New Life'n

Whoa, look at that

It’s a passage they teach you as soon as you start following Jesus (they did me, anyway).  It’s talking about sexual immorality, but it’s said as if it’s assumed you know it’s true in everything, no matter what you’re doing.  And you take it serious because it’s so clear and seems so important and radically different from any way you’ve thought before.  But then because you learned it so early in your Christian life you can think of it as a basic Christian thing that you move on from as you grow.  You don’t:

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit who is in you

Whom you have from God

You are not your own

You were bought at a price

So glorify God in your body

You only move on from it like you move on from learning to walk – once you learn, you don’t stop, you do it without thinking because it’s become part of your life.

If it’s been awhile since you read this passage and you come across it and have the reaction, oh yeah that’s right, like I did, you probably have to wonder if you’ve really learned to walk.

The persuasion of passion

At first I think it's a commercial, a parody. But it goes too long. So it must be like a SNL skit, only on the radio. It obviously isn't real because no one could be that passionate about cigars. It doesn't fit: the excitement, the guests, the crowds lined up to get into the event, the insider lingo... The host made it sound like something momentous, like Tiger Woods losing or Iowa Caucus night last year when Obama beat Clinton. I couldn't stop listening.

It was Cigar Dave.

You know how when someone laughs, you feel like laughing? And when you see someone reacting emotionally, you get a tear in your eye, too?

Facts get filed in the head. Emotions connect with your heart.

Cigar Dave didn't try to persuade me to do anything. But suddenly I wanted to smoke a cigar.

Don't I have a right to understand?

Continuing The God Show.  You can find out more and get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

We’re in the nature channel, beginning to see how the whole earth is filled with God’s holiness, and how Job gets to discover this out in a very personal way. 

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Job is blameless and upright -- the greatest man among all the people of the east. Then some horrible things happen to him, and he doesn’t understand. It doesn’t fit the expectation of his understanding of why suffering and pain and senseless loss happen.

His friends don’t understand either, but they think they do, so they try to help Job see that really somehow, someway, he has messed up or all this bad would not have happened. Which certainly is a question to ask yourself -- what’ve I done wrong?  But Job has already asked it, and this great, godly man has a clear conscience.

So none of this makes sense to Job and he has a million questions.

Because it has to make sense, right? And if it’s not us it’s happening to, we’d be glad to enlighten you about what’s really going on and why God’s doing this.  Because everything makes sense and has a reason.  And we have a right to know what it is.  And, most of us are pretty good at making sense of things -- as long as it’s not me it’s happening to…right?

Job didn’t know at the time about the little scene at the beginning of the book between God and the devil. Even if he had, it still wouldn’t make sense -- it was all God’s idea! God said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? If Job hears that, he’s got even more questions.

Starting in Job chapter 38, after Job and his friends have done all the talking, the Lord has His say. And He really doesn’t answer their questions.

Freedom -- 2

I asked some rhetorical questions HERE.

Ray has an answer in this from John Mackay:

"When are men truly free? Men are not free when their action is determined by a mere whim or caprice. In such a case the whim or caprice is their master. Men are not free when an authority of some kind forces them to do something whose essential rightness or importance is not apparent to them. In true freedom two conditions must be fulfilled. One is the universal validity or worth of what one is asked to accept; the second is the personal voluntariness with which one is able to act…There is no serfdom involved when the human spirit becomes the voluntary joyous agent of the Infinite and the Holy."

Go to the starting point

When trying to get better and fix your bad habits and answer the question of why you keep doing what you do, start on the inside, at the core.  Yes, come up with ideas to fix and make things work, but don’t rely on that for change.

If the nuclear plant is spewing radioactive stuff, you need to take action to protect yourself and people.  But if you don’t shut down the core, the problem isn’t going to go away.

You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. – Matthew 23.26

It's just a ukulele -- part 2

(Part one’s HERE) 

What if your drive or passion is so unique and indescribable that it’s not even a ukulele?  You don’t know what it is.  Maybe you’ll have to invent your own thing. 

But don’t expect acceptance or appreciation.  When the electric guitar was invented it was rejected as a “broomstick with pickups.” 

Now, though, Les Paul is the only person in both the Inventor Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Totally new and unique things can take a while to influence (if ever).

Les just died.  He was 94.  Played in a club every week into his 90’s.  When you do what you love, that’s what you do.  I showed my friend Eric a video and he joked, “Where’s the other women singers?”  It’s all Mary Ford – Les Paul invented the way for one person to sound like a group, too. 

The nature channel

Continuing The God Show.  You can find out more and get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place.  This is the beginning of the nature channel.

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What do the heavens declare about the glory of God? What speech are they pouring out? What of His invisible attributes are clearly perceived in what He has made?  How is the whole earth filled with His glory?

John Piper says the universe “…is about the greatness of God, not the significance of man. God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself. And he says it for us to learn and enjoy -- namely, that he is infinitely great and powerful and wise and beautiful. The more the Hubble Telescope sends back to us about the unfathomable depths of space, the more we should stand in awe of God. The disproportion between us and the universe is a parable about the disproportion between us and God. And it is an understatement. But the point is not to nullify us but to glorify him.” -- Don’t Waste Your Life, p34

Infinitely great, powerful, wise, beautiful, unfathomable, awesome, disproportionate, glorious.  He’s all right, all good, all the time – righteous.  There’s nothing else and no one else like him.  You look at nature and the universe and you know if He made that, then you are less than a speck of dandruff on a hair on the leg of a flea in comparison.  You might not think of the word “holy” when you think of nature and creation, but that’s what it is. 

The whole earth is filled with His holiness

But that does not mean everything in the world is holy – the room I’m in is filled with furniture but everything in the room is not furniture.

there cannot be two unlimited substances in the universe…there cannot be two absolutely free beings in the universe, for sooner or later, two completely free wills must collide. These attributes, to mention no more, require that there be but one to whom they belong -- A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy, p15-16

A long time ago Job smashed into God's holiness.  And it was good.  But not at first...

It's just a ukulele

So you got your drive and passion, and on the surface it’s not impressive and doesn’t look like anyone else’s.  You’re kind of an odd bird.  When you tell people your interest and what you do (or want to), they shrug.  Yeah, so?  It’s like a ukulele in a world of rock bands and symphony orchestras.  What good can that do?  Why can’t your drive and interest be in something cool?  But you can’t help what you’re interested in, right?  Maybe you could take Jake's advice to ukulele players:

1.  Use what you’ve been given.  You can bring it alive or it wouldn’t have been given to you.  Don’t wish you had someone else’s gift or ability.  Jake got his first uke from his mom when he was a kid and knew it was for him.

2.  “Have fun and play songs you enjoy.”  Run with your passion and do what you enjoy with it.  It’s like Eric Liddell said: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” 

3.  “The basics are so important.  You can never spend enough time on simple things.”  Whenever I get off track and confused and depressed I usually find I’ve wandered from prayer and the Bible and simple trust. 

4.  “Spend time working on your tone.”  Is the river that carries the boat of your message a raging, churning, shore-eroding whitewater?  Pleasant words promote instruction (Proverbs 16.21).

Now imagine taking your passion seriously and embracing it and running with it and working hard at it and doing it for the pure joy of loving it – even though it’s just a ukulele.  Maybe it can end up looking like this:

The invisible creation

Continuing The God Show.  You can find out more and get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

We left off talking about what it means that “the whole earth is filled with his glory” (Isaiah 6.3).  We’re thinking about the question: What would you see and how would it affect you if your expectations of seeing God around you were adjusted to include not only nature and creation and the stuff you can see, but also the way the created things relate to each other, in institutions and systems of order? 

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Institutions and systems like authority. The whole earth is filled with authority -- work, church, government, schools, families -- all over the world we see it. Every tribe, village, city, street, state and nation has some combination of parents, kids, bosses, employees, principals, teachers, students, presidents, chiefs, governors, mayors, police, citizens, pastors, generals, soldiers, coaches, players…  You can’t escape being some part of authority if you are in any kind of group of people. And we see systems of authority in heaven too, even within God Himself, where the Father has authority over the Son and over the Spirit, and the Son is over the Spirit but not over the Father (but more on that later).

And how about family? The whole earth is filled with family. Dad and mom and the kids are seen in the animal and people kingdoms reproducing and nurturing and launching the next generation. And then we see God saying that He is the Father of His children and that His children should refer to Him as ‘papa’ (Abba). And we see Him saying he has a Son.

And marriage? The whole earth is filled with marriage -- just about every culture since the beginning has a husband, wife, mom and dad.  Every marriage is challenged by what it means to love and respect, to be faithful and united as one.  Everyone knows there is no other relationship like it.  You see marriage ‘invented’ by God with Adam and Eve. And then God tells us marriage is a picture of His relationship with us, our relationship with Him, and even His relationship with Himself.

And how about people?  Individually, you and me, created, He says, in His likeness to be conformed by Him into an even greater likeness of His Son.  And every person is a stage where God’s justice and redeeming love is displayed, and a battleground where the fight between God and his enemy takes place.  The whole earth is filled with people.

The God Show

It’s almost like a show -- The God Show. And there’s five channels: The nature channel. The authority channel. The family channel. The marriage channel. And the you channel.

How are God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, clearly perceived on each of those five channels, in areas that don’t change over time or according to culture; areas that are part of how things started at creation and that are still, well, on the air?

What would you see if you were paying attention and had the expectation that you would see Him more right now…and even every moment? And what effect would what you see have on you?

Freedom

Who would argue about freedom being a great thing?  Everybody wants to be free. 

Does freedom always mean the same thing?  Does it depend on what the freedom is from or for?

Does being free mean being able to do whatever you want or feel like doing? 

Does it mean being free to be the kind of person you (or God) wants you to be? 

What if being free to do one thing means you’re not free to do another?  How do you choose?  And whatever you choose, doesn’t that mean in the other you’re not free?  Isn’t that bad?

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And Kathy F won the drawing for The Indwelling Life of Christ book.  Kathy, you’ll need to email us your address and Brenda and I will get your book to you this week.