WAS IT REALLY LIKE A ROCKY BOXING MATCH?

I know it’s a popular & understandable way to present Jesus’ death & resurrection in a dramatic way, so I apologize for pouring rain on the parade. 

Sometimes life makes us feel like we’re in a boxing match with the enemy. But we can’t allow our perceptions of life to dictate our understanding of who God is & what He is like.

The idea from which the “Jesus & Satan in the Boxing Ring” scenario arises is what some have called “dualism.” An implication of dualism is that Good & Evil have been battling each other throughout history, & that it is not certain what the outcome will be.

Here's the truth: God is in absolute control of history. This doesn’t mean that we always get what we want, nor does it mean that we always understand what’s happening in any historical process or turn of events in our personal lives. What it does mean is that nothing can ultimately thwart God’s eternal plan.

There are many biblical passages that should give us a basis for understanding how the Living God oversees & guarantees the outcome of His plan for His creation in general & for those individuals who trust in Him. These same passages describe His absolute power & authority over the process & all its details.

Here are just a couple:

Colossians 2:9-15:

For in (Christ) all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form…, and He is the head over all rule and authority…  When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

2 Chronicles 32:16-19

(Sennacherib’s) servants spoke further against the Lord God and against His servant Hezekiah. He also wrote letters to insult the Lord God of Israel, and to speak against Him, saying, “As the gods of the nations of the lands have not delivered their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand…”  They spoke of the God of Jerusalem as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, the work of men’s hands.

The challenge for each one of us is not to just hope & pray that somehow God can rein in the evil that surrounds us & threatens to destroy us.

Instead, it is no simpler than “Trust & Obey, for There’s No Other Way to be Happy in Jesus, but to Trust & Obey.”

A very blessed Christmas season & New Year to you!

I HOPE GOD ISN’T LIKE THAT

A characteristic of our me-obsessed culture is the desire (or should I say the demand?) that God line up with our individual agendas.

It’s not really a new thing, because Scripture gives us a lot of cases where believing this idea has ruined people’s lives. 2 Chronicles chapters 17 & 18 give us a textbook example of how this happens & what can be the effects of it.

King Jehoshaphat had begun his reign well. He honored the Lord in the priorities of his rule, & experienced God’s blessings. However, he gave in to the temptation to do the easy thing by allying himself by marriage with a neighboring king, Ahab, who had a clear track record of not honoring the Lord.

Jehoshaphat probably hoped that God would not mind this unholy alliance.

Wanting to go thru the motions of honoring God, Jehoshaphat & Ahab summoned a large group of prophets to pronounce God’s blessing on a joint military campaign. This group of 400 “yes-men” did so, & when Jehoshaphat complained that he wanted to hear what a true prophet of God had to say, they brought one who (probably with a sarcastic tone) agreed with what the false prophets had said. When pressed, this prophet gave a very dynamic & poetic prophecy about how God had put a lying spirit in the mouths of the false prophets. He prophesied that the 2 kings would experience a crushing defeat.

Although his conscience was certainly troubled by this, Jehoshaphat probably hoped that somehow God’s prophet was mistaken.

When they were preparing for the battle Ahab, the older king, suggested that he disguise himself by dressing in a more common uniform, while Jehoshaphat would wear the royal uniform. Ahab hoped that by disguising himself & exposing Jehoshaphat to the enemy archers, that his own life would be spared even if it the cost of his son-in-law.

Guess who got hit with a “random” arrow & died before the end of the day? The guy in the normal uniform who hoped the prophecy wouldn’t be fulfilled.

“Me-obsession” leads us to hope that somehow God isn’t who He says He is. We should know better. We can hope all day long, but at the end of the day, God is still God. May this conviction about who God is stir hope, obedience, & faith in our hearts, & not a subtle, impending sense of dread about the future.

WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO?

I’ve been teaching a class this week on missions & church planting. I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect the students taking the class came with the expectation that I would spend most of the time talking to them & exhorting them to go & be missionaries & church planters.

That’s not exactly what happened. We started out the week by discussing together the need for a biblical basis for whatever we do in ministry. I began the conversation by asking them this question: “What happens if we do a ministry activity simply because we think it’s good or enjoyable or beneficial, or because we just feel sorry for the people we want to help?” I followed that up with the question, “What happens to the ministry we’re doing if we try to do it without first trying to understand & apply what the Bible says about it?”

Here’s what inevitably happens if we just jump in, come what may:

• We do it wrong
• We do it for the wrong reasons
• We give up when it gets too hard, resources aren’t available, etc.
• We limit our vision & understanding of what God wants to say to us & do thru us

I’m convinced that there is a process, guided by the Holy Spirit, that should take place when any kind of ministry is being considered:

• Theology – what does Scripture say about it?
• Philosophy of ministry – how does what we see in Scripture give shape to our ideas about that ministry?
• Strategy – in specific & practical ways, how do we plan to do that ministry?
• Application – how does it all work in the real world where people live?

 Why take time to get an understanding of what Scripture says? Why take time to pray, think, & discuss about how what Scripture says applies to ministry activities today? The needs are so great – why take to formulate strategy before we go & do ministry? Precisely because we want as much as possible to get the what, the how, & the why right first, according to what the Bible says, before we jump in & start doing something.

We need to wait for the guidance & wisdom that the Holy Spirit desires to give us. He knows better than we ever will the people of the place where we want to do ministry. He wants to purify our motives. He wants to give us the perseverance that we’ll need when it gets too hard.

Of course, there are times when circumstance demand that we just jump in & meet a need. But I believe that most of the time we need to intentionally set aside time to give the Lord a chance to speak to us.

Then we can have a much better answer to the question, “Why do you do what you do?”

POWER FLOWS THRU STRUCTURE

This is an extremely important concept I learned from Dr. David Lim.

Lim is a proven spiritual leader who has served as pastor of Grace Assembly of God in Hongkong & as President of the Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in Baguio City, Philippines. You may have read his book Spiritual Gifts: A Fresh Look. 

One of the pastors in our weekly meeting was having real headaches getting her people to come out to the weekly prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings at the church. When we would visit her church on Sundays, she would announce the service & encourage the people to attend. But rarely would more than just a few show up.

A few months ago we began to discuss this concept of power flowing thru structure in our weekly meeting, & she changed how she did the weekly prayer meeting. Instead of holding it at the church, she asked families in the church to host it on a rotating basis.

To her amazement, the people took ownership of it & really got involved. Now, every week it is a time of rejoicing & effective prayer together. Being an expectant mother, she can’t always be there. But, no problem – it still goes on, & the people are seeing a lot of answers to prayer. They are excited to be a part of it.

Power flows thru structure. Her people are experiencing God’s power because the change in the structure facilitates an occasion where they can more readily be touched by His power & grow together.

Too often we try to get the people in our churches to conform to what the schedule, program, organization, building, etc. requires. But all the time our responsibility is to help them conform to the image of Christ, not to the structure that is in place.

What is the purpose of an organizational flow chart, service schedule, church building, etc?

If it is not serving the ultimate purpose of glorifying God thru the making of disciples in the image of Christ, it may be time to look at some kind of change.

WE’VE EVOLVED PAST THAT

Although I don’t qualify as a trekkie, I do enjoy the old TV show Star Trek, along with many of the series that are derived from it. But that enjoyment is tempered by a line that is periodically recited by some of the characters. “We humans almost destroyed ourselves, but now we’ve evolved beyond that.”

This statement is based on a couple of assumptions. One is that mankind, if he tries hard enough & can change his environment, is perfectible. The other, related to this, is that evolution explains positive advances in mankind’s ability to fulfill his sense of what is right.

I don’t believe either of those things.

Instead I adhere to a couple of very important themes in Scripture. One is God’s ability to preserve His creation in spite of our depravity & sinfulness. The other is that we have a sinful nature & that we do not have the inherent ability to overcome it.

How do we explain advances in technology, social issues, & other developments which have improved conditions in the world? Some have called this prevenient grace.

One implication of this idea is that God works in sovereign ways to protect, bless, & provide for the needs of His creation.

Because God has placed His image in mankind, He has given us the ability to care for His creation. He has also worked in sovereign, often humanly indiscernible ways, to maintain His creation & insure its continuance. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the effects of wrongdoing are erased. We can see these effects all around us. But, for those who believe the Bible, we know that without this aspect of God’s working, the world would be in a much worse state.

I also believe that mankind is a prisoner of his rejection of God as He is revealed in the Bible. In spite of God’s prevenient grace, there are limitations on what man can do. He can’t improve or change what he is in his innermost core simply by changing his environment. That would be like expecting snakes to hatch into birds by moving their eggs to a bird’s nest.

God’s answer to this impossible situation is simple. We don’t need to evolve, change our surroundings, or redeem ourselves. We only need to surrender to Christ, who is our Redeemer. As we experience His work we are accepted, made clean, & transformed into His image.

 I like Star Trek, but it’s just fantasy. I don’t buy the false view that it advocates about human nature. 

WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT EDUCATION

One of the big things we do is teach at a church-based training center which is the first of hopefully many on our island. Why do we have this kind? Because one-size-fits-all training is neither realistic nor effective. This is the first step of setting up what I like to call a “flexible training infrastructure” which makes ministerial training accessible to anyone who wants it. 

For example, the time available for new high school graduates to study is much different than it is for adults who are working & have a family.

Professionals who already have a bachelors degree will be able to study at a higher academic level than those who may have struggled to finish high school.

Also, what about using the internet for making classes & courses available for some who prefer to take part of their training that way?

My point is that if we want to serve students & potential students, we had better be ready to set aside our own convenience & agenda, & be ready to cater to them where they are.

While the analogy isn't perfect, there are a lot of things that can be learned about how to improve education in the US.

A big one is that training (aka education) must fit the needs & desires of those it serves. Education does not serve educators or organizations that hide their real motives by claiming to care about “the children” – it serves students.