God wrote a book

LOVE IT!

I was quite taken with a short video clip by John Piper this week.
The intro reads:

“It is one of the saddest effects of the fall that over time the greatest wonders in the world become routine. The first day among the Alps we are speechless with wonder. By the end of the week, we’re playing video games. This reality is a great human tragedy.

So it is with the Bible. It is an immeasurable wonder that God has given us an inspired book containing the truth about himself and his ways and what he wills for our lives. If it had not been around for two thousand years, stocked in every bookstore, found in hotel drawers, courtrooms, mobile apps — if it arrived today, we would either write it off as a ludicrous myth, or we would bow down in worship and scarcely dare to touch it.”

Piper speaks in hopes of restoring our wonder in the Word of God.  And I ‘get’ what he’s saying because I distinctly remember my first sight of the Swiss Alps as a teenager on a school trip.  They were so achingly beautiful in the light of the setting sun that I wondered how anything ever again would seem beautiful in comparison.  That thought almost made me cry.  I remember it still.

The Word of God is like this—an incomparable revelation of God’s heart, God’s will, and the glory of God’s Son, all written down for us.  And yet, the wonder fades… Why is that?

That’s what I’ve been pondering this week.  Have a listen to John Piper’s thoughts here, then I will add my own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOhkldCSs04

Some see a portrait…others a window with never ending beauty beyond.

God wrote a book—pages and pages of God—His thoughts, His heart…We see God Himself in this book.  We meet Him here or we don’t meet Him, not with any hope of friendship…

Our weak, tired, distracted eyes see a boring portrait on the wall, but it’s a window… it breaks through into the real world, the better world, the lasting world.  And through this window shines a divine light that changes everything!

Discipline and resolve can carry you only so far. We need something stronger.  There are too many traps and hurdles along the path. At the root  of the  reasons we don’t read the Bible is that we don’t want to read the Bible.

We see a wall, not a window, a boring portrait, not the never ending beauty beyond it.  So we leave it shut and we miss the miracle.

The God who said let light shine out of darkness loves to shine…

He wakens our dead bored souls.

He frees us from bondage to sin.

He satisfies us with Words, His words.

How else will I know Him. How else will I prepare myself to enjoy Him forever.  I’ll spend the rest of my life looking out of this window, waiting for another sight  of Him, another glimpse of my God  –John Piper

Piper’s words make me think about my own experience of the Word of God.  I have read it nearly all my life.  And mostly, I have loved it.  But not always.  Some days I get up early to read it, longing to hear God’s voice—to sense His Spirit speaking to mine in its pages–directing, reassuring, counseling… But many other mornings I don’t wrangle myself out of bed. I don’t rise to listen.  Why is that?  I think I’d rather sleep a little longer, (or lie there awake but cozy, as the case may be).  There is in me this lingering nagging doubt.  Maybe God won’t ‘show up’.  Maybe it will be a frustrating waste of time to open those pages and search in vain for a living word.  Maybe this morning the Word will be dry and empty, like chaff to my hungry soul.  And I’ll come away wishing I hadn’t wakened my hunger. Or maybe I’m not even hungry.  All seems well in my world.  I think I’ll do quite fine today without the manna.

I suppose there are lots of reasons we don’t read the Word with an insatiable appetite—reasons we see it as a severe-faced portrait on the wall rather than a window overlooking the Alps.  One thing that has helped to sustain my appetite for the Word through good times and low times is this.  Where once I came looking for a verse for me, a tidbit I could pluck right off the page to make me feel better about me, more and more I’m coming to Scripture looking for what God is saying about Himself, His own heart, His desires, His plans.  What does He want me to know?  Why did He include this passage in the collection of ‘all Scripture’ that is declared ‘profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…’ (II Tim.3:16) Asking this question has taken my attention off my need and turned it back to God’s heart.  He’s given this inspired Word for my benefit but it is not primarily about me.  It’s about Him.  And the more I look at it that way, the more I see, and the more I want to come back to know Him better.

Suppose we were to come to the Word to see God, to know Him as He really is, not as we have imagined Him to be? What if we were to come full of wonder, to marvel, to fear, to bow, to adore this God who is so unlike us and yet has stooped to make us in His image so that we can walk with Him and hear His voice in the cool of the day?

Suppose I could refrain from trying to make every passage fit my immediate need—like  a TUMS for the soul, some quick-fix to take away the discomfort of life in a disordered world?  Suppose instead I would keep coming back to this book as God’s remedy for the underlying cancer that’s causing all the pain in the world as we know it.  There may be no quick fix, but there is hope here, an eternal  hope that resets my fixation with the present.

Here lies God’s unfolding story of reaching down to the likes of us.  In the beginning, here is God creating.  In the end, He’s banishing evil and wiping away our every tear.  And in the middle God manages the messes man makes as He brings His Kingdom reign to earth.  God’s word gives me a window into all of this.

Do I come to the Word as an old portrait on a wall I’ve passed a thousand times or as a window framing the never-ending beauty of a God who makes Himself known to me in its pages?

–LS

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,  so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Is.55:1-3,9-11 ESV

My Testimony—the conclusion for now…

LIVE IT!

Here I sit all these miles from where I began–closer to the West coast than the East, a ‘landed immigrant’ in a country I knew nothing about growing up, a wife to a humble man of great faith, a mother of six (one gone ahead to glory), a grandmother to four, a friend to a smattering of persons all across both countries, and still a homebody.

In many ways I was the least likely of my friends to head off into the horizon, leaving our tight knit community of faith for a bigger world. We thought we had a corner on church and holiness and ‘missionary work’. Why leave?  But my mom had a subscription to this little magazine called “The Overcomer” from Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada. And she was the dreamer, not I.

I suppose she was a bit of a schemer too. For she noted that Prairie also had a boarding highschool. Recognizing this as an opportunity for me to grow beyond the confines of my cloistered life, she got ahold of an application and sent it to me while I was away on a summer missions trip in Alaska. [That trip in itself was testimony to God’s quiet but powerful moving on a willing heart. He gave me the ‘want to’ in response to a testimony I read and He paved the way!]

Anyway, my mother sent me this application to Prairie Highchool, told me to pray about it, and left the decision with me.

Wow. I remember sitting down with that paper, in the wilds of Alaska, overlooking a beautiful still lake that mirrored the surrounding mountains… thinking, and praying. Summer was almost over and we teens were eager to trade pup-tent living for home. I had never been away from home for so long. Now this. If the school accepted me I would have only a week or so at home before the school year started. And I had never even seen the school! But I was willing…

Well, my story has been one of the Lord working in my heart to make me willing to do things beyond what my personality would suggest as feasible, and then going before me to make them possible. On the drive back to the mission base in Florida at summer’s end (Yes, we drove in an old school bus all the way from Florida to Alaska that summer!), our bus broke down in Alberta, at none other than Prairie Bible Institute. One of our leaders was a student there and made arrangements for our team to be housed on campus while the repairs were made. I ended up not only seeing the school, but meeting the principle and handing in my application in person. Within weeks I would be back, on my own, to join the Grade 12 class.

This is not a biographical sketch so I will spare you all the details of how I adjusted to that big change. I include this account because for me it illustrates the way God has directed my heart and my steps all down through the years. He knows the good works He has prepared for me to walk in. And He knows the people and experiences He will use to refine and sanctify me. And at each juncture He first shapes my desires to fit His, and then fulfills them. That has been my experience. A host of life-changing events followed on the heels of my willingness to leave the familiar home of my childhood.

*Not only would I never return to live in NJ (other than a summer or two and some holidays) but my parents would make a major move and commit the rest of their lives to missions work, first in Florida, and then, in Alaska!

* During a stint in the infirmary that last year of highschool I would resolve to get into Bible translation with Wycliffe, but first to enroll in Bible School.

* God used even my inhibitions to direct my steps. I chickened out of signing up for a 4 year program because I couldn’t imagine writing an extensive thesis paper. Enrolling in the three-year Biblical Studies program meant I got plunked a year ahead of my age-mates, into the class of a certain red-headed, freckle-smattered fellow with deep brown eyes and an inquisitive nature. We ended up together in Greek class. Quiet little me among just a handful of girls in this male-dominated class couldn’t help but be seen. This was God’s doings.

*Since we were both going the same direction—into Bible translation work, we joined hands and went together. I had not dreamed of being a wife and mother; I thought myself content to be a single-woman missionary or perhaps a librarian. God had other plans. I needed this man’s God-confidence, his easy-going nature, and his love. And I needed the blessing of children to save me from self-absorption!

I could run on about the life we’ve shared, the places we’ve been, the things we’ve done and experienced, but the point of our story is not us! We could talk about ‘missions’ a little and about homeschooling, and about ‘serving God’, but in fact, all the while it has been God at work in us to do His good pleasure. Far more than anything we have thought we were accomplishing for Him has been what He has done for us in the process of these years of attempting to follow His leading. Over and over He has demonstrated His love for us, far more than we have shown ours for Him.

But a testimony is not meant to be about bygones. What is my testimony to God’s grace today? Do I know Him better today than I did a year ago? Do I love Him more wholly with heart, mind, soul and strength today? These are questions that challenge me lately at this strange in-between time in our lives–with family life and home behind us and uncertainty ahead. In the end it will not so much matter what we have accomplished with our lives but how we have loved.

This is really the essence of my testimony thus far: God so loved me… that He invested Himself in my life so that I might know Him and learn to love Him with all my heart and mind and soul and strength. What started with the sacrifice of His Son for me continues day by day with the offering of His Son’s life to live for me, in me and through me by His Spirit. And by that Spirit He whittles away to perfect the design He had in mind for me from before the foundation of the world–to look like His Son.

By that same Spirit God’s love is made known to this ego-centric heart of mine day by day and I am humbled, realizing I have nothing to offer Him that He has not first given me. I only love because He first loved me. I only begin to know Him because He has revealed Himself to me in the person of Jesus and in this Word I am privileged to read in my own language. In the end there’s nothing to boast of but what He has done.

God’s plans for me have been far bigger than any I would have dreamed up. And they will culminate in a glory yet to be seen! Thanks for joining me on the journey

–LS

Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. Is.64:4 NIV

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”– the things God has prepared for those who love him– 10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
I Cor.2:9,10 NIV

 

I have revealed and saved and proclaimed– I, and not some foreign god among you. You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “that I am God.” Is.43:12 NIV

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. II Cor.4:5 ESV

For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
II Tim.1:12 KJV

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. John 17:3
____________

FYI: More tidbits of my life story can be found under the “My Story” tag below or by clicking HERE!

My “Testimony”– the beginnings

LIVE IT!
I alluded last week to the deceptive potential of a  testimony.  But it is clear in Scripture and in life that an honest retelling of what the Lord has done can be a powerful encouragement as well.  It’s not always easy to put it into words though. That’s what I’ve been wrestling with this week–how to boil down the story of God’s working in my life to a blog-bite’s worth of text. 
When I was a kid we went to ‘Testimony Meeting’ on Wednesday nights at church.  The service was a short one. It opened with a few hymns and then the microphone was turned over to whosoever-will-may-come!  There were various regulars, some more predictable than others.  Mostly it was the grown-ups that made their way up to the microphone to say a bit.  But there was this wild-card.  When Mr. T led the service one never knew what might happen.  
 
Now I admired Mr. T.  He radiated a love for the Lord and for His creation. He was an avid bird watcher and he was also my highschool Bible teacher.  But when he led testimony meeting it could be intimidating.  For he was very eager for the ‘young people’ to be a part of the service.  And he didn’t mind making it happen.  Every so often he would verbally lasso the whole lot of us.  And we’d find ourselves lining up at the front to take a turn at the microphone dispensing a ‘testimony’ of what God had done in our lives that week or that year, or once-upon-a-lifetime-and-worth-repeating.  This could be very uncomfortable, especially if you couldn’t quite figure what there was to say, beyond what you’d already said the last time this happened!  To make the matter even more intimidating, the first half hour of  these services was broadcast over the radio!  And this was not small-town radio.  Our testimonies would reach all the way to New York City!  There was definitely pressure to have something worth saying!

We youth usually came up with something fairly formulaic to say, patterned after our elders and kept very brief:  “I’m thankful that God saved me and I’m on my way to heaven”  or something of that nature.  Rarely would we volunteer a testimony and  how well I remember the uneasy tension of waiting till we were off the hook and the meeting over.

I’ve grown up quite a lot since then and have experienced the Lord’s good hand in many more situations but still this week I’ve been grappling with how to give a ‘testimony’ here that would be of some encouragement and not merely a glorified personal history.  A classic salvation testimony is supposed to tell the before, the ‘then what’, and the after.  Ideally there should be a big contrast of ‘before’ and ‘after’ and just enough spice thrown in so the listener can relate and be ‘wow’ed by the obvious transformation without being dragged through the messy details. Well, that’s not my history.  Mine is a rather ‘boring’ story given those parameters.   For I was born into a Christian heritage of believing parents and grandparents on both sides.  I grew up with believing cousins, surrounded by a community of dedicated Christians in our own little protected world.  We not only sang hymns and read the Word responsively together.  We ate together after church and the people we saw on Sunday we went to school with and were taught by on Monday. In the summers these were the ones we picked strawberries with on Saturdays and even swam with at our own local pool.  Into this heritage I was born, as my parents had been born before me. 
Still, I remember a moment of personal ‘decision’. 

I was ten I think, when I went forward with my friends at the close of an evening service to kneel at the bench and pray.  I didn’t anticipate it being a life-changing moment in my life.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  It’s what people did at Camp Meeting.  You prayed around the ‘altar’ (beautiful low wooden benches) following the official closing of the service.  And maybe there would be more singing, and maybe if people were very happy there’d be marching around the perimeter of the auditorium and back up the center aisle, just for the joy of it.  That was Camp Meeting. 

But this particular evening a wise older lady knelt beside me and asked if I knew that Jesus had died for my sins and whether I had ever prayed to receive Him as my personal Saviour.  I supposed that I hadn’t but it certainly seemed the right thing to do.  So I did.  As did my friends.  And we were very pleased with ourselves on rising from our knees.  And happy to know Jesus was in our hearts.  As I recall we dashed out the side door into the balmy summer evening  bubbling over with joy.  But really, it’s a bit of a  foggy memory for me. Though I have a definite recollection of Mrs. Wolfram’s gentle entreaty to me but I couldn’t tell you if there was a dramatic change in my life after that.  Maybe so. I don’t remember.  So much for the crucial ‘before’ and ‘after’ of a good testimony!

Mine has always been a ‘boring’ testimony consequently.  But the older and wiser I grow the more grateful I am for a ‘boring’ story.  It is the one God has scripted for me to walk out for His glory.  He eased me into this faith I call my own. He did the drawing and shaping and destining me for what I would become.  Even the temperament with which I was born was His doing.  I was a child eager to conform to others’ expectations of me.  Having grown up in an atmosphere of devotion and service to God it was as natural as breathing to follow in this path. 

Here of course is a potential deception.  For children are not born like radiant sunflowers pointing God-ward.  We are born in sin and bent on having the world revolve around us.  I was no different.  It’s just that pleasing others pleased me. My motives were self-serving. Only in retrospect do I see the great mercy of God in welcoming me to His family despite my very limited awareness of my desperate plight.   I  assented to needing a Saviour but, conscientious pleaser that I was, I thought I was pretty good already. (I’ve been unlearning that every since! It’s been no small feat, but God is faithful.)

So that was the beginning of my ‘testimony’ as I see it.  Perhaps the clearest evidence of God’s spirit at work in me though was my love for His Word.   I cannot remember a time when it was not important to me.  I had the advantage of Christian schooling, and dedicated teachers that taught us to memorize it and to personalize what we were reading by asking questions of the text and noticing the details.  That was Junior High.  Reading the Bible through in a year was a challenge we kids all took up more than once.  My parents modelled a dedication to reading the Word. Their morning quiet times were a part of my definition of morning! 

What was missing though was a reminder of the difference it makes to know Jesus.  Because I didn’t rub shoulders with ‘the world’  I lacked this appreciation.  The Word began to seem same-ish and old like stale bread. I didn’t see it changing lives. Then God sent Audrey.  She was a top-notch student, eager and studious.  She even liked History class, which I did not.  Unlike me she wasn’t afraid to ask questions and we became good friends.  But she was not like my other friends from childhood.  She hadn’t grown up in our kind of church.  Her mother was staunchly religious but not approving of the evangelical idea of salvation in a personal sense.  However, Audrey’s parents had recently divorced and Audrey was interested in a relational God.  One night at youth group she asked me how she could become a Christian.  True to form I doubted I could get her there so I took her to George, our leader, and he had the honor of introducing her to Jesus.  That’s when life began to change, for her and for me.  Overnight she developed an insatiable appetite and enthusiasm for the Word of God.  She copied down verses on wee scraps of paper  to share with me each morning at school.   Little verses jumped off the page and into her heart–promises and sweet truths she was seeing for the first time.  And her  enthusiasm was contagious. It revived my faith.  We grew together, played guitar together, wrote songs and ate ice cream on waffles.  She was God’s gift to my life that year, just when I needed it.  She was pulled out of my school and my life the following year.  This sort of faith was too radical; it ran counter to her mother’s form of religion.  So ended  our friendship and so began an intense testing of her newfound faith.  But that is her story to tell.

As for mine, God had plans I wouldn’t have dreamed of.  I wasn’t much of a dreamer really, just a quiet somebody content to have a few friends, to read my Bible and to love the natural world around me.  I imagined growing old in my childhood home in New Jersey beside a little woods with a little stream running through and a little lake for skating when it froze a little in the winter…Mine was a small and protected world that I had no particular interest in leaving, but God had bigger dreams for me. To Him I owe all that I am, all I have and all that I will yet become.  It’s His doings. He has carried me all the way…The journey has been a good one.

That is hardly the place to stop my testimony but for this week it will have to suffice.  Hopefully next week I can commence another installment without such a struggle to ‘step up to the microphone’ and find something worth saying!

Thanks for your patience,
–LS

“He chose our heritage for us…” Ps.47:4

“Listen to me, O house of Jacob…who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you.  I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” Ps.46:3,4

[See Part Two here…]

 

The Power of a Testimony

DEFEND IT!

I’ve been struck this week by the power of a testimony, to deceive.
Once upon a time testimony meetings were held among people who knew one another and shared life together.  There was context for the testimony.  You knew the man who stood up and thanked God he hadn’t sinned in twenty years.  He was mentally unstable and not to be taken seriously.  He had believed a false doctrine and lived in self-delusion. 

And you knew the woman who came each week with a fresh testimony of God’s goodness, often a little parable from her garden.  She was your Bible teacher and the mother of your best friends.  She lived her faith.  She clearly loved the Lord.  Her testimony attested to the reality that her life displayed.

So you weren’t deterred from your faith by the crabby spinster’s glowing evaluation of her own sanctification.  It was clear to everyone that there was yet work to be done.  Years later you would meet her again and that gracious work would be evident without her needing to say so. The fruit of the Spirit was clear.

Such were the testimony meetings of my youth. It was understood that God was supposed to get the glory, even if  there was a certain temptation to look good in the telling. A testimony was expected to center around themes of sin and salvation.  And when there were extravagant claims, they could be seen for what they were.  We knew each other.

Times have changed. Testimony meetings have largely gone the way of Sunday night meetings and prayer meetings.  Obsolete.  But now we have YouTube. Testimonies abound. But they are strangely different.  The focus is no longer on God and what He has done for an undeserving sinner. More often the focus is me and what I’ve experienced and how good (or strange or bizarre) it felt and how much more I’m hoping for and…you should too!  There is little or no connection to Scriptural truth or precedent.  We are beyond that now and paving a new way for God to work outside the box of truth as revealed in Scripture.  Not surprisingly these ‘testimonies’ leave us more in awe of people than of God.  How spiritual they must be to have had such an experience!

But since these folks are strangers to us and often disconnected from personal accountability, outrageous and unsubstantiated claims can be made.  We can’t see the way they live or the impact they have on those closest to them.  But they make claims of great things–some have looked into God’s face and seen his fiery eyes. They’ve felt waves of electric love ripple through them. God has spoken to them. They’ve been frozen by His presence, for days at a time. And by the time they are through giving their testimonies they have followers, promoters and believers hanging on their every word.  Next thing you know people from your church are signing up for missions trips in hopes of getting to the source and bringing back some of what they have!  OK I’m exaggerating, a little, but this stuff happens. It is the deceptive power of a testimony.

As a child I overlooked the testimonies that didn’t seem to jive with reality. They were not compelling. Not so these YouTube kind.  People love the tangible. They crave the sensual.  They are drawn to the sensational.

The problem with testimonies  based solely on experiences is just that.  They are based on subjective perceptions of what has happened. But when we convey them, we convey them as fact.  We don’t recognize how our beliefs have shaped our expectations and our expectations in turn have shaped our perceptions. Secular researchers tell us our minds are fully capable of concocting false memories without our even realizing it.1  What are the implications for our testimonies?

We’ve all heard fishing tales which grow with the retelling until the real fish that got away has taken on mythical proportions.  This can happen with personal testimonies as well, once they are unhinged from the reference point of God’s Word.  Sometimes this is unintentional; we are impressionable beings. But often such inflated testimonies are intended to establish the credentials and authority of the teller for their own gain.  We have been warned about such things. 

“Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. “Col. 2:18,19

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” II Tim.4:3

“Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness…” I Tim. 4:7

‘just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth,’ II Tim.3:8  [Jannes and Jambres were the magicians in Pharaoh’s court who imitated the signs and wonders Moses performed]

‘there will be false teachers among you, secretly bringing in destructive heresies…many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words….’ II Pet.2:1-3

But all too often, the testimony is so impressive and has such an aura of spiritual power about it  that we suspend judgment feeling it is out of our league to question or challenge such an experience.  It seems almost sacrilegious.  We’re cautioned not to quench the Spirit and not to judge another’s story.  Meanwhile all manner of fraudulent nonsense is carried on in Jesus’ name and attributed to the Holy Spirit.  And worse yet, the listeners are made to crave such experiences as the evidence of true spirituality.  And so they are led away from the simplicity of devotion to Christ, the reality of walking by the Spirit and the true meaning of growing in the  knowledge of God.

Instead they are made to crave the bizarre, the sensational, the miraculous, and the un-Biblical! 

“There are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Gal.1:8

This was happening to the Galatian church in Paul’s day.  It is happening in ours.  When a widely respected ministry leader says he is “unwilling to live with a Gospel without miracles” (meaning external signs and wonders, not mere internal transformation), look out!  He will spread a kind of gospel but it will not be God’s good news.  It will not free from sin and damnation.  It may provide signs and wonders and the thrill that accompanies them in this lifetime,  but it will not bring eternal salvation. And so he takes himself and his followers into the fog of deception, following doctrines of demons as they unwittingly embrace another gospel. 

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, I Tim. 4:1

Another lauded leader boasts freely of her bizarre encounters with the power and presence of God and by so doing earns the respect of many as a ‘very spiritual lady’.  Was this the sort of person Paul warned of when he said: “Let no one disqualify you… going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head…” (Col.2:18,19)

Nevertheless she is held in high esteem because of her dynamic testimony and  because she carries on her work among the poor in a far-off land and most of all because ‘there are miracles happening ’.  When did these become the measure of a work of God?  All of these things can be carried out apart from the Spirit of God and the Word of God.  But we don’t want to judge…  So, few question the power she has encountered.  Instead they pay to be part of her ministry and so get closer to the source. And unwittingly they buy into error and import it back to their local churches when they come home ‘all fired up’.   

A testimony is a powerful tool for deception when unhinged from the truth of God’s authoritative Word.  It is not judgmental to use Scriptural discernment in evaluating a testimony’s validity no matter how ‘spiritual’ it may sound.   If what we are hearing is not compatible with the Word of God and not honoring to the character of God as revealed in Scripture we are not obliged to believe that testimony.  If it glorifies man more than God we have reason to doubt it.

Human testimonies are fallible.  God’s  testimony of Himself  as revealed in His Word is not.

In a YouTube crazed world it is essential that we keep our heads and hearts moored in the written Word of God.  It is to be the bedrock of our faith, the measure of every experience (ours and others’), and the only sure proof of what is true and trustworthy.  The apostles who wrote the New Testament were eyewitnesses to the life of Christ.  They were given to the church to establish with authority the life, death and resurrection of Christ. These apostles wrote eyewitness accounts under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  There are none like them, nor will there ever be.  Yet even they call us to regard the Scriptures as our most sure authority:

Here’s Peter:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.  And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,  knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.  For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. II Pet.1:16-21

Here is the testimony we can trust—God’s testimony of  His love for rebel mankind and of  the only way to know Him.  I spent a bit of time seeing what Matthew Henry had to comment on this passage.  I love it.  It exalts the Scriptures as precisely what we need in a YouTube generation.  Here are his useful pointers for those who would ‘give heed’ to the Scriptures:

1. They must account and use the scripture as a light which God hath sent into and set up in the world, to dispel that darkness which is upon the face of the whole earth. The word is a lamp to the feet of those who use it aright; this discovers the way wherein men ought to walk; this is the means whereby we come to know the way of life.

2. They must acknowledge their own darkness. This world is a place of error and ignorance, and every man in the world is naturally without that knowledge which is necessary in order to attain eternal life.

3. If ever men are made wise to salvation, it is by the shining of the word of God into their hearts. Natural notions of God are not sufficient for fallen man, who does at best actually know a great deal less, and yet does absolutely need to know a great deal more, of God than Adam did while he continued innocent.

4. When the light of the scripture is darted into the blind mind and dark understanding by the Holy Spirit of God, then the spiritual day dawns and the day-star arises in that soul. This enlightening of a dark benighted mind is like the day-break that improves and advances, spreads and diffuses itself through the whole soul, till it makes perfect day, Prov. 4:18. It is a growing knowledge; those who are this way enlightened never think they know enough, till they come to know as they are known. To give heed to this light must needs be the interest and duty of all; and all who do truth come to this light, while evil-doers keep at a distance from it. 
                                                                      –Matthew Henry

We dare not not believe everything we hear, nor everything we see and feel! If so we will be tossed about with every teaching,  (especially if it comes with a YouTube eyewitness account!)   Every testimony must be made to bow to the truth as revealed in God’s Word.  Testimonies may mislead.  Signs and wonders prove nothing. Even Satan can counterfeit them. His deceptions are powerful. (II Thess.1:9,10). 

“And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.” II Cor.11:14-15 

 But the Word of God is a testimony we can count on, forever.

–LS

The righteousness of Thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live. Ps.119:144

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,  through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, … If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; …  For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.  Command and teach these things. …  Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. …  Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. (I Tim.4:1-2,6-7,10-11,13,16).

Take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. II Peter 3:17,18

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1”The Power of False Memory” a NYTimes article. Click here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/nyregion/witness-accounts-in-midtown-hammer-attack-show-the-power-of-false-memory.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=2   

He’s Calling You!

LIVE IT!

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I came home Monday from an early morning birding excursion with a fresh awareness of bird songs and calls and of my own ignorance of them!  Standing and listening motionless to birdsong for 15 minutes at a time is an exercise I hadn’t tried before.  Apparently birds sing most in the early morning.  They have songs and calls which are generally unique to their species.  It is primarily the males which sing the songs as a means of attracting a mate and establishing their territory.  Calls are simpler and less musical and used by both male and female to keep in touch, to sound a warning, to beg, and to intimidate enemies… I am learning these things.

But I must admit this first outing was a little like a blind man seeing for the first time.  What’s that? was my most pressing wonder. Only I couldn’t ask for fear of disturbing the birdsong. I can identify  the sounds of so few birds that by the end of that first outing I must admit I had turned to the more familiar and was snapping pictures of flowers and reading trailside plant identification signs.  I am not a good auditory learner. 

We were listening specifically for just a handful of species.  But birdsong was everywhere.  In contrast to my ignorance, the birding expert I accompanied had jotted down the names of at least half a dozen species at each stop.  We had not seen them necessarily, but her ears were quick to hear them.  Her job was to give an account of the birds in the area under study.  And for this job it’s the hearing that really matters. If you’ve learned to listen even the secretive unseen types can be counted.

Well, so that was all very interesting and I hope to be invited out again and to hone my listening skills.  But fresh on the heels of that experience, with bird songs and calls on my mind, I came home and  opened to the day’s Bible reading, the story of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar in Mark 10. He had no choice but to be an auditory learner!

There he was sitting at the dusty roadside, listening,  hoping for the pity of passers-by, hoping they could spare a shekel…His ears were no doubt attuned to the sounds of sandal traffic..Suddenly there was a great crowd approaching.  “What’s going on?” It wasn’t a feast day, why all the traffic?  He listened acutely to the snatches of conversation around him. “It’s Jesus, from Nazareth!” somebody hollered as feet raced by to meet the approaching crowd.  Hope surged in his heart.  He had heard the stories of this man.  He taught and acted with authority unlike any teacher before him.  Demons obeyed him. He made the sick well, the deaf to hear and way up North a blind man had regained his sight.  Had Bartimaeus heard this story too?  Perhaps. 

One thing he had heard somewhere, somehow, was that this man Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, ‘the Son of David’.  He believed it.  And over the noise and bustle of the approaching crowd he began to cry out at the top of his lungs:  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” 

What more could he hope for than mercy?  He was despised, a useless tramp, dependent on the alms-giving of the pitying public.  in fact his cries embarrassed them, annoyed them.  “Shut up!” they said, as if to put him in his place.  He cried out all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” hoping somehow to be heard above the clamor of the crowd.  If only Jesus could hear him…

I have a hunch Jesus would have made a stellar birding companion.  He wouldn’t have missed a ‘cheep’ or a ‘tut’.  After all it was He that composed the songs that come chortling in the early morning,  He that designed language and gave the birds their calls, to each kind its own.  Then He walked our dusty trails and noticed little fallen sparrows and circling vultures.  He knew the habits of a barnyard hen gathering its chicks and heard the early-riser rooster. He saw the seeming innocence of cooing doves.  None of these escaped His notice.  Nor did Bartimaeus.  Obscured and nearly drowned out  by the crowd, his voice still came to Jesus’ ear.  Since Jesus could not make his way to the man for the press of the crowd He called to him to come.  And the next thing beggar Bart knew, people were no longer telling him to be quiet.  In fact they were saying the unbelievable:

“Take heart. Get up; he is calling you!!!”  They probably couldn’t believe it either.  But Jesus had stopped in his tracks and was waiting for this scruffy blind beggar to feel his way through the crowd to Him.  He didn’t have to wait long.  Bart leaped up flinging off his cloak and the crowd parted and drew him forward till he was standing right in front of Jesus. 

The next words he heard were: “What do you want me to do for you?” The Messiah was offering to serve a beggar–calling him to Himself, extending the very mercy the man had hoped for.  This is our Jesus. 

Just prior to this incident, His own disciples, James and John had come with their mom to ask Him a big favor.  And He had said to them also:  “What do you want me to do for you?”  They had asked to share His glory in the coming Kingdom, to sit one on his right hand and one on His left.  Their request was denied, not being His prerogative to grant.  He told them they did not know what they were asking! When the rest of the disciples heard their presumptuous request they were indignant.  A teaching moment followed in which Jesus told them clearly that servanthood was to be the mark of His disciples.  “…and whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” Mk.10:43,44

Jesus was no exception: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” he had gone on to say. (Mk.10:45)  Next thing you know, they are on the outskirts of Jericho and a blind beggar is crying out to be heard.  What followed was an object lesson for Jesus’ disciples.  He turned from the fawning crowds who would soon be hailing him their King and offered His services to a helpless beggar:

What do you want me to do for you?

Bartimaeus respectfully asks for his vision to be restored.  And Jesus, pleased by his faith, and his humility (Have you noticed how the two go together?)  grants him his request saying, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” But Bartimaeus doesn’t go.  He leaves his roadside rags and follows Jesus on His way to Jerusalem. This would be the final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry in which He would demonstrate ultimate servanthood, laying down His life ‘as a ransom for many’.  Bartimaeus would be a part of that week because Jesus had heard his cry for mercy and called him to Himself.

And still He calls.  It doesn’t take a birder’s trained ear to hear.  We do not need a course in listening, or a book, or an advisor, anymore than a bird needs an Audubon guide book to identify his own species calling.  God’s voice is the one we are wired to hear; we are made in His image.  Adam heard it in the Garden, God in the cool of the day coming to walk with him, calling him by name: “Adam, where are you?”  He cringed. He had sinned.  He was in desperate need of mercy, like the blind beggar on the roadside. We too are  designed for fellowship with God.  We hide like secretive marsh birds because sin has broken that fellowship, marred that image.  But Jesus is near, calling, listening for our cry for mercy.  He calls us to come to Him.  He will do the rest.  He has come to seek and to save the lost, to open our eyes to the hope of our calling, to free us to follow Him…

Isn’t this the heart of the Gospel—this news that God has made a way for man to come near to a Holy God?  Whether we find ourselves in the place of Bartimaeus, the blind man crying for mercy, or in the place of the people in the crowd who brought Bart the good news: “Take heart, get up, He’s calling you!” we have a calling from God. 

For those of us who have long since had our eyes opened and have answered the call to follow Jesus, this story reminds us that Jesus hears our heart’s cries still.  Though we have left behind our rags to follow Him, He doesn’t expect that we will cease to need Him for even a moment.  Still He calls us to take heart and clamber out of the ruts we fall in from time to time.  Still He calls us to relationship with Himself when we stray.  Still He offers to serve us:  “What can I do for you?” and He knows when to say “Yes” to our requests and, mercifully, when to deny them because we don’t really know what we are asking. 

We are the ‘called out’ ones who have gone from being roadside beggars ‘having no hope and without God in the world’ to being ‘brought near by the blood of Christ’, reconciled to God with access in the Spirit to the Father, ‘no longer strangers and aliens but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.’  Ours is now the song of the redeemed.  And like so many songbirds who cannot help but sing, we are wired to sing His praise with our very lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHw_rkSdqc

Let my lifesong sing to You!

–LS

‘…having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you’ (Eph.1:18)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  I Pet.2:9,10

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph.3:20,21

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[This old hymn came to mind as I was writing today.  It seems so fitting I pass it on…—LS]

Jesus calls us o’er the tumult

1 Jesus calls us: o’er the tumult
of our life’s wild, restless sea;
day by day his sweet voice soundeth
saying, “Christian, follow me.”

2 Jesus calls us from the worship
of the vain world’s golden store,
from each idol that would keep us,
saying, “Christian, love me more.”

3 In our joys and in our sorrows,
days of toil and hours of ease,
still he calls, in cares and pleasures,
“Christian, love me more than these.”

4 Jesus calls us: by thy mercies,
Savior, may we hear thy call,
give our hearts to thy obedience,
serve and love thee best of all.

–Cecil F. Alexander (1852)