Why I Am a Christian

Why I Am a Christian

I often ask the question of myself, and am sometimes am asked by others, “Why am I a Christian?” By that question I suppose different things are meant, such as “why am I a theist rather than an atheist or agnostic or pantheist?” And, if I am a theist, “why am I a Christian instead of a Jew or a Muslim or a Zoroastrian?”

These are all good questions indeed. I’d like to take a brief stab at answering them, though, in truth, the question could take many many pages, if not books, to answer.

At one level, and quite a apart from any intellectual ponderings about the nature of things, I must say that I am a Christian because “something happened” in my life and heart back in my teens when I first heard the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ taught in the context of a youth retreat. At a simple level Jesus was presented in such a way that I found myself “inviting him into my heart,” to use the language of that day and time. I was prepared for the message I suppose by some innate sense of God’s existence, and it is true that I did not have any significant intellectual hindrances to believing that this Jesus might actually be there and be alive. And so, when I “asked him into my life” it was not against any serious intellectual objections to the basic notions.  Perhaps in my youthful wanderings through the woods, in dealing with the difficult issues within my family, particularly my father’s drinking, in feeling incomplete and knowing I was incomplete, possibly after having listened to my sister speak of her relationship to God (though I treated her terribly), perhaps even due to some things I was taught in a confirmation class years before – in all of that I perhaps was “ripe” for the message of that retreat.

So, no, I did not first engage in serious study of the nature of the universe, the arguments for the existence of God, the probability of the resurrection of Jesus, or any such thing. Reflecting back now from the standpoint of my own present Christian world view and faith, I would say in fact that I became a Christian because God came to me and did something to me and in me such that believing in Him at that moment came “naturally.” I believe now that He had prepared me for that moment in time in many ways that I, at the time, was not consciously aware of. It is not without significance that there were after that night of “asking Jesus into my heart” immediate and spontaneous changes in me, changes which were also not brought about at a conscious level by me deciding to live this way and not that way, changes not even brought about by any conscious sense of guilt over wrongdoing. It was as if one day I liked the color blue and awoke the next day to like the color red. I seem to have been made into a different person.

I did lots and lots of reading after that initial conversion. The C. S. Lewis science fiction trilogy was perhaps the most significant tool in teaching me about the larger themes associated with my new faith. I also read most of his other books, and many books by Francis Schaeffer, John Stott, J. I. Packer, and the like.

I now refer to that process as “faith seeking understanding.” Often a person comes to believe, really finds himself believing, and yet his or her understanding of what it is that he or she believes is rudimentary at best. And then the lifelong process of filling in the blanks begins.

So, if any of you reading this essay were hopeful that I would provide the definitive argument for the truth of God’s existence and the truth of the message of the New Testament, as if it was first an elaborate study of such things that led me to faith, well, I hate to disappoint you, but it didn’t work that way for me, and this little essay does not provide any definitive argument. However, what I will do now is answer simply and  rationally the questions first listed above as clearly as I can, from the very biased standpoint of one who believes already, and knowing that full treatment of these matters would take volumes.

Why do I believe in the existence of God? Well, even the question itself presupposes very much indeed. It presupposes some common idea of what a “god” might be in which I or others might believe. By “God” I mean an infinite personal being who exists independently of me and of history and who is not equal to and the same as matter and energy.

So, really I am answering the question, “Why am I a theist?” as opposed of course to being an atheist, who believes that there is not in fact such a personal being in existence, or as opposed even to being a pantheist, whose god as far as I can understand it is not a personal being or entity outside of and apart from the rest of the physical/spiritual reality.

For me there is one primary compelling reason for being a theist. Stuff exists. There is by all appearances a universe out there, a planet, people, stars, forces, life, made up of some extremely complex interactive relationships of matter and energy, a good deal of which we don’t understand.

Though I do not believe that the old argument of “first cause” is necessarily “proof” per se, it is impressive to me nonetheless. From where or what or whom did all this stuff come? How did it come to be? Because it seems that causation is a primary attribute of space time reality (every event seems related causally to a prior event) it does not make sense to me that there has never been an initial first cause, a true beginning imposed from the outside of the space time causal universe. Stuff is there and its bare existence demands our attention. How did it get there? So, to me, though it is not watertight as a formal proof, the explanation that there is a personal infinite God who created all things from nothing strikes me as extremely reasonable, and more reasonable than all the various other explanations as to the origin of the universe.

That fact that our universe is by all appearances ordered, that there is a correlation between its order and the workings of our own brains, i.e., that there are “rules” or “laws” which determine or at least describe much of its workings and which can be discovered and understood by us, that there is an aesthetic correlation between ourselves and our brains and this external world such that we find it to be “beautiful” – all of this argues to me for the existence of a rational and creative God who made both the universe and us as human beings. In other words, given the universe as we understand it, and ourselves as ones who have the capacity for understanding it, the existence of a rational and infinite creator being seems to be credible; it fits the evidence well and explains much; and it correlates with our own rationality and creativity as beings.

And when I look at human beings all over the world, people from every sort of ethnicity, race, and cultural background, I am amazed to find several common threads. All people everywhere have an innate sense of there being this certain quality or attribute regarding human behavior which we might call “right” and this quality or attribute of behavior that we might call “wrong.” Now, one person’s right may be another’s wrong, yet, everyone everywhere has this sense that there is a right and there is a wrong. Even people who say otherwise are betraying themselves. For they believe that their belief, that nothing can be called right or wrong, is, well, right, and that the beliefs of people who think that there is a right and a wrong are, well, wrong. So, there seems to be within the human species a universal sense of the ultimate moral nature of human life. I have tried hard to understand how it could be that such a universal moral sense could itself have been part of the process of natural selection; that is, that there was to our species a beneficial aspect to our brains being this way and not another way. And yet it seems unreasonable to me that all of the incredibly complex anatomical and biochemical and hormonal aspects to our neurological and endocrinal systems – all the stuff that has to be in place for us to have this complex moral sense – “fell into place” and was selected out in the relatively short time of the development of the human species from the non-human species. And if we argue that this “moral” sense is simply passed down environmentally and culturally, we are still left with the fact that it has either been passed down from the very first human beings, which begs the question of how they stumbled into this sense, or we are left saying that different peoples have all “developed” this sense independently in isolation and then passed it down to their forbears, which begs the same question eventually. It seems to me that this moral sense is “innate” and part of the package, part of the nature of the human species. And it rings true to me, and makes more sense as a rational explanation, that this moral sense reflects a deeper and more foundational moral sense “underneath” it and built both into the fabric of the universe and into the fabric of our natures. And so, as an explanation, the notion that the world was created by a moral being whose nature in some way we reflect makes sense to me, and seems more reasonable than the alternatives.

I would say the same about the universal innate human sense that there is such a thing as objective truth. Oh I know that this idea is passé in these “postmodern” times, and there is no doubt that the long term impact of pluralism and secularism and consumerism have trained us in the affluent western world to have a more relativistic feel for the nature of things. But try as we may we cannot escape the box we’re in. Even postmodern thinkers think they’re right about there not being ultimate truth. Even politically correct intellectual do-gooders cannot get around the fact that they think they are right when they say either that all is perception and that everybody must be free to follow his or her own personal truth, none of which can be said to be better or superior than other truths. I have never met people more passionate than those who are committed to the “truth” that there is no truth to be committed to. And so, as I step back, and look at the universal human sense that there is in fact a “truth” to be known and discovered, well, the notion that there is a rational being who created us and all things – and that there is such a thing as truth and such a thing as non truth – well, this just makes sense to me, more sense than the other potential explanations.

I am also impressed by the almost universal sense amongst peoples of all tribes and nations, of all races and ethnicities, that “something or someone is out there.”  Something about us as human beings seems always to be leading us to think, imagine, hope for, believe in, or fear the existence of a god or gods of some sort. Atheism has never seemed to come naturally to human beings. There is indeed this almost universal “religious” sense pervading our species. Yes, it finds expression in many diverse and contradictory ways, but people everywhere, except of course in Europe and California, seem to believe that there is a god out there. I have to ask myself why. What best explains this innate human sense? Is there a religion gene? Can it be argued that at the deepest level of our brain anatomies and chemistries (and of course as a result of time and chance), that in our development as a species those individuals and groups whose brains by chance and mutation have been altered physiologically and anatomically to produce this religious sense have won out - that this characteristic has proven to offer survival advantages such that this mutated branch of our lineage has become more successful, such that those other individuals and groups who did not had these characteristics have disappeared and died out?  Well, anything is possible I suppose. But it makes more sense to me to believe that we human beings are created by God to reach for Him, to know Him, such that all human beings have always attempted to do just that, believing in God or gods of all types, yet all believing in some being who is pout there and responsible for our creation.

But this brings me now to another level of belief, if you will. Even if there is a creator God who has a rational, creative, and moral aspect to his being, there are many alternative takes on who or what this God is like, and what, if any, his or its relationship with the created order is like.

Once again, when I look around me, when I sense and feel (as much as I can bear to) the reality of human experience, the story of the Bible rings true as to its explanatory power. For when I look around I see this incredible mix of good and of evil, of beauty and of ugliness, of courage and of cowardice, of faithfulness and faithlessness, of love and of hatred, of honor and of dishonor. It seems that every person is a mix of all of these attributes. Most of us feel this mix within ourselves as well as see it around us. Yes, it is possible that we have evolved in ways that seem mutually contradictory, that the selection out of certain attributes for advantage in one area of life brings disadvantage in another. But the story of Genesis 1-3 rings more powerfully true to me, a story of noble creatures created in the image of a good and holy God, who have themselves fallen into rebellion and been cursed with an inability to regain or reclaim that which has been lost. This story explains both our nobility and our pettiness, our capacity for love and for hatred, our love for life and disregard for it, all at the same time. We know how hard-wired we are, not just for good, but also for evil. Most of us know, and fear, what lurks inside. And so the basic story-line of “creation and fall”squares with our common experience of the human race and the workings of our own inner person. It rings true. The world, it seems to me, is very much like a world created and fallen according to the story-line of the book of Genesis.

But several faiths claim these chapters as their own –the Jewish first of all, the Christian, and the Muslim. So why am I a Christian rather than a Muslim or a Jew?

The answer to this question rises or falls on the question of the validity of the New Testament account of Jesus of Nazareth. For, if this account is accurate and true, and particularly if it is the case that this Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily from the dead, then it is most likely also the case that what Jesus is reported to have said about himself and about the kingdom of God is also true.

As a Christian I am struck, even stunned, by the many ways that the life and story of Jesus seem to be fulfillments of ancient Jewish prophecies. I could name many of these. But this is nowhere more the case that in the accounting in Isaiah 53 of the “Suffering Servant,” who, it says, “bore our iniquities and carried our sorrows.” When I read the gospel accounts of the arrest and trial and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and then read Isaiah 53, it is as if I am reading the very same story. The detailed similarities are stunning. In fact, did I not know better, I would be tempted to wonder if perhaps the gospels came first and Isaiah 53 came after. Or, I would be tempted to think that the story of the last day of Jesus’ life, and his death and resurrection, was part of a vast conspiracy to make people believe that Jesus was the one spoken about hundreds of years earlier in Isaiah 53. Can you imagine who would have to have been involved to pull off that conspiracy? Had the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day themselves accepted Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah 53, and if they were of ignoble character, one can almost imagine such a conspiracy succeeding. But they didn’t believe that to be the case about Jesus, and they were not of ignoble character. It just seems credible to me that the arrest and trial and suffering and death and resurrection of Jesus looks like fulfillment of the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 53, because, well, it is the fulfillment, and that Jesus was in fact the one foreseen in Isaiah 53.

And I am drawn to the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, and to the suffering Jesus, and yes, I do believe that He bore my iniquities and carried my sorrows.

But none of that suffering would have mattered if Jesus had stayed dead. Yes, it would still be a story filled with pathos that would draw people into it who had themselves experienced suffering as part of the human condition. But the suffering as a suffering in the place of others, a suffering which bore iniquity and sin for others, that part of the story would have had no objective reality or meaning unless the subsequent resurrection were true. For, historically speaking, the same accounts which have Jesus telling the disciples that he would die as a ransom for many also have him telling them that he would rise from the dead. So how could one accept the notion of Jesus suffering in the place of others without accepting the notion of him seeing life and the light of day on the other side of that suffering, as both are part of the prophecy in Isaiah 53 and both are prophesied by Jesus himself.

Ultimately, there is no way to separate out the Jesus who said he would rise from the dead from the Jesus who said he would die as a ransom for many or the Jesus who told his followers to love one another. Those that try to pick and choose from the New Testament accounts those specific things that they think Jesus may have actually said, or those events which they think are more likely than the other events, well, these are on a fool’s errand and are revealing more about themselves than about Jesus. There is no historically credible way to “get behind” the gospel accounts, as it were, to find the real Jesus back there somewhere. To believe, for example, that Jesus likely said something like “love one another” but did not say “and on the third day I will rise again” is simply to believe what one wants to believe.

It is honorable and fair for the Jewish person to believe outright that Jesus did not rise from the dead and that the New Testament accounts of his rising are fictional. It is honorable and fair for the Jewish person to disbelieve what Jesus said about himself as the promised Messiah. It is perfectly reasonable at several levels and for several good reasons that the Jewish leaders would want to get rid of such a person if they believed him to be bogus. But is neither honorable nor fair nor reasonable for the pseudo-Christian New Testament scholar simply to create his own personal Jesus by picking and choosing what he or she thinks Jesus is likely to have said or done.

As to the Muslim view of Jesus, as much as I understand it, it does not seem credible to me to believe that Jesus was a good prophet and important messenger of the one God but not to believe in his bodily resurrection. For then one has to conclude that either Jesus was just plain wrong about himself, or that he was as a complete lunatic, or that he never said such things about himself at all (which is problematic as mentioned above), and that the accounts of his being raised from the dead were fictional, the latter raising its own set of historical problems as I will explain below.

Again, to me, what we think of as the historic Christian understanding of Jesus (in all its aspects) ultimately depends on the truth of his resurrection from the dead. Did it happen? Is there any corroborating evidence outside of the accounts of Jesus’ early followers that it did in fact happen? Well, as I look at it, there is such evidence, and it is powerful and almost irrefutable.

The disciples, of course, could have said anything they wanted to say about Jesus – what he had said and done while alive, the nature of his teachings, their beliefs that he was the promised Jewish Messiah. They could even have gotten together and cooked up a story about seeing him alive after he had died. That too is possible. But is it likely? I don’t think so.

What seems absolutely historically certain is that the disciples of Jesus really themselves believed that he had risen from the dead. What makes this certain is not simply that they said he had risen from the dead. What makes this seem certain is that they spent the rest of their lives, and indeed, in almost every case, they each gave up their lives, proclaiming and teaching that it was so, and that they themselves had seen and talked with Jesus after his death and burial.

The evidence is overwhelming, historically speaking, that the disciples of Jesus went to their graves believing that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Why would they do that? I have no credible explanation for this except that it was true, that Jesus had in fact been raised from the dead and had in fact appeared to them over the course of forty days just as their accounts say that he did. To propose that the resurrection was not true, but that they all believed it was true, and spent the rest of their lives proclaiming that it was true, well, that itself just does not ring true.

Yes, there is the lame attempt to suggest for example that the disciples had all fallen under a spell, a sort of group hallucination. That is certainly not normal to human experience, though one can suppose that it is possible.

And yes, it has also been suggested that the disciples were victims of their own really strong psychological desires that the resurrection be true, such that their emotional need caused them to believe that it was so. That is possible.

But better to be a grown up about it and just say that they conspired, they lied, and they made it all up. And frankly, that is possible too. Human pride and stubbornness could have been a motive. Human pride can steel people to do all sorts of immoral and stupid things. But is it credible to believe that the disciples would have spent their entire lives, and given up their very lives in often brutal deaths, for the sake of such a lie? It just seems far-fetched to me.

Much more credible is the simple explanation that the reason that the disciples believed Jesus to have raised from the dead is that he was raised from the dead just as they believed. Had they been confronted with the real risen human Jesus, raised to life on the other side of death, then they would have been motivated not only to tell everyone about it, and to believe and put forward the teachings of Jesus before and after his death, but to die if necessary in the process, for the truth which they knew to be so. The truth of the resurrection makes sense of the rest of the story.

Believing the resurrection to be true is more plausible than believing it not to be true.

Which means, if the resurrection is true, that it is reasonable for me to believe the truth of all the other things that Jesus said, such his claim that he would die as a ransom for many, such as his claim that he was the fulfillment of the Jewish covenant, such as his claim that he was indeed the king that was to come, the messiah.

And if the resurrection of Jesus is true, and happened as Jesus said it would, it means that I am inclined to believe the things that Jesus believed about the existence of God, the creation of the world, about the nature of human beings, and about the historical pattern of creation, fall, and redemption. This also means that I am inclined to believe the truth of the stories Jesus Himself believed to be true, stories about Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah. This also means that I believe what Jesus has said to be true about the future, the future of the universe, the future of the earth, and about the future of his own return. This also means that I am inclined to believe that Jesus has the right to tell me what following him is to look like, and what is right and not right for me as a human being to do and say to my neighbor.

It seems that we have come full circle. Not only are there good reasons to believe in the existence of an infinite and personal God, the creation of the world and human beings by this God, the truth of the basic story-line of the first chapters of the Bible, there are also good reasons to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and working backward, the truth of Jesus as the promised messiah, and working backward again the truth of what Jesus understood about the nature of God and the nature of the universe. In the end it all seems to fit together as credible and reasonable.

And so, for me, all these things added together answer the question, “Why am I a Christian?”

But what happened personally to me 30 years ago when I asked Jesus into my heart is also part of the reason for believing. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, Jesus promised that when people believed in him they would be changed, converted, altered, made different. And this has been happening now for two thousand years: men, women, and children walking down the road, minding their own business, and bam, here comes Jesus into their life and they are never the same. The historical fact of the profound conversions of millions and millions of people all over the world, men and women from every nation and race and ethnic group, itself argues for the truth of the message of Jesus. For he said that such would be so. And so it has been. And it was for me, thirty years ago now, as I was lying in my bed in my house at 6438 Bridgewood Road, Columbia, SC, talking to God, asking Jesus to come to into my heart, then going to sleep and waking up a new person, a Christian.

In Jesus,

Joel Gillespie

Psalm 119:11 - Treasuring Up God’s Word

(Note to we101.com/greensboro readers. This is a second post of this writing. I could get access to my faithandpractice web site for 2-3 days so I posted this on Blogger. I need it to be here in the archives. Forgive the double up)

Today we will look at the third verse of the second stanza of Psalm 119. Remember that within each stanza, each verse (or line in Hebrew) starts with the same Hebrew letter. In this the second stanza each line starts with the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet, “beth.” I wish this could come through in the English but it just does not. Attempts to translate these lines starting with the corresponding English letters, in this case the letter “b,” are kind of lame.

As is my habit I will include each line in the stanza leading up to the present line. Psalm 119:9-11:

9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
10 With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!
11 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

The Hebrew word translated as “stored up” is translated differently in different versions of the Bible. I think the varying translations help give us a feel for the richness of the word. For example, the NASV translates it as “treasured,” the NIV as “hidden,” the KJV as “hid.”

It is hard not to think of the parable of the hidden treasure (Matthew 13:44) when I read this verse:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

This is what the word of God is to be for us, a treasure, a treasure worth more than anything and everything we may have, for in this Word, we find not mere wisdom for living, but the living God Himself.

We get a sense of this treasure in Psalm 19, when after describing the merits of the precepts and law and commandments of the Lord, the Psalmist says of them:

“More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

Back when this Psalm was written it was quite normal that people would memorize letter-perfect all the existing Psalms as well as many other parts of the Bible, along with family stories and such. Not all the people were literate, and they had to memorize the Scripture to have it available to them at all times. It was much easier to memorize back then. It’s not because they were smarter (maybe wiser) but because we are deluged with so much written information it’s always there to fall back upon. People wonder if the ever increasing availability of information on the internet will in time change the way our brains work, making it even harder to memorize.

But the issue in Psalm 119:11 isn’t merely memorizing the Scripture; it is the attitude which we have toward it. Is it a treasure? Do we hide it away in our hearts so that we may turn to it over and over in time of need, as when we are tempted to sin?

It is very hard to go forward with sinning with the Word of God screaming in our minds and hearts. Rather we shove it to the dark reaches of our mind so our conscience can withstand the assault which sin is upon it.

Jesus promised to his apostles that after he departed that the Father would send “another comforter” who would, among other things, “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

That same Helper or Comforter is with us still, helping to bring to mind and heart the Word of God as we go through our lives day to day.

In his letter to the Colossians Paul urged the Colossian believers to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

This was an encouragement to the whole church. The body of Christ as a whole is to make a suitable home for the Word of Christ and for the Scriptures generally. This abiding word, living in the community, provides the basis for mutual encouragement and teaching and admonition.

But nowhere do we see this principle lived out as with Mary the mother of the Lord. After the birth of Jesus when the angels found the baby Jesus and gave testimony about all they had seen and heard from the angelic host, it says that Mary “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”

After leaving Jerusalem and realizing that Jesus was nowhere to be found, Joseph and Mary went back into the city to look for him. They found him in the temple talking with the rabbis there, and gave him a bit of a talking to. His reply was cryptic. “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

As the passage says, they did not understand what he was saying, but he left the city and went back to Nazareth with them.

And Mary? It says of her, “And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.”

Our verse today tells us of just one of the many benefits of treasuring up the word of God in our hearts – “that I might not sin against you.” However we may understand “’sin,” that is, as falling short, missing the mark, or being “twisted” away from our purpose as human beings, it brings harm to ourselves and others, it dishonors God, and it causes others to dishonor God. If it is true, as I think that it is, that we are created to reflect the glory of God and to bring glory to Him, well, sin keeps us from realizing our highest purpose, and it puts distance between ourselves and our Maker. Bridging that distance came at great cost, and we are not to disrespect the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, and, as it were, spurn the Son of God and profane the blood of the covenant.

The Christian is reminded in Hebrews 10 that, “The Lord will judge his people.” As he goes on to say, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

It is much better to be good soil in which the word of the kingdom can live and grow and bear great fruit. When we hide up or treasure the word of God in our hearts we are being that kind of soil.

Such “treasuring up” is much greater than memorizing the Scripture, but it is not less. We need the Scripture in our minds and in our hearts that we may call it to mind and “treasure it,” and thus live by it.

I wouldn’t start memorizing with Psalm 119, but maybe Psalm 1 would be a good place to start.

God bless,

Joel

Psalm 119:10: Prone to Wander

Today we look at the second verse of the “beth” stanza of Psalm 119, Psalm 119:10. I have included the preceding verse eight just to give a sense of the flow of things.

(9) How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
(10) With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!

Have you ever had the experience where one day you are not only striving to seek God, but you are in special communion with Him, and for a time nothing else in the world matters? Those times come less than we may like, but they do come. But then the next day you wake up and your heart is all over the place, greedy for this, desiring that, seeking after fame or money or power.

As the hymn says, “Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”

The way we are to keep our way clean is by keeping it according to God’s Word. But ultimately it is not merely the Word we wish to follow, as if it had some special divine status separate from its author. We wish to keep His Word because we wish to please and love and show our gratitude to Him, to the Word’s ultimate author, to God whom we as Christians know as “the God and father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

If we try to seek God apart from his Word we will wander, perhaps even into dangerous places. If we try to follow the written letter apart from a relationship with its author, we become dried up, legalistic, and just mean and awful.

Just as Word and Spirit go together, so do Word and God the Father go together. As Christians we believe that God is three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so this makes since to us.

Sometimes we feel so dry. Our hearts feel empty. There seems no yearning after God in us. We don’t even care. Other times we yearn for intimacy with God and He seems to be hiding from us.

The Psalmists also knew that feeling. From Psalm 63:1 we read:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

And from Psalm 77:2:

In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted.

The need to seek the face of God continues into the New Testament, as we read for example in Matthew 6:33:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

And similarly in Philippians 3:1-4:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Oh how we yearn for an undivided heart, that we would not only seek the Lord with an undivided heart, but seek him at all times with an undivided heart.

It never ceases to strike me how honest the Bible is, not only about its various “heroes” and their faults, but also about the hard aspects of living faithfully before God. Because of this honesty we can pick up and pray the Psalms as from our own hearts.

I seek you with my whole heart…
Do not let me wander….

People rant and rave about free will. As for myself, I desire that God change my will, protect my will, direct my will, and conquer my will. You see, underneath our “will” lay our desires. (I put the word ‘will” in quotation marks because I don’t know that there is really such an entity. What I do know is that people “will” or “:choose” things.)

Our desires impact our will. We cannot really get down underneath our desires. We can’t really change them by an “act of will.” And so, if we are free to exercise our unchecked and unchanged desires we will not be free, we will be slaves, slaves to our desires and slaves to sin. I for one don’t wish to be such a slave. I desire to be another kind of slave – a slave to Christ.

“Seeking” God is not just a matter of mind over matter, of “willing” or “choosing” to seek God. Yes, we can structure our lives and develop habits that make the seeking of God easier. But in the end “seeking” is a passion of the soul, a longing of the heart, a desire erupting from deep within, and we desperately need God to keep us desiring and longing rightly.

Not only that, but for reasons that have mystified the saints over the centuries (and often the saints who have been of great help to the rest of us), is the fact that though we seek God he sometimes seems to be hiding as it were. I think He tests His children, to see if they will continue to long after him even when He is not gratifying the longing. And in fact, the very longing itself is a sign of grace. We must never let a lack of fulfillment in our longing after God make us indifferent to His word and to His will. We must seek to obey Him and trust our souls to Him even when he seems afar off.

Longing after Him is right and needful. We seem built to “long” after things. ‘Longing” is a deeply significant part of our nature. Madison Avenue understands this perfectly. It wants us to long after stuff. We set our hearts say on a new car, or a new kitchen, or a new set of golf clubs, and  the brain releases chemicals that reinforce the longing. The longing is deeply pleasurable. But is also a trap. As soon as we obtain the thing we have been longing after, we lose the rush. We’re off to longing after something else.

My Christian friends, we need God’s help and power that we would continue to long after Him, to seek him with our whole heart. We need to pray for this grace for one another. At any point in time any one of our number may be slip sliding away, wandering from the Lord, and that could be you, or me. We each need to pray for the other.

The verse says that we are to seek YHWH with our whole heart. That also implies that we are to seek Him with all of our might. Oddly there are Christians who believe that the exercise of all our faculties in trying to be obedient to God is somehow wrong, a kind of “living according to the flesh.” It isn’t wrong. It is required. But as we seek the Lord with all of our being we know that we are being carried along by God Himself. We know that His spirit is lifting us up, giving us strength, empowering our hearts, and giving us the “want to.” And so we give Him the credit - and the glory.

In summary, we seek him with our whole heart, yet we know how prone we are to wander.

I like how Spurgeon puts it. He says, “The man of God exerts himself, but he does not trust himself.”

I think I will close this meditation on that note.

Joel

Psalm 119:9: Keep Your Way Pure

Today we start into the “beth” stanza of Psalm 119, Psalm 119:9-16, the stanza where every line in the original poem begins with the Hebrew letter “beth.”

The first line is familiar and widely memorized:

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.

The phrase “young man” suggests that the writer of the Psalm may indeed be a young man, though that is not certain.

It’s almost like the writer is saying, “How can I keep my way pure?” The answer: “by keeping it according to your word.”

And so, we’re back into the environment of prayer, of personal communication between the Psalmist and God, between ourselves as God.

The “man” in the verse is a man who is moving or has moved out from under his father’s rule. It is someone at the beginning of being “his own man” and “on his own.”

He seems to be struggling with the reality of youthful passions of whatever nature. There is within him a longing for purity, for “cleanness” before God. This young man desires that his “way”,” that is, the course of his life, his “daily walk” in our terms, would be pure and holy.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”

As we peer into this young man’s heart we see a yearning and a longing for walking blamelessly before his God. Yet we also detect fear, doubt, anxiety, and lack of self confidence. I think this particular type of lack of self confidence is a good thing.

In light of the inner passions of life, the enticements of the world, the whispers of the devil, and the false counsel of godless friends, how in the world is a young man supposed to keep his way pure?

It is a great question. Everyone should ask this question.

The answer at first doesn’t seem to satisfy. The answer is quite simple: “by keeping it according to your word.” Part of us may want to say, “Duh, of course, but how do I DO THAT?”

Well, it is not a “duh” for everyone. Many professing Christians go about their lives as if they are not required to be directed by the Word of God. But there is only one path of purity and holiness and blamelessness towards God, and that is the path set forth in His Word. We need to have firm resolution about that. We need to know for certain that there is no other way. Many people, even professing Christians, don’t really believe that.

But Jesus modeled this for us. His meat and drink was His Father’s word. He knew that man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. He fought off the devil’s temptations with the Word of God.

Thankfully we know that by ourselves, in our own strength, we cannot keep our way pure. We know, realistically, that we’re going to mess up along the way.

And we know that We’ve already sinned and rebelled against God, and we already are under judgment, except that His Son and our Lord has stepped in for us, taking upon Himself our sin and guilt, His obedience being  imputed to us by His Father. Thus we are given standing before God.

We are not to be flippant about this standing, or disrespect the cost of acquiring it. We are still supposed to have a deep passion for holiness, a longing to please our heavenly Father, a yearning to represent Him well and a striving to be what we were made to be.

And so we must press on. We seek to walk blamelessly before Him by walking according to His Word.

My fellow believers in Jesus, The Word of God and the Spirit of God work together. The Spirit who renewed you abides in you to strengthen and empower you in your struggle against sin. You cannot keep your way pure without the Spirit’s power.

Nor can you keep your way pure without the Word dwelling in you, for the Spirit uses the Word to transform you. Neither Word without Spirit nor Spirit without Word is healthy or enough. There must be both.

The Spirit needs to the Word in your heart and mind to “work with” as it were. He uses the Word to guide, convict, teach and exhort. The Word without the Spirit is but a dead letter.

The “how” question always seems to tempt us to look for a definitive technique. We are vulnerable to promises of shortcuts. What three steps can I take to remain pure before God? What one thing can I do to jump to a different level? What is the exact day to day “how to” guide that will keep my way clean and blameless.

There isn’t one.

But, we must (we absolutely must) know that the way to purity is through the Spirit of God working with the Word of God in our hearts. We must take consistent advantage of all the means of grace for the Spirit to do His work. We read our Bibles. We pray. We engage in Christian community where we find the Word of God dwelling. We partake of the sacraments which are the Word of God visibly displayed. We let ourselves be open to counsel, rebuke, exhortation. We confess our sins. We read good books that build us up and fill our faith with understanding.

There is no silver bullet, magic pill, or water tight process. It’s the consistent ongoing exposure to God’s word, a word that, like Mary the mother of Jesus, we treasure up in our heart, or as it says later in this stanza, we “store up” in our heart “that we might not sin against Him.”

A couple of years ago some not-very-nice people – probably Russian mafia or a radical Islamic group or a drug cartel (according to the security agents I talked to) - planted a little “trojan” on my computer, a small little program that came in under the radar. I was likely not targeted. They send these out by the millions and they land where they land. I had anti spyware and anti virus software running, but when they send out new variations by the millions day after day the software can’t keep up.

So this little bug landed and sat on my hard drive waiting…..waiting until I typed in the URL to a bank it was programmed to recognize. Then it came alive. It recorded my user name and password as I signed in, and then sent this information to somebody far away somewhere. A little later and unknown to me that somebody used the URL, user name, and pass code to get into my bank account, set up Bill Pay (which I had at that time not yet set up), and sent a check for all but $200 in my account to someone in Texas who was also being scammed. Thankfully I caught it quickly and the security officials were able to restore my money and I think halt the check so the other person would not be scammed. I had to get a new checking account number and all the rest. It was a nightmare. The very Secret-Service-sounding security guy said that usually these kind of key logger trojans self destruct, but not always. We later found a previously undetected trojan, but we were unsure if it was the one that had done the deed.

The point? Well, the Word of God dwelling richly within us is like a little program that can communicate with our conscience and with the Spirit. When we have treasured up the Word, we find that when there is opportunity to sin, the Spirit activates the Word that activates our conscience, and we are able to say “no.” We are able to stay clean. We are able to do the right thing. The Spirit and the Word go together and work together.

Thankfully the Word does not self destruct and we don’t have to wipe our hard drives clean. In fact, the more the Word dwells in us, and the more we see the Spirit at work, the more we build resistance to certain temptations (though others are waiting in line…).

“Father in heaven, how can a young (or old) man (or woman) keep his way clear? Yes, thank you, by keeping it according to your word.”

Psalm 119:8 - Do Not Forsake Me!

Today we finish the “Aleph” stanza of the acrostic Psalm 119. Each stanza has eight verses. We think that the use of the number eight corresponds to the eight words used over and over for God’s word in Psalm 119.

Verse eight says simply…

“I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me!”

As before we kind of need to see this verse in the flow of the stanza:

1. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!
2. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart,
3. who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!
4. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
5. Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6. Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7. I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.
8. I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me!

Verse eight uses the word “statutes” for God’s revealed will. The word “statutes” carries the idea of something engraved or inscribed, set down in stone if you will. It speaks of the binding permanence of God’s word.

We find again the confident expression of personal intent side by side with a deep fear of failure. The Psalmist knows the way of Life. He knows that the man is blessed who walks in the law of the Lord. But he also knows himself. He knows his heart’s intent and desire, and he knows his heart’s weakness and waywardness.

When one person forsakes another he writes him off, leaves him behind, disowns him, and refuses to help him. Our writer knows that unless God is there to hold him up and keep him on the straight path that he will fail. If God forsakes him in the journey into obedience to God, then there is no hope, and no hope of blessedness.

I so deeply appreciate the real-world nature of this Psalm. It speaks to me, yet it also speaks of me. It describes my life – what I am sure about and what I am not sure about, what I long for, along with my certain knowledge that I can never arrive there in my own strength. I deeply want to please God by obeying His word, yet, I completely depend on Him that I may be able to do so.

“Father in heaven, you are very great. May your kingdom come, may your will be done here and now, today, on earth, across the earth, and also in my heart, as your will is done in heaven. I look to you to meet my needs. I seek your forgiveness for all the ways I have not walked according to your word, and I ask for the mercy to extend forgiveness to others who have sinned against me, just as I have sinned against you. Lead me not into trials or temptations beyond what I can bear, and Father, protect me from the evil one who would have me rebel against you and your Word, and bring dishonor upon your name.”

The prayer that Jesus taught me to pray jives with the heart of the Psalmist in Psalm 119.

My Christian friend, only God can give to you the “want to.” Ask Him to every day. Ask Him to provide you with strength to obey His word. Ask Him not to leave you to your own devices. Ask Him not to abandon you. He has promised not to leave you or forsake you; claim the promise, don’t just assume it. Everyday find time to meditate upon God’s work, in the day or in the night, on work breaks, in the car, wherever you are. Flee to His word as food for your hungry and thirsty soul. There is not a thing in your life more important. Quit making excuses. Quit blowing off God. Seek him while He may be found. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day of blessedness. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow may not even arrive.

I would like to make in one final point in closing off the ‘Aleph” stanza. Christians come to the Psalms as it were from different directions. We read and pray them straight up, just as they are, identifying with the Psalmist. We read them as pointing to and being fulfilled in the life and person of Jesus Christ. We imagine our Lord Jesus reading and praying them. He certainly knew the Psalms. The cry of his heart from the cross was straight from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

I can see Jesus my Lord reading and meditating on Psalm 119. We have a hard time imagining Jesus struggling because we think that the only reason we struggle is because of indwelling original sin, which we rightly understand that Jesus did not have. But neither did Adam; neither did Eve. We also imagine Jesus not struggling because ‘He was God.” Yes, I believe that to be true. But he was also fully human, human without the stain of inherited sin and guilt, yet still human. Jesus was tempted, truly and really tempted, as we are, yet more I believe. He was tempted to be a spiritual rock star, to be co-owner of the whole world, tempted to disobey his Father’s will and use his powers to turn stones into bread and break is fast. He was tempted time and time again to abandon his mission, tempted in way I believe that we can barely even imagine.

Jesus depended on His Father’s mercies as we must. All He did and said was from the Father. I have no doubt whatsoever that he sought his Father’s empowering presence day in and day out. He needed His Father’s strength to fend off temptation, which he did, but not alone.

We as Christians give thanks that Jesus fulfilled the life of blessedness as laid out in the “Aleph” stanza of Psalm 119. Because He did, He merited the Father’s favor, and gained a standing that we can share in as we believe in him and attach to Him. Gaining this status and standing was no walk in the park for Jesus however. We need to remember that He learned obedience through suffering. Do we think we won’t have to learn it that way too?

And finally, Jesus, who obeyed his Father to the uttermost, and who never was forsaken by Him in his life, yet on the cross and in his death he was utterly forsaken by his Father, for our sakes. The irony is that the only way those words “I will never leave you or forsake you” – could be true for us was by the Father forsaking His Only Begotten Son, His Beloved Son, who knew no sin, and who in obedience to His Father, became sin for us. The mystery of Jesus’ suffering on the cross may never be understood by us, in this life or the next. But through that suffering we gain acquittal of our sin and freedom from our guilt.

Jesus did keep His Father’s statutes, yet for us suffered forsakenness that we would have standing before the Father, and confidence that we would not be abandoned.

When we pray each day for the “want to,” and for the strength to carry on, let us also give thanks for Jesus who lived out Psalm 119, and remained utterly obedient, even unto death on the cross.

Are you an extrovert or an introvert? Are you okay with that or would you rather be the other?

I am an introvert. However, my two "jobs" or "professions" have forced me out of myself - teaching and being a pastor. This is important if an introvert is to serve and care about others, which to me is important for all human beings. I have learned that introverted people can love others as much as extroverted people can. Extroverted people tend to love being around people, they draw energy from it, and tend to migrate to where people are. Loving being around people and loving people are not the same however, so the extrovert has his own challenges. An introvert tends to draw energy from solitude. He tends to retreat from the crowd. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. For introverts like me the challenge is to be able to get out of yourself and force your care and attention on other people. Practice, and practice only, does the trick. And yes, I am OK with being an introvert.

   

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

What three things do you miss from your younger years?

My long hair, my dog, and my VW Rabbitt, well for starters...  

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Chicago on My Mind

I don't know what it is lately but every time I go for a walk all I want to listen to is Chicago, as in early Chicago, CTA and Chicago "II" mostly, though III is cool too.

Chicago got fused into my neurons back in the late 60's when my brother would put in an eight track before going to bed and just let it play all through the night. I have CSNY's Four Way Street, and The Who Who's Next implanted pretty deeply as well.

I have become ever more impressed by the virtuosity of Chicago the music group, and the manner in which they blended brass and keyboard, electric guitar and bass, and really cool percussion, no, amazing percussion.

I think Terry Kath may be my favorite lead guitarist of the rock era. Just love the way he plays and sings.

I don't know why but their music elicits this upswelling of joy from within me - so much so that as I walk I am just a smiling, and tempted to wave my arms like I am conducting or playing air guitar or air trombone! With my growing grayish hair blown about by the wind I'd probably look crazy as a loon. So I try to keep it at a smile.

On my play list...(though sometimes I just listen to each record right through):

I'm a Man
Beginnings
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
Question 67 and 68
Make Me Smile (the whole medley - whatever its name)
Colour My World
Fancy Colors
25 or 6 to 4
It Better End Soon

etc., etc...

I think the moment of purest joy listening to Chicago is on Question 67 and 68, right at the end of the jazz/pop musical interlude as Kath's guitar joins the horns in the build up to the final stanza, "Can this lovin we have found within us..." Pure rock joy for me.

I prefer the original audio recording but this You Tube Clip ain't bad. 

These guys were amazing.

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Psalm 119:7: Praise Him for His Just Rules

In my morning New Testament Gospel reading today from The Saint James Daily Devotional Guide Jesus replied back to the women who had offered blessing upon the “womb that had borne him,” and said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

Could we find a better summation of the beatitudes of Psalm 119:1-3?

(1) Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord!
(2) Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart,
(3) who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!

When I read those words of Jesus, and the beatitude of Psalm 119, all I can think is, “I want to be that person.”

How many people glance at the Scriptures and their commands and admonishments and encouragements and promises and either scoff or just go their merry way. They see nothing therein to commend God to them, or to lay claim to their own hearts and lives. If we have been gripped by His word and find ourselves looking to it to find Him, we know that this is so because God has already acted to creative this love of His word within us.

In the commandments of God we find love and mercy and goodness rather than a burdensome yoke. The more we read and understand the Scripture in its totality, and see the parts in their place, and find the diversity and variety that add up together to completeness, the more we love the Author of such a word. Behind the words written by men we find the finger of God Himself. Reflected in the words of many and various authors is the beauty, often the terrible beauty, of the God of Israel whom Christians know as  the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Psalm 119:7 reads:

“I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.”

Some bibles translate the latter phrase as “your just and righteous decrees.”

Though lacking in self confidence (Oh that my ways be steadfast…”), and knowing full well that the obedience that brings blessing he cannot conjure up apart from God’s own enabling hand, still he knows that continued exposure to YHWH’s just decrees will increase His own love of and praise for YHWH.

The word of God isn’t some sort of religious/moral rule book by which we order our paths in hope that we might please the deity, or get into heaven, or give us some sort of moral edge up on our neighbor; the word of God reveals God’s heart to us and creates in us awe and wonder and love and respect for Him.

Our hearts lifted up by the word of God we respond not just with action but with praise. In the Christian life all roads lead to worship.

I have found this to be true whether I am deep into the Levitical code, in awe of the majesty of Christ in the prologue of John’s Gospel, considering the big picture of life behind the veil in Revelation, seeing Jesus’ interaction with a needy and hurting man as he walked the shores of Galilee, or pondering our beginnings in the book of Genesis. Wherever I am in the Scripture the Spirit uses the Word to life up my heart to praise.

A life of bare obedience outside of praise and love of God is heavy and legalistic.  A life of worship apart from obedience is hypocritical and vain.

Dig deep into the Word of God and you will find the God of the Word, and you wil praise Him, and you will desire to follow Him unto the ends of the earth. You will be a blessed person whatever comes your way in life. You will bear good fruit in due season and your leaves will not wither.

We are not meant to keep God’s word to ourselves, as if denying Him the praise and glory. As we learn of His saving work and are recipients of it; as we are given insight into who He is in his attributes and character; as we see His love displayed for us in His providential care and also in His loving guidance – all this will cause us to praise Him in the assembly.

Let His word lift your heart today, that you will praise and give glory to Him, and desire to praise and obey Him in every way.