Lenses

I love the word "lens" in a Christian context. It always reminds me that I need to see through the proper lens when I am processing things in life. I need to see things through God's lens and not mine or the worlds. His "lens" (His way of seeing things) is the only one that matters in the end, and the only one that is truly correct, and the only one through which I can see things in the true perspective and light.

For example, last night I was teaching the youth group about Paul and how his encounter with God instantly changed his life* (as a follow up to Isaiah's similar moment in Isaiah 6). As I taught we reached Jesus' words to Paul (then Saul):

And falling to the ground he [Saul] heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. (Acts 9:4–5)

As a side note to the main teaching I drew their attention to the fact that Jesus sees persecution against the church (believers, His body) as persecution against Himself. We don't stand alone. When we are persecuted it is to God as if He Himself is persecuted. I referred back to Jesus' words to the disciples before He sent out the 72, "The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me" (Luke 10:16). We are the body of Christ, and Christ is in us and completely identified with us. Even in solitary confinement we do not suffer alone, and we are not alone.

This morning our family was watching a documentary on the Bible and it was talking about the early church and the horrible persecution it suffered for over 200 years. Torture, burned alive, lions, etc. A horrible litany of the tremendous evil of man unto man. The narrator gave religious, political, social and economic reasons for the Roman persecution of the church . . . but stopped at that. I had the girls pause the DVD and told them that no matter the "topic" or hot point the devil uses to stir up people against believers, at the core of it all it is that darkness hates light. The light has come into the world and men love darkness and hate the light. At its core all persecution and hatred of God's people is a spiritual war, driven by Satan and his hosts. I told them that this is why it is imperative to me to know a political candidate's deep and true religious beliefs and worldview lens. There is no way they can truly understand the nature of world events and issues if they do not have (and apply) God's spiritual lenses through which to see it.

I ended by sharing with them that while it is easy to direct our hate at Nero (who burned Christians alive as his torches, etc.), the Bible makes it clear to us:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. (Ephesians 6:11-13)

No matter the person leading the persecution. No matter the person being persecuted as a Christian. The reality of it all is that ultimately it is Satan warring against Jesus. It is darkness against Light. It is Satan and his hosts driving the persecution, and it is Jesus receiving the persecution as if unto Himself. This is the only lens through which we can truly understand it, through which we can truly direct our anger and defense against it . . . and the only lens through which we can find the only true comfort in it—what is done unto us for the sake of Christ is received by God in us as if done unto Himself.

We are not alone. We are the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Darkness hates light. But we are eternally alive in Christ, God's own children and special possession, forgiven, in truth, in light. And nothing can take that away!

* Luke records this encounter as a narrator in Acts 9, and then Paul tells about it in Acts 22.

Son of Sam and . . . You and I

Note: If you have not read the Light and Dark series (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) I recommend you do as a context for what follows. I believe that an understanding of this truth will dramatically affect both our understanding, and our sharing of the Gospel.

A Fox News story today reports that convicted serial killer David Berkowitz, also known as "Son of Sam," said he has "no interest" in parole thanks to forgiveness by Jesus Christ. It reports that Berkowitz—who terrorized New York in the late 1970s, killing six people and wounding seven—will not seek parole during his next opportunity in May. According to the article, he wrote Fox News, “I have no interest in parole and no plans to seek release . . . If you could understand this, I am already a 'free man.' I am not saying this jokingly. I really am. Jesus Christ has already forgiven and pardoned me, and I believe this.”

Now, I recognize that there is a lot of scepticism about prison conversions (I have almost never met with someone in jail who hasn’t said God got a hold of them this time and it is the last, but few have made significant and lasting changes toward God when they are out). I don’t know David personally, but I do know that there is much more to be said, and read, about him and his conversion. He even has a web page where he writes devotionals called www.ariseandshine.org. But, setting any skepticism aside (and in NO way saying what he did was not horrible or that God doesn't think it horrible), and assuming for the sake of this post that his conversion is real, this is a story almost guaranteed to reveal deep down your and my understanding of the holiness of God, the condition of man, the Gospel, and of Light and Darkness.

If you, as a Christian, struggle with the fact that this man will share Heaven with you while your neighbor, who gives to charity and does “good” deeds won’t as of now, you may not fully understand how God sees Light and Darkness. Likewise, if you are not a Christian, and you struggle with the idea of this man being eternally in Heaven and you being eternally in Hell, you probably don’t understand Light and Darkness.

At this point in my life and studies I believe that the major problem and obstacle to our understanding of the Gospel lies in defining good and bad by a moral measuring stick and not by God’s presence in it or absence from it. We must remember that the Bible says that the Light came into the Darkness, and that men loved darkness because of their wicked deeds and so rejected the Light. There are only two kinds of people—those in the Light and those in Darkness, and God’s reign is the defining mark. Colossians 1:13-14 says of God, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The “domain [rule] of darkness” and the “wicked deeds” Jesus talks about in John, Chapter 3, apply to even those family and friends and neighbors who do “good” deeds. I believe we struggle with this because we want to measure ourself against others, and fail to see the vast distance we all are from God and the utter darkness of absence from Him.

I can not adequately explore this in a single post, and I will talk about this more in the coming days, but we must be very, very careful to not fall into the trap of looking left and right to define Light and Dark, and good and evil, instead of looking up to Him. He is the line, He is the mark, He is the litmus test, He is the measure. He is the life. We were created for relationship with Him, and we chose the knowledge of good and evil. WE chose a moral code. WE chose a set of rules that make it possible to live independent of His leading. HE created us for intimate, moment-by-moment relationship with Him and WE chose a path that made us “like God”—able to define right and wrong on our own. We MUST understand, HE is the measure, HE is life, and anything apart from Him and relationship with Him is Darkness and death. It may have the appearance, and even intention of good, but He alone is life. And, so, we come again to that place where “wicked deeds” are not defined by a moral measuring stick, but by His absence where we have replaced His rule with self-rule, and separated ourselves from Him. We will never grasp this if insist on believing good can exist apart from Him.

I know that this is a lot, and that I run the risk of offending people with such a limited explanation, but hang in there. More next time, but until then, may His love be felt strongly by you.
Erick

Light and Darkness, Part 3

I highly encourage you to read Paul Ellis' 8/16/11 post on his Escape to Reality blog called "12 Infamous Examples of Walking After the Flesh in the Bible." This post dovetails beautifully with my prior posts in this series—in which I shared how "darkness" and "wicked deeds" are not defined by our moral measuring stick, but by God's presence in them or not (and how this realization affects our understand and sharing of the Gospel, especially with "good" people). The comment I left on his post was: This is one of the best posts I have ever read. Thank you for teaching and reminding us that even our “good” ideas and leadings, apart from Him, are sin. I have been finding in my recent studies and teachings such an amazing revelation in Jesus’ talk with Nicodemus. When He tells Nicodemus that the light comes in to the darkness but men love the darkness because of their wicked deeds I shared with our church how this applies even to our friends and family who don’t do “bad” things, but even do charitable things and “good” things. Clearly, Jesus defines darkness and wicked deeds differently than we are tempted to do with our moral measuring stick. The conclusion I have come to is that darkness and wicked deeds are anything separate from Him. I really, really appreciate this post. I am going to share a link to it on my blog. I hope that is OK.

Light and Darkness, Part 2

Note: Please be praying strongly this week for this history-cookbook project I am wrapping up. We are very, very close and I am really struggling with the  "closer" (Gospel) page which shares how our region is not a slice of Heaven (it is a wonderful place!), but a shadow of Heaven. Then, last night, Mary Ann and I were up until 11:30 trying to fix a corruption in the file---the first time this has happened, and the night before we were to print proofs. I can't figure out what happened, and yet I know that God is bigger than it all, and that this book will be finished and bless our community, our youth, and glorify God!

Light and Darkness, Part 2: One of the starkest contrasts the Bible presents between the Kingdom (reign and rule) of God and the reign and rule of Satan is that of Light versus dark. The Bible makes it clear that the world is in darkness. Now, anyone that has ever been sunburned knows we have a very big light above us half the day, so something else is meant in the following passages:

Matt 4:12-17   Now when he [Jesus] heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. . . . so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ". . . the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned." From that time Jesus began to preach, saying,  "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Acts 26:15-18   And I [Paul] said, 'Who are you, Lord?' And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. . . . for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, . . . to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

Clearly, darkness is the default condition of man and the world, and clearly He means a spiritual and mental darkness. This ties in to the theme of blindness, also in the Bible describing the lost:

2 Cor 4:3-6   And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. . . . For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

So, just what does God mean by this darkness? It is a critical understanding to understand the Gospel, and it especially speaks to the heart of "good people" (of which I spent many years thinking I was, because I wasn't "as bad" as many around me). I believe the clue to God's meaning of "darkness" comes in John's encounter with Nicodemus in which Jesus (who calls Himself the Light of the World) says to him:

John 3:19-21   And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.

Those who refuse to come to the Light (Jesus) are those who love darkness because of their wicked deeds. But, we all know people who, compared to others, are really "good" people and don't do "wicked" deeds (as long as man, and not God, is the standard). And yet, the Bible is clear they are lost and, tragically, going to Hell. So what are their wicked deeds? Why is the darkness they so love? It is the absence of God. He is the Light. Apart from Him is darkness. So wicked deeds are not just things like murder and drugs and adultery, but any deeds done in the darkness, done from self-rule and not God's rule (hence Kingdom). They are us, loving ourselves more than Him and others, and being our own Lord of our life. That is the ultimate tragedy and trap of the enemy, to get us to think that there is any good apart from God. When we love to rule our own life more than loving God and others and His rule in our life we are separated from Him, not walking in faith, and separation from Him is darkness. A great lie of the enemy is that it has to be "really bad" things, when He is so good that anything apart from Him is bad, and tragic.

I'll write more about this in the next post (God willing), but I encourage you to reflect on it. It is changing the way I share the Gospel and the concept of sin and darkness, and I truly believe that if "good" people understand this they will understand the Gospel better—people who don't do murder and the such and struggle to understand what is so dark about their life. This understanding of darkness elevates our eyes from others around us, and their lives, to Him. Until then, God bless, and don't hesitate to send your feedback. I treasure hearing from you!

Light and Darkness, Part 1

Hello all. No, I haven’t “disappeared”—I have just been putting hours upon hours in to wrapping up the history-cookbook fundraiser we are doing for our youth group, and most of the rest of things have slipped to the side. But, it is close . . . and I am feeling things start returning to “normal” (whatever that is—someone said the other day that “normal” is a setting on a dryer and all the rest is life . . . )
    With that said, as a “sub” series in the running study I am teaching on the Kingdom of God (which is focusing on the present-day, “breaking in” aspect of His Kingdom—as opposed to the place Heaven, or the future Kingdom reality) I have been doing a shorter series on the stark contrast that exists (and should be evident) between the two kingdoms—God’s reign and rule versus Satan’s. The Kingdom of God, in the present day sense, is the reign or rule of God in a situation or person. Jesus said if He cast a demon out of someone the Kingdom of God had come upon them. He would heal a sick person and use it to talk about the Kingdom of God, and Colossians 1:13 says that when we are saved we are taken out of the rule/authority of Satan and into the Kingdom of Jesus.
    When God comes in to a person or situation the contrast should come to be stark because His rule has just replaced Satan’s, and their two hearts are very different. Jesus came in love that we might have life (eternal life begins at salvation), and have it abundantly, and He left us access to His joy and peace and indwelt by His Spirit which produces such things as love and kindness, etc. Satan, on the other hand, is by Jesus’ words a thief who comes naught except to steal, kill, and destroy. When God’s power comes against Satan’s, God’s is always superior—just ask Pharoah’s magicians, the demonized man in the tombs, or Simon or the woman with the spirit of divination in Acts.
    Unfortunately, in Western Christianity, the world seems to rarely see such a stark contrast between itself and God’s Kingdom, and I think that one of the reasons is that we try (and our culture permits us) to live at the same time with the security of Heaven, and the pleasures, values, and priorities of earth—and we often have little more respect for the authority and truth of His Word than the scientists do who mock it (hence our faith is weakened). Thus we are powerless, His voice is quieted, His Spirit is quenched, and all the world says is different about us is that they have Sunday morning off and we don’t. For the most part, Western Christianity is a far cry from those in Acts who “turned the world upside down.”
    I want to begin in the next few posts to talk about one of the stark contrasts between God’s Kingdom (reign and rule) versus Satan’s—the stark contrast between Light and darkness (and what God means by those two words). I think that it will really help us to better understand why a “good” person can go to Hell, and how we miss God as the mark of all that is good. I encourage you to follow this along, I think it will bless you. Until then, may God pour His favor upon you.

Darkness and Light — Part I

Yesterday we went to the east side of the Pinnacles National Monument with our youth group. It was a really special day. We got there a little after 10 am, and then hiked up through the natural caves created by large rocks covering parts of a canyon. At the top we stopped and did a little study by a small reservoir and then came back down for lunch and heading home.

At the top, for our study, I began by asking the youth what they could turn on in the dark parts of the cave to help them. The answer was their flashlights, or "light." I then asked what might happen if they walked in the dark without their light and we came up with answers like falling, getting hurt, getting lost, dying, etc. I then asked them, as we sat out in the beautiful sun, to turn on the dark. The blank looks said it all—you don't turn on dark, you just remove light and what is left is dark. Dark is the absence of light. Remember that for what follows . . .

When Jesus came Matthew 4:12-17 tells us He fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy that the people who live in great darkness have seen a great light. In Luke 1:78-79, Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, filled by the Holy Spirit, prophesied, "because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." [boldface is mine]

I asked the youth what the land was like when Jesus came, and the answer, according to the Bible, was that it was in darkness. So, I asked, does that mean the sun wasn't shining? Obviously, the answer is "no." This is a description of spiritual darkness, and based on what we talked about to start—darkness is the absence of light. Who is the light of the world? Jesus. The people lived in a spiritual darkness, absent of God (they had plenty of religion, just not God).

Light and dark are big words in the Bible. In the English Standard Version there are 88 different uses of a variation of the word "light" or "dark" in the Gospels, alone—and almost all of them have to do with light in the sense of illumination, not weight. If it is true that darkness, in a spiritual sense, is the absence of God, then we would expect to find Hell described like that. Sure enough, in multiple places, it is the place of "outer darkness." To the contrary, if God is light and light chases away darkness, then we would expect to find Heaven a place of tremendous light. Hence the words of Revelation 21:22-25, "And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there." [again, boldface is mine]

So, darkness is the natural state without the addition of light. When we walk in darkness we get lost, hurt, and even die. This is the condition of man until the light comes in and shines in the darkness. I'll talk more about darkness and light and walking in them in the next post, but for this one simply reflect on the fact that, absent of light there is darkness. It is the natural condition. You don't need to do anything to make it dark. You do need to apply light to remove the darkness. So many people who don't know Jesus seem to believe that they are on a road and one day they have to choose Heaven or Hell, God or not. The reality is that all are on the road to Hell. It is not one we choose. It is our natural path. We are all absent of God and in the darkness. We must choose to apply the light to get out of the darkness, and that light has a name. It is not some mystical idea of "light" or "God." It is Jesus who said, "I am the light of the world."

Marvelous Light . . .

We had a wonderful day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium today. It was their homeschool day and it was free to homeschoolers, with even some special events set up for us. I stand in awe of the intricacy and beauty of God's creation. He is truly awesome and wonderful and, obviously, very creative! As Bethany and I looked at one rock formation covered in different colored plant life and creatures I told her something to the effect of, "There are people who think that all of that is an accident. I used to be one of those people. I used to think that this all evolved from some chance life that somehow kept changing and reproducing to become all of that."

I praise God that He has taken me out of darkness and in to His marvelous light. I now stand and look at these things and wonder how I ever could have been so blind and foolish as to think that it all was an accident. There is no way fathomable by an intellectually honest mind that all of that could have come about with intelligent design, and without the guiding hand of a maker.

1Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Thank You so much, Lord! I can see!