The Unity of the Bible

Greetings All!

     This week's "thought" will take some thought!  It's not your typical, casual, quickly processed quote.  It will require you to think. Hopefully you are up for the challenge!  It is the response I often give to those who say ask: "What proof we have for the existence of God?   Where did God come from?  And, "Did God create because He needed someone to love, or because He was lonely?
     The following quote seeks to address these three questions and explains why it is that God did not create out of a sense of need within himself.  Part of the answer to question 3 is taken from Daniel Fuller's book, "The Unity of the Bible" -- a must read, in my opinion, for any earnest believer.  Enjoy!

The God Who Has No Needs

     1.) "What Proof Do We Have for the Existence of God?" The best proof for the existence of God goes something like this:  Being cannot come from non-being.  That is, something cannot come from nothing.  Yet, most all scientists agree that at some point in the long-distant past the space now occupied by the physical universe was empty and void and consisted of "nothing."  But its precisely because something cannot come from nothing that helps us see that the creation itself is the greatest proof of the existence of God.  Since being cannot come from non-being, our existence as beings proves His existence.

     2.) "Where Did God Come From?" To answer this, we can take the previous argument a step further.  Because being cannot come from non-being, our existence as beings proves His existence, and His existence proves He always existed.  If God is, He must always have been.  Most all theologians have tended to agree on this, and Malachi 3:6 confirms it where it says, "I am the Lord, I do not change."  Change is part of that which is limited, lacking, or finite. A God who changes would be finite and limited and could not by definition be God. To be infinite is by nature to be changeless, immutable and everlasting -- none of which would be true of God if He had a beginning.  If being is, it must always have been, since being cannot come from non-being.  Even the fact that God is all-knowing demands that He must have existed forever, for if He was not an eternal Being, or came into being at some point in time (which is an impossibility since being cannot come from non-being), then He could not be omniscient, for He would not know what transpired before He came into existence.

     3.) "Did God Create Because He Needed Something to Love, or Because He Was Lonely?  The Christian answer, based on the fact that God is a Trinity, is best given by Daniel Fuller in his book "The Unity of the Bible," in the section entitled, 'Why Did God Wait So Long to Create the World?'  In this section of his book he points out: "The declaration in Psalm 90:2 that, 'Before the mountains were born or you (God) brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God,' indicates that vast eons of time elapsed before God acted to establish the earth so it would reflect His glory.  But Irenaeus, Augustine, and Calvin -- some of the church's greatest leaders -- have sternly warned people not to ask what God was doing before he created, or to wonder why he waited so long to create...  I believe, however, that it is both lawful and expedient to ask why the Triune God waited a long time to create the world.  For from the very fact that God waited, we know that he did not create out of the necessity involved in need-love. [That is, he did not create because he was lonely, or needed someone to love, as many often suggest].

     Since God the Father found infinite happiness in Jesus, the Son, then it becomes clear that from all eternity God has enjoyed his Son's love and companionship, showing the creation of the world was NOT a necessary act that God undertook to overcome loneliness, but an act that flowed from the freedom involved in benevolent love. It would be threatening to our future happiness to know that God created us to meet some need in himself... Yet the moment we understand that all of God's need-love was met in being a Trinity, then we see that he was free to act toward us, his creation, solely in terms of the freedom of a benevolent love.  A striking way to represent the difference is to say that if God were to have created us out of need-love, it would be like inviting us to a banquet, only to inform us that we were one of the courses for the meal!  But when God invites us to a banquet out of benevolent love, he wants us to join with him as guests at his table, to enjoy the feast along with him – as the psalmist put it, to drink from the river of his delights (36:8).  So, God's having delayed creation for a long while makes it unmistakably clear that he created us not out of need, but in the freedom of his benevolent love – out of mercy and grace.”

     What a different view of God we have when we consider his eternality in light of his Triune nature.  If God created out of a "need" that was unmet for all those many millions and trillions of eons before He spoke things into existence out of nothing (as the Bible does state), then the only picture one can draw is of a God who was sad, frustrated, or unhappy until He created, due to the long-standing unmet need in himself.  But when we consider God as Trinity, and the love and delight that existed between the Father and the Son from all eternity, we see that the fellowship and love between the Father and the Son resulted in a God who was eternally contented and happy!  A God who created, not out of need, but out of the overflow of delight, love and happiness that existed within Himself.  To put it in human terms, the best of all scenarios is not when a husband and wife seek to have a child to meet a need in either one of them, or out of an attempt to "save the marriage," but when they so love each other that they choose to bring a child into the overflow of love and delight that already exists between them. Not when they create out of need, but out of a desire to share their overflowing love with another.  And not only does it give us a different view of God, but a whole different ground for relationship!  For when we know we were not created to meet a need in God, we are freed to walk and share in the overflow of God's infinite Self-adequacy and Self-completeness!

     At any rate, just something to think about!

Living in the Grace of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

Brokenness

Greetings All!

     Just this week a good brother blessed me with a copy of a classic Christian book on revival that I did not have. Yet even better than receiving the book was the content within it. Only two chapters into it I found myself nodding and agreeing (from Scripture and experience) with much of what he was saying.

     The author is Roy Hession (1908-1992) and the book's title is "The Calvary Road."   Hession had been doing full-time evangelistic work in Great Britain for years, but in 1947 (by his own admission) he had fallen into a state of deep spiritual need, somehow having lost the power of the Holy Spirit that he had once known in the Lord's work.  It brought him to lament, "I still had to conduct evangelistic campaigns, but without His power -- a terrible experience."  As a pastor, I have known such periods too.  And yes, it is a terrible experience!
     Realizing he lacked spiritual power, he simply worked harder and increased his efforts, which made him increasingly tense and forceful - "a poor substitute,"he says, "for the Spirit's gentle penetrating power."  Yet, during this season of spiritual dryness, he invited some missionaries from the East African Revival Movement to speak at an Easter conference he had organized. And from that week on, everything changed. Their strong emphasis on a personal implementation of the basics of the Christian faith, and in particular, the healing powers of openness, transparency, and repentance made a profound impact on his life.  And as Hession wrote in the preface to the 1973 edition, "This little book expresses the truths that lie at the heart of revival, simply because it is the product of revival."  Enjoy.

BROKENNESS

     "We want to be very simple in this matter of Revival. Revival is just the life of the Lord Jesus poured into human hearts... Whatever may be our experience of failure and barrenness, He is never defeated. His power is boundless. And we, on our part, have only to get into a right relationship with Him, and we shall see His power being demonstrated in our hearts and lives and service, and victorious life will fill us and overflow through us to others. And that is Revival in its essence.

     If, however, we are to come into this right relationship with Him, the first thing we must learn is that our wills must be broken to His will. To be broken is the beginning of Revival. It is painful and humiliating, but it is the only way... The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within us is broken. 

     This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God's will, admits it's wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus' way, surrenders its rights and discards its own glory - that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and self-attitudes. 

     As we look honestly at our Christian lives, we can see how much of this self there is in each of us. It is so often self who tries to live the Christian life... and self, too, who is often doing Christian work. It is always self who gets irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried. It is the self who is hard and unyielding in its attitudes to others. It is the self who is shy and self-conscious and reserved. No wonder we need breaking!  As long as self is in control, God can do little with us, for all the fruits of the Spirit (they are enumerated in Galatians 5), with which God longs to fill us, are the complete antithesis of the hard, unbroken spirit within us and presupposes that it has been crucified...

     Brokenness in daily experience is simply the response of humility to the conviction of God. And inasmuch as this conviction is continuous, we shall need to be broken continually. And this can be very costly when we see all the yielding of rights and selfish interests that this will involve, and the confessions and restitutions that may be sometimes necessary. For this reason, we are not likely to be broken except at the Cross of Jesus. The willingness of Jesus to be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken too. We see Him, who is in the form of God, counting not equality with God a prize to be grasped or hung on to, but letting it go for us, and taking upon Himself the form of a Servant - God's Servant, man's Servant.  We see Him willing to have no rights of His own, no home of His own, no possessions of His own, willing to let men revile Him and not revile in return, willing to let men tread on Him and not retaliate or defend Himself. Above all, we see Him broken as He meekly goes to Calvary to become men's scapegoat by bearing their sins in His own body on the Tree.

     In a pathetic passage in a prophetic Psalm (a Messianic Psalm about Jesus), He says, "I am a worm and not a man" (Psa 22:6). Those who have been in tropical lands tell us that there is a big difference between a snake and a worm. When you attempt to strike at them the snake rears itself up and hisses and tries to strike back - a true picture of self.  But a worm offers no resistance. It allows you to do what you like with it, kick it or squash it under your heel - a picture of true brokenness.  And Jesus was willing to become just that for us - a worm and not a man. And He did so because that is what He saw us to be --  worms having forfeited all rights by our sin, except to deserve hell. And He now calls us to take our rightful place as worms for Him and with Him. The whole Sermon on the Mount with its teaching of non-retaliation, love for enemies, and selfless giving, assumes that that is our position. But only the vision of the Love that was willing to be broken for us can constrain us to be willing for that.

     But dying to self is not a thing we do once for all. There may be an initial dying when God first shows these things, but ever after it will be a constant dying, for only so can the Lord Jesus be revealed constantly through us (2 Cor 4:10). All day long the choice will be before us in a thousand ways. It will mean no plans, no time, no money, no pleasure of our own. It will mean a constant yielding to those around us, for our yieldedness to God is measured by our yieldedness to man. Every humiliation, everyone who tries and vexes us, is God's way of breaking us, so that there is a yet deeper channel in us for the Life of Christ. You see, the only life that pleases God and that can be victorious is His life - never our life, no matter how hard we try. But inasmuch as our self-centered life is the exact opposite of His, we can never be filled with His life -- unless we are prepared for God to bring our (self) life constantly to death. And in that, we must co-operate by our moral choice."

     Hard words for the modern day person -- steeped in psychology and not Scripture -- to accept. In the Bible, there are not many passages that speak specifically of revival, but one does confirm what Hession has said here. It is found in Isaiah 57:15-16.  There God speaks through his prophet and says: "This is what the high and lofty One says -- He who lives forever and whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to REVIVE the spirit of the lowly and to REVIVE the heart of the contrite."  And the context that follows suggests that this "contriteness" and "lowliness" stems from a remorse over their sin, wickedness and selfish greed.

     That's what we need to see. Revival does not come to those who think they are fine just the way they are. It does not come to those who believe they have what it takes or have their act together. It does not come to the proud, the holier-than-thou, the self-satisfied, or self-sufficient.  It comes to those who have been broken and humbled by the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and thereby made contrite by seeing the ungodliness and sin that exists in their soul, and their desperate need for God's grace in Jesus.

     It comes to those who KNOW they are entirely lost without God, spiritually dead without Jesus, and powerless apart from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.  It comes to those whose inner awareness of personal sin and need causes them to fall on their faces in humbled lowliness and plead for that which they cannot produce, or receive, except by the graciousness of God who gives them what they could never deserve.  It is the lowly and contrite whom God revives, not the proud or haughty or self-contented.  Or to use a more contemporary term, it does not come to those who have a wonderful, glowing and undeflateably good self-esteem.

     God ever calls us to come before Him in prayer.  With what shall we come?  Requests that He notice how good we've been doing in our Christian walk?  Hopes that He sees what fine specimens we are?  Or with honest transparency that openly confesses our sin and lack and our desperate need for His grace?  It has often been said that, "To be full of God's Spirit you cannot be full of yourself."  It's true. For God does not dwell with the haughty and self-satisfied, but the lowly and contrite -- "to revive the spirit of the lowly, and revive the heart of the contrite."

With prayers for personal and corporate revival, Pastor Jeff

The Gift and Grace of Weakness

Greetings All!

     This week's "thought" comes to you from Charles Spurgeon.  It is found in the devotional I have recommended before (one that I consider a gem) - "Beside Still Waters - Words of Comfort for the Soul." This particular entry has to do with the gift and grace of weakness.  It's a concept that's hard for those raised in our "strength worshiping" culture to understand, but he true believer will grasp what he says.  In fact, the true believer may be the only one who grasps what he says.  Enjoy.

     
     "Your faith will never be weak when you are weak, but when you are strong your faith cannot be strong. To the apostle Paul, Jesus said, "My strength is made perfect in weakness" (II Corinthians 12:9). The only way to increase your faith is through great trouble.  We do not grow strong in faith on sunny days; only in stormy weather do we obtain it. Strong faith does not drop from heaven in a gentle dew; generally, it comes in the whirlwind and the storm.

     Look at the old oaks. How did they become so deeply rooted?  The March winds will tell you. It was not the April showers or the sweet May sunshine that caused the roots to wrap around the rock.  It was the rough, blustering, north winds of March shaking the trees.  The weakest of trees are those grown in the shelter of the greenhouse.

     Life in the barracks does not produce good soldiers. Great soldiers are made amid flying shot and thundering cannons.  Nor are good sailors made on calm seas. Good sailors are made on the deep, where the wild wind howls, the thunder rolls like drums, and the waves smash in repeated succession against the hull.  Storms and tempests make tough and hardy sailors.

     It is that way with Christians. We must expect great troubles before we attain great faith."

     In times of plenty and ease it is questionable whether faith is even necessary, and the longer or more extended those periods of ease and plenty are, the weaker faith becomes.  So also in the Lord's work, it is better to have a man who knows his weakness and casts himself wholly upon the Lord in utter and desperate dependence on Him and His grace, than a confident man who thinks he is strong and completely capable of doing anything, and thus depends on himself alone. 

     Spiritual work is not like physical work, and worldly success is far different from eternal fruit borne for the kingdom of God.  Faith in God must not be confused with confidence in self.  If we were more attuned to the ways of God and what He was up to in permitting our struggles and trials, we would be far less anxious and far more willing that His power might be made perfect in us through our weakness.

In the sufficiency of His grace, Pastor Jeff 

Not Enough

Greetings All, 

     This week's 'thought' comes from a book I picked up at a local "bargain basement" for a couple bucks.  It's by a lady named Tammy Maltby, and is entitled: "Confessions of a Good Christian Girl -- The Secrets Women Keep and the Grace that Saves Them."  It caught my attention because as I skimmed through it I found that she was tremendously honest and transparent and cut through a lot of the religious facades people put on to hide the reality of their human brokenness.  

 

     She speaks of how earnest ('good') Christian women stuggle to deal with things like suicidal thoughts, sexual brokenness, family violence and abuse, broken relationships, divorce and addiction.  And she offers good practical advice about the grace which alone can heal it. In fact, it almost seems like a female version of the book, "Red Like Blood" by Joe Coffey and Bob Bevington (which is also a very captivating and helpful read for the same reasons).

     Although the book is addressed to women, the selection I chose can apply across the board to anyone who has ever wrestled with a sense of inadequacy, or what she calls feeling like we're "not enough" -- an inner sense that pushes us to the driven-type-behaviors we often use (and even justify) in our attempts to mask our sense of lack, or make it appear to outsiders like we're just plain good motivated people.

     I hope you find it helpful. And if you do have a Women's Study Group that wants to go through a book that helps you to take a good, hard, honest look inside, and shoot for healing and transformation instead of reverting to the common forms of religious pretending, it might be a good book for you to look at.  Enjoy.  

     "The entire message of the Bible, as I see it, has to do with how God sees us.  And the Bible has both good news and bad news about that.  The truth is that were not enough -- because we're incomplete and imperfect and weak. Because we're sinful and rebellious.  Because we're supposed to work together and we just can't get along.  Because we need God desperately and we forget that reality on an hourly basis.  We're so inadequate, in fact, that it's downright pitiful.  

     And that's the bad news... Because the truth is we will never be enough.  We're mortal.  We have limited physical endurance and emotional strength and intellectual capability. We're fallible and make mistakes. We need help and encouragement.  We feel inadequate, in other words, because we are inadequate.  God's made us that way.  God created us for relationship, to depend on one another.  He gave us different, complimentary gifts that are supposed to work together like the parts of the body do (see I Cor. 12:12-31). He called us to love each other, to support each other, to encourage each other, to carry each other's burdens -- to be an interdependent community, not a universe of independent superstars.  And He calls us into fellowship with Him too.  It's part of our nature to feel restless and incomplete if we're not connecting to God and depending on Him. So in the economy of God, 'not enough' is not really an issue.  What is an issue is our skewed thinking about who we are and what's expected of us -- when our 'not enough' reality turns into frantic attempts at self-sufficiency...

    But here's the good news -- and it's amazingly good.  Even in the midst of our inadequate, lying, sinning reality, God loves us passionately. Tenderly. Enthusiastically.  With a Father's care and tenderness.  He sees so much potential.  He wants so much for us.  For thousands of years He's been pursuing us, making it possible for us to draw near to Him.  He even sent His Son to save us -- not because of our efforts, but simply because we're His.

    That's hard to understand, I know.  Believe me -- I know!  I still struggle with my compulsive, workaholic tendencies.  I still wrestle with the pain my inadequacies cause me and those I love.  I'm still ashamed to be 'not enough,' and I keep bustling around to rectify the situation when what I really need to be doing is turning to Jesus... 

     Our inadequacies, our failures, our 'not enough' issues are simply beside the point when it comes to the Father's love.  Yes, He has His standards.  Yes, He wants to help us be more like Him.  Yes, He has work for us all to do, and I believe He delights in our hard work and creativity when it's combined with obedience and honest truth.  But even if we never did a thing, our Father would still love us.  He continues to love us when we fail, when we run from Him, when our thinking is skewed and our intentions are all wrong.  Even when we persist in thinking we can never be enough through our own efforts. 

    We must sound so silly as we huff and puff and whine and wheeze and try harder and harder and wallow in our worries.  But if we let Him, He can love us back to sanity.  He'll give us rest.  Even better, He'll give us peace. Remember what He said to the woman with the issue of blood? He told her to go in peace.  He said the same thing to the Luke 7 woman, the notorious sinner who annointed His feet with perfume. And I believe that's His word to us... who try and try and still don't feel like we're enough.  That word of 'peace' means 'nothing missing, nothing broken.'  It means being whole, enough, sufficient.  It means being able to relax, not strive, because we're so confident that we're loved.  It means doing all our work with a changed perception.  An attitude of grateful, peaceful confidence. Because we're His children.  Because, to Him, we are never anything less than beloved."  

 

         As you enter each day, remember the words I often share from the pulpit: "As God's grace-adopted children, we work FROM acceptance, never FOR acceptance."  And that little change makes a big difference!  In fact, maybe a little daily reminder of her advice would be helpful as well:  Begin each day by reminding yourself: I can relax, not strive, because I know I am loved. I am confident of His love.  I am His child. And in Him, I am never anything less than beloved. 

 

To the further glory of His grace, Pastor Jeff

Come Down, Lord!

Greetings All,

Over a two decades ago someone gave me an extraordinary little book. It was only fifty-six pages long, yet it ended up being one of the most insightful little books I have ever read. The author, Roger Ellsworth, had simply written Seven Short Meditations on Revival from Isaiah 63:15 thru 64:9, all of which focus on the key theme voiced in Isaiah 64:1: "O that you would rend the heavens and come down..."

The title of the book, "Come Down, Lord!" is taken from that verse. This week's selection comes from parts of chapter one and two, based on Isaiah 63:15-64:2. Enjoy.

"We are in desperate need of God's renewing and reviving presence. Let us even now begin to cry with Isaiah: 'Come Down, Lord!' Let us arm ourselves with the same arguments he used, and hoist our voices to heaven in such numbers and with such frequency and intensity, that God will be moved to visit us in mighty power. Let us unite our voices to make this a swelling chorus that will constantly bombard the gates of heaven. Let us resolve even now to give ourselves no rest and to give God no rest until the people of God be 'a praise in the earth' (Is. 62:6-7)...

Nothing was clearer to Isaiah that this--God was withholding His power from Israel... The people of God have often heard the world tauntingly say: 'Where is Your God?' (Ps. 42:3, 10; 79:10; 115:2). But it is a sad thing when the people of God have to ask themselves that question. We are happy if we can answer skeptics by pointing to present indications of God's power. But what are we to do when God withholds His power from us and there are no evidences to point out?

The church, in order to maintain credibility in the world, has to have the power of God. She is involved in a great spiritual warfare, and only God's power will enable her to prevail. Human ingenuity and wisdom are simply not equal to the task. Trying to do this kind of work without the power of God is like trying to break huge granite boulders with our bare hands.

The problem, as I see it, is that the church is trying to subsist on her own power. She is relying on her own abilities. Human wisdom can produce many things, and the church is trying to pass these off as the hand of God at work, but the world is not buying it. They still bombard us with the disturbing question, 'Where is thy God?' And if we will get alone and examine our hearts, we will be driven to admit that the many things we are producing are cheap and shabby substitutes for the real power of God, and we will be compelled to cry out to God: 'Where is thy zeal and thy strength?'...

God's people can become dangerously self-sufficient. Is the church today any different from Isaiah's people? Are we really conscious of how utterly helpless and hopeless we are apart from God? Or are we relying on our own wisdom and ability in our warfare against Satan and his forces?

If we are not careful we can think pushing all the right buttons will produce lasting spiritual results. We can reduce the work of the church to shrewd manuvering with statistical probabilities and psychological jargon. We can be guilty of doing the very thing David refused to do--fight in Saul's armour. We can have polish but not power. We need to realize that God can do more in one minute with His power than we can do in a lifetime with our strategies! Oh, that we could see our need of God and get a hunger for Him! God's people need His power... 'Oh that You would rend the heavens and come down.' "

Ellsworth is right. The people of God must display the power of God in and through their lives. If we do not, how can we possibly convince anyone that we are anything more than another merely human outfit or organization?

Yet for too long the church in America (and even moreso the church in Europe) has been content to subsist on mere human effort and worldly stategies often borrowed in full from secular organizations. And the saddest part is that the modern day church doesn't even realize (contra the people of Isaiah's day who at least did realize it) that God's power and manifest presence (in doing that which can only be seen as Him moving in their midst) is often absent from their gatherings and activities.

It's a condition which should cause us to, "hoist our voices to heaven in such numbers and with such frequency and intensity, that God will be moved to visit us in mighty power." When we perceive we are in such a spiritual state, we should, "unite our voices to make this a swelling chorus that will constantly bombard the gates of heaven," and pray, "Oh that You, Lord, would rend the heavens and come down..."

That we may hear that call to prayer, Pastor Jeff