Christianity – Page 5 – LOVE | ACCEPT

A House Divided

The God I Never Knew by Robert Morris

Pastor Robert Morris adds to growing library of works about the often misunderstood and sometimes forgotten third member of the Holy Trinity. This book is his attempt to clear away some of the mystery and confusion that surrounds God in this person. This volume succeeds wildly on one level, but struggles to find its footing on another.

The first half of the book having to do with the reality of the Holy Spirit and His work is a good addition to the growing attention the Spirit is receiving. It is scriptural and doctrinal, and does a superior job of presenting the reality of the Spirit to a church that is desperately in need of an outpouring of the Spirit’s power. In addition to the fine explication, Morris applies the truths to our daily lives in way that makes us desire more and more of the Spirit.

Sadly, the second part of the book doesn’t hold up the expectations set out in the first. After adhering close to the Evangelical median in his discussion of the reality and work of the Spirit, Morris tips into a scattered series of chapters about separate Baptisms in the Spirit and the miraculous gifts. An extensive presentation of these topics is beneficial to have, but the way in which the author strikes, fires off an anecdote and then moves on is less than satisfying.

Inconsistency aside, The God I Never Knew can serve as a fine introduction to the Spirit or a reminder of the power that He brings to the believer. Some will find the theological diversions unnerving, but understanding the doctrines contributes to the growth of all Christians.

I’m grateful to WaterBrook press who supplied this copy for review.

Learning to Kneel-One

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;*

If you have ever paddled the quiet waters of a remote lake, gently placing the blades into the water so as not to churn the stillness around you…

If you have ever chanced upon the grandeur of a mountain vista or a verdant valley or the deep crimson of a desert sunset and found yourself quietly absorbing the beauty…

If you have ever held a newborn, warm and taking his first few breaths, and had no words to utter…

… you are familiar with the feelings that overtake you as you truly enter the presence of the Living God.

Many a sanctuary this coming Sunday will be filled, not with awful, prayerful silence overwhelmed by the presence of God, but the noise of a hundred casual conversations that grow slowly louder as more of the brethren enter the room. Bibles will remain closed, guitars will be tuned, and children will play.

As if God will appear at the appointed hour, like the train from Bakersfield, and all we need to do is to be there to meet Him.

Reverence is the first lesson in learning to kneel. This requires a change of attitude and a soul attuned to the Omnipresent God rather than the culturally popular Compartmentalized God. My next post will begin here, unpacking the twin threads of omnipresence and reverence and noting how a heightened awareness of both can radically change our times of worship. This coming Sunday however, enter your sanctuary or meeting room and try sitting quietly, making yourself aware of His enveloping presence. Pray for the service. Pray for the visiting family sitting behind you. Pray a Psalm. See if others follow your lead as the moments tick by toward the first notes of a song. See if your preparation hasn’t brought minutely closer to the throne.

Grace and peace to you.

*Psalm 95:6

image Joshua Conley

Psalm 104–The Beams of His Upper Chamber

He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. (Psalm 104:2-3)

Feeling the rays of the sun upon our face is one of the simple joys we take for granted. The warmth that brings rejuvenation, a reminder that we are alive. It relaxes us and reminds us of our toil while inhabiting this mortal coil.

The fragility of our skin in the sun’s rays is also a reminder of the source of those rays. We cannot stay long in even the mildest weather as the unseen wavelengths do their work on us. As the beams of His upper chambers strike us our façade, no matter how thick, we are reminded of how His holiness envelopes us. We cannot hide our failings in the light and we are brought to confession and repentance.

Bathe in the light.

Grace and peace to you.

image Roger Foo

Psalm 103–So Great Is His Love

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. (Ps 103:8)

Of all of the great promises in Scripture, this stands out for those who only see God in terms of His wrath. For many within His people and many more who still stand apart, the image of the Holy Father is not one of love, but one of a God of vengeance, sweeping His eyes east and west watching for any infraction that might be an opportunity to visit retribution upon their heads.

While we are wrong to discount His anger at the ways in which we treat one another upon His creation, we also err when we see His holiness only in terms of righteous wrath. God is patient, demanding holiness, but teaching rather than terminating. When you live with the constant fear of failure and its outcome, the fruit of joy is never harvested in your life. Many Christians have followed this path, living their entire lives with a very narrow understanding of God’s character.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (vv 11-12)

This unmatched, vast and measureless forgiveness is one of the prime character traits of God. Far from the hair-trigger vengeful God of lore, He desires a loving relationship rooted in love much more. When we look to the cross, we don’t see charges waiting to held against us, we see a fresh start that is refreshed by our prayers of repentance and our journey toward greater and greater holiness.

Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, O my soul. (v22)

Grace and peace to you.

image Ministerios Cash Luna

Psalm 101–Eyes on the Faithful

My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me. Ps 101:6

The psalmist introduces a small group of psalms (101 – 110) that concentrate the larger themes of the entire psalter. Arranged concentrically, both 101 and 110 speak to the devotion of the king to God. He pledges to arrange his kingdom on the principles of the Lord and to reign in righteousness.

I will walk in my house with blameless heart. (v2)

I will set before my eyes no vile thing. (v3)

Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; (v4)

Faithfulness to the Lord begins with separation from the world. Dwelling in the muck does not leave you spotless. While we will reach into the mud to pull another to safety, it is not meant to be our dwelling place. We will spend time with the unsaved, but they will not direct our lives. When blame enters our heart, we will confess and repent.

Grace and peace to you.

image WeiterWinkel

Average Joe Finds the Updraft

Average Joe by Troy Meeder

You won’t find but a handful of web sites devoted to the comings and goings of the average guy. Blogs, books and the media do not celebrate the dad who works all day and then coaches the kids at night and then does battle with his lawn on Saturdays. No paparazzi track their every move and no one votes via text message for the next “American Average Guy”.

And yet, it’s the ordinary guys that make the world work, socially and spiritually.

Troy Meeder invites us into the world of the average guys who have enormous and often unrecognized impact in Average Joe. He builds the book on the notion that God uses average guys for extraordinary works, paralleling the biblical men who stepped out of unsung, ordinary lives ( the fisherman, the waiter, the farmer ) with their modern counterparts who leave their marks on the lives of others while remaining in the background, as far as society is concerned.

Average Joe would have been ideal material for the Promise Keepers movement in its heyday. Meeder encourages Christian men to recognize that their status needn’t be governed by the categories of secular society, the big house, big car and the corner office. Instead, he says, what we are in the eyes of God is measured by how closely we live out the life that He outlines for us. It is a life in which we enrich others, not by what we can do for them in worldly terms, but rather, by what we leave with them that enables them to do the same for others.

If Average Joe only serves to initiate conversation among men as they see themselves or their mentors in the vignettes, it will be a success. If the pages help to open the eyes of a man who is driven to “be somebody” in order to have a Spiritual impact and to help him to see the power of his ordinary devoted life, the ripples will have effect long into the future.

I’m grateful to Multnomah who provided this copy for review.

A Crash of Christians

Unleashed by Erwin McManus

Domesticated Christians are far too willing to abdicate the battle for the soul of the world. Civility focuses our energy on all the wrong places. … In contrast, Jesus calls us to a different way. He tells us this is a battle of kingdoms. McManus

Activist pastor and thinker McManus is never shy about emphasizing a wild and untamed Christianity. He is less concerned with church structures, the recitation of creeds or spending all of his precious moments of life arguing theology. Instead, he sees in Jesus a Lord calling into followers into dangerous territory that is fraught with potential pain and even loss of mortal life, in order to reclaim it from the corruption that beset it in the Garden. Faith for McManus is not to be lived in the safety of the sanctuary while the world dies a little more around us. Rather, we are to be following our Lord into the battle for souls and the ground to extend the kingdom.

Unleashed is a repackaging of McManus’ earlier book The Barbarian Way. It was great read in its original form and the additions and edits in its new form make it appealing to reread. The subtle changes in the cover and the text appear to be aimed at opening up the book to more than just the men that the original title appealed to. McManus’ daughter has grown up over the years and her appearances in the book also show that the barbarian heart beats on both sides of the Christian family.

Pastor McManus doesn’t write Unleashed as a prescriptive guide to changing your life. Rather, each chapter encourages you peek outside the walls to see the untamed world outside of your safety zone and take the first tentative steps into it. As he says, “if you make the insane decision to live your life for the sake of others, if you choose to follow the One whose barbarian path led Him to the brutality of the Cross, and if you embrace His invitation to take up your won cross and follow Him, then it has begun.” You can choose safety and simply wait out your time to be called home. Or, as did the original disciples, you can follow the Lord into life completely different from every day that came before.

I am grateful to Thomas Nelson who supplied this book for review.

Psalm 99–Seven

O Lord our God, you answered them; you were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds. (Ps 99:8)

As the joy and awe of Easter remains fresh in our hearts, we do well to reflect on the reality of God’s demand for holiness. Psalm 99 is linked to 97 as an expression of the benefits of the Lord’s reign over His people. These benefits are not the product of a one-sided covenant however. As mercy is extended to us, we are commanded to pull our boots from the mire that has held us captive and ascend to higher ground. Our core calling is to make holiness the objective of our efforts.

The psalmist also expresses the parallel expressions of God’s reign, mercy and correction. Grace is not license, as some mistakenly interpret it. He corrects those he loves in order to reorient their path. To be abandoned to sin is to be without hope.

Grace and peace to you.

image sarah and mike

God So Loved The World VI

Lent 2011

For God so loved the world… John 3:16

so adv 1. In the way or manner indicated. 2. to the extent or degree indicated or suggested. 3. very or extremely. 4. very greatly. 5. most certainly…

You may come to this passage indirectly, perhaps as your first memory verse or your initial introduction to the great truth of the Bible. As you read and absorb it, you cannot help feel the Spirit move as you encounter this simple but profound reminder of the sacrificial love of God for you.

When you read God’s story from the beginning, on the other hand, and arrive at the fourth gospel and this verse, your eyes read the words in a much different light. Where it was just you and the secrets of your heart before, now you have the entirety of history casting its lengthy shadow over God’s love. The rise and fall and rise and fall tempo of man’s relationship with his creator causes you to wonder why He loves us, and marvels that He does.

Love us, that is. He most certainly does.

Grace and peace to you.

image stevendepolo

God So Loved the World V

Lent 2011

For God so loved the world… John 3:16

so adv 1. In the way or manner indicated. 2. to the extent or degree indicated or suggested. 3. very or extremely. 4. very greatly. 5. most certainly…

Immediately before speaking the familiar words of verse 16, Jesus had expressed the horror that salvation would entail, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Reading how God so loved the world takes an added dimension when it is placed in this context.

Go back to your Bible, and as you read, substitute the word “thus” or the phrase “in this way” for “so”. The depth of the love of God takes on a new weight when considered in this light. Rather than the abstract God so loved the world, we are confronted with Because God loved the world, the Son of Man must be sacrificed on their behalf. We’ll never read ‘so’ in the same way again.

Grace and peace to you.

image gritphilm