The Rest of the Old Old Story

A friend of mine, Patrick Beard of Indigenous Outreach International, asked me about Psalm 45:10-11, which I mentioned in my book on the Council of Nicea. I love that passage, and I want to share my answer to him with you.

So, here’s the email:

Ps. 45:10-11 is for me a more emotional version of “There is no one who has given up relatives and lands for my sake who shall not receive a hundredfold in this life and in the age to come, life everlasting” (loosely quoted, I didn’t look that up).

Psalm 45:10-11 is a more positive side of “If you love father and mother more than me, you are not worthy of me.”

Those quotes from Jesus are important (of course). We must put him first, or we are not worthy of him. Even better, if we forsake everything for him, we will receive a hundredfold in this life.

But Psalm 45:10-11 is the best of all. Forget your own people and your father’s house—leave them behind to come be in Jesus’ house—and the King will greatly desire your beauty.

The picture is a feminine one, of course, addressed to daughters, and I am not a daughter. The church is a bride; I am not a bride.

Nonetheless, this represents the call of Christ to me. Leave everything behind, and enter his household, and he will not only reward you and find you worthy, he will greatly desire your beauty.

Maybe this passage, to me, is like John 15 from Christ’s lips: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Continue in my love. If you keep my commandments, you shall continue in my love.” And, “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”

Somehow, the picture from Psalm 45:10-11 drove that home for me. It’s an incredible thought to me that the King might not only be pleased with me, but that he would count me a friend (greatly desire my beauty).

In 1 Chronicles 27, there is a list of all sorts of officers that served King David. The office I want is found in v. 33 and held by Hushai the Archite.

A friend of mine made a banner for me for my hospital room with Psalm 84:5-7 on it.

I’m on day 20 of my first round of chemotherapy for acute leukemia, in case you don’t already know that. I’ve been blogging about it at Thrilled to Death.

There’s some hardship involved in my chemotherapy, but it’s not nearly as hard as I expected. I’ve found out, though, that the marrow or stem cell transplant that’s coming will probably be worse and will last much longer—at least 6 months, and one man I talked to today had 18 months that he called bearable but extremely difficult.

So how do I face this?

Strength in God

How blessed is the man whose strength is in you.

The greatest opponent I’ve faced is my own strength, my own attempts to have a positive attitude and to expect the best. My faith is easily shaken. On a bad day, my mood can easily swing, and I question people’s motives and judge their behavior.

God’s strength, however, is never shaken. The one who delights in the Lord is consistently supplied with grace, which Psalm 1 pictures as a tree planted by a flowing river which never runs dry.

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee. (Isaiah 26:3)"

If I’ve learned anything in the last five weeks—yeah, it’s only been five weeks since I was diagnosed!—it’s that I have to live right now. God has grace for right now, not grace for next week, six months from now, or next year.

The rest of that passage in Psalm 84 provides two awesome promises:

From Weeping to Springs of Life

Passing through the valleys of Baca, they make it a spring.

Baca is Hebrew for "weeping."

What an awesome picture! For those whose strength is in God, their weeping produces springs that feed those behind them.

You can probably draw your own analogies from that picture.

From Strength to Strength

They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion.

If I’ve learned anything else over the last five weeks, it’s that strength is not continuous. Yesterday’s grace is not sufficient for today. I’m sure there’s really awesome Christians somewhere who never wander from the presence of God and pray without ceasing.

I’m not one of them.

But I do know what it’s like to go from strength to strength. I do know that the sea of grace is inexhaustible and can be tapped anew each day. I do know that the mercies of God are new every morning, and I know what it’s like to appear before God in Zion, though that last one is a story for a different day.

To sum up, let me encourage you that today is the day to let your strength be in Jesus Christ, to keep your mind stayed on him, and to know that yesterday’s grace won’t carry you today, and that there is no grace for tomorrow until tomorrow.

This post won’t go up until July 9. By then I should be in the hospital, just finishing chemo, with no bone marrow and no immune system, and starting a 4-6 week recovery.

My 50th birthday is July 11. Happy birthday!

Tonight, though, June 29, I’m sitting in an RV, and except for the miracle of modern medicine, I’d be dying very rapidly. I may still die, I suppose, though I believe God has told me that’s not the end of this leukemia path for me.

Still, I think about death and eternal life. Even though I know it’s happened to thousands and millions of people, it still amazes me how our lives can go on and on for decades, seemingly so stable and normal, and then death quite suddenly shoves its way in.

So now I have this dread disease. Cancer.gov refers to it as “highly responsive, but usually fatal.” The time frame is usually under two years. At that point, you’re cured or dead.

I don’t want to die.

I don’t mean die on this earth. Everyone’s going to physically die. No sense worrying about that.

I mean I don’t want death to be the end. I want to live forever. The thought of disappearing into blackness is scary to me, and that thought, on occasions in my life, even as a Christian, has really shaken me.

And now, here I am, with a lot of reasons to think about death, and God is so close.

Today, it’s no problem to picture disappearing into the light of God because I’m already there. Today, it’s no problem believing Jesus’ promise of eternal life.

In fact, today, it’s no problem believing that the issue of life after death won’t be an issue for me for at least 20 years or so, even though doctors are going to wipe out my bone marrow and immune system next week.

Why should I be so unworried? Why should this time be the time for me to have the most peace I’ve ever had?

For the same reason those Vietnam POW’s gave thanks to God when they were released.

Because God is real, and his Gospel is real.

And so I sit thankful. I have been given this incredible peace, and such a wonderful opportunity to talk about it.

All because God thinks I can handle having leukemia dumped on me.

I feel honored, and I feel humbled.

I remember making rank once in the military after I refused to study for my test, choosing instead to devote myself to the study of God’s Word. The test scores required to make rank that cycle were lower than any before or after for several years.

I cried on my bed when I was told.

The rank didn’t matter that much to me, but that God would give me such a gift was overwhelming.

You can pray for me. You can think I’m strong. You can think I’m a good Christian, but I’m really not a very good Christian. I can give you lists of people who have lived lives of constant self-denial, while I’ve spent too much time in restaurants, occasionally failed to “get around” to giving, and simply indulged at times when I should have denied myself.

Can I really claim to have “buffeted” my body as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 9:27?

I doubt it, unless you apply the modern term “buffet,” as in a really indulgent restaurant, to the verse, which really isn’t a very funny joke.

People like Mother Theresa cause my conscience to be stricken. Amy Carmichael once wrote a book called If. I couldn’t read it. I’m in the church now, which has done some very positive work on my weak will, so now I can at least read it. Though it convicts me, I can see where God has moved me forward in things that book talks about.

I’ve traveled, and I’ve met foreign missionaries who have hung out all night in jungles being eaten by mosquitoes, then swam a dangerous river towing bible wrapped in plastic, all to bring the Gospel to those who don’t have it. Me? I’m a self-indulgent, wealthy American. Such men make me wonder whether I qualify as a Christian.

May God have mercy on me.

Only I don’t have to say “may.” God has already had mercy on me. He’s let me feel the process of dying, and he’s held my hand and told me he’s with me.

If leukemia kills me, the only thing that will matter is the terrible hurt that will cause my family. May God allow me to teach my children to trust God the way that he is teaching me to trust him. There is nothing like walking in the Spirit.

For me, though, all I can think is the wonderful kindness of being shown eternal life by God because leukemia is destroying my blood.

Why is this happening to me? Why is God allowing me, of all people, to bear this, to experience such wonderful assurances? Why is he choosing me, of all people, to get to carry this disease and talk about the power of Jesus Christ, who never leaves us nor forsakes us?

I do know why. I’m not a very good Christian, but I am a Christian. I am a man of faith, and I have chose to learn from Jesus.

It’s far better to be a lousy disciple than a non-disciple.

Don’t fool yourself, though. To get the blessings, you do have to make a choice to enroll in his school, to choose his ways, and to give up what you want.

Yeah, I know. It’s a terrible price. Your dreams of being a pilot, your college, your exercise, your business, and even your parents, siblings, wife, and children, all don’t mean much to him except as they are put in his service.

Of course, he made them all. I suppose that gives him a right to them.

Personally, it’s a price that today I regret less than ever.

Note: This post ignores all the questions about what the body of Christ is. This applies whether you’re including everyone who claims to be Christian and all churches that claim to be churches or not.

Further note: While most of the details of this post are still accurate, I actually have Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm (that link’s to my explanation of the disease), a particularly rare and aggressive lymphoma.

I’ve got a larger army of immune cells than you do. In fact, I probably have almost double the amount of those microscopic disease-destroying cells than you do.

And my cells are bigger than your cells.

What an army!

They’re killing me.

Those large cells are useless against the viruses they’re supposed to be fighting. They look impressive, so large and out in such intimidating numbers. But they have a couple of big problems.

They’re from the wrong source. My lymphocytes, the virus-fighting cells of the immune system, are all clones of one another. They did not come from the proper source, being made anew by my bone marrow. They have gotten their DNA–their programming and their growth–from one rogue cell, and they just march on … unchanged and unchanging.

They’re useless against the real enemies. Because they’re abnormal, they can’t recognize or kill viruses. They just tour my blood stream, looking impressive.

They’re crowding out everything else. These cells don’t like other cells being around. Neutrophils are smaller cells that fight bacteria. My blood has antibodies to destroy neutrophils. Apparently, only viruses are the real enemy now, and my white blood cell army only pretends to fight those.

Platelets are blood cells that thicken blood and join together to stop bleeding. My blood has antibodies that kill platelets. But what’s probably worst of all, that army of massive, mutant lymphocytes is crowding out the only cells that can really give life: the red blood cells. I have only 70% as many as I had 9 months ago when I was healthy.

The Body of Christ

This post isn’t about me. My problems are sent from God to open doors for ministry and to help me live by the only real life there is, that spiritual life from God which is fed to us by the blood of Jesus Christ.

But there are so many accurate analogies between my body and the body of Christ that it’s not funny. In fact, it’s scary.

Currently, the body of Christ has lots of people running around defending it. They’re large, and they are numerous. Their targets include works in any form as part of the Gospel, anything that doesn’t come from the Bible (and, in fact, anything which doesn’t come from their interpretation of the Bible), evolution and anything else they don’t agree with from science (like the earth going around the sun?), and homosexual marriage among non-Christians.

Their power is to defend a system that provides weekly speeches by professionals, a mix of professional and amateur musicians to lead singing, and a school with a few teaching positions for particularly gifted laymen. By and large, though, it’s a very small percentage of Christians that have an active role, or even an opportunity for an active role, in the system we have today.

So why does a system that is so clearly unscriptural and ineffective survive and thrive from year to year, decade to decade, and generation to generation?

Because the multitude of giant but mutant defenders of the faith are too busy opposing the works that Paul said Christians must maintain (Tit. 3:8), that Jesus died for (Tit. 2:13-14), and that James said are required for salvation (Jam. 2:14-26) to take on the real enemies of the faith.

In the meantime, the voices of true defenders of the faith are drowned out by the multitude of shouts of the cloned mutant giants. With warnings and threats, they have raised up an army of passive, ignorant, and superstitious Christians functioning as antibodies to drive out all other disease-fighting parts of the body of Christ.

The ability to fight invaders, the ability to stop the bleeding, the recognition of the real enemies, and, above all, the flow of life from the real blood of Christ are stifled.

We’re killing ourselves, led by the multitude of cloned mutant giants.

A Brief Addition on the Blood of Christ

The real blood of Christ is life-giving!

Let me tell you about the incredible difference between having life-giving red blood cells coursing through your veins and having those same cells crowded out by mutant, giant, cloned, and ineffective white blood cells, possessing no life in themselves.

In 2006, I ran a 31-mile course on a small mountain near Huntsville, AL. One of the loops, which we ran (well, mostly walked; it was littered with big rocks covered by leaves) 3 times, had a steep hill at the end of it. I ran up it the first time, but by the 3rd time around, I was happy to walk the quarter-mile or so, breathing hard at the top, loving the feel of the mountain air, and feeling alive with the trees around me.

When I got home my legs were so sore that I stopped in front of the porch to plan how to get up the two steps so I could go in the house.

But I was charged with energy; thrilled with my success; delighted with life.

I’m living in an RV right now, and without running any miles, some days I breathe hard after I climb its two steps to get inside. My legs aren’t sore, so I don’t have to plan how to climb those steps. My energy wanes regularly, and I’m thrilled with life only because I choose to be.

Friends, that’s what traditional Christianity is doing to you!!!

Can you understand that’s why John says that if you don’t keep Christ’s commands, you don’t know God?! (1 Jn. 2:3-4).

John was angry at "those who are trying to seduce you" (1 Jn. 2:27) because they were robbing the people of God of life. They were teaching the people of God to fight the wrong things.

Seeing the Problem

You can’t see my disease. If you walked in my office to see me doing barbell rows (yeah, I keep a barbell in my office) or to see me on the floor doing twists to keep my back from going out, you would think I was a normal, healthy individual.

Well, okay, you probably wouldn’t think I was normal.

It’s not until you ask me to function that you’d see something was wrong. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with you in a soccer game. If we work on a carpentry project all morning, it wouldn’t take long for you to notice that I’m resting a lot and that I don’t look right.

It’s starting to show in other ways, too. I’m growing my third plum-covered bump on my torso as of yesterday. That’s the product of my body attacking itself, my immune system doing damage to perfectly good tissue.

Are you catching the analogy?

Have you seen the plum-colored bumps on the body of Christ? Have you seen those clusters of damaged people, beat up and rejected by an immune system run wild and led by the cloned mutant giants?

The mutant giants want you to pay attention to all the good flesh. The parts of the body they have not yet damaged.

That’s as stupid as my pointing out that I can still walk many miles as long as I don’t get too fast while ignoring the massive drop in energy and endurance I’ve experienced. That’s as stupid as my ignoring an inch-and-a-half wide raised purple bump on my back and the two that have come after it. (I have to be honest and admit I ignored the bumps for weeks until the drop in energy became obvious and a friend ordered me to go to the doctor.)

Leukemia’s an excellent picture of what’s happening to the body of Christ.

Correcting the Problem

Thank you to the West Clinic in Corinth, MS and to the men and women who have devoted their lives to healing people like me.

But who’s devoted their life to healing the body of Christ? And are they gathered together in one clinic, reviewing each other’s work, and helping each other to work toward one common goal? Do they know what that goal is?

The people who are fighting Leukemia are studying. They’re researching. They’re learning all the time. They’re looking at the problem and discussing it.

But before they ever began, they made sure they knew how a healthy body is supposed to work, at least as well as humanly possible. They went to college, and they got in a degree in some medical field.

But Christians can’t just go to college. Too many Bible colleges have studied the modern body, riddled with diseases. They don’t know what a healthy body is like.

Am I being judgmental?

I don’t think so. I think it’s bizarre that we would read that the early Christians devoted themselves every day to the apostles teaching, to the breaking of bread and to fellowship, and that we would ignore the fact that we don’t even encourage daily fellowship.

I think it’s bizarre that the book of Acts would say that the early Christians had all things in common, and that we would claim that was only in Jerusalem without doing any research to see if that’s so.

I think it’s bizarre that the earliest church manual in existence says we ought to seek out the faces of the saints every day and be prepared to share everything with them, and we would act like tithing (Of all the laws that we could drag into the church from the Old Testament, why that one?) at a weekly speech to support a professional staff and a building is the same thing. Good grief, that’s morally reprehensible.

I think it’s bizarre that Justin in the mid-2nd century could talk about living familiarly with one another and Tertullian in the early-3rd century could talk about sharing everything except our wives, and that we would ignore what was obviously the normal Christian life of the 1st and 2nd centuries.

We’re diseased, friends!

No wonder we marvel at John’s statement that those who are born of God do not sin. We rightly point out that the Greek of that verse means something to the effect of “continually sin,” but that doesn’t change the fact that, really, we don’t understand the grace that takes away sin’s power any more than I can understand the endurance that would have allowed me to run the 10K I was scheduled to run with my secretary.

Help! Is there a doctor in the house?

I was quoted last night. One of the elders told the church here that I had said that we should not pursue righteousness.

Everyone was nodding. No one minded. Let me tell you why.

There is a useless righteousness. The apostle Paul once wrote:

[The Jews], being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going around trying to establish their own, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness for everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:3-4)

What is the difference between our righteousness, which becomes an idol keeping us away from God, and God’s righteousness?

Our Righteousness

We are often deceived into thinking that just because Paul was talking about the Law of Moses in Romans 10, then that means that the only false righteousness we can have is one based on carnal, earthly interpretations of Moses’ Law. Or, even worse, we think that now that Christ died, it doesn’t matter whether we live righteously at all. (That last one, as common as it is, has got to be the most egregious misunderstanding of any book of any time period.)

The real problem is that the Jews had a righteousness based on the letter—that would be Scripture—rather than on the Spirit.

We can be just as guilty as they.

First, just in case you think that’s not what Paul was talking about, listen to Jesus’ complaint about the Jews and their righteousness:

You search the Scriptures because you think that you have life in them. But these are they which testify of me! And you refuse to come to me so that you may have life! (John 5:39-40)

Who can deny that today it is a normal, mainline teaching that we should search the Scriptures because there is life in them?

God’s Righteousness

God’s righteousness doesn’t come from the Scriptures. It comes from heaven.

Listen, I’m not making a case against the Scriptures. You may notice that I’m quoting from them in this blog. I know which verses to quote because I read the Scriptures often. This blog post, and all others I write, are founded on the Scriptures.

The Scriptures "are they which testify of [Christ]."

Having read them, I know to go to Christ.

Having read them, I know that the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:14), not just the Scriptures.

Having read them, I know that the church is the pillar and support of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15), something that the Scriptures never say about themselves.

Having read them, I know that God’s righteousness comes from God, through his Spirit, and not from reading the Scriptures and going off to do what we think are good works.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:10)

Is Jesus Christ our example? Are we not supposed to imitate him?

Jesus didn’t do anything that he didn’t see his Father doing. In fact, he states, "Of myself, I can do nothing" (Jn. 5:19 and Jn. 5:30).

How much more can we not do anything of ourselves? How much more should we not do anything we don’t see our Father doing? How much more do we need to lean on the Spirit of God?

God has prepared some works in advance for you to do! If you get too busy doing your own works, you’ll miss his!

Your Righteousness, God’s Righteousness, and Hypocrisy

All of us have things we’re good at and things that are very difficult for us.

For me, it’s very easy to receive admonishment. I consider all of it. Harsh words don’t upset me, and insults don’t bother me. I bear them patiently, and I try to learn from them. I don’t even have to wrestle my fleshly nature to be that way.

But if I try to explain something to you, and you’re not getting it? Well, then my blood pressure rises. I get frustrated, and I want to yell, "Are you not listening? Why can’t you get this?"

There are worldly temptations that are not a temptation at all to me. There are others that are a terrible difficulty.

All of us are that way.

Left to ourselves, we’ll pat ourselves on the back for our strengths and ignore our weaknesses.

We’ll do that even if we’re reading our Bibles.

I’ve known several men that seemed to be bold, brave speakers. They knew the Scripture, and they weren’t afraid to stand up for God to anyone.

What was really true of them, however, was that they were terrified someone might see or point out their own faults, so they had become experts at jabbing, poking, and stinging others with the Scriptures in order to keep them at a distance.

Oh, what righteous men they appeared to be! Jesus, however, would have pointed his finger at them the same way he pointed his finger at the Pharisees.

There’s no saving such men. You can rebuke them, point out their hypocrisy, then leave them be. Chances are, they’ll never repent.

But you …

You can repent. You can do what’s right. You don’t have to fall into the same hypocrisy.

And don’t fool yourself; you will.

Unless you submit to the righteousness of God.

Pursue a relationship with God. You can always fool a book, even if that book is Scripture.

You can’t fool God. God has something for you to work on today. He knows. He knows what you’re hiding. He knows how hard or not hard it is for you. He knows when to put his finger on your faults, and he has the ability to give you the grace to overcome them.

When the Scripture speaks, it’s possible that you might miss it. It’s possible that you won’t even catch what was said. It’s also possible that even after you catch it, you’ll find it impossible to follow through.

But when God speaks?

When God speaks, you may ignore it, but you won’t miss it. It’ll drop in your heart, touch your conscience, and you will be forced to struggle and wrestle with that word and grow and live, or you will ignore it and slowly die a spiritual death. God won’t say another word until you deal with that one.

And when you deal with it, you will live. As horribly hard as it might be, it will be within your grasp. You will feel the smile and pleasure of God with each step forward even as you struggle.

How many people are sidelined, reading the Bible, looking for their own righteousness, all the while ignoring the last thing God said to them. They’ve been without the presence of God for days or even years. They’re worn out, exhausted, powerless, and unable to find anything in the Scriptures that will set them free.

If you’re one of those, it’s time to look up and ask God, "What was that you said to me?"

A Picture of Righteousness

Aargh, I hate adding one more thing. I’m scared you’ll lose what was already said.

Most of us have a picture of what it means to be a real man or woman of God.

That picture’s wrong.

Crush it. Throw it away. It’s an idol.

Only God knows what it means for you to be a man or woman of God.

Your picture will get in his way.

I’d try to explain it to you, but there’s no way to do that. If you have a confidently held picture of what real righteousness looks like, then you’re hopelessly off the track. I can’t tear that picture down for you; God will have to do that. And he will, if you’re a follower of the Spirit of God rather than a man who pats himself on the back with the Scriptures.

The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, without partiality, and without pretense. (James 3:17)

Today I found the worst “wife birthday” card ever.

I was at WalMart (yes, I confess I was shopping at Corporate Evil HQ) for a birthday card for my wife, and I found one that said … Well, I’ll have to paraphrase because I can’t remember word for word:

Dear wife,
I love you because you understand me. You love me despite my faults, and you see me for who I am.

What???

Now, I want you to pause here, look away, and decide whether you agree that’s a really terrible card. If you don’t understand, then what I’m about to tell you will change your life and your relationship with everyone.

Pause, pause, pause, while you’re not looking and deciding why it’s a terrible card.

…

The World’s Worst “Wife’s Birthday” Card

Can you paraphrase what that card says? Here, let me give you a different paraphrase:

“I love you because you think about me and let me talk about myself even when it’s your birthday. You’re not bothered by the fact that I can’t get my mind off myself.”

If you’re a Christian, you have to do a lot better than that—and with more than your wife.

At Rose Creek Village, we like to say that if you want to speak into another person’s life, you have to answer three questions for them: Do you love me? Do you see me? Do you care?

You can answer those questions with your eyes or with your words. You can answer that question in advance by the way you treat the person that you’re talking to. But in some way, you need to answer those questions—and answer them all with yes—before you can really expect them to hear what you have to say.

That world’s worst wife’s birthday card doesn’t answer those questions, it asks them.

Husbands, at least on your wife’s birthday, surely you can answer those questions for her, not tell her you appreciate that she answers those questions for you! Talk about selfish! Good grief.

If you’re one of those guys who would have bought a card like that, then it’s time to look at yourself ONE LAST TIME. Acknowledge your selfishness, repent, and forget about whether anyone, including your wife, understands you. UNDERSTAND THEM INSTEAD!

I think it was Frances of Assissi who prayed:

Father, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all of my heart

Time to pray that prayer, then buy a card that talks about her, not you.

A Final Note

Some years back, I used to run a warehouse by myself. Every day UPS would come by and pick up the packages I’d packed. The UPS driver was a real chatty fellow, very pleasant to be around.

Anyway, he’d get to telling stories, and then he’d stop and say, "Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?"

He was joking. Make sure when you act like that, you are, too.

Tags: birthday card, love, self, selfishness

 

"Get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding." – Proverbs 4:5

Recently I saw a movie called Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. There’s a modern remake, but I saw the 1936 version with Gary Cooper. Really good movie. I love romances, and this one was both humorous and insightful into human nature.

Anyway, at one point Gary Cooper, playing Longfellow Deeds, gets to see Grant’s Tomb for the first time in his life. The worldly-wise female reporter, who obviously was going to become the other half of the romance, says, “Well, there it is.” She clearly expects him to be disappointed, and she comments that most people are.

He then says, "Do you know what I see? I see an Ohio country boy who grows up to be a general in the United States Army. I see Lee surrendering to that Ohio boy. I see him standing and taking the oath to be president of the United States. That could only happen in a country as great as ours."

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

It really wasn’t that moving of a scene, but it distinctly highlighted the difference that attitude can make.

I know people that are excited all the time about the Word of God. They are excited when they read the Bible. They are excited when they hear preaching and teaching. They are excited when people speak into their lives.

What’s even more amazing is that these people can listen to some pretty boring and occasionally rather shallow teaching and still be excited.

Why? Because the Word of God is the Word of God. It is the very life of a disciple. Thus, they happily sit through an hour of chopping rock to get one precious gem. (That’s supposed to be a mining analogy, which I point out just in case poor writing or my poor understanding of mining makes the analogy unclear.)

But how many of us struggle to find some time to read the Scriptures. How many of us sit through good or very good teaching, loaded with precious gems, yet complain because 50% of the teaching time was like chopping rock. Or worse, we complain if even 10% of the teaching time was a little slow.

We’re lazy people. We want the riches of God handed to us. We can find a YouTube video of some spectacular teacher, who never lets one minute of his sermon get boring. Why should we labor our way through the disorderly words of some lover of God who has to struggle to get his point across to us.

When Longfellow Deeds saw Grant’s Tomb, he didn’t see an unimpressive building. He saw an idea. He saw the sweat and labor of pioneers and soldiers.

It’s the exact same kind of thinking that makes the difference between a disciple, who is granted access to the treasures of God, and a member of an audience, who is happily entertained but for the most part granted access only to “strong delusion,” following the many in blissful ignorance of what Jesus said about what road the many travel on.

Today, I just have some points for you to consider:

• After 300 years of church history, the Council of Nicea still found only a paragraph’s worth of doctrine important enough to encapsulate in a creed.
• The foundation of God, according to Scripture, has to do with behavior, not belief (2 Tim. 2:19).
• Jesus didn’t say, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only those who can accurately answer a question about the atonement” (Matt. 7:21).

A friend mentioned I hadn’t posted in nearly a month. I’ve been working on my book about the Council of Nicea. 10 chapters done, 1 chapter to write, and 9 to edit. I also have to edit the glossaries. I hope to have it done within a month. It will be about 400 pages long, and there’s a lot of unique information.

It also does what I’m always trying to do with Christian History for Everyman: tell you stories to educate, entertain, and pique your interest, then put the sources in your hand so you can be an expert, too.

But I don’t want to completely neglect the blog.

Today I read in Jeremiah 23:14 about shepherds who “strengthen the hands of evildoers” (Holman Christian Standard Bible).

It made me think of George Fox, founder of the Quakers, who said complained about preachers who would “plead for sin.”

The purpose of the Scriptures, according to Paul in 2 Tim. 3:17, is to thoroughly equip us for every good work. That’s great; there’s a pattern there because that’s the purpose of the new birth, too (Eph. 2:10).

How much preaching today, however, ‘strengthens the hands of evildoers’ by explaining why we can’t stop sinning and why works don’t matter?

Jesus’ blood does provide forgiveness of sin and access to the throne room of God. But aren’t we entering the throne room of God specifically to access the grace that teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts (Tit. 2:11-12), that causes sin to lose its power over us (Rom. 6:14), and that makes us zealous for good works (Tit. 2:14).

Admittedly, we all “stumble in many ways” (Jam. 3:2). All the more reason, then, that we don’t need help in stumbling!!! Let us plead for righteousness, considering how to provoke one another to love and good works.

Consider Strengthening the Hands of Well-Doers

Rather than strengthening the hands of evil-doers, let’s strengthen the hands of well-doers, for it is only those who do not grow weary in well-doing who will reap eternal life (Gal. 6:9). All cowards, liars, adulterers, and such have their part in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8).

My daughter likes to tell me she’s bored every now and then so I can throw out suggestions about things she can do. Recently she reminded me that I once told her, “Why don’t you sit on the couch and stare at the wall.”

I have a new suggestion for those with time on their hands, bored or not.

Consider.

Doesn’t the command to consider suggest that we should be stopping and thinking? Maybe sitting on the couch and staring at the wall isn’t such a bad idea.

And what are we to consider?

How to provoke one another to love and good works.

Let’s be those who strengthen the hands of well-doers and who frighten evil-doers the way God wants to (1 Pet. 1:17).

A friend of mine likes to say, “Salvation is not a plan, it’s a man.”

Our faith is not to be in something Jesus has done, but in Jesus himself, the Savior of the world.

But what does it mean to have faith in Jesus Christ?

Faith and Obedience

Jesus once said:

Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will compare him to a wise man who built his house upon a rock. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it didn’t fall because it was built upon a rock. (Matt. 7:24-25)

Apparently, Jesus—the one in whom we are to have faith—thinks that having faith in him is listening to and obeying what he has to say.

Corroborating Jesus

Now I know we shouldn’t have to corroborate the words of Jesus. He is, after all, the Lord and Creator of everything and everyone.

But since Christians today seem to prefer other voices than that of the great Shepherd of the Sheep himself—Jesus doesn’t always seem to grasp or agree with our ideas about faith alone—let me point out that the writer of Hebrews entirely concurs with Jesus.

He has become the author of eternal salvation to them that obey him. (Heb. 5:9)

To whom did he swear that they would not enter into his rest except to those that did not obey (Gr. apeitheo: to refuse to be persuaded or comply)? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief (Gr. apistia: unbelief). (Heb. 3:18-19)

And Paul warns us about people who would trick us into not believing that faith has nothing to do with obedience to Christ:

For you know this: No sexually immoral or unclean person, nor a greedy man—who is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Don’t let anyone deceive you with empty sayings, for it’s because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. So don’t be their companions in crime. (Eph. 5:5-6)

In fact, so does the apostle John:

Little children, don’t let anyone deceive you. The one that does righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. (1 Jn. 3:7)

Jesus Speaks on Obedience Again

Jesus makes his concern about obedience even more clear a few verses before his comment about who is building his house on a solid foundation:

Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven. (Matt. 7:21)

So Jesus is concerned about obedience. To Jesus, faith is obedience.

But what does he want us to obey?

The Three Most Important Chapters in the Bible

Both passages from Matthew (above) are part of the Sermon on the Mount. Chapters five, six, and seven of the Gospel of Matthew are about the most concise description of how God wants you to live that you could ever hope for.

You could spend the rest of your life living out those three chapters and learning what they mean by obedience to them.

And according to Jesus, you’d be wise if you did.