Wrestling with God

LOVE IT!

I’ve long puzzled over Jacob’s all-night wrestling match with God and for the past couple weeks I’ve turned it over and over in my mind and looked at it from every angle I can see (as if I were the referee!)… in hopes of extracting the essence of it for my own life.

Is it a model for prevailing prayer?  A template for securing God’s blessing?  Or is there more to this story than meets the eye in its sparsely told format?

Up to this point in Jacob’s life there has been little to commend him as a man of faith.  He has lived up to the meaning of his name mostly, and has struggled with everyone in his life in order to secure himself a blessing.  He’s been a cheat and a conniver, looking out for his own interests and enjoying the blessings of God without acknowledging God as His rightful Lord.  He has spent the most productive years of his life living in exile from his own family, putting in slave labor for his uncle, being cheated and taken advantage of himself but always rising to the top, always making things work out… and now he has a big family, two wives, and a whole lot of progeny, not to mention flocks and herds. He left home with just a staff and now he’s returning with his own entourage…

Yes, he’s returning at last. This was God’s idea.

But years ago when he set out on this journey he had made a promise—granted it was an unabashedly conditional, ‘Jacob’ sort of promise—but a promise it was.  God had ‘seen him off’ on his journey with a vision by night in which He said: “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. … and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Gen.28:13) Jacob was awestruck by God’s presence and made a sort of altar out of his stone pillow in the morning, christening the place, “Bethel” (house of God), and vowing that if God would keep him in food and clothes and bring him safely home again that he, Jacob, would make this God his own God. 

And now here he is, almost home.  But this is scary. The immediate dilemma in Jacob’s mind is that his presumably embittered brother, Esau, is on the march with 400  men. Jacob could lose everything, including his own life. But there’s another One he’s been running from. This God to whom he vowed allegiance has not forgotten Jacob’s vow at Bethel. He loves Jacob far too much to let him go on living by his own strength. And when Jacob has taken every last measure he can think of to gain his brother’s approval, and has sent his loved ones across the stream ahead of him…when he’s all alone at last, God shows up.

I love this about Jacob’s story. It’s really a story of God showing up, intervening, blessing, protecting, and guiding Jacob’s life in spite of himself, to a point where he will rest from his conniving and let God be God. It’s a story of God pursuing man. It’s our story… But I run ahead of myself.

The details of the all-night wrestling match are sparse. A ‘man’ wrestles with Jacob until morning light. Jacob refuses to yield until his hip is dislocated and finally, clinging on for dear life he declares “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  (Gen.32:26) Who does he think is in charge?  Who’s not letting who go?  It seems to me that it is God who has initiated this match and God will say when it is finished. 

Hosea’s commentary on this event helps: “The LORD hath also a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways…He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God: Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us… Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God continually.:” Hosea 12:2-6

I see a picture of a repentant Jacob finally yielding to God’s power, finally willing to admit that he really does need God’s blessing. He has found that ‘place of repentance’ that eluded his brother Esau.  God, like a kind Father has brought him to repentance, first matching his strength till he is spent, then with a mere touch dislocating Jacob’s hip…all to bring Jacob to the point of crying “Uncle!” (or could we say “Abba”)?  Or as he puts it: “ I will not let you go until you bless me”.  Jacob acknowledges that he is dependent on God’s mercy.  He cannot coerce God to bless him but he desperately needs what only God can give him–a new name, a new allegiance…God has orchestrated this moment. 

It is not so much Jacob’s persistence that is to be lauded, but his crying out with the last of his strength for God’s mercy–recognizing that he is beholden to God for everything, even life itself.

“It depends not on human will or exertion but on God, who has mercy.” Rom.9:16

All night long God has hung on to Jacob awaiting his surrender, like a Father feigning weakness as he ‘wrestles’ with his toddler,  but this is no game.  God knows what Jacob needs most, the blessing of forgiveness and acceptance despite all he has done. He needs to be rightly related to this God as his God. A precious thing transpires at this point. God asks him a question that seems so obvious as to be silly. “What is your name.”

Long years ago Jacob had been asked this very question by his own father. And he had answered with a lie, the consequences of which have dogged him down through all these years and brought him full circle to this moment. He had said ‘I’m Esau’ to procure his father’s blessing. And now he is here, a grown man pleading for a blessing from the God who has brought him to this moment for that express purpose.

But first he must confess his real name: “I’m Jacob” (the cheat, the deceiver, the usurper). And God is pleased to bless him with a new identity. He has come to the end of his struggling and will now bear the name Israel, denoting his life-long struggles with man and God, but also that “God Perseveres”. And I start to see that this is not so much the story of Jacob as it is that of God’s mercy and unrelenting love, carrying out all He has promised. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Rom.11:29  Jacob, now Israel, goes from this encounter, a reconciled man—finished with his struggles with God and with man. First chance he gets he buys up a parcel of land on which to pitch his tent and erect an altar.  And guess what he calls it?!  El-Elohe-Israel—God, the God of Israel.

His story gives me hope…for this God is my God.  This God is the One who holds me in the night of my fears for myself and my family.   When I struggle to work things out myself, He reminds me it’s His game plan that matters.  When I question ‘Why did you make me like this?!’ He reminds me that He is the Potter and that’s no way for clay to talk…When I see how weak I am, He reminds me this is the best place for His strength to be on display…

Ah, which reminds me.  There was another conversation God had with Jacob.  The night of wrestling was past.  The reunion with Esau had gone splendidly.  And God told Jacob to build an altar at Bethel. There God answered the question Jacob had asked of Him on the dark night of their wrestling: “Please, tell me your name.” Gen 32:29 

God answered, “Your name is Jacob; your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name…And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply…” Gen.35:10,11 The introductions were over. God Almighty is now the God of Jacob and Jacob will in turn  invoke this name to bless his own sons and their sons (43:14) just as his own father had done for him. 

The story of Jacob at this point gets all but buried in the narrative of Joseph’s life. Jacob grieves the loss of his favored son Joseph until he is surprised beyond belief at the announcement that Joseph is alive and ruling in Egypt—a literal God-send for his family’s preservation. Life in God Almighty’s care goes beyond anything he could have schemed or dreamed up for himself. And so he grows old in the land of Egypt. But do you know what he is commended for in the great Hall of Faith (Hebrews 11)? It is not for his ‘power with God’ in that long ago wrestling match. It is not for his big family. He is commended for the faith expressed in his dying breath as he blessed the sons of Joseph bowing in worship on his staff. (Heb.11:21)

This was his blessing:

“The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys; and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” Gen.48:15,16

How was this an expression of faith? Here are these two Jewish/Egyptian lads, Manasseh and Ephraim,  being reared in a pagan culture, but Jacob is confident that God Almighty is well able to take them and weave them into a great nation as He has promised. Jacob has traded in his wrestling for worship, his self-confidence for faith. And so he is commended for his faith not in wresting a blessing for himself, but in passing it on…

I’ve been magnetized to Jacob’s story for two weeks now, perhaps because I see my own propensity to struggle with God to bless me and mine, as if He were not faithful, as if all depended on my faithfulness…As if the struggle were requisite to the blessing.

One morning early last week I was bemoaning my perceived woes, filling my ‘quiet time’ with rankling memos in my journal of all that is not right in my little world…It was time to put on the teapot and fix breakfast and still I could not see God’s truth through my self-absorbed fog. At that moment I was reminded of these words from Isaiah: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” And a little farther along in the same passage, “The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” (Is.30:15,18) Old familiar verses freshly applied to my heart.  They are the story of Jacob’s life and the requirement for my own.  It is not in the struggle that I prevail but in repentant rest and quiet trust. And when I cannot see the blessing that is promised, it is the waiting that will be blessed.

–LS

“So you, by the help of your God, return, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.” Hos.12:6

“We do not present our pleas because of our righteousness but because of your great mercy.” (Dan.9:18)

“O Lord, be gracious to us;
we wait for you.
Be our arm every morning,
Our salvation in the time of trouble.” (Is.33:2)

–I know this has been long but there are two songs that beg to keep company with Jacob’s (and my) story.  Take a few minutes to bless the God of Jacob as you listen:

In Christ Alone [Click title to listen]

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand
…………..
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man
Could ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I stand

Songwriters: Julian Keith Getty, Stuart Richard Townend

————————————————–

My Saviour, My God[Click title to listen]

I am not skilled to understand
What God has willed, what God has planned
I only know at his right hand
Stands one who is my savior
 
I take him at his word and deed
Christ died to save me this I read
And in my heart I find a need
For him to be my savior
 
That he would leave his place on high
And come for sinful man to die
You count it strange, so once did I
Before I knew my savior
 
My Savior loves, my savior lives
My Savior’s always there for me
My God he was, my God he is
My God he’s always gonna be
 
Yes, living, dying; let me bring
My strength, my solace from this spring
That he who lives to be my king
Once died to be my savior
 
That he would leave his place on high
And come for sinful man to die
You count it strange, so once did I
Before I knew my savior
 
My Savior loves, my savior lives
My Savior’s always there for me
My God he was, My God he is
My God he’s always gonna be

–Aaron Shust’s adaptation of the original by:
Dor­o­thy Green­well, Songs of Sal­va­tion, 1873

 

 

 

 

 

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Revive us Again

All Sorts, BOOKS

 

OK, so I’ve  thrown my energies this week into reading and reviewing a couple books so I can start on the fresh stack I picked up at Missions Fest over the weekend… I realized I still had a book I’d picked up there last year but not yet read.  So it’s now been read and underlined in, reviewed and regurgitated for your perusal at: http://thestackofdawn.blogspot.com/2012/02/azusa-streetbartleman.html

It’s called Azusa Street (by Frank Bartleman) and is the account of the revival there from 1905-1911 that birthed the Pentecostal Movement.  I picked it up out of curiosity I guess, to know what exactly did happened there. The church I grew up in was birthed at very nearly the same time so I wanted to see if there was any connection.  We’ll let the old bones lie.  The connection wasn’t a friendly one.  Those were controversial times for sure.  Churches and theologians were polarized over the revival.  Was God in it?  Doubtless.  Was everything sensational attributable to His Spirit.  Not likely.  But as I picked through the author’s observations trying to separate fact from opinion I realized he had a lot of wise insights to share based on the glories and the pitfalls of revival as he’d experienced them. 

Let me whet your appetite with a few pertinent quotes:

“Nothing hinders faith and the operation of the Spirit so much as the self-assertiveness of the human soul, the wisdom, strength, and self-sufficiency of the human mind.”(76)

“A true Pentecost will produce a mighty conviction for sin, a turning to God. False manifestations produce only excitement and wonder. Sin and self-life will not materially suffer from these.” (91)

“Any work that exalts the Holy Spirit or the gifts above Jesus will finally end up in fanaticism.” (91)

—————–

As we headed down the highway to Missions Fest I read the final chapter—a fascinating epilogue entitled “Revival and Recovery”, written by another author, Arthur Wallis.  In it he offers a panoramic survey of the major operations of God’s Spirit in the history of the church, with a view to demonstrating that the purpose of God in each subsequent renewal is not only to revive the church of that generation but to recover some truth that has been lost that will equip the bride to fully experience and fully express the life of Christ to the world.  He proposes that “since truth and experience are inseparable and must be in balance if either is to reach its divine objective, we see the Lord moving to emphasize either doctrine and principle, or purity and fullness of life and power.”  (149)

Then commencing with the early church he cites the characteristics of God’s working in each era.  The early church gave us the New Testament and the model for  walking in the light and correcting error.  It thrived in persecutions.  

The fourth century brought the church under official favor and a spiritual decline set in as the church came under pagan influence and an ecclesiastical hierarchy not based in Scripture.  She descended into the dark Middle Ages until true Christianity was almost extinguished, but for a giant of faith here and there.  There were no widespread movements and ‘for a whole millennium the tide of spiritual life continued to recede.” I tried to imagine how different it would have been to live at this time.  What would my understanding of God be like?  What would my life be like without the Word of God to anchor it?

The Fourteenth Century came ‘round and the revolutionary idea that the people should be able to know God’s Word.  England’s only Bible was in Latin!  Enter, John Wycliffe’s translation into English.  The recovery of true Christianity commenced with the return to the Word of God.

“Poor Priests” called Lollards took off with this word in the following century until half of England were either Lollards or sympathetic to their teaching.  Life had come to hungry people.  The way was being paved for…

The Sixteenth Century brought the Reformation under an unlikely poor priest, Martin Luther.  Other reformation giants arose to free the church from bondage to works and introduce salvation by faith.  There were still plenty of traditions to shake but they got the ball rollling.

In the Puritan movement of the seventeenth century “God raised up expositors, men mighty in the Scriptures”.  They emphasized the importance of being grounded in the Word.  Two church movements stemmed from their work:  The Congregational Movement rejected ecclesiastical hierarchy in favor of local church autonomy.   And the Baptist Movement added to this believer’s baptism by immersion.

By the eighteenth century the emphasis on doctrine to the neglect of ‘life’ had led to corruption in leadership and immorality and blasphemy in the culture.  England was saved by the revivals under Wesley and Whitefield.  The Methodist Revival brought a threefold emphasis—instantaneous salvation with assurance of the Holy Spirit, a strong focus on the subjective side of faith, i.e.holiness of heart and life, and the realization that formal education wasn’t essential in order to preach the Word of God. Multitudes were saved.

By the 1800’s revival was again wanting.  Multiple smaller revivals occurred, among them the Brethren Movement emphasizing the sufficiency of the Bible for daily life and church business.  To balance the emphasis on positional truth came the revival of 1859 in England and a great wave of evangelistic and missionary work across denominational lines.  The Salvation Army was born.  The Keswick ‘deeper life’ movement came into being with its proponents: Andrew Murray, Hannah Whitall Smith and Jesse Penn-Lewis and others.

Then with the twentieth century came the Welsh Revival and the birth of the Pentecostal Movement emphasizing the filling of the Spirit and the still active gifts of the Spirit to the church.  The author points out that there were excesses and separatist tendencies that caused this movement to be alienated from the rest of the Church.  Developing in isolation its bent to substitute the Spirit’s empowerment for thorough Bible study, weakened its potential.  Arrogance of superior experience sometimes slipped in to further the alienation from the rest of the Body.  However the author cautions against discrediting the whole movement based on its weaknesses.  It continues to make an enormous impact worldwide. 

And so we come down to our times.  Having surveyed even briefly what God has done down through the history of the church Wallis says, “we should not think that any movement has recovered everything, or has consummated the process. The attitude of ‘we have it all’ has all too often characterized the more enlightened of God’s people.  In fact, the more light we have, the greater the danger of falling into this trap.  This is spiritual pride and inevitably results in the halting of  further spiritual progress.”(160)*  Gulp.   With these and other warnings the author proceeded to knock me off my sometimes flighty horse.  Good to put my feet back on the ground and consider how to be ‘cautious without being critical’ and ‘discerning without being destructive.’  Who am I to tell the Almighty how He should do His work? He is the Potter.  I’m a lump of clay for His purposes… More and more my heart cry is to be all He has for me to be, nothing more, nothing less.  Isn’t that what revival’s about?

–LS

Revive us again;
Fill each heart with Thy love;
May each soul be rekindled
With fire from above.
        –William P. Mackay, 1863

 

[*The epilogue by Arthur Wallis was excerpted from his booklet entitled “Revival and Reformation of the Church”.  My comments were drawn from pages 147-167 of Azusa Street by Frank Bartleman.  For the full review go to: http://thestackofdawn.blogspot.com/2012/02/azusa-streetbartleman.html ]

Do you get the Drift?

All Sorts

Last post I talked about a fellow’s story of his own ‘de-conversion’, in which he describes his experience of ‘being saved’ and then of beginning to doubt the existence of a personal God until every vestige of faith seemed to have crumbled.  He described it as a ‘graceful degradation’. One by one the components underlying his faith in God broke down under closer scrutiny.  Such things as his own testimony, answered prayer, the beauty and complexity of creation, scientific evidence, the Bible, logical arguments, and morality all fell short of being convincing reasons for him to believe.

Depending on one’s theological background, some would say he ‘lost his salvation’.  Others, that he was never ‘saved’ in the first place.  And others still that his turning his back on God, doesn’t mean God has turned His back on Him…  Time will tell.  We probably don’t see the whole picture and God is His judge (I Cor.4:4,5)

Though I do not know this young man’s destiny, I do know that we are cautioned often in Scripture to be watchful.  Sin is by nature deceitful.  Our human natures are bent to embrace it.  And we do have an enemy who is far more clever than we are!

Some verses that have come to my attention are:

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it….how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” (Heb.2:1,3)

“Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.” (I Tim.6:20)

“We do not wrestle against flesh and blood…therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Eph.6:11-13)

“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Heb.3:12,13)

“…God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”
(2 Tim.2:25,26)

“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.4:16)

I read somewhere lately that if you think you are above deception, (it could never happen to you) you are already deceived! That hit the mark! It’s the principle of pride coming before a fall, I suppose (Prov.16:18).  Paul had a similar warning for the Corinthians: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” (I Cor. 10:12).  In the context, he was explaining to the Corinthians that the events recorded in the Old Testament about the Israelites and their relationship to God are recorded for a reason, namely for our own instruction. I can read stories of unbelief and shake my head in arrogant incredulity or… I can take heed and learn something from their example! 

So what can I learn from this fellow’s story?  Let me just lay out a few observations I’ve made…

  • “Getting saved” must  entail some comprehension of what we are being saved from—not just a warm, fuzzy belief that God is there and I’m now initiated to the club. I see no acknowledgement of sin in this fellow’s story, and in fact a disconcerting sense of being a good person at heart.  Jesus came “not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”(Lk.5:32)
  • The reality of the Holy Spirit’s presence in one’s life must consist of more than a moment-in-time experience.  The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is what sets the true believer apart from the rest of the world. (“Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him”. Romans 8:9) So it is crucial that we verify His presence by more than subjective experience.  Is there a newfound freedom, a hunger for the Word, a growing Christlikeness, a love for others….These things are effects of the life of the Spirit in our lives.  [For an excellent set of articles entitled: “The effects of the Spirit” don’t miss T.M. Moore’s series available at  www.colsoncenter.org or downloadable here: http://www.colsoncenter.org/images/content/wilberforce/ViewPoint_Studies/VP-Effects-of-the-Spirit.pdf ]
  • The Word of God is an essential aid to growth, stability and protection from deception.   It is our guide to life and godliness.  Accept no substitutes! (II Tim.3:16)  This young man appears to have neglected study of the Word in favor of reliance on impressions and visions.
  • Hearing from God is first and foremost a matter of listening as the Spirit brings the written Word to life in our hearts.  Overdependence on mental impressions apart from verification in the Word will leave us open to deception.  The mind is a powerful entity and we are capable of deceiving ourselves. 
  • Beware the craving to understand everything.  The human mind must be subject to the truths that God has revealed even when they cannot be explained.  As believers, we are people of revelation–not everything we believe can be logically ‘proven’ beyond a doubt.  Paul describes our quandary excellently in I Corinthians 1. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”(21) Intellectual arrogance is a slippery slope to grand delusion!  By it we can profess to be single-minded searchers after truth and be in fact pursuing deception!

And that’s some of what I’ve gleaned from this fellow’s story.  We are called to greater things—to know the source of all Truth.  Interestingly, the deception already at work in the world that will culminate in Antichrist’s appearance will target those who have ‘refused to love the truth and so be saved.’(II Thess.2:7-11)  A great deception is coming and already at work but I love the way Paul braces us for it– reminding us that we are loved, chosen, and saved by the Spirit’s work and our belief in the truth…and after all is known and believed, it is God who is at work to strengthen and establish us in all we say and do.  Wow!  And that’s the drift of what I really wanted to say!

Thanks for hearing me out.

–LS

But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits  to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. 16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. (II Thess.2: 13-17)

High Wind Warning in Effect!

All Sorts

I spent an evening this week listening to a young man’s testimony, but not of the usual sort. This one was a detailed recounting of his own DE-conversion experience. He traced in detail his own descent into unbelief.

I’ve never heard anything like it. What went wrong? What were the warning signs he missed? How could this happen? I listened with rapt attention, took notes, and have been mulling his words over ever since, intent on gleaning wisdom from this tragic, but unfinished, story.

This young 20-something fellow grew up in church, a Pentecostal church. He and his family were regulars there and he was an eager beaver for boys club and all things church. By his own profession he ‘accepted’ Jesus into his heart at one such meeting. And as a young teen he experienced the requisite ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ with the evidence of tongues (and falling to the floor). He was a well-churched lad. He towed the line. His relationship with Jesus seemed intact. He learned to hear His voice. He had visions. He had never actually read the Bible through himself, but He experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit in church, and he knew what it felt like when God was speaking to him.


He grew into a young man quite confident in his faith, or at least in his own righteousness. He was an intensely religious fellow, even thought maybe he should be a missionary, but his natural aptitudes were more along the lines of ‘techie’ stuff—maybe he could design a computer game that would win the world to Christ?! What did God want him to do with his life anyway?

He became obsessed with prayer as a means of figuring out God’s will and making his life work. Well, at first he prayed for others, but the answers seemed so hit and miss. He got burned one too many times when he really believed something was going to happen–but it didn’t. His focus turned toward himself and his own experience of God in prayer. Visual images became the most frequent way God communicated with him. He learned to trust theses images because he knew what God’s presence felt like based on his experience at church. He learned to rely on God to show him what to say, what to do. And it worked. Granted, he didn’t have many friends, and definitely no girlfriends, but he was getting good grades…
His strategy worked flawlessly, he said, until his junior year. He began to fail in a class. Re-doubling his energies and his devotion to ‘prayer’, i.e. listening for the voice and the images, made no difference. Nothing was working. Suddenly he felt lost; God’s will seemed hidden. The only time he could still hear God guiding him was in his Internet dialogs with atheists. Speaking with atheists became his obsession…. He was confident this was God’s mission for his life.


You get the drift of where this story is heading. This lost young man used the technical term “graceful degradation” to describe how one by one his reasons to believe disintegrated. Graceful degradation refers to the property that enables a system to continue operating properly despite the failure of some of its components. Even as his belief in prayer failed, other components of his belief system were being called into question.

Ethics class in college was unnerving. So, if everybody is good and wants to do what’s right, then it’s just about collectively deciding what’s best… We don’t need God for that.  Maybe morality is in fact man made.  We just need to figure out the rules for ourselves. Maybe there really is morality apart from God…
Somewhere along the line this young man found a book that was ‘clearly’ God’s way of revealing to him how science and the Bible fit together. There was no need to doubt Darwin. Other ‘problems’ too could be explained away. No one need be an atheist any longer if he could just show them that the Bible was really not at odds with evolutionary science.


And then he met ‘the professor’. It was an unlikely place to meet– over an Amazon review the young man had written for a new edition of the Bible. Hostile remarks about the Bible’s obvious ‘errors’ precipitated the meeting, and shook the young man’s beliefs like never before. And soon he and the professor were in regular dialog, for the young man said, “It was clear to me that God was bringing me knowledge through this man.” The sage old professor sized up his prey early on, for he too had once had faith, back in his happier golden twenties… He warned the young man to stop asking questions, to stop pursuing this ‘knowledge’ that would surely destroy his faith. But when the young man persisted the professor persuaded him that since there was no way he was old enough to know all the things he didn’t know, and since he most assuredly couldn’t understand God at his age, he should sit back, relax and listen to what the professor had to say, and stop trying to argue! And so he did.

The professor broke the news to him that over all the years of history, academia had yet to find any reason to believe that ‘god’ was anything more than a concept… He cited books, and psychological explanations, and obscure ‘proven’ knowledge. He appealed to the young man’s arrogance and his appetite for ‘truth’. And the young man was confident God had led him to this ‘former Christian’ to strengthen his own journey…


Meanwhile the young man had begun to read the Bible, but from a vantage point of skepticism. What he could not understand fueled his doubts, fed his unbelief and destroyed his confidence in the Bible as a trustworthy guide to truth…


The process of ‘graceful degradation’ had now reached critical mass. All the things that had once confirmed his belief in God were disintegrating. Prayer, the existence of morality, the Bible, the testimony of others, scientific credibility. This new way of seeing ‘just made too much sense’. The logic of it was irresistible. Resistance seemed futile. He knew he was at a crisis point and decided to call his parents.

“What would you do, Dad, if someone showed you that what you believed was wrong?”
His dad brushed it off with a hapless response: “I wouldn’t listen to him.”
“But Dad, what if it was true?”
Angered (and likely exasperated at his own inability to reason with his son) the Dad lashed out: “Jesus didn’t come to give us the TRUTH… He came to…”
His Dad uttered the word ‘truth’ with a contempt that stunned the faltering son, for whom ‘truth’ had become the quest of his life. As he put it: “Truth was more important to me than God” (as though the two were at odds!).

The young thinker had already concluded from his experience
—that connecting with God had required him to disconnect with the natural world around him,
–that connecting with God had led him to poor mental health,
–that connecting with God was a kind of unreality…. and so following this final clincher of conversation with his parents, he turned his back on his faith in God holding only to what he felt was his ‘unwavering commitment to find the truth’.


His story turns dark at this point. He describes his new world as ominous and dark. He becomes delusional, borderline schizophrenic for a short time, as he rearranges the perceptions his soul has held dear and makes room for deception… Pantheism becomes a prospect and he begins to ‘see how evil God was…’ By this time in his story I have listened for hours. Incredulous. Sad. Troubled. I do not wish to hear any more details. It is all beginning to sound like rubbish—fool’s gold. He has embraced a whirlwind of swirling confusion while feeling confident that he has set his sails to find ‘truth’.


He continues to go to church because that is his only social network. He doesn’t talk about his unbelief there, not much anyway. Noone would understand. No one cares to think with him about truth. He observes that noone seems to notice the change he has undergone–so much for people who claim to communicate with an omniscient God. They don’t really seem to know much… The professor has suggested he view them as ‘deluded automatons’, afraid of science, ‘more often fueled by emotion than a serious search for truth’. This appeals to the young man’s arrogance. He really must be on a different rational level than all these church folk and now he concurs with the professor: “Religion doesn’t serve people like us.”

————–

It’s bedtime at my house by the time I hear this young man out. He’s a perfect stranger to me, but quite an articulate one. I’ve stumbled upon his story on the Internet, at a site apparently dedicated to promoting skepticism.* But the telling, and the listening have reinforced in my mind my commitment to a faith that is grounded in reality, backed by the inerrant Word of God, and not subject to change with every wind of doctrine or wave of emotion.  I am eternally grateful for such a hope.

When this young man has exhausted his intellect with the investigation of every man-made alternative to God, the question will remain:
What will you do with Jesus Christ?



“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified…to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (I Cor.1:20-25)

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I must leave off without further commentary tonight; this is long enough! Perhaps next time? In the meantime I commend to you Ephesians 4 as it lays out God’s design for our maturing and protection from the wild winds and waves of deception…

“…And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ…”  (Eph.4:11-15)


–LS


I welcome your feedback.  What is your perception of this man’s story? 


* a series of YouTube videos features this young man’s testimony, “Why I am No Longer a Christian” at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3


Update: 2/16/12 A well-stated blog analyzing this man’s testimony in light of the Bible is found at: http://caffeinatedtheology.com/atheist-chris-redford-i-am-smarter-than-god-and-i-have-higher-moral-standards/

Prove all Things

All Sorts

 

“ I longed for the Reality of His Presence…. to actually SEE the working of God and to KNOW and EXPERIENCE Him more…”* So begins the testimony of a fellow that considered himself well-grounded in the Word, but as he pursued the wrong means and ends, his life and that of his family were nearly ship-wrecked. Why? How does that happen when there is such an apparently legitimate passion to ‘know’ God?

OK, I’ll say right up front here that I have far more on my mind than will fit in a single blog but am having a tough time sorting and ordering its presentation. In short, I see two related phenomena happening in current Christian practice. This pursuing of the experiential ties them both together. One is a strong desire to experience God’s presence, to SEE signs and wonders or anything that will give evidence that God is alive and well and active in my sphere of the world. The other related idea, is the view that prayer is much more of a two-way walkie-talkie than our parents’ generation ever suspected. Hearing from God outside His already written Word has become rather commonplace, in fact an anticipated right of every child of God. If you’re not ‘hearing God’s voice’ something must be wrong. Or maybe you just need some practice…

It sounds good. But something is not right. As the Mother Goose rhyme says, “I smell a rat close by”!**

How could that be? Surely we can give credence to both these pursuits. “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection…” was after all Paul’s own single-minded reason for pressing on (Phil.3:10). Isn’t that the same as knowing ‘the reality of His presence”? And ‘His sheep hear His voice’ is surely evidence enough that God speaks quite intelligibly to His own. Isn’t it?

Apparently church historians are onto labeling this trend. They’re describing the times we live in as ‘third-wave Christianity’ [The first wave was Pentecostalism, the second the Catholic Charismatic Revival—and we must be talking strictly about the modern era or we’re missing centuries of ‘waves’!] Some are calling this trend the ‘new paradigm’ in evangelical Protestantism, tracing it back to the explosion of interest in spiritual experience characterized by the ‘Jesus People’ in the 60’s.*** I haven’t been a serious student of Church History (not yet anyway) but I’m convinced that even a little knowledge would give a stabilizing wisdom and perspective to our trendy times. Solomon said there was nothing ‘new’ under the sun. I’ve been reading Bruce Shelley’s Church History in little ‘helpings’ and thinking, wow…. Extra-biblical revelation is nothing new. Certain erroneous doctrines embraced a thousand years ago (which are with us to this day) were confirmed by dreams and signs. What if more emphasis had been placed on establishing truth from the written Word and less credence given to the experiential? Might we have been spared damnable heresies? Might we still? But I digress…

The fellow I was citing as I began this post continued: “As I daily studied the words that I received [from prophetic teachers]… this desire grew. I grew dissatisfied and frustrated with the church I was attending. “They just don’t GET IT!” I told myself. So I determined in my heart that I would find out where I could learn about this “New Thing” that God was doing and I and my family would be there when God showed up!” *

He was in for some major disappointments. He changed churches, got to the source of where God was apparently moving, and in his own words: “that’s when my life started to unravel.” It’s a story that’s been lived out innumerable times. Fortunately for him, he extricated himself and committed with his wife to find their source in the Word and prayer alone, in the company of solid Bible-believing friends with ‘a proven track record with God’, ‘solid, firm grounded and steady in the Word’, not merely sounding ‘spiritual’. He’s on the road to recovery.

As I look at movements and stories of people around me, as I read, as I ‘work out my salvation’ with the God who is at work in me, I wonder, what are the safeguards, what are some guiding features of the way of truth? How will I keep from sliding down the slippery slope of experiential reality where it parts ways with revealed truth? I love to research and investigate in quest of solid truth, to cross-examine and evaluate. But it also occurs to me even as I’ve begun to read and listen to half-truths and enticing ‘new truths’ that these can be a tremendous distraction from the pure and unadulterated pursuit of Jesus to which I’m called. Paul pled with the Corinthian church to recognize that the teachers they were entertaining were false. He said: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.  But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. “ II Cor.11:2,3

From the look of things there’s no end of craziness and false teaching in our times. It’s alluring; if not to believe it, at least to expose it. But can I afford the distraction? What might become of my morning quiet times? Will I be reading His Word, or a book that promises me the keys to enjoying His Presence? Must my passion for the truth take me through every counterfeit before I can contest that I’m sure of my foundation? And is the old fashioned way of reading the Word and praying good enough or must I find a new and better way? And most critically, am I beyond delusion and deceit myself, or might I walk into a hidden snare in the process of unraveling truth and error?

I find it especially disturbing that seemingly ‘spiritual’ teaching can actually lead us away from undiluted devotion to Christ. Paul warned the Corinthians that the men who boasted of their ‘mission’ to the Corinthians were actually “false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ”.  And here’s the part that makes me sit up and take notice. It’s not as though the people we may read or listen to or be led astray by are going to appear as obvious frauds. Paul was quick to point out: “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. Their end will correspond to their deeds.” II Cor.11:12-15. Oh my, these teachers will be perceived as ‘servants of righteousness’. Now that’s something to think about!

But, if I’m not going to read every book, watch every video clip, and follow every related blog to find out who’s who and who’s not what they seem… what are some guiding questions I can use to steer myself and the arms and legs of the Body around me into ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.’

I know I’ve asked way too many questions already, but the following are ones I’ve drawn up (in no particular order) to evaluate teaching that comes my way. I’d love it if you’d add to this list in the comment box! For starters…

************

–Is the focus on things seen or unseen? On believing in a hope yet unseen or in experiencing what we hope for now. (Rom.8:24,25)

–What is the effect of the teaching? Does it point me to Jesus or attract me to a teacher? Does it increase my hunger for the Word of God or the words of a man? (I Cor.1:12,13)

–Is the Cross of Christ and the pure and simple Gospel message of sin, repentance and salvation a primary or peripheral teaching? Are visible, physical manifestations given more attention than the Gospel’s power to transform souls?(I Cor. 1:17,18)

–Godliness with contentment is great gain. Is there a measure of contentment in this teaching? Can I rest in it or am I left forever craving something more? (I Tim.6:6)

–Is the ministry markedly Christ-like—not just with demonstrations of power but with humility, servant hearts, self-effacement, and righteous living. Is it marked by loving self-sacrifice or self-promotion? (Phil.2)

–Are the benefits that are made much of primarily to be experienced in this lifetime, in these bodies, or does the teaching emphasize seeking those things that are above? (Col.3:1)

—Whose Kingdom is being built by this teaching? (Where’s the money going?) (Mt.6:33)

–Is the hope of Christ’s return a focal point or is the focus merely the outworking of His Kingdom on earth? (II Tim.4:8)

–Does it fuel a looking forward to the Kingdom of Heaven or a present Kingdom with tangible present rewards? (Titus 2:12,13)

–Is the teaching clearly sourced in the declarative teachings of the Word of God or in logically derived, or experientially based teachings? (II Tim.4:3,4)

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Having said all that, it’s hard to improve on Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonian believers:

“Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.

See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.

Rejoice evermore.

Pray without ceasing.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Quench not the Spirit.

Despise not prophesyings.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

Abstain from all appearance of evil.

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and [I pray God] your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Faithful [is] he that calleth you, who also will do [it].

Brethren, pray for us.” I Thess. 4:14-25

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When this generation is winnowed will there be a harvest of righteousness? Will we have tested and clung to the truth, no matter how ‘old-school’ it seemed, and let the fluff of chaff blow on with ‘every wind of doctrine’? May it be so.

“Praise is due to You, O God…to you who hear prayer…Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!” Ps. 65:1-4

–LS

*honorofkings.org by Kevin Kleint, “Working for the Elijah List”

**”Three Little Kittens” (Follen (1787-1860))

**Cited in an article in American Anthropologist titled “The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity” (p.3,4). A fascinating secular study which raises many interesting questions for the believer in pursuit of hearing from God. You may hear more from me on this one?! Available on the Internet as a PDF file.