Category Archives: Basic Principles

Basic Principles, Faith and Finances, Reflections on Life

Money – blessing or curse?

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Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller, a multi-millionaire industrialist of a past generation, how much wealth was enough.  His famous reply? “Just a little bit more.” In his day, Rockefeller was one of the richest men on earth. He was also one of the most generous, believing strongly that he had a responsibility to use wealth to improve the lives of others.

By contrast, I recently read a news piece about Karl Rabeder, an Austrian millionaire who is currently in the process of giving away most of his fortune.  He plans to use the proceeds to finance a microcredit charity (see Leaving an Imprint – January 6).  He has taken this radical step after coming to the realization that money could not make him happy.  Having grown up in a poor family, and having spent most of his lifetime striving for wealth, Rabeder says he is now finding peace and genuine satisfaction through giving away his wealth to others, living very simply and renouncing luxury.

Rockefeller was a Christian and his views on wealth and its proper uses were motivated by Christian convictions. I have no idea whether Rabeder is a Christian, but his decision to renounce wealth and give most of his substance to the poor is consistent with some interpretations of Christian obedience. Taken together, the actions and viewpoints of these two wealthy men highlight an issue that has always posed a dilemma for those who seek to follow Jesus.  What is the proper attitude of the Christ follower towards wealth and property? Should we seek wealth, as Rockefeller did, or renounce it as Rabeder has done and is doing?

Attitudes towards money vary widely. Sadly, like the man in Jesus’ parable who built bigger and bigger barns but was not rich toward God, many make the pursuit of financial security the major goal of their lives. Others, reacting to the evils caused by greed, conclude that money and the pursuit of wealth are inherently evil. Ironically, however, it is often wealth gained through business that ends up being used to finance works of charity – as in the case of both Rockefeller’s and Rabeder’s fortunes.

There is no Biblical support for the claim that money in itself is impure or evil, or that the wealthy are wicked by definition – nor did Rabeder make any such claim when he decided to give up his fortune. What the Bible actually teaches on this subject is not that money is evil, or a source of evil, but that the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. This observation is not actually a statement about money at all, but rather about the human heart. The Bible speaks in very positive terms of those who walk uprightly, gain their wealth honestly and use it to bless others, and in very negative terms about those who gain wealth by oppression or unrighteousness or who place their ultimate hope in their riches.

One of the ironies of life is that you can be in financial bondage whether you are rich or poor. Some are in slavery to poverty, some in slavery to wealth. Some reject all wealth as evil, others are addicted to it.  Some fear poverty because they are afraid for their own survival and that of their children; others fear prosperity because they are afraid it will corrupt them.  Strange as it may seem, both these maladies stem from the same root.  They are the work of a spiritual power that feeds our minds with lies,  tempting us to assign ultimate power to a created thing rather than to God, thereby diverting us from walking in faith and love.

When I was a young man I had a very one-sided view of this issue.  I knew the words of Jesus about not serving two masters, and was famliar with his instruction to the rich young man to give away all his possessions to the poor.  I saw the dangers of materialism, and saw the church of my upbringing as hypocritical, filled with middle class people who from my perspective had given their lives to the pursuit of Mammon.  I did not yet see how judgmental I was, or how dependent on the generosity of those who were more prosperous than I.  More recently I have come to see that prosperity can be used in the service of the Kingdom of God, and that while Jesus warned against the dangers of pursuing wealth as a primary goal in life, he was quite willing to accept financial support from those who worked for wealthy people.  The key to a right understanding of wealth, I now see, is a Biblical view of stewardship.  If God has entrusted wealth to me, I am not the owner but the steward, and I am accountable to Him for what I do with whatever He has entrusted to me. Wealth is a tool which can be used to accomplish much good – but only if we first settle the issue of Lordship and decide who will have our primary allegiance.  In Jesus’ words, No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.  In other words, you can only have one Lord, not two – or three or four.

When we believe the lie that our lives are controlled by money, or wealth, we make money into a god, and submit to the control of the principality, or spiritual power, that Jesus called Mammon.  If you think this doesn’t apply to you, consider how many times you have said that you would do thus-and-so if only you had the money. Consider also how much of your energy goes to getting more wealth than you have, and how much of your hope is fixed on things that money can buy. Yes, God can use financial plenty and financial lack to open and close doors, but often we live as though our primary allegiance is to Mammon, and the true God has to get Mammon’s approval before we can step out in faith – rather than the other way around. Jesus, on the other hand, lived in a culture where needs were great and wealth was comparitively more scarce than it is in North America today, yet he never acted or spoke as though provision were lacking for any undertaking that his Father had ordained. To use a phrase that I first learned from my friend Brian Sauder, Jesus had a prosperous soul – he believed that Father’s provision for him would always be more than enough, and he lived in confident expectation of that provision. This is Biblical prosperity – staying in the center of Father’s will, and living our lives as though His provision will always be more than enough.

There is nothing wrong with having an abundance.  There is also no sin in being poor. The key to staying blessed in both sets of circumstances is to recognize the Lordship of Jesus – to recognize that God is the owner, everything comes to us from His hand and we are his stewards. The only way to freedom is to give control of our finances to the One who is the only rightful Lord of everything in our lives, including our finances, place our trust in His goodness, and let His word renew our minds with regard to wealth and finances. This act of surrender may or may not result in a change in our financial circumstances, but it will certainly result in a change in our attitude towards wealth and property. In the early church in the Book of Acts, no-one said that anything he had belonged to him.  This is a key insight.  Jesus said that if we seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, everything else we need will be provided for us. He also told us to be content and to give generously. Giving control to Jesus means learning to live our lives by the values of the Kingdom, not the values of the world system.

I have learned to fear neither prosperity nor poverty. Due to a ministry commitment, for several years when our children were young Marion and I lived in relative poverty (at least by Canadian standards) and we found that these were good years in the life of our family – years when we grew in faith and experienced much blessing. We have now come into a much greater level of financial abundance, and have discovered that it is a tremendous blessing to be able to do for others what many did for us during the years when our income was more limited. I have also discovered that no matter how prosperous we may be, we always tend to make commitments in accordance with our wealth – so a wealthy man is just as dependent on a constant flow of provision as a poor man. This posture of dependency and humility coupled with confident expectation is a good posture for a believer – it is a posture that allows us to walk in freedom, faith and joy with regard to finances.

My church is currently in a financial crisis. I believe this financial crisis is the result of a crisis of vision, and that God is dealing with us sovereignly to bring us back to where He wants us to be. There is no lack with God. If we respond to him in faith and obedience, there will always be more than enough to do what He wants to do in and through us. Consequently I am not worried about this crisis. Of course this circumstance has created some pressure, but pressure is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be one of God’s choice instruments to purify our hearts and bring us to a place of greater surrender, greater obedience and greater faith. Yes, God is capable of providing in abundance, but there are conditions on receiving and walking in that abundance. Increasingly, when it comes to finances, my own prayer is for wisdom to steward well what God has entrusted to me, and a faithful heart that will rightly discern and respond to what He wants to do with what He has placed in my hands.  In the end, nothing else brings any lasting satisfaction.

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Apologetics, Basic Principles, Faith and Politics, Reflections on Life, Testimonies

What about the dark side?

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First of all, for those who read my blogs semi-regularly, let me say that I am very flattered that some of you actually noticed that I hadn’t posted for over three weeks.   It has been a very busy stretch, what with company year-end bookkeeping, Marion being away for over a week, and the usual family, work and church commitments.  I’ve missed blogging and hope to resume posting on a roughly weekly schedule, although that depends partly on what topics suggest themselves – I don’t really plan these things very far in advance.   It’s nice to know that my blogs were missed by at least a few people!  Incidentally, two of my sons – Joe and Reuben – have recently started blogging and seem to be having fun with this new adventure.  Their blogs are very different from mine but I am enjoying them.

Much has happened in the world since I last posted.  In particular, there was a massive earthquake in Haiti on January 12.   Many of us probably know someone who was directly affected in some way.  Marion and I discovered that a friend from Russell — an Ottawa police officer with whom we had lost touch over the last few years — had been serving in Haiti for nine months as part of a peacekeeping mission and was there during the quake.  The leader of his mission was killed, and Martin (our friend) only escaped death because he had left his hotel a few minutes before the quake.   Although his scheduled time in Haiti had come to an end, he stayed on for several days to help with the relief effort and was profoundly moved by the experience.

How does one account for such devastation?  There’s no easy explanation as to why such things happen.  Jesus did warn his disciples that wars, famines and earthquakes would become regular occurrences in the years preceding his return, so if we are aware of the signs of the times we shouldn’t really be surprised by such things.  Yet our hearts cry out at the extent of the destruction, and we ask – if God is good, couldn’t He have prevented such misery?

This of course is a huge topic and I won’t attempt a complete answer, but let me say three things in response to this question.   First, from a Biblical perspective, the world as we see it today is not the perfect world that God created.  It has been marred by human sin and failure, and the Bible makes it clear that this disruption has had cosmic effects.   Secondly, God has not distanced Himself from our pain but has entered our broken world in the person of His Son Jesus, who willingly entered into our suffering as an innocent victim and bore it for us to purchase our freedom.   Thirdly, from the very beginning God’s good plan for the world has been opposed by an evil power, a liar and deceiver whose purpose from the beginning was to steal, kill and destroy, and the world will not experience lasting peace until he is finally overthrown and Jesus reigns on earth as undisputed Lord.

In the wake of the Haitian earthquake, American televangelist Pat Robertson made some very controversial comments linking the devastation in Haiti to an alleged pact with the devil made by Voodoo leaders in 1804.   The historicity of this particular claim is hard to establish, but whatever one thinks of Pat Robertson and his comments, there’s no denying that Vodou religion – a syncretistic mix of West African spiritism and Roman Catholicism – has had a big impact on Haiti.  There’s also no denying that Haiti has had a very dark history for many years, long before this latest earthquake.  My purpose is not to defend Pat Robertson, but whatever you think of his off-the-cuff ramblings, don’t be too quick to dismiss the idea that the spiritual choices and beliefs of a nation’s leaders will affect the destiny of that nation.  Haiti’s political leaders – themselves practitioners of Vodou – have done no favours for their people.   Despite hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Haiti over the past few decades, poverty remains rampant.  Corruption and callous disregard for the needs of the poor have characterized Haiti’s leadership for many years.  The Biblical understanding is that all forms of evil – corruption, injustice, poverty, witchcraft, demon-worship – come from the same root.  Ultimately, they arise from humanity’s choice to turn away from the true and living God and serve other gods.  The only solution for such misery is for nations and individuals to turn back in humility to the healer of our souls and the restorer of nations.

I am a rational person who works in information technology.  I understand science and the materialistic world view.  I used to be an atheist and was raised in a climate of liberal humanism that was very skeptical about the supernatural.   Despite that background, I have come to believe in the reality of the supernatural – both good and evil.   I have found that most people – both Christian and non-Christian – have a high degree of respect for the person of Jesus Christ.  Many consider him to be a great spiritual teacher and a wise man.  Yet this great spiritual teacher presented himself as being the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and he clearly believed in the reality of Satan and demons, although he was not in the least afraid of them or intimidated by them.  So at the very least, in the interests of intellectual honesty, if you are going to take Jesus seriously as a great spiritual teacher, you have to take his view of the world seriously as well.   If he claimed to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, he was either right or wrong in this claim.  If right, the only reasonable response is to worship Him.  If wrong, he was either deluded (insane) or a liar.   Reading the gospels has led me to the inescapable conclusion that he was neither insane nor a liar – and of course, if he were insane or a liar, he would not be a great spiritual teacher.  My conclusion is that he is who he said – the Son of God and the Saviour of the World.  Once I accepted that conclusion, believing in the reality of Satan was easy – and it made sense of a lot of things that otherwise made no sense (such as how an evidently good and beautiful world could at the same time contain such evil – or how people with such potential for creativity and goodness could produce so much darkness).

Does this mean that I blame the people of Haiti for their misery?  Not at all.  My heart is stirred with compassion for them, they have been often in my prayers, and Marion and I gave what we felt we could afford to help the relief effort almost immediately after hearing news of the earthquake.   My point is simply this.  Although short-term relief is clearly needed, money and human effort alone will not solve Haiti’s problems – or Canada’s, for that matter.  Ultimately, only Jesus can bring lasting blessing to any nation.  The true story of the world is of a people who were made in the image of  a good Creator and fell into darkness because of a choice to turn away from Him towards independence.  That choice was instigated by the ancient Serpent who leads the world astray.  One of the main ways he leads people astray is by concealing his existence and at the same time whispering in our ears that we are independent and fully capable of solving our own problems without God.  That belief is itself our main problem.  Yes, there is a dark side, and it does matter what you believe and who you serve.  Religion is not an answer – religious systems are the territory of the Dark Lord and only keep people in bondage – but a restored relationship with the Lover of our Souls brings true and lasting freedom.  The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.  One day the light will rule completely and the darkness will be destroyed forever.   That being the case, I choose to walk in the light of the Son of God now, while I still have the choice.

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Basic Principles, Faith and Relationships, Reflections on Life

The freedom of forgiveness

A little over 10 years ago, on April 28, 1999, 17-year-old Jason Lang was gunned down while attending school in Taber, Alberta, by a troubled 14-year-old boy.  Coming on the heels of the Columbine massacre, this tragedy shook the nation.

Jason’s memorial service was conducted by his father, Dale Lang, an Anglican priest.  Towards the end of the moving service, he stunned everyone in attendance by announcing that he was going to walk out to the site of his son’s shooting to lay a wreath.  After laying the wreath he led the assembled mourners in a prayer to reclaim the school so that it would be safe for future students,  expressed his own decision to forgive the boy who had killed his son, and prayed a prayer asking God to forgive, heal and bless the shooter and his family.

How could Dale Lang do this?  He has been asked this question many times in the ensuing years.   On one occasion he explained it this way.

[A]s someone who had been a follower of Jesus Christ for 22 years, forgiveness was the only response that I could give. I didn’t think about it, my wife and I didn’t sit down and talk about it, it was a response out of our faith. We did it because it was the way we understood who Jesus is. And we did that and it had a significant impact on people in the country.  I can’t explain except to say that people just are not used to forgiveness.

Most of us will never have to endure the tragedy of losing a son or daughter to a killer, but all of us have been hurt by others at times in our lives.  All of us have known what it is to be wronged or to have our trust betrayed.  Some have received wounds that have left deep scars.  Unless the trauma is so huge that it overwhelms our defenses, we often tend to minimize, deny and bury the pain of these smaller betrayals and offenses, pretending that they have not affected us.  But such bitter roots bear bitter fruit, causing us to miss out on the grace of God, and leading to a backlog of unacknowledged resentment and bitterness as our hearts gradually become hardened and trust becomes more and more difficult.

Although pride or fear of pain may prompt us to want to deny it, the truth is that betrayals and wrongs do hurt us deeply.  There is nothing unspiritual about acknowledging this.  They hurt us because we were designed to thrive in an atmosphere of love and trust.   This is especially true of young children whose hearts are tender and impressionable.  Because we live in a fallen world with imperfect parents who are unable to consistently model God’s merciful kindness for us, we grow up emotionally damaged to a greater or lesser degree.  When we come to faith in Christ, and our sins are forgiven at the cross, we are set free from condemnation, but our backlog of emotional garbage usually remains in place, and needs to be removed.

God won’t force you to let him clean up your garbage – the choice is yours.  You can keep it if you want to.   But the wonderful truth is that everything needed for our healing, cleansing and restoration has been provided by Jesus’ powerful, life-transforming teaching and example and his sacrifice on the cross.  Jesus not only taught us to freely forgive those who have wronged us – he did it himself.  If anyone could ever have claimed to be an innocent victim, it was Jesus – yet when he was hanging on the cross he uttered this unprecedented prayer:  Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.  He understands our pain, loves us completely, and is able to give us the ability to forgive and love those who have wronged us.

Because we have all committed many wrongs in our lives, we are all in need of God’s mercy.  Jesus taught us that we can only receive God’s forgiveness as we forgive others.   As we learn to practice forgiveness, we become freer and freer.  Dale Lang didn’t just wake up on the day of his son’s memorial service and realize that he had to forgive his son’s killer.   Although Dale and his wife Diane were in tremendous emotional pain because of this devastating loss, they had learned years earlier to walk in the freedom of God’s forgiveness, and they knew right away what they had to do.  Their decision to forgive their son’s killer not only protected their own hearts from becoming hardened, it also allowed them to have a huge impact on many people.  They were used to bring healing and hope to the students at their son’s high school, and since then, Dale Lang has told his story on hundreds of occasions, speaking at high schools, at prayer breakfasts, at restorative justice conferences, and in many other venues.  Every time he has been asked to speak, through his simple story of the power of forgiveness he has been able to bear witness to the light that Jesus has brought into the world.

The details of our story will be different than theirs, but we can learn much from Dale and Diane Lang’s example.  Because of their choice to let Jesus heal their hearts and lead them into the freedom of forgiveness as a way of life, they have been able to turn a curse into a blessing.  By their example they have demonstrated the love and power of God to many, with great integrity and simplicity.  Practising forgiveness is its own reward, but it also provides us with many opportunities to show God’s kindness to a needy world that is suspicious of religious show but hungry for authenticity.

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Apologetics, Basic Principles, Faith and Science

Atheism – faith without evidence

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This post is going to be a bit different from most.  I want to comment briefly on two related belief systems – atheism and evolutionism.   I will be making a number of claims regarding creation and evolution without backing them up in detail.   Supporting evidence and arguments for all my claims can be found on the web site of Creation Ministries International as well as elsewhere.

Atheists usually contend that atheism is based on reason whereas Christian faith is unprovable and non-rational.  My assertion is that this is a false contrast.   I maintain that atheism is not a rational position but an irrational one – that it is not based on reason or evidence, but on a decision of the will to reject God in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.  In the interest of keeping this post relatively brief, I won’t venture into a full discussion of these assertions here, but will content myself with a few points, hoping to spur you to further reflection.   My motivation for addressing these issues is to encourage my readers not to be intimidated by the claims of evolutionary faith, but to educate yourselves about these issues so that you are able to answer anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.

Atheism is not a new phenomenon.  There were atheists in Biblical times too, and the Apostle Paul describes their atheism as an intentional choice, stating that they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.  Interestingly, if you listen to an atheist for very long, they usually sound quite angry at the God in whom they claim not to believe – thus belying their claim that their atheism is based on reason.  Psychologist Paul Vitz concluded, after studying the lives of some of the most influential atheists, that they rejected God because they rejected their own fathers, whether due to a poor relationship with their fathers, the absence of their fathers, or their own rebellion (The Psychology of Atheism, Dr. Paul Vitz, 1997).

Atheism and Darwinian evolutionary belief go hand in hand.  Many Christians are handicapped in their faith due to having accepted the widespread belief that Darwinian evolution is a proven fact of science.   In fact, Darwin had no real evidence to support his theory of evolution (see The child is father of the man).  There is plenty of evidence of speciation (new species being formed) but absolutely no evidence that this took place via the mechanism proposed by Darwin, according to which totally new forms of life (eg. a fish becoming an amphibian becoming a mammal) arose through spontaneous mutations.

The only form of evolution that is provable by observational science is natural selection within an existing gene pool, in which the new species is clearly related to its originating species, can still interbreed with it, and is really a variant form of a very similar creature.   For example, all breeds of dogs, foxes and wolves probably arose through natural selection from a prototypical dog/wolf kind which would have had more genetic diversity than today’s breeds of dogs.  The differences between breeds of dogs were attained mostly through selective breeding (breeding for certain characteristics)  which is done by selecting from among existing genetic information, not adding new information.  Some characteristics of certain breeds of dogs also arose through mutations (see Is Your Dog Some Kind of Degenerate Mutant?), but these mutations again involve the loss of genetic material, not the creation of new genetic material.

There are many logical problems with Darwin’s proposal, but I will address only one.  If his theory was correct, there ought to be a myriad of transitional forms in the fossil record.  In fact,  no-one has ever found a fossil of a transitional form between two clearly different forms of life.  Dr. Colin Paterson of the British Museum, a highly-respected scientist and committed evolutionist, stated that there is not one fossil of a transitional form for which evolutionists could make a watertight argument.   On the contrary, a wealth of fossil evidence shows fully developed species which – leaving aside those that have gone extinct – are essentially the same as creatures that are alive on the earth today except in regard to size.

But why does this even matter?  Can’t you believe in Jesus and also accept evolution?  Yes, you can, but your faith will be severely compromised in many ways.   When I first came to faith in Christ I was a committed evolutionist.  I had some scientific training – some of which, at least when it comes to the topic of evolution, I now recognize as not far removed from brainwashing – and believed that Darwinian evolution was the only intellectually respectable option.  When I learned that there were intelligent, articulate, reasonable Christians who believed in creation, that most of the pioneers of science were creationists, and that many excellent contemporary scientists still believe in Biblical creation, my eyes were opened to new possibilities and my faith in God and his Word was greatly strengthened.  The Bible is clear that God made the world in wisdom.  It is liberating and faith-building to realize that God does not require us to suspend our intelligence in order to believe in Jesus.  On the contrary, faith in Biblical creation is intellectually satisfying and well-supported by an increasing body of scientific evidence – even though this evidence is not usually reported or interpreted as such in mainstream science.   Dr. Dudley Eirich, a molecular biologist at the University of Illinois, put it this way.

Once you understand evolution, it takes more faith [in the colloquial sense of blind credulity] to believe it than to believe in creation.  And there really is a lot of faith involved; they don’t have many answers to the big questions.  (Manipulating Life , Creation, December 2004)

I said at the beginning of this post that atheism is not based on reason – that it is a choice not to believe.  Christianity isn’t based on reason either.   Like atheism, faith in Christ is a choice — a decision of the heart, the mind and the will.  I’m convinced that it is a choice supported by far more evidence than any other choice you could make, but in the end it is still a choice.   Having at one time counted myself as an atheist, and having considered these issues very carefully over many years, I choose to put my faith in the One who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever.  I invite, encourage and urge you to do the same.

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Apologetics, Basic Principles, Reflections on Life

Circle of life?

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Recently several of my friends and colleagues have lost loved ones.  My own father and mother died in 2007 and 2008, and my wife’s parents are in their upper 80s and dealing with diminished capacities.  All of this has prompted me to reflect again on life, death, and eternity.

As we move from childlike innocence to adulthood, all of us have to learn to reckon with events over which we have little or no control, events that threaten our sense of order.  When a loved one dies, your country is suddenly plunged into war, you lose your job and cannot pay your bills, or your health is threatened, it can feel as though your life is sliding from order to chaos.

From what I can observe, our dog Cookie doesn’t spend much time worrying about why things are the way they are, or what will happen to her tomorrow.  But humans are different from dogs – we have a built-in drive to make sense of life in some way.  So, we try to come up with explanations that comfort us and give meaning to our lives.

One very common way of coping with the reality of aging, illness and death is to see them as simply an inevitable part of “the circle of life”.  We live; we grow old; we die.  The ancient Greeks added the belief that death was a welcome release for the soul, which they saw as having been trapped for a time in the physical realm.  In this view, death is not an enemy, not something to be feared or even resisted, but simply a natural and even welcome part of the life process.  All living things come from the earth and must go back to the earth; when your time comes, you die, and your soul goes to some sort of (hopefully friendly) afterworld.

This way of thinking is quite ancient but still very popular today.  It has the appearance of wisdom, and with the addition of a belief in heaven it can even masquerade as a Christian outlook.  But although there are elements of truth and wisdom in this way of looking at life, at its core are two beliefs that are totally contrary to Christian faith: the view that death in its proper time is a friend, not an enemy; and the view that we all automatically go to some state of bliss after we die.

In contrast, the Bible clearly portrays death as an enemy, not a friend.  In Biblical thinking, humans were made for an unbroken relationship with God, and death is an unwelcome intruder, the tragic consequence of our first parents’ decision to turn away from God towards independence.  It is true that believers in the risen Christ do not need to fear death; but that’s not because death is our friend, it’s because Jesus has risen from the dead to conquer our enemy.

But why does this matter?  Does it make a difference what you believe about such things?

Yes it does.  Beliefs have consequences.   If humans are just souls trapped inside bodies for a while, then by killing someone you are really doing him a favour.  Then Hitler was doing those 6 million Jews a favour by incinerating them; he was just liberating their souls from their bodies.  You can see where that type of thinking leads – abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide all become acceptable and even compassionate choices.   If, on the other hand, we were  made for an eternal purpose and we have an eternal destiny in a renewed and restored earth,  then each human life has eternal value.  This has huge consequences both for how I conduct my own life and the degree of respect with which I treat the lives of others.

Probably all of us who have watched a loved one die slowly can relate at some level to the idea of death as a friend.  I have to admit that I was relieved when my mother died, because I felt she had suffered long enough, and I was confident that she was going into the presence of the Lord.   I am so thankful that she met her Redeemer before she died and that she is in His presence today.  However, I did not see her death as simply a natural culmination of her life, but rather as an expression of humanity’s broken condition and our need for a Redeemer; and while I was in agreement with the family decision to let her die without trying to bring her back to life artificially, I could never have agreed to any form of euthanasia because I do not believe that her life was mine to end.

I believe that my life is headed somewhere – it is a journey with a destination, not a circle.  I believe that Jesus rose from the dead to set me free from the power of death and the fear of death, and that regardless of what trials I may face in my life,  I have a glorious destiny in a renewed heaven and earth.  I also believe that I will one day face the one who made me and redeemed me and give an account for what I have done with my life while I am on this earth.  I’m thankful that I don’t need to fear judgment, since Jesus has paid the price for my sins, but I want to live in a way that brings joy to the One who suffered so much for me.

Life is not a circle but a journey with a destination.  All of us are headed somewhere.  Whether we are headed for glory or misery depends on our response to the One who gave His all for our freedom.  The price has been paid, and the gift of eternal life has been purchased for us, at an incredibly high price – the lifeblood of the only truly pure man who ever lived.  What we do with that gift determines our eternal destiny.  The value we place on the lives of others – especially the weak and helpless – says much about the value we assign to His sacrifice.

Over to you …

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Basic Principles, Intimacy with God

What is true worship?

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Worship is what we were made for.   The Book of Revelation gives us a picture of a renewed heaven and earth in which there is constant worship.   When all things are restored, there will be no more division between worship and life – it will all be one constant stream, an expression of our lives poured out in love to the King who has redeemed us and who will dwell with us forever.

But for now, we are on earth and God is in heaven.  Although Jesus has come among us, we are not yet in the New Jerusalem; we don’t see him face to face.  And so for us, living here and now, worship is still a separate activity from the rest of our lives, much as we might wish it were not so.  Until Jesus returns, it will be that way.  We ache for the day when we will be one with Him, but we’re not there yet.

So for us who live in this dying world, yet who belong in Christ and are waiting for his return, what should our worship look like?  In his famous dialogue with the woman at the well in Samaria, Jesus spoke of true worshippers who would worship the Father in spirit and in truth.   So then, what is a true worshipper?  What characterizes true worship?    What type of offering is pleasing to God?

This is a big question, but as one who loves worship and has sought for years to bring a faithful offering of worship to the Lord, I’ll try to briefly summarize what I have learned from the Scriptures and from my own experience.  I’m certain that what I say will be inadequate, yet I pray that it will encourage you in your own pursuit of the God who alone is worthy of all worship and praise.

First and foremost, if we are going to be worshippers of God we need to understand that our worship must be genuine, not just a show.   If we are worshipping to win points with God, to impress others with how spiritual we are, or to have a particular kind of emotional experience, we are missing the point.  Jesus, quoting the prophet Isaiah, referred to God’s grief and displeasure with the Pharisees of his day who honoured God with their lips while their hearts were far from him.   Being true worshippers means daily offering our lives to Him as living sacrifices.  It means that we are learning to love God with our whole being – heart, soul, mind and strength – without pretense.

True worshippers understand that He truly is the only God; there is none other.   True worship means praising God for who he is – his power, greatness and goodness – and thanking Him for his mighty works in our lives.   It means acknowledging him as our Creator and Redeemer, the source and goal of our life.  Since all of us are self-deceived to an extent, being a true worshipper means laying our hearts wide open before God, and inviting Him to identify the idols in our lives (anything in which we have placed ultimate trust other than God) so that we may turn away from them and place our trust in Him alone.

Even though God is far above us – great, awesome, and holy – true worship also means not staying at a distance from God, but drawing near to Him.   When Jesus gave up his life on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two as a graphic illustration that by His sacrifice the way is opened for us into the presence of God.  Jesus has given us access to the Father and He desires that we boldly enter in.   Staying at a distance dishonours His sacrifice.  He doesn’t want us to be content with less than the intimacy that He purchased for us!   True worshippers understand that because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we are invited to boldly come before God with unveiled faces and behold His glory, unlike Moses who covered his face in God’s presence.   True worshippers love spending time in the presence of the Lord, worshipping Him in the Spirit, knowing that as we linger in His presence we are being changed into His likeness.

In spite of this invitation to come into His presence boldly, true worshippers never take God lightly.  Like the elders around the throne in the Apostle John’s vision of heavenly worship, true worshippers are in awe of God and his holiness.   At the same time, true worshippers are those whom Jesus calls his friends.  We tend to think of friends as equals, but Jesus redefined friendship for us when he said that we are his friends if we do what He commands.  Yet he clearly was talking about a very intimate relationship, because He also said that He would show his friends everything that He had received from His Father.   David wrote that God would show His secrets to those who fear Him.  True worshippers – those who worship in spirit and truth – are those who are in awe of God and yet know themselves to be  His friends, to whom He promises to reveal His plans and show His covenant faithfulness.

True worshippers are overcome with gratitude for the amazing gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness that has been poured out on them.   Like the woman who came into the house of Simon the Pharisee, poured perfume all over Jesus’ feet and wiped them clean with her hair,  true worshippers are so aware of their own need and so thankful for God’s kindness that they pour out love on the Lord,  without worrying about what anyone around them will think.

True worshippers pursue God passionately.  They can’t get enough of Him.  Like the Beloved in the Song of Songs who went through the streets of Jerusalem at night looking for her lover, sick with love and filled with desire to pour out her love on him, true worshippers have a burning desire to lavish love on the Bridegroom who has claimed them for his own, has purified them and is coming to redeem them and make them forever His.

Like the Apostle Paul, I have to freely confess that I have not attained to all I am describing here, but I am pressing forward to make it my own.  Daily I ask God to fill me with genuine love for Him and for those around me.  More than anything else I want to be a worshipper whose offering brings delight to the Lord, so that when He returns I can welcome Him with joy.

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Basic Principles, Reflections on Life

Thoughts on purity

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The Psalmist asked, “How can a young man keep his way pure?”  (Psalm 119:9 ).  This is a question asked in one way or another by all the great religions.   Pretty well all spiritual teachers agree that purity is a key to attaining the favour of God.

The problem is, none of us can attain purity of thought or action by our own efforts.  We can try, but it doesn’t work.   Punishment doesn’t make us pure, working out doesn’t make us pure, reading Bible verses doesn’t make us pure, praying 3 or 5 or 10 times a day facing Mecca or Jerusalem or Rome doesn’t make us pure, giving to the poor doesn’t make us pure, abstaining from food or sex doesn’t make us pure.  These practices can all have some value, but they don’t solve our core problem, which is that God is pure (holy, righteous) and we are not.  And because God is pure and we are not, we cannot have intimacy with God even though that intimacy is what we were made for, what our hearts long for and what alone can save us.

The prophet Ezekiel, recognizing that his people were irreparably damaged by generations of sin and not capable of obeying God consistently, prophesied that God would do what they could not do.  Listen to these words of promise :   I will give you a new heart, and will put my spirit within you.  I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.

There is one alone who can make us pure – Jesus, who came from the Father to live this human life as one of us, who was born of a virgin and lived a life in perfect obedience to the Father’s will.  He has paid the price and carried the burden of sin for us.  Impurity is part of our inheritance from the Garden of Eden, the result of the sin of the first man and woman (Romans 5:12-17).   But because of what Jesus has done for us, we have a new inheritance – a free gift, already paid for.  Because of what He has done, we can have purity – not as an achievement but as a free gift.  All we have to do is surrender control of our life to Him and receive His life in exchange.  It’s like being born all over again – a fresh start.  The Bible says that when we receive this free gift, we are made new – like a whole new act of creation.

Do I still need to make the choice to turn away from impurity?  Yes, of course.  As long as I am in this life I will still need to make the daily choice to listen to the voice of the Spirit of God and not the whispers of the Tempter.  Even Jesus had to make this choice.  But because I have surrendered my life to Jesus, He lives in me by His Spirit, so the battle is already won even though I may have to go through some tests.  The moment I think I have to win the battle by my own efforts, I’ve already lost, because this way of thinking separates me from the river of life that flows from God’s throne.  Instead, what I need to keep doing is turn to the One who has already provided purity for me, and allow His purity and goodness to renew my mind and fill my thoughts.

I am so grateful that the battle has already been won and that in Jesus I have freedom and peace.  I would never want to go back to living without Him.  Thankfully, I don’t have to, and neither do you, because when we place our trust in Him, Jesus promises to be with us forever.  Thanks be to God!

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Basic Principles, Intimacy with God, Reflections on Life

The importance of desire

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Buddhists believe that passions and desires lead only to trouble, and the way to peace is to attain a state in which we no longer have such longings.  Some Christians likewise seem to think that our desires and passions are inherently evil and should always be denied.  But that is not the picture we get from the Bible.  True, the Biblical writers do warn us that some passions are destructive and will lead us into sin if indulged, but they also speak of desire or longing in a positive sense.   The characters who populate the pages of Scripture are not weak, insipid, colourless, passionless wimps – they are people with strong emotions, who do not hesitate to express those emotions and desires.

Take Bartimaeus, for example.  He was a blind man who lived in the city of Jericho during Jesus’ lifetime, surviving by begging from passersby.  When  he heard that Jesus was on the road and heading his way, Bartimaeus cried out at the top of his lungs “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”   The people around him tried to get him to be quiet, but Jesus approached him and asked him what he wanted.   He then told Bartimaeus that his passionate shouting was an expression of faith, and rewarded that faith by healing him.

Jesus’ response to Bartimaeus is evidence that our problem is not desire, but wrongly directed desire.  God is not offended by the fact that we have passions or longings.  In fact, he created those desires and longings, and without them we cannot live.   Even the desires that get us into trouble are perversions of desires that were originally built into us by God.  The Devil is not creative enough to come up with anything truly new – he can only twist the desires that God originally placed in us into perverted forms, or tempt us to fulfil legimate desires in illegitimate ways.

As someone who ministers emotional healing to others, and as a passionate person with strong desires of my own, I have struggled to rightly understand this aspect of human nature, and have found little positive Christian teaching on the subject.  For centuries, in a well-intended desire to combat sin, much Christian teaching has implied that desires in themselves are evil and should be suppressed, but I have always known intuitively that this could not be the whole picture.  Recently I was delighted to find many helpful insights, and much encouragement, in a wonderful little book by Mike Bickle on the subject of desire.  It is titled The Seven Longings of the Human Heart and is available as a free download from International House of Prayer.

Bickle writes,

When we wake up in the morning, whether we realize it or not, we are being driven by innate desires that demand answers and refuse delay. These longings are inherent to us as human beings. We have longings, yearnings, placed deep within us by God, for the purpose of wooing us into His grace and presence. As we understand their origin in God, we begin to cooperate with these longings in accordance with His will. We find the answer to our longings in the One who put them in us.  (Mike Bickle, Seven Longings of the Human Heart, © 2006 Forerunner Books, p. 5)

Bickle then goes on to identify seven longings which, rightly understood and channeled, can propel us forward in a wholehearted pursuit of the God who made us :

  • the longing for the assurance that we are enjoyed by God
  • the longing to be fascinated
  • the longing to be beautiful
  • the longing to be great
  • the longing for intimacy without shame
  • the longing to be wholehearted and passionate
  • the longing to make a deep and lasting impact

My heart has been stirred and my understanding has been strengthened by reading this book.   I have been given fresh motivation to pursue God with my whole heart, and renewed confidence that this is what I was made for.  I would highly recommend it for any Christian believer but especially those who are intercessors, pastors or small group leaders.  Thank you, Mike Bickle.

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Basic Principles, Faith and Relationships, Reflections on Life

Sabbath Rest

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What does it truly mean to enter into God’s rest?

As a child I memorized the Ten Commandments.   One of those commandments is the requirement to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.   I memorized the verse in Sunday School, but I didn’t really understand what it meant, beyond the idea that it must have something to do with going to church on Sundays.

Two of my young adult children have jobs that require them to work some Sundays.  This is going back to what life was like for Christians in the Roman Empire, where the Lord’s Day was not a holiday.  It’s a reflection of the fact that we live in an increasingly paganized society.

Although Sunday is not and never was the Sabbath, in the Christianized society of a generation ago it was a lot easier than it is now to take Sunday as a day of rest and worship.  But perhaps it was also easier to fall back into an outward observance of a day on a calendar.

I remember my father telling me about the strict rules in his Calvinist grandmother’s home regarding what you were and were not allowed to do on Sundays.   But resting in Jesus has nothing to do with rules about what I can or cannot do on a particular day of the week.  This is why the Pharisees were so offended when Jesus healed on the Sabbath.   They understood rules but they didn’t understand the mercy of God or the Sabbath rest of the people of God.

Over time I have come to realize that the Sabbath rest spoken of in the book of Hebrews has nothing to do with a day on a calendar.  If you need further convincing, take a look at what the Apostle Paul has to say in Galatians 4:8-11 and Colossians 2:16-17.  As God has dealt with me over many years, I have learned that my old nature resists true rest, because one of the Enemy’s favourite ways of keeping me enslaved is by convincing me that I have to work hard to please God.   As long as I believe this – even subconsciously – there is no rest and no peace.   It is through trusting fully in what Jesus has done for me that I can discover true rest.  Sabbath rest is a condition of the heart.

I’ve also discovered, however, the great wisdom in Jesus’ words that the Sabbath was made for man.  As a practical strategy to keep my heart in this place of rest, I need to set aside a day every week to nurture my relationship with God, to move at a slower pace, to take time to pay attention to those close to me.  One of the ways I know this is true is that my old nature still resists it.  I can always find things that I “should” be doing or things that I “should” be thinking about on my day of rest, or entertainments that – while not wrong in themselves – distract me from developing a quiet heart.  In a culture that encourages constant activity and constant stimulation, cultivating a heart at rest is a real challenge.  Sometimes I have to really battle to take the time I need to just rest in God.  I need the reminder offered by the writer of Hebrews who urges us to make every effort to enter that rest.

How about you?  What do you believe it means to enjoy the Sabbath rest of the children of God?  Does this have anything to do with a day of the week?  And how do you keep your heart in this place of rest?

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NOTE to City Church small group leaders – I’ve included this post in the Small Groups category because it could function as a useful discussion topic in small groups.

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Basic Principles, Faith and Relationships, Intimacy with God, Prophetic Ministry

Intimacy with God: laying it down

Over the last few days I’ve been wrestling for clarity as to how to respond to a particular situation.  It’s a situation over which I have very little direct influence.  My only real choice is how I respond to the decisions made by someone else in a matter that is very close to my heart.  Lest anyone feel sorry for me and think that I am being unjustly treated, that is not the case.  It’s just not my call.

We all live through these types of scenarios – someone else is making choices that are legitimately theirs to make, their choices will affect us directly, and we are not likely to be consulted.   What is ours to decide is how we will respond.   And when it comes right down to it, our choices are simple.  Either we will draw near to God in faith and obedience, or rise up against Him in rebellion.   This can take many forms of course, but fundamentally these are the only two paths open to us.

Today I went for a walk at lunch hour and as I walked, I listened over and over again to Julie Meyer‘s beautiful song Alabaster Box on my Sony Walkman.  In particular, God used these words from the song to speak to my heart :

So take every song, every spoken word
All of my dance, all of my rhyme
I give it all to you
It’s my fragrant oil, it’s my costly perfume
I take my alabaster box and I break it open

As I walked and listened, I realized that while Julie’s song speaks of offering our abilities and gifts to God in an act of worship, to fully offer myself to Him I need to do the same with my hopes, dreams, and visions.  The Holy Spirit was prompting me to lay down all the specific details of my agenda in this situation, and truly surrender it to him.  He was not telling me that my desires were wrong or that my agenda was bad.  Even so, in order to pray well (which is really the only choice open to me at the moment), I need to lay down every dream and desire, and truly yield it up to Him, trusting that He has a way forward for me.   I also sensed that He was giving me a time period, by the end of which I would know the outcome.  In the meantime I need to keep worshipping Him by letting go.

This is hardly a new insight, but it is a very important one.  Christ-followers often say that we want to know God’s will in a situation, but much of the time the reality is that what we really want to know is whether He is going to do things our way.   But surrendering the situation to Him means dying to the idea that God should do things according to our preferences, and embracing the truth that He really does have a better idea (Isaiah 55:8-9)

So I am going to continue to set my will to surrender this situation to God until my pathway becomes clear.  I’m going to seek to apply the words of Paul  in Philippians 4:4-7 :

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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