Too Crazy to Grasp!

In John 15:9 Jesus tells His disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." (ESV)

God is perfect and complete. The Son and the Father and the Holy Spirit are all God, unique but One. Their love is perfect and complete for one another. Because God is perfect and complete (not wanting in some area) it means He didn't need us. No, He wanted us! And when we realize that He didn't need us, but made us completely because He wanted us, it makes His love for us even more incredible. It magnifies grace because it magnifies that it is completely one way—everything God did for us, including the most amazing part of giving Himself to us, He did from desire and love, not from any obligation or need. Wow!

Because God is perfect and complete, and has been since before time itself, it means His love within Himself, Father for Son, etc., is perfect and complete. A love that is perfect, free of our fleshly pulls, not self-seeking, not keeping a record of wrongs, never failing, without any shame or condemnation, holy and righteous—this is God's perfect love, expressed within Himself before we were ever created. And now we read that in the same way the Father loved the Son, the Son loves us!!! In reality, since the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are One, we can say that in the same way God loves Himself (and that is perfect love!) God loves us! This is absolutely stunning for a believer to meditate on, and Mary Ann and I have been doing that in our conversations lately as we process a lot of hard things in the lives of many people around us. Reflecting on this reality that God loves us in the same way He loves within Himself does multiple things for me when I reflect on it:

1. It leaves me in awe, and very secure, in the vast height and depth and width of God's love for me. It is so incredible it is something I could meditate on for the rest of my life and never fully grasp. It is so important for us to understand that as shame and guilt and self-attacking are so easy to fall into. God loves us and presents us to Himself as holy and righteous from His good pleasure and with a complete love that is so perfect it is how He the Father loves the Son!

2. It is, I realize, even one more thing that God calls us to do (to love others as we love ourselves) that He first did for us. How amazing, and incredible, that God would do so much for us before ever asking us to do it ourself! It is no wonder the incredible news of God giving Himself to His creation was so amazing and so unthinkable that even the prophets and angels sought to understand the mystery of God He had prepared before the ages but that He only revealed in Christ. God was going to give Himself to His created people! God was going to love them with a love reserved for within the Trinity!

3. This is a self-giving, perfect love from God, to me,that the world can not touch, take away, or alter. It is an anchor not of this world in a world that has so much pain and brokenness.

Who could ever imagine that God would give us Himself? Who could ever even guess that God would love us with the love He Himself loves Himself, His Son? I have to think spending much time dwelling on that would break many a stronghold of the enemy in our heart, and put a fire into our worship! It has been doing great things in Mary Ann and my heart recently and I hope it blesses and encourages you as well.

Making Things Too Hard

God is so vast and His mysteries so deep that we will probably never fully fathom Him or His holiness or His wisdom and ways. But sometimes we can make too hard or too deep that which we would be better served receiving as a child. Sometimes the simplest explanation and realization is the best.

Recently I was praying with someone about the multitude of potentially overwhelming things we were facing—things that seemed to be humanely impossible. It was too much to handle and do all of them, and the way it would work out seemed impossible to perceive. Many of them seemed like we had no equipping to handle them, and the insecurity and fear and anxiety and apprehension was strong.

But, as I was praying, I found myself spontaneously asking God to prevent us from taking any path or taking on any chore that He was not leading us on, and suddenly I had the childlike revelation of what it means to be a sheep surrendered to following a shepherd. If we are following a good shepherd, as Jesus says He is, then we only have one care and that is to follow Him. We do not need to worry about His heart or any of the things He is responsible for. He will lead us to still waters and green pastures. He will protect us. He will look out for us and provide for us and He will not lead us on any path that He knows we can't take.

It became so simply clear—as the sheep of a Good Shepherd all I need to worry about is following Him. If I stray off the path He is leading me on then I become responsible for my own provision and protection and I am completely dependent on my own resources and ability, and I am alone and vulnerable in the dark woods and deep thickets of life. But, if as a good sheep I simply follow my Good Shepherd, then I can do so knowing that while I may not know where He is leading, or the path it will take, He will never lead me where He won't provide for me—and all of the needs I have, including words I need to speak, and things I need to do and face, will be taken care of by Him as long as I follow Him.

So, my responsibility becomes very simple. To follow. To make sure I am only doing and taking on what He gives me to do and take on, and that I am only going where He is leading. We would never call a shepherd "good" if they led their sheep on paths along cliffs that the sheep were sure to fall off of, or to pastures that were without food, or water that was brackish and poison, or if he abandoned them to the wolves. We would never call a shepherd "good" if they expected of their sheep what only a lion or an elephant or a fish could do. But Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and we are His sheep, and as such the only thing we must be guarded against is not following Him. If we are, no matter what is in front, we can trust Him to lead and provide what we need for it.

(Thanks for) An Unfathomable God!

The current world's population is estimated at over 7,080,000,000 people. Depending on your "origins" beliefs you can estimate from that how many people have ever lived on the earth over its life. It is a stunning number and yet, as the man performing a wedding I attended last weekend said, each and every one is different—no two are ever alike—and we are all made in God's image.

Setting aside the theological differences about what it actually means to be in His image, we can say that every person who has ever lived is different and yet every person reflects God's image in some way. Isn't it an awesome comfort to know that our God is so big and so vast and so unfathomable that billions upon billions of people can each represent a facet of Him and we still don't have a complete picture of Him?! I am so glad that God is so huge. I wouldn't want to trust my life to a god who was so small I could fully grasp and understand Him. It is so comforting to know that the God I trust and serve and depend on is so big that I will spend eternity discovering more and more of the riches of the knowledge and mystery of Him.

"Yes, but . . ."

I think a fair question to ask ourselves as Christians is, "Where does the true emphasis of our thoughts, hope, and expectancy lie?" As one person recently shared at a men's gathering I was at, "You can tell a Marine!" talking about their shaved head, huge stickers on their trucks, and the way they carry themselves. We all laughed but then he asked, "Why is it so hard to tell a Christian man who is supposed to be light and joy against a dark world?" The room got a lot more quiet.

We are supposed to be different. Not Polyanaish or naive but different. People of words of hope and joy and other-focused instead of people of grumbling and complaining and anger and bitterness and self-focus. After all, we have the Creator of the universe loving us, saving us, and living in us sealing us for an eternal relationship with Him in a home He's prepared for us free of all sickness and tears and death and sorrow.

One of the ways I have found in myself and others to see what the true emphasis of our thoughts, hopes, and expectancies is comes from looking at what comes in a sentence after the word "but." (I read something like this some time back and I can't remember where. It struck me at the time and I was reflecting on it again today. I wish I could remember the source so I could credit it, but God knows. I'll share my memory with my reflections included. I am not saying this is in any way hard and fast, but it does bear noting.) What I mean is this: do our sentences contain the structure, "God is so huge, God is so wonderful, God loves me, God is with me, but . . . " and then follow the "but" with a list of all our problems which give the problems the biggest emphasis and leave the problems as the last, trumping thought and memory and focus? Or, do our words follow a structure of, "I am struggling with this and that and facing this or that, but . . . " and then go into praises of God and His faithfulness and love and power, leaving a sense that God is truly the biggest emphasis and focus and final thought?

Maybe you've seen this in yourself or others. I know I have in me. Statements that seem to give the "proper," courtesy theological nod to God but then truly dwell on the problems and obstacles and negative possibilities versus the statements that acknowledge the problems and issues but then put their true weight and expectancy and hope and joy on a deep recognition of who God is and what He promises us. There is a big difference. As Christians we sometimes seem to feel this "obligation" to mention God and His love and control, etc., but too often are really consumed with our problems and simply giving an obligatory nod to God because we, as Christians, are "supposed" to. The weight and emphasis of our words often reveal that. But then you meet that amazing person who has problems and doesn't sugar coat them or pretend they aren't real but whose words reveal that the genuine joy and hope and power of their thoughts and life is their amazing God and His love and power and promises.

Maybe, in a slightly different way, you've experienced the person with major issues who seems to want to talk and talk about them and when you offer to pray for them they let you and are quiet long enough for you to but then, almost before you finish the "amen" they are back into all their problems and horrible expectancies, etc. It is as if they were holding their breath through the whole prayer, letting you pray because as Christians that is the thing to do, but in reality they aren't even hearing or believing in the prayer and are poised to jump in talking about themselves and the problems they face as soon as the prayer is "out of the way" and the Christian "duty" done. I am not trying to be callous in that but if you've experienced it you know what I mean—you pour your heart into praying for someone for their medical or other issues and you believe you are connecting with God and you are appealing to His awesome, star-breathing, love and power and you are barely done and it is as if you just shared the weather or sports score for all the impact your prayer had on their expectancy or attitude. I feel for these Christians, and I've been that Christian, and it is so hard to be in a place where we intellectually nod at God but our heart is overwhelmed with, and consumed by, our problems and life.

Faith has an object, and the object of Christian faith is God. Abraham, Sarah, and others are given in the Bible as examples of people in faith because they considered the One promising faithful. God is the object. God is why we are confident and hopeful and joyous. God. And that is why I think we are encouraged to "be still and know that I am God" by God. Faith as some "thing" we are supposed to have and we intellectually talk about because we feel guilty not talking about it is empty. Faith is not a "thing." It is our confidence and trust in God and His love and power and promises and Word. Our words can be a real clue to the condition of our faith. The same sentence can describe our problems and describe our God, but the placement of the word "but" can reveal a whole lot about the heart.

Where Do Rights Come From?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .   (Declaration of Independence)

All the arguments about whether our founding fathers were true Christians or just Bible readers, etc., aside, please don't tell me they didn't recognize and found this nation on the principle that we have certain rights which originate from God, our Creator. Therefore the whole concept of moral relativism, of rights being determined by majority vote, of each culture being right for itself, etc. is incompatible with our foundation.

It is simple, basic common sense that if we are given rights by our Creator then the only place to determine what those rights are is that same Creator. He defines them and, inherently and necessarily following from that, defines right and wrong as well. It is, truly, simple. Our nation can change that (and is in the process of doing so) as the majority walk away from that recognition of God as the source of both rights and of right and wrong. They can move into the wishy washy realm of men instead of God deciding right and wrong based on their own opinions, but they should at least have the courage to stand up and state that they are rejecting the concept of a Creator (and that He is the source of rights) instead of trying to pretend they are doing it and staying true to who we are as a nation.

If our rights came from our Creator then there is only one place and way to determine them. Go to the Creator. Simple. Foundational. Logical. Reject it if you will, but recognize you are rejecting God in the process, and have the courage to state it. Quite trying, Christian, to pretend any form of deciding right and wrong by your opinion in opposition to God's Word is compatible with God. Either He is real and hence the source of all rights and standards and morals and ethics or He's not, and if He's not then anyone's opinion is just as valid as anyone else's—be it slavery, Nazism, eugenics, abortion, gay marriage, euthanizing the elderly, or any other subject that falls into the category of right or wrong. There is NO legitimate basis for declaring something to be absolutely right or wrong unless you appeal to something above all the parties involved that is absolute and removed. If it is not God then there is no thing that is universal that works, and we descend into moral relativism and an anything goes society and world where each person determines what they think is right and lives by it, even at the expense of anyone else who doesn't agree. Simply look through history . . . you truly don't want to live in a society where right and wrong is determined by the majority opinion or by the leaders independent of God as the higher, absolute source!

Option 1: Creator. Therefore created. Therefore we are His and He determines our rights and what is right or wrong.

Option 2: Evolutionary accident descended from animals and cellular blobs in some accidental cesspool of chemicals on our accidental planet in our accidental universe with no spiritual real or afterlife. Therefore no absolute right or wrong, no meaning or value to life above anything else or beyond the grave, and no basis for declaring anything morally wrong because there is no absolute to define morals by (unless you adopt survival of the fittest as your causative absolute and I doubt anyone in their right mind truly wants to live in a society that is logical in the implications of that! Of course, how do we even define "right mind" in that foundation?).


I understand the non-Christian who vacillates on moral decisions and tries to determine individually in their opinion what he or she thinks is right or wrong. But, I can not understand the Christian who does—who professes to believe in God and the Bible and yet continually makes moral assessments independent of Him and it. The world may not agree with our stand, but at least it should see us have the courage to take it, no matter the cost.

Just some thoughts.

We are His

The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. Psalm 89:11 ESV

The heavens are His. The earth and all that is in it is His. He made them. He made us. As Christians we'd all acknowledge that intellectually, and yet how easy it is in this self-focused society and Gospel we often hear to shift that around and not even realize we are doing it—to "sell" God like a product based on His benefits, or come to God for what He does for us. Or to look around and to say, "I have this and that and I have God and I have a family and I have a car and I have . . ." lumping Him in with everything else we "have."

But there is a reality that we must come to realize if we are ever going to truly surrender to Him. It begins with realizing—meditating on—that before all "this" around us was, there was God and God alone, perfectly complete and sufficient in the Trinity. Spend some time simply imagining and reflecting on that—God and nothing else. God, completely complete. Perfect. In need of nothing.

To often we ask questions that suppose there is a purpose for God or for the Trinity or that God came to be or took a certain form for a reason. The true place to begin and to realize is that God doesn't exist for a reason, or He is not the Trinity for a reason, He simply is that way and always has been. He is the start of everything. It all begins in Him. There was nothing that created Him, or came before Him, so any question that implies there is a reason for God or for the form God takes is wrong because it presupposes there was cause for God or a decision in how God would be—that God serves a purpose. (For an excellent discussion on this read Chapter 2 of Fred Sanders book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything.)

God simply is, in the form He is, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, from everlasting to everlasting. He is, and always was, and always will be. EVERYTHING else finds its origin and start and beginning and life and source in Him, from Him. And, realizing that He is totally COMPLETE and WHOLE in and of Himself we realize He needs nothing . . . therefore EVERYTHING He does is from His desire and pleasure, not because He needed something and had to.

Beginning in this place—having had that reality go from our head to our heart through pondering on it—we then realize that the ONLY, the SOLE, the SINGLE reason we exist is that at some point (after He had already existed for eternity without us) He decided and wanted to create us. That is it. There was God, and being God He needed nothing. He didn't have to create us. He wasn't incomplete without us. He was God, perfect, complete, eternal. And from that place, as a free gift, He DECIDED to create us and all that is around us. Every one of us, and everything around us, exists SIMPLY and ONLY because He decided it would, for His own reasons or pleasure. There is not a single tiny thing we offer to God that He needed that obligated Him to make us or left Him imperfect without us. It was 100% His free desire.

When I can reach that point where I realize this—that the only reason I exist is because He decided to create me for His own desire or pleasure—I then realize that, logically, because of that, I am His. He is my Creator and He created me for Him. I am the clay and He is the potter. He made me, formed me, designed me, molded me, breathed life into me. From that realization it is then a tiny step to realize I am not my own, but I am His, and He has all rights to me.

This RIGHT of God to all of us makes perfect sense and takes hold of our heart when we fully and completely realize that there was NOTHING that obligated Him to makes us or that He is indebted to us for. There isn't even a tiny iota of anything that made Him have to make us. We are ENTIRELY His creation of HIS own free gift and choice. And realizing that helps us to internalize at our core that being His entirely—our entire existence depending on and drawing from His gracious free-will gift—we are truly His, for His pleasure and will. To say it again—from that realization comes the realization that He has ALL rights to us. It is not a two way street. We don't also have rights or any basis of leverage or demand on God. Our existence is entirely one way which means we have no claim on it. We are His, and His alone. May we live as surrendered vessels recognizing that right of His over us. It will be the most joyous place we can ever live when we stop kicking against the goads and surrender.

Friday at Noon

In a recent post I mentioned a film Mary Ann and I had just gotten on DVD that we were looking forward to watching. It is called Friday at Noon. Last night I got home from our fire department drill earlier than I expected and we curled up to watch it. I wanted to share my thoughts about it and the issues it brings up. (I am not profiting in any way from recommending it, other than maybe playing a small part in encouraging the family that produced it and in strengthening the faith and defense of anyone who might watch it on account of my recommendation.)

As I mentioned in my previous post, the movie explores the issue of how we define or determine right or wrong in the absence of a God. While this is an issue I have enjoyed discussing, and one that played a strong part in my conversion, it is one I have rarely seen handled in a fictional format. This movie does a wonderful job of it, taking a man grieving over the murder of his son by young men who were acting out the evolutionary implications of life and having him kidnap the daughter of the professor who taught them the theories they lived out and telling the dad he can save his daughter only by answering one question, "Why shouldn't I do evil to her?"

As the professor struggles to give answers beyond the shallow and not thought through surface answers most people would give he realizes how inadequate the canned answers are, and how few people actually think through the implications of what they claim they believe. I don't want to spoil the ending or the conclusion, but suffice to say that it would be a very strengthening film for older youth and for adults to watch to either strengthen their conviction in God and how we can defend his existence, or to challenge non-believers to see the horrible, logical, moral extensions of their atheism. The movie does a great job of systematically demolishing the intellectual arguments for morals that sound so good in the "hallowed" halls of academia, but, when carried to their logical conclusions, end in horrifying places.

Made by a homeschooling family and the church the father pastors, the film is surprisingly well done considering what I can only imagine was resources at their disposal that were nothing like what a feature film can throw at a production. Do you laugh at a few scenes and see a few places the "Hollywood" experts would pick apart and criticize? Yes. Of course. But I can tell you that if my family, or our fellowship, produced anything remotely close to this I would be very proud. I'd recommend you get a copy of this to show your friends, to initiate discussions, to strengthen yourself, and to encourage a family and church who are seeking to glorify God in all that they are and do. I would not let Bethany and Abigail watch it yet as we have shielded them from more violent or stark scenes and a little of the imagery might scare them right now, but it won't be long until I do and I would certainly encourage it for high school and above.