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Jun 2 2012

Does God want you to be happy?


God wants you to be happy! This seems to be the prevailing teaching coming from today’s Christian preachers and teachers. Those who will follow Jesus are promised “a better life” by sincere people.

One of the most often quoted passages of scripture is this one.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

This verse and others are often taken out of context and applied broadly so that people are led to believe that all God wants for them is a life of sunshine and butterflies.

The truth is that your life might get worse, not better, if you devote your life to Jesus. Consider this passage from Hebrews 11. Many people who consider this chapter to be the “hall of the faithful” have evidently never read the whole chapter.

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.  Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword.They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:35-38)

This is a description of people who were sold out to God, they were people of great faith, and great faithfulness. They were not “happy”.

When the great Apostle Paul received his commission to take the gospel to the masses this is what the Lord himself said about him.

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. (Acts 9:15-16)

That Paul would suffer was as certain as that he would take the gospel to the masses. He was not told to expect happiness.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, we American Christians face little suffering because of our faith. In most of the rest of the world suffering is seemingly “normal” for believers. Frequently I read of Christians murdered in some far away country. What is their crime? They follow Jesus, that’s it.

Does God want us to be happy? Or, maybe we should ask “Does God want me to be happy?” The answer is clearly NO!
He does want us to have joy, and overflowing.
He does want us to have peace, it’s a gift from his grace.
He does want us to be content, whatever our circumstance.
He does want us to know and believe that everything we experience as believers are parts of a whole work by him that result in our best interests. (Romans 8:28) Suffering of all kinds is routine and should be expected. (Romans 8:17-18)

You may be asking, “Why would you write a post like this?”. It is a good question and I’ll give an answer. Several months ago my wife and I and others were part of a class at church for new Christians. One of the participants was a young man with a very bad past. He had been a Christian for only a few months. He tearfully told our group that his wife had deserted him, he had lost his job, he was being evicted, and he had no transportation. Now for my reason for writing this post. He was convinced that somehow he had failed since things were not going as he thought they should. He was very unhappy! I explained to him that his relationship to God is not conditioned upon how well he performs. We cannot measure our standing with God based on day-to-day circumstances.

This young man is typical of tens of thousands who have been taught that God wants his people to be happy and when you are unhappy it’s a sure indication you have failed or that God is not pleased with you at the moment. Each of us follows Jesus imperfectly. God’s love is “unconditional”. He is not fickle as we humans are. He does not turn his love on and off based on how we respond. We very often bring trouble on ourselves by making poor choices and acting in ways that are against God’s instructions but we can’t blame the results on God. Even our mistakes, yes, even our sins will be used by God for our good. We most likely can’t even begin to see the good at the moment but we must trust what God has promised. The life we live is a life of faith. Faith says “What God has promised is true no matter what I am presently seeing with my eyes and hearing with my ears. He will do what he promised”.

Dear friend, cling to God with all your might in the middle of your darkest night. When hard times come, (and they will come), instead of questioning your own performance and questioning God’s love for you, rejoice! Trouble in the life of a faith-follower of Jesus is a reminder of his love! You can confidently take God at his word.

May 24 2012

You can’t tell a book by it’s cover


Many thousands of years ago God gave Samuel a lesson about how to choose a leader. Just as Samuel was about to anoint the wrong person God gave him this admonition.

 “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1st Samuel 16:7)

Samuel was using the only criteria at his disposal as a man to pick a leader. He could only judge with his natural senses. Each of us are like Samuel are limited to what we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. None of those or a combination of them were good enough to judge with worthiness of a man for God’s use. Neither are they good enough for me to judge you and your relationship to God.

Obviously, what we see and hear give us some great insight as we observe others. But as God told Samuel, we are limited to the external part of each other.

It’s very interesting that God gave his law, a written code, on tables of stone. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” was one of the ten commandments. He was pretty clear about what he wanted and rejected. Some of the Jews insisted God hadn’t said enough, so they added amendments. They wanted to “see” if someone was observing the day or not so they fixed it. They added about 40 things that were forbidden and under many of those were further additions so that finally there were literally scores of laws, any of which if broken by a Jew make him guilty, presumably before God. They went to such lengths that in their minds Jesus was guilty of breaking the law because he forgave sins on that day!  To add to the confusion, different groups of zealots had different laws about the Sabbath Day. Does this sound familiar?

God says to Christians “Don’t neglect to meet together as is customary to some, to encourage each other…” (Hebrews 10:25) Simple enough isn’t it? Not a lot of rules to be broken. Ah, but along comes a legal beaver with a Wal-Mart suit and he (and others like him) makes it more clear and easier to observe. You must be at “the building” on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and all of the days of the annual “gospel meeting” (and many, many more). Violate any of these and you are in danger of hell, that is according to the zealots.

Once you get to the “building”, God says “Eat the bread and drink the wine together to remember the Lord until he comes. Sing to each other in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs…make melody in your hearts.” It sounds nice doesn’t it? Enter elder Joe Bob Dogooder. He and his ilk insist that you sing only a certain kind of song, a certain number of songs, decide who can stand where while singing, there can be no musical instrument, no clapping of hands, no raising of hands, and no solo singing. Not very inviting huh? Well, I could go on.

Presently there is a huge push back against those of us who teach that sinners are saved by faith. That is that God justifies those who turn away(repent) from their life of self and simply put their trust (faith) in Jesus who died to pay for their sins. God calls it grace. People who claim to be exclusive representatives of God claim it’s bogus and cheap. Their claim is that God needs to see what you are doing and they appeal to James and Matthew as primary sources for their proof texts. Oh, there is Acts chapter 2 as well.

Jesus said something unusual to Nicodemus when they had their late evening chat. Jesus talked about the wind. The wind? Yes. He told this well educated Jewish leader that those who are “born of the Spirit” are like the wind!

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

Being born of the Spirit is not something you can see, like the wind. You can hear it blowing the leaves of the olive trees but the wind is not observable. It makes some folks jittery to talk of spiritual things but Jesus did. A true Christian has been “born from above”, “born of the Spirit”. When God justifies a sinner and makes him his child it is a spiritual transaction. In God’s kindness he has given us some tangibles that point to this spiritual event. Confession is one of those. We can hear words. Apart from the Lord’s Supper, water baptism is the most beautiful illustration of this spiritual birth. As one goes into the water his object lesson says “I am dying with Christ, dying to my old life”, and when he is raised up from the water he is saying by that “I will now live the Christ life, I am a new man”.

God made it very simple. Along comes brother Dogooder again. He redefines the new birth to no less than 5 acts, (or according to some, 6 things). It’s as if God is only a spectator sitting on the edge of his seat waiting to see if some sinner will do all those things so he can say “Approved!”. God doesn’t wonder what a person will do, he knows. Added to his omniscience is the fact that Jesus can “see faith”. He knows what is in the heart of a man before he takes a step or says a word. But we tend to want to only affirm things we can physically measure or monitor. Not so with God!

Here are two contrasting examples of this. The first is from Luke

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.  And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 15:14,15)

Have you ever met anyone like this? I have. Jesus set the record straight. You see, they probably had some of those who observed them believing that, with all their trappings of religion, they were really fine men of God. They didn’t fool Jesus. “God knows your hearts”! It’s good to keep this in mind. What men think is very cool and might impress God, He finds to be awful! Now the opposite example.

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.  And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” (Acts 157-9)

Peter was defending having baptized Gentiles. And, he baptized Gentiles who got the order all messed up. They received the Spirit before they were baptized and were praising God! Peter, like Jesus earlier, set the record straight. God decided that “Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and…believe”. And moreover, “God, who knows the heart bore witness to them…” God knew they had put their faith in Him before a song was sung, before the invitation was given, and before the waters were disturbed. God Knows!

It seems to me a good plan is to stay out of God’s way. Love people, love them enough to tell them the good news, and God will take care of the saving. We have the joy of baptizing them in water and teaching them to become good disciples. Gospel song writer Mark Lowery wrote a song part of which says ‘I catch’em God cleans’em”.

In my view we should stop trying to reduce God’s plan of redemption to a neat little check off sheet as if he has appointed us to grade the papers. God was doing quite well before you and I came along and he can do well without our amendments to his plans. There are millions of people who don’t look like me, sound like me, worship like me, or live like me who might not meet my approval but are some of God’s own dear children. I think it would be good for all of us people of the dust to stop trying to be God. We don’t do a good job of it.

Apr 22 2012

Why Jesus saves


Image “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Yes, God saves ungodly folks like you and me because He loves us and doesn’t want us to perish. He rather wants us to live with Him forever. Of course this is a very brief and elementary statement but none-the-less true. Tens of thousands of volumes have been written attempting to mine the depths of the doctrine of salvation (Soteriology). I will not attempt to cover that ground but I will tell you what I’ve been thinking about today.

God doesn’t save people to make them religious. Nope. It was religious people who demanded that Jesus be crucified. In fact many of those whose voices were loudest were in fact the most religious!

God doesn’t save people so they can go to church. If you think so you are wrong. There are lots of people who go to church as regular as the movements of a Swiss watch and God is offended by them.

God doesn’t save people so they will be prosperous. Do you doubt it? Try reading the New Testament. What about Jesus and his disciples, how much stuff did they own? Oh, then there is the last half of Hebrews 11… If you follow Jesus your life might not be a happy one is a gentle way to say it.

God doesn’t save people so they can be happy. Hmm, how about the great Apostle Paul, or Peter? They were beaten, thrown into prison, etc., etc. Happy? Are you serious?

In my next post I’ll talk about some reasons God saves ungodly, undeserving sinners.

Thinking out loud,

Royce

Apr 10 2012

Dying for Jesus


I am in my fifth decade of being a Christ follower. In those 50 plus years I have heard scores and scores of preachers and Bible teachers talk about the meaning Jesus had in mind when he in three of the gospels in the Bible (Matthew 10:38, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23, 14:27)  was quoted as saying something about his followers bearing a cross.

It is true that each of us who will follow Christ has a cross to bear. What is in question is not “if” Jesus’ disciples are to bear a cross but “what” is that cross? The answers I have heard range from migraine headaches, to mean mothers-in-law, to some physical impairment. I believe the majority view is that the cross Christ had in mind for believers to bear is some burden, something that makes life somewhat more difficult. While this explanation is quite popular it is absolutely untrue!

In the Bible the word “cross” when used as a noun has but one meaning, death! There is not one mention of “cross” in the Bible that has any other meaning. The Roman cross had only one use, the crucifixion of the worst lot of criminals. So, a legitimate question might be, “Royce, are you saying Christ wants his followers to die?” That is precisely what I am saying. God used the Apostle Paul to give meaning to the relationship of the cross to the believer.

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)

Christ does not allow for divided loyalties in his people. He calls us to die for him, every day.

The death of self will, the death of self worth, and the death of self-righteousness are some of the results of taking up one’s cross. Only by our understanding  and appropriation of the cross of Christ can we become the disciples Jesus desires.

The idea is conveyed in many contexts in the Bible. For example in Romans 12:1 and following is the picture of a believer placing his own body of the alter as a sacrifice. Then in Romans 6 there is the beautiful teaching about baptism that pictures a follower of Jesus joining him in death. The one who is immersed is saying “I am dying to my old life of living my life my way and I am being raised to live life God’s way”.

The “old man” does not go down easily. It would be simple if the “old man” we symbolically put to death in the waters of baptism would stay dead. But, we each know from experience he does not stay dead very long. So, the Apostle says,

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:11)

Since we still live in bodies of flesh the old man is not really dead, we must “consider” him dead, or as some translations put it, “reckon” him dead. We must purposefully live as if the old person is dead. And, if we would be true disciples, we must do the exercise every day of our lives on earth. Again, we can learn from Paul.

I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! (1 Corinthians 15:31)

This is what Jesus had in mind when he said these words.

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

One of our greatest mistakes as followers of Jesus is that we give much attention to our “doing” and precious little to our “dying“. My hope is that each of us will understand that until we get our “dying” right our “doing” means little. In a very real sense, only those who die for Jesus can really live for him.