothing was found suitable enough. So, He didn't scoop up some more dirt to make a suitable companion (helper). He causes Adam to sleep deeply and woman was fashioned from the rib of man. Fashioned, not made.....shaped in deliberate fashion from the first human, Adam, instead of all of the created world and things within it. The Potter shaped with deliberate care, woman, to give balance to man.
We have become worshippers of ourselves; it is all an individual path to God's glory, there is no absolute truth. We have ceased to look at what we do, but rather simply ask "Is it possible to do it and how?" We look at what we can get out of our understanding of God instead of realizing that we cannot understand God completely outside of Heaven. We define God according to human standards and then argue when those incomplete standards come into conflict with the Bible.
We seek to clarify within denominational walls what the 'true' meaning of the text instead of understanding that the text clarifies itself to us. It is too easy to trace the contextual and root words of the Biblical narrative in today's society, but too often...we just don't want to take the time. We'll let someone else do the work for us and hence, we become Lutheran, Catholic, Protestant, or Emergent.
Or we create a totally separate and false religion designed to answer those questions that burn within our hearts and we don't like the biblical answer to. We worship our cars, our homes, our TVs, and our bank accounts. Created things that belong not to us, but to the Creator Himself. And, as the Church has retreated from that truth as it has come against the wall of the society that it is supposed to serve.
The Church has become a friend that deceives a friend; the congregation it harbors. It has taught itself that it can modify and reduce the harsh truth of the Gospel into a more societally accepting version "just to get them in the door." The Church is more concerned about being a 'friend' to everyone and every thing, from the seekers to the unbiblically living 'Christians' that file in and out of their doors (funding their salvation with hefty tithing) and the 'global warming' cries of human supremancy led science to God is 'love and only love' mentality of proclaiming homosexuality is a environmental or genetical error that must be accepted because God wants all of humanity saved.
We lie and tell ourselves that we know God, and since we do...we can name what we want and He has promised to deliver...or else we'll just get it ourselves. We define the standards that we live by....that aren't too difficult for us to follow.
We seek the answers to our existence and seek the balance that was upset by the sin in the Garden. We've become a society that has devalued life to the point where we ignore the murder of unborn children because they are inconvenient. Even to the point where we justify the murder in cases of rape and incest. After all, 'it' was born from sin. Problem with that is that we all were born from sin. Should we, as a moralistic society, commit genocide?
We proclaim that God makes mistakes; after all, it's not the homosexuals fault they feel attraction towards another of the same sex. They were born that way, science PROVES it. Or the hidden homosexuality of gender error....where a man was born a woman or visa versa. We are imminently qualified to make that decision of what sexual identity we should have been born with....those chromosomes were mixed up during the formation process.
We declare that men aren't supposed to be the "head" of the household because men have once again surrendered it to society as a whole to define them. Of course, men will sweep the truth of what they are supposed to be under the carpet. Headship in the household isn't a dictatorship but performed with biblical love, rooted in the Word, and under the directorship of God characterized by selfless intimacy (opening themselves to another in areas that they let no one else into). Men don't want to claim the Biblical role of priest, prophet, protector, and provider because that might 'demean' women and force themselves to a higher standard.
Women don't want to follow the biblical standard of 'helpmate' because it is demeaning and not promotional of equality. After all, it was a cultural thing that defined the Biblical standard and not an equal and balanced design. Women aren't supposed to be submissive as we are told in Ephesians 5:22 ff. Of course, the word is taken totally out of its true origins….Woman are to be voluntarily submissive, placing themselves under the 'position' of another, and is only regarding the 'ranking' of the biblical order rather than establishing value. Men and Women are created equally…wonderfully and fearfully made.
You may think I'm speaking from a place of authority, I'm not. I am chief sinner amongst sinners in this regard; subjecting myself to my own authority too often and allowing God in only when things are pretty good. I am my worst enemy, the old man who is chief agent of the enemy camp. I have convinced myself that all that is 'wrong' with my world is mine to fix and control.
I don't have the gumpson to speak with the authority required to back the words I've written here. They are standards higher than myself and a struggle that I put effort into to achieve even a near miss in their truth. I may write what God puts on my heart to write, but often it is for my own growth and no one else's. I am first to claim imperfection and last to claim humility.
As I grow closer in the walk with God, I realize that I am totally and helplessly in a tail spin. I cannot even control the navigation of my vessel in the storm tossed seas of this life and the world that commands it. I am subject to the whims of things I cannot control and usually screw up the things I think I have control over.
And if I willingly submit to that realization, then I can gain some spiritual guidance from the Creator Himself. I can realize that there is control and it is in the best of hands, the One and True King. I can measure peace that withstands the broken reality of a world gone wrong and find joy in the realization of the designed perfection that lies waiting for the King's return.
And, no matter the tides or the sea state of my life, I will gain headway under the captaincy of the King to that destination.
Simply: In giving up my life, I gain it.
Not too terribly PC in today's world.
But then, humanity is under the delusion that they know what's best for the world and its inhabitants. They feel that they have the right, coming from primitive ooze, to proclaim what is best for everyone upon the globe surface. They have gained the right to be GODS.
A look back upon the history of the Jewish nation of Israel and the secular history of this entire world proves that we are still in a state of denial.
We can't do anything.
We aren't worthy of anything.
We aren't GODS.
We're just lost children in the woods, trying to follow our own breadcrumbs home.
Why don't we just follow the guy with the map?
It is there.....in the Bible.
I am nervous about posting this today. I've struggled to make it as unoffensive as possible and keep erasing what I corrected. Maybe I'm too intolerant, maybe I'm being too critical. Maybe.
You can take it or leave it. I speak what I feel God has laid upon my heart to write. For myself. And anyone else called to listen.
Wednesday, March 5
Tuesday, March 4
Plumbing the depths......
"The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out." Proverbs 20:5 (New International Version)
I'm reading the Gospel of John as part of the 'homework' for the leadership group I'm studying with. SO what's the Proverb have to do with John?.......
It is interesting to see Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who hides under in a tree and comes to Jesus in the cover of darkness……."The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8 NIV). The NIV commentary says, "The Holy Spirit is sovereign. He works as He pleases in His renewal of human hearts." But, I think it goes deeper than that.
Jesus continues His discussion with Nic, "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." (John 3:20-21 NIV).
Our moral behaviour is too often defined before we reach out to discover that which is missing in our lives; Jesus Christ. Some respond to the light quickly and with due haste because of the representation in their own lives through the parents. Some are broken upon the mantle of righteousness before they can see. Others won't ever know the reality of the depth of their Heavenly Father's love because they've never realized it can be deeper. A study done recently by Pew Research (I think, or Barnum) showed that the faith of the children is exactly the same as the faith displayed and represented by the parents.
Is it any wonder that the millennials who are defining the church today in the emergent movement do so with a shallow and pale comparison of the truth? Christians in the United States are supposedly 82% or greater of the populace, but what kind of faith is represented? We find that only about 8% are of the 'old guard', those conservative, evangelical followers of Christ, while the vast majority have a dim and boxed image of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Some have gone as far as saying God can be found in every religion, others that Christ is representative of Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic faiths.
Why?
Because man has defined the surface tension that protects the deeper, more basic purposes of his heart. We hide the interior of our homes and our lives from outside view because we are ashamed or fearful of exposing that which is done in the darkness. And, anything that is not of God is not good. We don't want others to know that we are basically fallen, sinful beings that imperfectly attempt to follow a God that we have devalued and boxed into a definable presence, brought out on Sunday and put away for the rest of the week. Our children, who are 'coming of age', are finding the world moldable and a God that can be fitted into their definition of truth. There is no prophecy; there are no miracles because we are in control of the picture.
For a people designed to live in relationship with each other, we are constantly seeking a method in which to claim relationship without connection. We maintain a distance in our church relationships with those who claim our beliefs, keeping our 'personal' business personal and putting on an image of propriety that isn't even tested by our closest brothers and sisters too often. They may attempt to explore a deeper relationship with others, but when the surface tension is met and they feel resistance…..they think they have plumbed the depths of each others soul….and call it good.
Who is this 'man of understanding' Solomon talks of? What are these 'deep waters' of a man that hide the purposes of their lives? And how are they 'drawn out'?
The good, the bad, the ugly. Those wounds of our hearts caused by ill-intent parents or in the best of circumstances by loving and gentle parents are what we hide within the deep waters of our hearts, dealing with each other from a position of painful relating and setting the 'depth gauge' to a pressure that we are comfortable with. Who wants to know the true brokenness of another, for knowing requires a response (at least that is what we are taught). After all, a true Christian will not simply walk beside their brother and sister in pain, but seek to 'lift up' that person from the anguish of being human.
But a 'man of understanding' looks to his own wounded heart and seeks to bring the light to the darken depths of his soul. Realizing that we are all living flawed and imperfect lives and that the true nature of God is so far beyond our understanding that we cannot contain or direct His movements in our lives and the history of the world. We can only seek after that which we were meant to be and find in the passage of time that we have changed. As the wind blowing in our lives, eroding the landscape to an image more reflective of the Father.
Why does God do the things He does? Why does the world exists the way it does? Who decides who has to suffer and who can triumph over the trials of this life?
By living our lives exposed, to the wind of the Father's breath, we find and root out the basis of evilness that has permeated our beings since the Fall. Living in true relationship with each other; loving despite the pain, accepting the pain of a broken world as it affects us, and striving in the storm tossed seas of this journey to our true homes despite the growing water in the bilges of our vessel, we find understanding, joy, and peace.
We find a touch of Heaven in our living.
But we have to dive the depths and discover our true purposes hidden there. And expose them to the light of the Truth so that the evil of our broken humanity can be charred away by the purity of His presence, and our true design can shine through, as God intended.
And in the process, we discover the solidity of our Creator………
Just my thoughts..........
I'm reading the Gospel of John as part of the 'homework' for the leadership group I'm studying with. SO what's the Proverb have to do with John?.......
It is interesting to see Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who hides under in a tree and comes to Jesus in the cover of darkness……."The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8 NIV). The NIV commentary says, "The Holy Spirit is sovereign. He works as He pleases in His renewal of human hearts." But, I think it goes deeper than that.
Jesus continues His discussion with Nic, "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." (John 3:20-21 NIV).
Our moral behaviour is too often defined before we reach out to discover that which is missing in our lives; Jesus Christ. Some respond to the light quickly and with due haste because of the representation in their own lives through the parents. Some are broken upon the mantle of righteousness before they can see. Others won't ever know the reality of the depth of their Heavenly Father's love because they've never realized it can be deeper. A study done recently by Pew Research (I think, or Barnum) showed that the faith of the children is exactly the same as the faith displayed and represented by the parents.
Is it any wonder that the millennials who are defining the church today in the emergent movement do so with a shallow and pale comparison of the truth? Christians in the United States are supposedly 82% or greater of the populace, but what kind of faith is represented? We find that only about 8% are of the 'old guard', those conservative, evangelical followers of Christ, while the vast majority have a dim and boxed image of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Some have gone as far as saying God can be found in every religion, others that Christ is representative of Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic faiths.
Why?
Because man has defined the surface tension that protects the deeper, more basic purposes of his heart. We hide the interior of our homes and our lives from outside view because we are ashamed or fearful of exposing that which is done in the darkness. And, anything that is not of God is not good. We don't want others to know that we are basically fallen, sinful beings that imperfectly attempt to follow a God that we have devalued and boxed into a definable presence, brought out on Sunday and put away for the rest of the week. Our children, who are 'coming of age', are finding the world moldable and a God that can be fitted into their definition of truth. There is no prophecy; there are no miracles because we are in control of the picture.
For a people designed to live in relationship with each other, we are constantly seeking a method in which to claim relationship without connection. We maintain a distance in our church relationships with those who claim our beliefs, keeping our 'personal' business personal and putting on an image of propriety that isn't even tested by our closest brothers and sisters too often. They may attempt to explore a deeper relationship with others, but when the surface tension is met and they feel resistance…..they think they have plumbed the depths of each others soul….and call it good.
Who is this 'man of understanding' Solomon talks of? What are these 'deep waters' of a man that hide the purposes of their lives? And how are they 'drawn out'?
The good, the bad, the ugly. Those wounds of our hearts caused by ill-intent parents or in the best of circumstances by loving and gentle parents are what we hide within the deep waters of our hearts, dealing with each other from a position of painful relating and setting the 'depth gauge' to a pressure that we are comfortable with. Who wants to know the true brokenness of another, for knowing requires a response (at least that is what we are taught). After all, a true Christian will not simply walk beside their brother and sister in pain, but seek to 'lift up' that person from the anguish of being human.
But a 'man of understanding' looks to his own wounded heart and seeks to bring the light to the darken depths of his soul. Realizing that we are all living flawed and imperfect lives and that the true nature of God is so far beyond our understanding that we cannot contain or direct His movements in our lives and the history of the world. We can only seek after that which we were meant to be and find in the passage of time that we have changed. As the wind blowing in our lives, eroding the landscape to an image more reflective of the Father.
Why does God do the things He does? Why does the world exists the way it does? Who decides who has to suffer and who can triumph over the trials of this life?
By living our lives exposed, to the wind of the Father's breath, we find and root out the basis of evilness that has permeated our beings since the Fall. Living in true relationship with each other; loving despite the pain, accepting the pain of a broken world as it affects us, and striving in the storm tossed seas of this journey to our true homes despite the growing water in the bilges of our vessel, we find understanding, joy, and peace.
We find a touch of Heaven in our living.
But we have to dive the depths and discover our true purposes hidden there. And expose them to the light of the Truth so that the evil of our broken humanity can be charred away by the purity of His presence, and our true design can shine through, as God intended.
And in the process, we discover the solidity of our Creator………
Just my thoughts..........
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