:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

The other day I dug into the ways that Christians misuse the Gospel for political and national goals. It was a tough post to write because I don’t want to be the angry truth police guy. I also don’t want anyone to think that Christianity is hopeless.

It’s easy to pick on the things that are negative rather than highlighting what’s in good working order. The latter stories are not as exciting to write or read. However, I felt that an issue like that needs to be exposed because it can subtly undermine the Gospel.

It’s ironic because while at a Christian writer’s conference last week I kept a running list of silly things Christians say/believe and reasons for hope. I had a hunch that the good news would outweigh the bad. They did. While I hit upon one really discouraging note the other day, I still have many reasons to believe that God can use his people to do a lot of good based on what I saw and heard at the conference.

So here are some significant reasons why Christians have hope…

There was an emphasis on suffering…

No one shared a prosperity Gospel. One speaker said, “Some of you have not suffered enough to write and minister as effectively as you one day will.” That is a powerful statement that hits upon the results of joining Christ in the fellowship of his suffering.

There was a diverse crowd…

This was a fairly diverse conference both ethnically and theologically. While some of the political junk got in the way at times, I was encouraged to see a diverse group of Christians working, worshipping, and hanging out together.

There was an emphasis on mission…

The Christians at this conference were actively seeking to share the Gospel with others. Time and time again I was challenged to go deeper in my walk with the Lord and to use my gifts for his work. That was probably more significant for me than the excellent writing workshops I attended.

There was an emphasis on solid research and writing…

The workshops I attended shared valuable advice on how to write good articles and books without resorting to unfair arguments, bad facts, and other emotional tricks. The workshop leader, who struck me as rather conservative politically, shared the ways he writes charitably about the political left and the nuances he found in the midst of his research.

There is an openness to the Holy Spirit…

If the people of God remain open to the leading of his Spirit, then we have the greatest reason for hope provided his people continue to let him lead.

While we find plenty of things to avoid or disavow, there are some great reasons to have hope in what God can do among and through his people.

What signs of life and hope have you seen in the past few weeks?

We continue to look at how Christians can stop sinning. Previously we identified persistent sin as a problem and then talked about the information we need and the desires that drive us. Today we’ll talk about the spiritual battle of sin.

If that sounds a little far out or unnecessary to you, then you really need to keep reading and give this some thought and prayer…

Solving The Enforcement Problem with Sin

So, if you’re following me now and you have your facts and desires straight, perhaps you still feel like sin has you under its dark, smudgy thumb. I’m with you on that. It’s nice that God wants you to be free and that God is able to offer us greater intimacy and joy than anything we can find here on earth, but don’t you wish it was easier to wipe the power and effects of sin from our lives?

He’s given us everything we need for godly living and we love him deeply, but somehow we still can’t connect our facts and desires with reality. Sin is a tricky little bugger.

This is where we need to get spiritual. We are in a spiritual struggle with evil spirits that want to wreck us, as in that guy prowling like a roaring lion seeking to devour us. Peter knew a thing or two about that when Jesus warned him that Satan wanted to tear him apart. There are spiritual forces in this world who desire to control us, who want nothing more than to become idols who receive worship and loyalty.

Now, in moving forward we can make two mistakes. One is the intellectual mistake of ignoring this spiritual warfare business because we once saw a preacher on the television wearing a snappy suit who hit a lady over the head with her crutch to heal her.

I’m from the intellectual tribe, and I’ve been in churches where I’ve had to dodge flailing plastic swords and waving flags while people shook and wept—stuff that has left me suspicious of this spiritual warfare business at times. However, whether we encounter the fraudulent or the odd, the scriptures make it abundantly clear that we are engaged in spiritual warfare that requires God’s spiritual resources if we want to win.

You do want to live a holy life in intimacy with God, don’t you?

The other extreme leaves the intellectual behind and moves more according to emotion, feelings, and finds spiritual significance in things like rocks, a word from God, and, if you’re really a lost cause, toast. That isn’t to say that God can’t speak through prophetic words or through unusual means. A charismatic friend of mine once said that God used a donkey to speak his message and he’s been using asses ever since.

Speaking of which, God has even used to share specific messages with folks.

However, we can lose our grip when delving into the spiritual. Some have clung to a supposed “word from God,” that only ruined their lives completely. We have scripture and fellow believers to keep us grounded, and while we should fight sin by spiritual means, we should not forget the teachings of scripture and the church when we engage in these spiritual struggles.

And so, keeping these extremes in mind, we can engage in the enforcement of God’s will and power with the sin that plagues us. Christ has broken the power of sin with his Resurrection, and so we have his power at our disposal because the Spirit is in our lives. So, for starters, we can claim the power of the cross and Resurrection. And even more than that, we are free from the dragging influence of sin when seeking out God. And this is where we will find the victory over sin.

We don’t defeat sin by fighting it ourselves. We defeat sin by letting God defeat it as we cling to him. Sin cannot touch us when we our heavenly father is residing in our bodies, his new temple. Therefore, the trick to living in holiness is to seek God with stubborn tenacity whether or not we feel like it.

We have the information at hand: he loves us and desires that all people should know him. There are no caveats, no loop holes that exclude you or me. And therefore, we are welcome into his presence because of his Son’s work and the Spirit’s ongoing influence.

As we enjoy intimacy with God, we can ask him to expose sin for what it is. In other words, as I’ve prayed about my own struggles with lust and anxiety, they have been revealed as spirits of adultery and fear. Claiming the biblical truth of Christ’s victory as my own, I told the spirit of fear and the spirit of adultery to leave.

While they pester me from time to time, in the years that followed those decisive moments of revelation I have experienced new-found freedom from these sins that nagged me for years because I’m entrusting the spiritual battle against sin with God. My time with God that resulted in renewed spiritual insight into my sin struggles brought about a decisive breaking of sin’s hold in my life.

Now we know the facts about holiness and sin, the emotional end of things, and the way we fight sin, but must sin always be an ongoing struggle? Can’t we move beyond this daily fight against sin? I’d suggest that we can, and that’s what we’ll discuss tomorrow…

After a few days off to move into a new apartment, I’m continuing my Christian Survival Guide series that addresses common problems that hinder Christian growth. 

Last week I talked about the problem of not being able to stop sinning, and my response began by addressing the information we need to know about Christ, the cross, the Resurrection, and the implications for our victory over sin…

So now that you read the post about being free from sin, I’ll bet you’re free from sin forever. I mean, I practically quoted the Bible in a stealthy way that presented the good news of salvation in a nice little section that exposed sin for what it is and made the goodness of God practically irresistible, right?

Who would go and sin after reading all of that?

Well, the answer is me—and you. Most Christians know this stuff. Some of us may live relatively sin-free, but for the majority of Christians, sin is tough to shake. We go through our lives crippled by these dark powers that sometimes tug at us in the dark and other times rise to the surface in very public, humiliating ways.

The trouble is that no matter how much information we consume from the scriptures, we run into a desire problem. We know the truth, but giving in to sin feels good or even inevitable.

Like a persistent pimple, sin attaches itself to us and convinces us that it’s part of our lives. And in fact, we can’t imagine our lives without it. We desire the pleasure, the rush, and the comfort that our sins bring to our lives in the moment, even if we are wracked with disappointment and guilt afterwards.

However, sin often sets up shop in our lives because our desires are out of wack—we lack a desire for God. This is something that John Piper addresses in his book Desiring God. Piper is right on the mark in saying that we latch on to sin–expecting it to bring us pleasure.

The problem all along is we don’t know what true pleasure is since God is the source of true and lasting joy. Once again, God is not in heaven trying to shut us down from having a good time. In fact, he wants our desires to be oriented in healthy directions that will lead to the good pleasure he has created in our world—pleasure that does not result from being completely consumed with ourselves and our desires.

I remember a friend who returned to visit family while away for a few years. When he gathered with his former church he felt the joy of God’s presence and wept with joy because he’d forgotten how wonderful it is. If I’m seeking after sin, then I have a desire problem that can only be completely fulfilled by worshipping God, confessing my sins, and enjoying him.

However, there’s more to this sin problem, and in our next post we’ll look at the ways we can actively fight sin when it shoves its way into our lives.

Yesterday I began a new series addressing common problems that Christians face. I’m beginning my survival guide series with a series of posts address the problem of not being able to stop sinning. My last post framed the discussion, and today we’ll take our first step toward overcoming the problem of pervasive sin.

Let’s have a look…

Sin and the Information Problem

Sin can be credited in part, but not as a whole, to an information problem. If sinless perfection rested on knowing the right stuff, then we could all get seminary degrees and be set. Having passed through seminary myself and knowing many others who have, I can assure you that seminary is not the silver bullet required for sin. However, it is good to orient and resource ourselves with the facts of our situation.

God is not a kill-joy handing down a list of restricted activities like some kind of micro-managing boss who wants nothing more than to control the minutiae of our lives. He’s not sitting up in heaven laughing at those silly Christians who are missing out on all of the fun to be had with unrestrained sexual exploits, excessive drinking, and raging anger. We may be a bit naïve and silly at times, perhaps we’re even suckers, but we’re not suckers because we miss out on catching venereal disease, vomiting on someone’s front lawn after a binge, or punching through sheetrock.

God declared creation good and then part of his creation became greedy and obsessed with its own glory. Our ancestors allowed their evil desires to rule them and these desires took shape as sin.

We have followed in their footsteps ever since. We are tempted by evil desires, we give in to them, and we sin.

The information we need concerns the nature of sin, temptation, and our evil desires. These are not the norm for God’s good creation. And more than that, God has done something about them. When dreaming up a sin solution, we tend to think in terms of the nuclear option that blasts sin out of our world once and for all, burning every bit of sin from each person. God doesn’t work like a nuclear weapon, and like petulant teenagers who can’t go to the dance, we resent him for it.

If you’re an American like me who operates on a grand, industrial scale, you’re probably disturbed by God’s “uncaring” way of dealing with sin in an “inefficient” way.

The metaphors have changed over time, an invasion, a virus, a rebellion, but the core information we need remains the same. We need to know that God has not made his world to be ruled by evil desires, openly indulging in the destructive, self-serving powers of sin.

We need to see things for what they are: we are beings shaped in the divine image of God who were made to live in loving relationship with our creator and our fellow beings. When we resist this calling, we fall away from the good world that God intended for us. Sin turns us into hideous creatures who are alienated from God and others.

Far from being free to do as we like, sin becomes a cruel master that will rule our lives, alienate us from God, and prevent us from the true joy of our calling. We find moments of pleasure by indulging in sin, but part of our problem is a lack of information.

Letting sin have its way cripples us in ways that have long-term consequences we cannot even imagine. We have been made in the image of God to perform good works, to enjoy a saving relationship with him through the work of Jesus and the Spirit, and to testify to that love by word and deed.

The scriptures tell us that sin is not the norm, and that God has in fact given us everything we need to live godly lives. Christ has born sin on his body while on the cross, defeated it by rising from the dead, and imparted his life-giving power through the Holy Spirit.

Sin is a defeated foe. We don’t have to submit to it. In fact, we can live with God in such a way that sin becomes the furthest thing from our minds since we’re consumed with the love of God. Who would knowingly seek out a cruel, evil witch/warlock when the most beautiful and kind woman/man in the world desires to be with you?

Our problems with require more than an information fix, and that’s what we’ll address next…

A New Series…

You know how most Christians tend to have the same problems and many of them sort of persist?

They’re the elephants in the room when we get together. Even if we don’t struggle with particular sins or Christian disciplines, we may counsel plenty of friends who have these struggles.

A few months back I decided to write up a kind of survival guide for overcoming these common threats to our Christian walks. These sins, doubts, fears, and short-comings can nibble away out our faith and keep us from intimacy with God, following Jesus daily, and completing the mission he has given us here on earth to proclaim his Kingdom.

The solutions are there. God’s power is available for us. So it’s time to challenge our doubts, short-comings, and fears. It’s time to lay hold of his power for us and to embrace the fullness of life Jesus promised us.

Let’s begin…

Part of One of “You Can’t Stop Sinning”

You know that guy at work who rarely does his job. He mocks you and the other peons who slave away while he plays games on his computer and shuffles papers, somehow convincing your boss that he’s a valuable asset. And so you get together with your colleagues while the coffee is brewing and talk about that sniveling, lazy jerk and his long, crooked nose.

Talk is too sedate a word for it. You slam him. You roast him alive like a fat pig. You make him the butt of your jokes and the target of your slander. He’s the worst kind of person and you always feel better about yourself whenever you’re done tearing into him.

And yet, you know deep down that a Christian shouldn’t mock this man’s character, lacking though it may be. And perhaps you shouldn’t make fun of the way he eats his hard-boiled eggs, the way he slurps his coffee, or the way he shoves his wispy black hair away from his forehead with a brush of his hand. No, the Christian way is to love this man rather than insulting him behind his back.

The tongue being a restless evil aside, you still think he kind of deserves it. It’s just words after all. Really, you haven’t done anything all that terrible. And as you hide behind justifications, you arrive at the real truth of the matter. You don’t want to stop slandering him. In fact, you can’t stop. It’s natural, easy, and feels good, as if you can undo his grievances against you by the power of your words.

But perhaps you haven’t struggled with words. Perhaps your struggle is with lusting after a neighbor along your block. He or she often walks past your house in the evening, and you find yourself thinking about this person in very inappropriate ways. It may be the scent of his cologne that lingers or that titillating blouse she wears that sparks your imagination and leaves you burning.

While you’re alone at home he sneaks into your thoughts with a seductive look or when you’re driving home from work your heart beats a little faster at the thought of seeing her today. This infatuation is both terrifying and wonderful, fulfilling some deep-seated desires that crave to be fulfilled even if they seem endless in their demands. You can’t help but give in to them because you’re not really hurting anyone, and worse than that, you don’t feel like you can resist them. The urges are too strong, your will too weak, and those exciting moments of surrender to lust are too exciting.

In either scenario, sin has taken hold and become a master of sorts. It isn’t that slander and lust are harmless sources of fun and fulfillment that God doesn’t want you to have. It’s that you’re actually enslaved to them, letting them control you, shape you into a different sort of person, and keeping you from the good things God has planned for you. When sin becomes an irresistible force that we cannot fight, we have a tremendous problem that must be addressed without delay.

The next post in this series will deal with sin and our information problem…

The Destination is Not Up to Us…

When I moved from college to seminary, I had a picture in my head of what I would be like as a mature Christian. Since most of my money was paying for a seminary education, you’d better believe I thought a vast biblical knowledge would be a key part of that.

My experience is that God often has something else in mind from what we imagine. In fact, it’s hard for us to predict what God’s destination will be for us.

I think seminary was a really important part of my growth, but it wasn’t the decisive factor I thought it would be. So far as I can tell, the most significant moments of my Christian growth have always been tied directly to learning how to pray or meet with God.

My biblical knowledge was important, but these moments of meeting with God drove that truth home.

Life is a careful balancing act of doing what we believe God has called us to do, while remaining flexible to his leading and his new destinations. Perhaps faithfulness is the art of being flexible with the results and clinging to God alone.

Ten years since I entered seminary, I am at a completely different place in life than I would have expected. I have no complaints, but it has been humbling to watch some of my plans and goals crumble. However, in holding to my plans loosely, I’ve learned there is joy to be found in the new places God calls us to.

We should pursue whatever it is that God places on our hearts, but it’s equally important to let go of our chosen destinations if God chooses to send us elsewhere. Life is this constant process of letting go of one thing in order to embrace another only to find that you will soon need to let go of the new thing in order to embrace another.

On and on it goes.

We’ll get beat up and frustrated if we make our lives about the things we’re aiming for rather than God. This is a lesson in the Kingdom. Christ is all and in all, and we have nothing without him.

I used to drive eleven hours from my dad’s house in New Jersey to my college, Taylor University, in Indiana. Eleven hours that I usually drove by myself.

I was kind of nuts. It was all about minimizing stops for gas and the bathroom, while keeping my speed as high as legally possible. I was a blathering mess by the time I arrived, but if I could shave off a few minutes, it was all totally worth it. Really, my friends didn’t know what to do with me after I arrived at Taylor.

While driving I’d also get a Caesar salad and a frosty from Wendy’s. If I was really living it up, I’d snag some chicken nuggets. Don’t ask how I ate my salad.

I’m luck to be alive.

I remember driving across Pennsylvania and despairing. It’s such a long, monotonous state—though not monotonous like Kansas, the bane of cross-country road trips. But on the PA turnpike I was like, “Oh golly, another long hill of a mountain. I’ll bet they’re mining THAT one for coal too.” I would always despair over how long I still had to go in that state which really shouldn’t be allowed to be so wide.

When I’m facing my own issues with disobedience and sin, I’m reminded of my Pennsylvania road trips.

Some days I’m so dang discouraged about how far I still need to go in my Christian faith. In the letter First Corinthians, Paul calls the Corinthians immature, needing to hear about Christ crucified all over again because they suck at obeying God and loving one another.

I don’t know about you, but that all sort of sounds familiar. Am I really just an immature Christian who can’t get the cross and basic obedience down? It’s humbling.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Christians pass through seasons. Sometimes we have struggles and other times we have our mountain peaks. However, the path to maturity surely must run through deepening our intimacy with the Father.

The good news is that God isn’t waiting at our destination, checking his watch, wishing we’d step on it and knock off the chicken nugget pit stop. He’s there in the car with us, wondering why we’re barreling forward at such high speeds instead of pulling over to have a chat with him. That’s where he wants us to start.

I dig a little deeper into the Bible and worry a little more about my prayer life, pressing my foot to the floor as I accelerate myself into a holy fervor. And yet, while God wants me to be obedient, he wants me to obey because my love for him is what drives me.

It’s true that we have very far to go in our quest for holy living and Christian maturity as part of God’s family, but we won’t zoom ahead by trying harder. That is the hardest lesson to learn.

While on vacation with our family last week I gave frequent updates on the past year, and I realized something.

The past year wasn’t the worst. That kind of surprised me. In fact, a lot of great things happened. And then again, I certainly hit my fair share of set backs that cast a shadow over things—hence my surprise.

During this time last year, where did I expect to be in a year’s time? The answer: Well, not quite where I am right now. And now, where do I expect to be next year at this time?

I can live with my lack of progress because life is more than a long to-do list. I need to look at something bigger than my goals.

This isn’t a matter of painting a bulls-eye wherever my arrows land. Rather, I’m talking about the delicate balance of having goals and remembering the larger relational picture of life. Over the past year my daily quality of life has improved and my wife and I have found time to be together in midst of some pretty crazy schedules.

All in all, we’re doing fine, and that is something to be thankful for.

On the Christian end of things, I think I can get caught up in meeting all kinds of goals as well, craving certain spiritual milestones. You know, stuff like being free from a nagging sin, hearing God more clearly, or reading a certain amount of scripture. Christians usually think they don’t pray enough, and we’re usually moving somewhere between the extremes of despairing over our sin or excusing it.

I like the idea of aiming for Christian maturity, and I’ll speak about that more this week, but as far as goals go, I think it’s important to begin any discussion of them from the standpoint of what’s most important.

When I consider my goals as a Christian, I find myself balancing the desire to be more holy or spiritual, but not listing the goal over the relationship with God that will ultimately lead me to that level of holiness or spirituality. In other words, working toward the goals can overshadow the means by which we attain them—namely through intimacy with Christ.

It can be frustrating to struggle with sin or to find that you’re not quite as far along in your Christian walk as you’d like, but we don’t move forward by setting a goal and then working on it without the relationship with Christ in place. I’m learning that the best way forward is not always what seems to be the most direct…

The last significant aspect of our vocabulary of the Holy Spirit concerns the ways in which the Holy Spirit speaks to and through us.

Many evangelicals such as myself have a hard time with this one since we’ve historically been rather fixated on the Bible as our source of revelation. Tossing the Holy Spirit into the mix complicates things.

However, even if we just try to read the Bible without acknowledging the role of the Spirit, we’ll keep bumping into verses that give the Spirit a prominent place in our lives.

Teaching Us

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus frequently speaks of the Holy Spirit as a guide for his followers, leading them into the truth (John 14:17, 26; 15:26: 16:13, 15). The scripture itself came about originally through the work of the Holy Spirit.

The process of interpreting the scriptures and living with wisdom is just as connected to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts (1:2, 6:10). Paul frequently alludes to the guidance of the Spirit in discerning a particular belief or application.

Therefore, as we study scripture we can also speak of the Spirit as a guide who teaches us. This isn’t a stretch of scripture, though we can certainly take this notion too far by creating individual bastions of interpretation and defying all who disagree with us. Though, we don’t need the Holy Spirit to do such a thing, we can abuse the leading of the Holy Spirit in heavy-handed ways.

Prophetic Words

We could choose several different ways to speak of prophetic words from the Holy Spirit, but I think it’s quite biblical to speak of the spiritual gift of prophecy as another way the Spirit guides and teaches us. According to 1 Corinthians 14 a prophetic word is a revelation from the Spirit that edifies the church.

Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians all speak of prophetic gifts being given to God’s people, and Paul even said that he wished all of the Corinthians would prophesy. Having said that, he also took a great deal of care to explain how to use their gifts in orderly, beneficial ways. Prophecy is intended, above all else, to help other Christians to grow.

We could debate whether Acts 2 makes prophecy a gift for all Christians or whether Paul’s spiritual gift lists make it one gift among many that we may not have. I’m not certain about this, but I do believe we should remain open to the possibility of God giving ourselves or someone else a specific word for our edification.

I mean, God spoke through Balaam’s mule (or ass if you want a laugh), so there’s no reason why his Spirit couldn’t speak through me, right?

Desiring the Lord, Not Just the Gifts of the Lord

The work of the Holy Spirit is an incredible blessing that I sometimes wish I experienced on a more regular basis, but the trouble with such gifts as prophetic words is we can end up craving the gifts rather than the Lord we are called to love above all else.

And so while we should desire these important gifts that will empower us for ministry and help us contribute to the health of the church, our chief desire should be the Lord himself. As we draw near to him and remain open to the work of his Spirit, he is able to direct and empower us as he sees fit.

In Acts 1:4 Jesus asked his disciples to not leave Jerusalem until they received the Spirit. John prophesied that Jesus would baptize them in the Holy Spirit, and before they set out to do the work of the Kingdom, they would need this empowering baptism.

Though they were looking for the restoration of Israel as a Kingdom, Jesus pointed them back to the coming Holy Spirit. The Spirit would empower them to be witnesses whether close to home or far abroad.

Don’t Leave…

The words of Jesus stop me in my tracks. How many times have I tried to do something for God and His Kingdom without first waiting for the empowering of the Holy Spirit? I think I’ve tried to do a lot of well-intentioned ministry out of my own strength and wisdom.

In our American culture that focuses on planning and doing, it’s jarring to read that Jesus told his disciples to sit and wait. Waiting can be one of the most important parts of our ministry.

It’s like that episode of Seinfeld about a show that is about nothing—the work of ministry begins by doing nothing. We are seeking the filling, empowering, and guidance of the Spirit before we step forward.

That doesn’t mean we do nothing all of the time; waiting can be exploratory. Waiting may look fairly proactive in some circumstances since we’ll need the Spirit to confirm our tentative first steps.

However, can you imagine what the early church would have looked like if the disciples ran out of Jerusalem without the Holy Spirit? They would have created some chaotic, ill-conceived mishmash of the teachings of Jesus and of the expectations of Israel’s restoration as a Kingdom. No one would have thought about preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles for sure.

Waiting on God’s Spirit

What does waiting for the Spirit’s power look like? Do you need to sit in the presence of the Lord to wait for his leading? Do you need to talk with some friends about where you sense he’s leading? Do you need to try something new, while prayerfully asking God for guidance?

We know that waiting for the Spirit’s empowering is important. We oftentimes don’t know what it looks like. However, as we step forward in ministry, we should aim to make sure there’s no mistake that it has been God’s power at work in and among us.