:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

When I’ve felt most distant from God, God has eventually drawn me near again. The time I’ve spent feeling far away from God and unable to hear his voice has been difficult and uncomfortable. I have no idea why it happened sometimes.

On several occasions God overcame my doubts and fears by sending someone to pray over me. Something spiritual snapped, and I reached a new place in my spiritual walk.

Within a few months I had plenty of new problems. Thankfully God is able to draw us near to himself in several ways, the ones I know from personal experience are included below:

Confess Sins

We could say a lot about the theology behind sin and obedience, but I find it most helpful to think of sin as a matter of direction. That’s how Jesus often spoke of the Kingdom—either we’re entering it or we’re not. Are we moving toward God or away from him?

If we are sinning, we are moving away from God and will be unable to draw near to God. The laws of the Old Testament are among our many clues that God desires to have fellowship with us, but we must be holy and obedient. We show our love through obedience, and our obedience is sparked by our love.

Receive Prayer

Sometimes we need a friend to help us break through to the place where God wants us to be. I have found this to be particularly true in my own experience since it can be hard to get somewhere I’ve never been. When a fellow believer who knows where I’m coming from and where I need to go prayed for me, God moved me to a new place of freedom.

Whenever the Gospel spread, there is a clear precedent in the New Testament for believers to pray for one another, especially those who are new to the faith. I’ve found that the same principle sometimes applies when we need God to lead us out of a rut or into a deeper aspect of the spiritual life.

Wait in Faith

Yesterday we talked about letting go of our expectations, but there’s a balance to aim for here. While we don’t define how God will act, we should certainly expect to meet with him in some way.

I’ve often found that when I sit down and ask God to guide me, he’ll direct me to worship him.  I may not find the exact answer I’m looking for that day, but the important thing is to remain in Christ, our life-giving vine. We may have to wait a while before we experience God in the ways we’re looking for, but God desires to meet with his people. He will not abandon us.

How do you hear from God?

What’s your experience in breaking through a tough time when you couldn’t hear God?

Distance from God because of sin is bad enough without making up more sins, guilt, and despair on our own. Sin certainly creates a distance between us and God, but we don’t necessarily need sin to do that. We can handle that quite well on our own.

That isn’t to say that we are at fault whenever we feel distant from God. However, it will help us to eliminate some possibilities when we sense we are far from God.

Some struggle with this more than others, but here are a few ways we can isolate ourselves from God:

Expectations

I’ve expected God to show up for me in a particular way, and then felt disappointed when he didn’t. After seeing God show up for someone else or even revealing himself to me in the past, I’ve expected God to keep revealing himself in the same way.

Sometimes the Jewish leaders asked Jesus to show them a particular sign or miracle so that they could believe, but Jesus didn’t always give them what they asked for or expected. God defines the time, place, and means of his revelation. Our place is one of attention and awareness to him so that we’re ready to receive him when he shows up.

Moses didn’t expect to find God in a burning bush.

Guilt

We can feel bad in general when God doesn’t show up in the ways we expect or because we don’t have a certain kind of spiritual life. While Godly sorrow leads us to repentance and restoration, it’s possible to just feel bad and inadequate on an ongoing basis.

Guilt can creep in when we compare ourselves to others and minimize what God is doing in our own lives. If guilt is keeping you from God, then you can rest assured that it needs to be surrendered. We can use guilt as a crutch, “I’m a bad Christian, but so long as I feel guilty about it, I’m OK.”

God intends his people to be free from guilt, able to enjoy his presence with freedom.

Tomorrow’s Post: Drawing Near to God

Whenever someone brings up the problem of evil in our world or criticizes God for how things have played out, I always want to know what they would do differently or better. In a sense, this has everything to do with Advent. However, we need to set a few ground rules and look at a few options before looking at the birth of Jesus.

Why Are We Here?

Christians and any other religion that believes in a god, teach that God created the world. We didn’t arrive here by chance or luck. Christians in particular believe that God created us to be in relationship with him.

Therefore, if we follow this “free will” line of reasoning, God did not create us to be robots who obeyed him. God also doesn’t force himself on us. He wants us to choose to love him and to love others on our own.

What Options Do We Have?

Therefore, God could cancel his plans to work with us and to reach out to us. He could conceivably take control, force himself on us. However, God is defined by love and relationship, and such forceful action would run counter to his nature. His eyes are searching the earth for those who are seeking him.

If God doesn’t take control of us and our world, how else can he deal with sin and all of our other problems? I mean, there have been times when I wouldn’t have minded God taking control of things, but then again, that wouldn’t change anything for you or me personally. I believe God has a better way forward.

Bearing and Overcoming Evil

The thought of Jesus hanging on the cross with angels at his command is startling for me. God himself came to us in the person of Jesus, suffered like any other person, and then endured a painful death with the weight of the world’s sins upon him.

God didn’t choose a superficial plan that solves our problems for today and leaves us unchanged. God dealt with the roots of our problems by facing all of the evil in our world, bearing it on the cross, and then overcoming it through the Resurrection.

The Intimacy of God

God is not detached from us and our suffering. He faced it head-on in ways we cannot imagine. However, God will also not use the nuclear option. He modeled the way we should live and left his Spirit among us. If we can stop filling our brains with every other influence from the internet, TV, and radio, we may be quiet enough to hear him.

I crave that quiet time during Advent this year. I want to ponder the wonder of his incarnation and his plan to bear our sin and suffering. Every time I think of this incredible plan to work with us from the inside out, I’m blown away by the patience and compassion of God.

He gives us time to repent. He offers second chances. He waits for us when we can hardly scrape a few minutes together. He does all of this because he has not wavered from his original plan to be in relationship with his creation.

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…

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.

Another meditation in my series on the book of Romans…

If Jesus died to conquer sin while all were still sinners, then Paul reasons Jesus will continue to save those who have been reconciled through his death. The Romans church can boast of Christ’s sacrifice that not only cancelled their debt with God, but also includes them among God’s saved people.

This chapter particularly focuses on the the significance of God’s saving work through Christ that brings us peace with God. The gift of salvation is more generous and powerful than any offense that could separate us from God.

A key illustration involves the sin that Adam brought to the world. Through sin death began to reign, as everyone who followed Adam, also followed into sin and thus into death. However, if one sin brought death, then Christ’s gift of life through his one righteous act conquered sin and death. In this way, Christ is supreme as the one who not only rights past wrongs, but also offers a new way to live.

Unlike God’s gracious gift through Christ, the law was not given to make us right with God, but rather to point out sin. Thus rules and regulations have value within their role sorting right from wrong, but only in the work of Christ on the cross can sin be defeated. Therefore, Christ has both kept and fulfilled the law, making himself superior to sin, death, and the law. Christ has made God both just and the one who justifies.

Therefore, Christ brings us peace with God, and offers us a chance to live free from sin’s power. The details of living new lives apart from sin will be spelled out in chapter six.

This continues my series of meditations on the book of Romans. Today we have chapter three…

Paul has been building an argument for the equality of Jews and Gentiles under sin, but by the end of chapter three he extends this equality into the realm of salvation. For starters though, the Jews and Gentiles are mired sin and separated from God.

In spite of sin that alienates people from God, God is faithful to offer salvation as a gift through Christ. Nevertheless, God’s patient and redemptive acts do not give anyone an excuse to continue sinning. God will fulfill his promise and bring salvation to Jew and Gentile alike, but there is a stern warning that judgment will come to those who persist in sin. Therefore, Paul tells his readers to use the law to become conscious of sin, but to have faith in God for their salvation.

Therefore, whether or not someone has the law, the verdict is the same, but so is the way out. God’s salvation is not dependent on the law or whether or not someone has any kind of religious or ethnic credentials. I’m particularly taken with the thought that God is not only just, but also the one who justifies. God is essentially clearing the path for whoever wants to believe in him rather than setting up standards to be met.

The hard part of the argument for Paul’s listeners must have been  upholding the law by faith and not by observing it. It would seem that the only way to God and the path to obedience is by recognizing one’s complete and utter dependence on God for salvation. However, living by faith does not mean anyone can ignore the law. In fact, faith is the only path to truly obeying it.

That strikes me as an easy lesson to twist. God will judge those who ignore his patience and salvation by continuing to sin, but the way to be made right with God depends on believing in the saving work of Christ and living by faith. One would expect Paul to hammer on obeying the law, but he doesn’t. I can see how some would twist Paul’s arguments into a kind of antinomian Christianity where more sins only draw on more unlimited mercy.

Paul is no doubt challenging this sin-challenged church to be obedient and faithful to God. However, the only lasting way to be made right with God and to remain faithful is through faith in the life-changing work of Christ.

It is this work of Christ that fills up the following chapters in Romans where Paul explains how saving faith need not result in indulgent sinfulness.