Category: Christian

How Can a Loving God….?

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Sunscreen

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In 1 Samuel 15, God told King Saul to wipe out the Amalekites, every last one of them, and leave no survivors. The story is about Saul failing to follow God’s directions while claiming to have done so. He kept King Agab alive and allowed his men to save the best of the sheep and other animals. When Samuel, the prophet, asked, “What is this bleating of sheep I hear?” Saul blamed the men for his failure to obey God, but Saul was the one who did not obey God. That is how the story goes….

But, wait a minute! …. God told Saul to kill them… all of them. That sounds incredibly harsh. It sounds worse than harsh. Is God not supposed to be a loving God?

This is a pretty common question (a rhetorical one) posed by people who oppose Christianity and reject the Bible. “A loving God would not kill people,” they say. Since the Old Testament, in particular, depicts God in this way, the Bible cannot be true, the Christian God is fiction and the whole thing is bunk.

The unspoken sentiment behind that line of thinking is that “we” (humankind) have come a long way since primitive times. We have evolved past the Enlightenment into a modern scientific age in which we have superior moral and intellectual stature. We are the gods of our own world. We have thrown off superstitious belief in a tyrant God that stifles human potential in this post-enlightenment age.

But does history add up that way?

Continue reading “How Can a Loving God….?” →

Immigration: the Strangers Among Us

If Christians are to be instructed by the Word of God on immigration, what would that instruction be?

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In the wake of Obama’s executive orders on immigration and the outcry and fallout from it, I realized that I did not have a biblical framework on which to analyze the issues. I could not definitely say exactly what the Bible instructs us on the issue of immigration.

The Syrian refugee crisis at that time was much in the news, and I was conflicted by the many Christians urging our government not to allow Syrian refugees into the country. I was conflicted because I didn’t know what to think.

I realized that, as a Christian, I need to be instructed by the Word of God, and I wondered, “What would that instruction be?” Therefore, I took the time to study it, and the answer surprised me in its clarity.

Continue reading “Immigration: the Strangers Among Us” →

The Desire to Be Like Others

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In Samuel 1:19-20, the people wanted a king like the other nations. In that desire, they were rejecting God as their king. When Samuel asked God what he should do, God said warn them, but if they still want a king, let them have a king.

The end result was less than what God intended them to have. They substituted a king for God, and God let them do it.

As Christians, we tend to be envious of the world and want what the world has. When we want and seek after what others have, even if what we want is not bad in itself, we reject God. If we do not relent he will give us what we want, but we will not be better off for it.

People everywhere are tempted to want what others have and want to be like people around us, believers included. This is not a matter of following a godly example, but of the desire to be like others, to fit in and to have what they have. God does not favor that desire. He made us for something else. He calls us to Himself, and He wants us to be set apart.

We are warned about the consequences of seeking our own desires, but God will, ultimately, let us have our own way. God will not hold back the dam that holds our desires. He will let us go:

“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts…. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator….” (Romans 1:24-25)

The ultimate fate of the people or person who continually wants something other than God is like the dam that is breached and no longer holds the water back. God gives us over to those desires. We get what we want, but not the good that God wants to give us.

The Eternal Consequence of Now

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Every action, every decision we make in our lives has eternal consequence.

Do you believe that is true? Do you live like that is true? Think about it for a moment:

“For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:14)

God will bring every act to judgment.

Even the hidden things, the things that no one but I (you) know about is exposed to God. We cannot go anywhere that God is not present. (Psalm 139)

God knows our thoughts too. (Psalm 139:2) Jesus made it clear that anyone who is angry with his brother is guilty of murder (Matthew 5:21-22); and anyone who lusts after a woman is guilty of adultery (Matthew 5:27-28). Our thoughts are subject to the scrutiny of God as well as our actions.

If we would follow the example of Paul, we need to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Every action, every thought, has an eternal consequence. It should be no surprise, therefore, that inaction also has eternal consequence. Indeed, “to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17)

Believers who live by faith are not living under condemnation. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.” (Romans 8:1) But that is no license to go on sinning. (Romans 6:1) As Paul said, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2)

We have been set free from sin, but where is the fruit? It is the fruit of this freedom that leads to sanctification and results in eternal life (Romans 6:22); if indeed we are attached to the vine that bears this fruit, we will bear fruit. Jesus sacrificed Himself and rose from the dead precisely so that we may bear fruit for God. (Romans 7:4)

God is looking for fruit from us.

Consider the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 God does not give the same measure of talents to all of us, but he is looking for us to use what He gave us and not bury it in the ground. What we do with this time God has allotted us has eternal consequences.

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Ephesians 5:15-17)

“[W]alk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:10)

Seven Ways to Have More of God

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Anyone who has had an encounter with the Living God wants more. That is why Jesus had a following. People gathered around Him and followed Him wherever He went because they wanted more. We all want more of God, more of His presence, but how do we “get” more of God?

I am not an expert on this, but I was praying through these thoughts the other morning, and I believe God spoke to me through various passages in the Bible about how we all can have more of God.

We need to make room for Him

When God became man (Jesus), He came to His own, and His own people (the Jews) did not know Him. There was “no room in the inn”. We need to make room for God in our hearts and lives.

God emptied Himself to become a man, lived the life we could not live in perfect submission to the Father, suffered and died on the cross as atonement for our sin and rose again making the way for us to have fellowship with Him. If God emptied Himself for us, we need to empty ourselves for Him. We need to decrease so He can increase in us.

I am relaying these things in the order that God gave them to me, but I do not think there is any particular order in which we should do these things. That is, except for this one thing – we need to make room for God in our lives.

This does not just mean carving out some time during each day to pray and read the Bible; this means that we allow God to inhabit us and inform us in every aspect of our lives. We need to allow His Spirit to indwell us by making room in our hearts, by emptying ourselves and “getting out of God’s way” so that He can fill us with Himself.

We need to spend time away with Him

Jesus went away to pray and be alone with the Father often. Jesus was always going back to the Father alone, by himself. He found times to steal away from the crowds and the crowded marketplace to pray and just spend time with the Father. If Jesus needed to do that, we need to do that all the more if we want more of God in our lives.

We encounter God in many ways, but He speaks to us in a still, small voice. We need to be still and quiet to hear what God is saying. We need get away from the busyness of life, the things that crowd in upon us, and spend time with God, alone, where He can speak into our hearts, and we can learn directly from Him. We need to get away from other things and spend time with God by ourselves if we want more of God.

We need to wait for Him

Jesus told His disciples to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel. That is the Great Commission. But He followed the instruction “to go” with another instruction; He commanded them to do something that seemed completely counter-productive to the direction “to go”: He told them to wait.

He told them to wait for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father. The Holy Spirit is “God with us” in the same way that Jesus was “God with us”; except that the Holy Spirit is God in us!

We often want to rush ahead of God. It is a natural inclination. After Jesus turned a few loaves and fishes into a feast for a crowd, the crowd wanted to seize Him and make Him king. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the people celebrated Him as an earthly king and savior, but they did not realize other things needed to happen, first. Jesus needed to die for our sins. He needed to conquer sin and death. God, in His great mercy, was not ready to take the throne. He was extending the opportunity for generations to accept His atoning death for our sins and be saved.

We can not see what God sees and do not know what God knows. We need to wait for Him and seek to understand what God is doing right now in our lives, in the church we attend, in the area in which we live and in the world. When we wait for God, we are waiting to understand and waiting for His power to enable us to fulfill what He has for us to do. If we run out ahead of God, we will not be doing exactly what God wants us to do, when He wants us to do it, and we will be going in our own strength, instead of God’s strength.

We need to ask

What father, when his son asks for bread, gives him a stone? Jesus is the Bread of Life. He is the Living Water. He invites us to partake of Himself, but there is something in the asking.

God wants us to ask. God is Person. He made us in His own image. He made us for fellowship. When we ask, we are stepping into fellowship with God. He delights to give of Himself, but he is looking for an exchange: He draws, and we respond; we ask, and He gives.

If we want more of God, we need to ask for God Himself. Our treasure is where our heart is. We could ask for things for ourselves or even for others, but the greatest treasure is God Himself. Our treasure awaits us in heaven, but God has given us His Holy Spirit – which is Himself – and we can partake of that treasure on earth. We just need to ask.

We need to seek

God promises to reveal Himself to us when seek Him, and we find God when we seek Him with all our hearts. Seeking God with all of our hearts means we need to be “all in”!

We need to devote our hearts to the seeking, and what we seek needs to be God, Himself, if we want more of God in our lives.

As we seek God, we stop seeking other things. Other things, even good things, are poor substitutes for God. In the process of seeking God, we must stop seeking other things and devote ourselves to the greatest thing – God. In that process, we align ourselves with God; we put away the lesser things; and we set our sights on God. He wants us to seek because, as we seek Him, we focus on Him and take our focus off of other things.

We need to go

Jesus told us to go. There is a time to go, and when we go, the Holy Spirit is right there with us to help us. Although there are times we need to wait for God, there are times that we need to go. Ultimately, going is what we need to be doing. I think the Church, as a whole, misses God because the Church is not going.

Peter, James and John climbed a high mountain with Jesus. On the mountain top Jesus was transfigured before their eyes. Elijah and Moses appeared with Him. What a “mountaintop experience”! Literally. The disciples wanted to pitch a tent and camp there. – Who wouldn’t?!! – But that was not God’s plan.

It is never God’s plan for us to camp on our experiences with Him. In those encounters, Jesus shows Himself in all of His glory; we learn things about ourselves, about God and about the world; but He does not intend for us to pitch a tent and stay there. He took the disciples back down the mountain to the valley where the purpose of God is played out in real, everyday life.

We cannot camp on our experiences with God. God has a plan, and He wants us to move on to fulfill that plan. He wants us to go with Him. If we camp where we experience God, He will move on; and we will be left on an empty mountain top. We should seek God on those mountain tops, but we need to follow God down from the mountain to the valley of everyday life where the purpose of God plays out.

We need to do

Jesus spent much of His time walking the dusty roads, on the street, in the marketplace, mixing with people, healing the sick and sharing the Gospel. If we want more of God, we need to be where God is and doing what God wants to do – reaching people with the Gospel and love. We will encounter God by doing those things Jesus did.

God told the prophets that He wants His people to administer justice, to show compassion and mercy to each other. Pure religion is looking after orphans and widows in their distress and keeping ourselves from being polluted by the world. We need to be about the business of God if we want more of God in our lives.

Doing means speaking as well. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If we are not telling people about the Gospel, who will? God chose to use us and send us into all the world to preach the Gospel, and we need to be doing what God wants us to do if we want more of God in our lives.

I began Navigating by Faith in response to what I believe God was speaking into my heart. For me, this is part of being about God’s business. I believe He has given each person gifts and burdens and callings that are unique to each individual. We all have the ability to write, serve, speak, have compassion, pastor help, etc., but God gives out different measures to different people, and God places different things on different peoples’ hearts to make use of those gifts and abilities. We do not live this life alone, in a vacuum. We need each other.
 
Let me know what you think. What has God put on your heart? What do you think He is calling you to do with the gifts and abilities you have and the calling He placed within you? I would love to hear from you.