Attempts at Honesty

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5 R’s for 2012 – A Lesson from the Apostle Paul

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We are 16 days into 2012. In thinking ahead to the the rest of the year, I want to choose some Bible verses as a point of emphasis. The passage that comes to mind is found in Philippians 4:4-8:

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (NASB)

Anyone who has been in church for any length of time will have been exposed to this passage; it is quite familiar to most believers. Yet there are some things that jump out at me as I read them now.

We are commanded to rejoice. This is a command which can be obeyed or refused; a choice must be made. To be obedient, I must choose to rejoice. I have been blessed with a relatively comfortable life and compared to many I have little to complain about, yet sometimes I allow those little things to inhibit my ability to rejoice.

The next verse gives the reason why I should rejoice, even when things are not going the way I would like. Paul reminds me that the Lord is near. On the basis of his nearness, I can learn to not be anxious by bringing my concerns to God in prayer. I am to bring those concerns with thanksgiving, sometimes easier said than done.

The result of this will be that the peace of God will protect my heart (emotions) and mind (thoughts). I have the responsibility to bring the things that are bothering me to God and he will exchange the anxiety for peace. This is very cool, but how does it come about?

It comes about through discipline. I must train my mind to focus on what is true, honorable, right (or just), pure, lovely and of good reputation. It is on these things that I am to ponder and focus my attention.

I am generally an upbeat and optimistic person, so much of the time it is not hard for me to do this. But there are times when it is difficult. Paul doesn’t tell us only to do this when it’s easy. He doesn’t indicate that this should be the case most of the time. He indicates that we are to focus on these things all of the time.

War, economic problems, crime, governmental policy, family issues and dealing with people and their issues can easily distract me from thinking on the things Paul lists in Philippians. Along the same lines, the author of Hebrews commands us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and not be pulled down by the bad news around me. We have a choice as to where we focus our attention and we need to choose well.

In summary, here are the bullet points from these verses with alliteration to help me remember them:

  1. Rejoice– rejoice always
  2. Remember– remember the Lord is near so don’t be anxious
  3. Request– Bring your concerns to God in prayer
  4. Rest– Let God’s peace protect my thoughts and emotions
  5. Reflect – Focus on the good things

This takes a discipline that I have yet to master. Yet by following these steps, I hope to look back on 2012 as a year of great progress in trusting God.

What is your verse or verses for the year?

Confessions of a functional atheist

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GraveyardOne of the accusations against Christians is that we have a psychological need to believe a fantasy. In other words, the atheist thinks that we make up a belief in God to provide comfort against the unknown. Our belief in God is like whistling as we pass through the graveyard. It doesn’t provide any real benefit but it makes us feel better.

Honesty (the premise of this blog) requires that I get something out in the open. There are times when I don’t want God to exist. It would be oh so much more convenient if he did not and I could do whatever I want. There are times when I want to be god and I don’t want anyone telling me what to do.

This is the atheist position. The position that does not want God to exist and refuses to see any evidence that would point to God. I see this as more of a will issue than an intellectual one. My intellect tends to go where my will leads it. I often remember a line I heard a long time ago,

“a man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still”

God tells me to forgive, even when I don’t want to forgive. God tells me to love when I would rather hate. God tells me to respect when I feel disdain. God tells me to give when I would rather take. God tells me to value others above myself. All of these commands are difficult and I sometimes do not obey them. In those moments when I refuse obedience, I become a functional atheist; I act as if God does not exist.

Too often we see this in the church. Pastors and elders have to deal with people who write off Scriptural commands with the magic words, “it’s all in the interpretation” or “not everyone agrees with such a literal understanding.” Jesus predicted that some would fall away because of the demands of the Christian life (see Matthew 13:3-9). At one point in Jesus’ ministry his disciples referred to his teaching as a “hard saying” (John 6:60). When you examine Christianity in its entirety, it is sometimes very inconvenient.

We serve a God who does care how we behave. We do not serve a semi-senile grandfather God who always pats us on the head and says, “that’s nice.” We serve a God who demands holiness, a demand so important to him that he sent Jesus to provide for us the means of obtaining holiness.

Every moment of the day, I must choose to live according to my belief or to deny my belief in God. By God’s grace, most of the time I choose correctly and move toward deeper relationship with him. Yet, there are times when in my pride and stupidity I choose badly. When I choose badly, I am then given the opportunity to repent and choose well (1 John 1:9).

I believe in Jesus Christ because he provides the best explanation of the world I see around me. I believe in him because I think that he is indeed the truth (John 14:6). Sometimes, it is a very inconvenient truth and I do not live up to it, yet it remains the truth.

You may choose to disbelieve but please make that choice based on an accurate understanding of Christianity. Too often those who oppose God present a caricature of Christianity, a straw man easily knocked down. The real thing is far more elaborate and far more beautiful than the caricature.

Homeland Security for the Church – The Need to Defend the Faith

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For my generation and our progeny, the church cannot start from the Defend the faithposition that people want religion and are shopping around to determine what religion is right or best. We cannot take for granted that people in the community feel a need for God. The popularity of the writings of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins is evidence enough of hostility in our culture toward God and religion.

The fact that acts of aggression are done in the name of religion does not increase receptiveness to Christianity. The church (using the term very loosely) does not have a perfect record in this regard. The Inquisition and the Crusades are often used as evidence of the danger of religion. Added to this are recent horrors perpetrated by followers of Islam. Homicidal bombers and terrorist pilots have murdered thousands of innocent people in the name of Allah.

In the face of all this, the church is still called to fulfill her mission. Jesus gave the church her marching orders as recorded in Matthew 28:18–20. We are called by Jesus to make disciples. Disciple making is the main verb and main thought of this commission. We make disciples by going, teaching and baptizing.

Because boomers are suspicious of religion, it is not enough for the church to know what we believe, it is now more important to know why we believe it. We not only need to know the truth, we need to understand why it is the truth and why Christianity offers the best explanation of man and his world.

We, as the church, must stand up to the false dichotomy between belief and reason that permeates western culture. This dichotomy is illustrated by a bumper sticker that a coworker proudly displayed saying, “If you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church.” The implication is that there can be no overlap between thinking and believing.

Many churches do a fantastic job of teaching the Bible and how to live according to Biblical principles. Yet too often, believers are not trained in how to explain their belief to their neighbors. We often do a poor job of training our young people about how Christianity stands out in the marketplace of ideas and competing world views. Because we do not explain to our young people that there is a rational basis for belief in Jesus Christ, because we do not train them about the implications of belief or non-belief, because we do not prepare them to encounter hostility and pseudo-intellectualism, many of our young people fall away and reject Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Peter challenges us to

“sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15 NASB)

We take national security very seriously. In response to the September 11 attacks, America developed an organization called the Department of Homeland Security. In the same way, the church should have a renewed interest in homeland security for the church. We are under attack, we have an enemy that wants to destroy us and we need to know how to respond.

This is a call to church leaders to train themselves to defend the faith and contend for the claims of Jesus Christ. We need to offer answers to those who are searching for them. The Sunday sermon, as important as it is, is not enough to sustain belief. Other opportunities for discussion and training need to be provided.

We also need to provide a forum for questioners to find answers. There are answers to the questions that they are asking, but too often the church shames them into silence.

If we do not raise up a generation of defenders of the faith, those of us in church leadership will one day have to give an answer to our Lord as to why we did not.

Question: What is your church doing to provide answers to hard questions and train people to defend their faith?

Thoughts on Prayer inspired by C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis ends his essay entitled The Efficacy of Prayer in a collection entitled The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays with these words:

“If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.”

School PrayerIn the article, Lewis builds a case that while there is mystery in prayer, one thing we do know is that prayer is not a means of tapping into a genie god that gives us whatever we want. By its very nature, a petition is a request of someone, a request that can be granted or denied based on the wishes of the one being petitioned. We are not guaranteed the request and a denial does not indicate a lack of love on the part of God.

To support his point that a denial does not indicate a lack of love, Lewis uses the example of Jesus in Gethsemane. In Matthew 26 and Mark 14 we find Jesus praying to avoid drinking the cup of God’s wrath on our behalf. He feared the suffering that was to come, yet was resigned to follow the father’s will. It was God’s will that Jesus would go to the Cross to accomplish the Salvation that was planned from eternity.

God, in his mercy and wisdom, does allow us to participate, through prayer, in the accomplishment of his will. In the course of that accomplishment, we are sometimes privileged to see answers to prayer that defy explanation as coincidence. Often it is those who are young in the faith, parying with innocent boldness, who see the most striking answers to prayer. Their immature faith is nurtured by these prayers.

In contrast to this, it seems that mature Christians are sometimes stretched in their faith by trials when it seems as though God is unwilling to grant their petition for relief. God, in his wisdom knows where the believer is and what he can handle (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). Paul prayed three times to be relieved of his “thorn in the flesh,” a petition that was not granted (2 Cor. 12:7). In the case of Paul’s thorn, God thought it necessary to allow it to remain to increase Paul’s understanding and dependence upon the grace of God.

I am encouraged in that when I find myself in circumstances which seem desperate, and in which God seems to delay in responding, I am better able to remember that I am not abandoned. I can also be confident that God is using the circumstance to build spiritual strength in me.

The desperate posts in the battle can be lonely and hard, but God knows what he’s doing and he chooses well. Why then am I so reluctant to volunteer?

What about you?

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