Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Did he just do that?

I was reading in Mark 6 this morning, the story about Jesus walking on the water. To give this story context, it is important to note that Jesus sent the disciples out on the boat right after feeding the 5,000. That being an amazing miracle in itself!
Mark 6:47-52: When it was evening, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and He was alone on the land. Seeing them straining at the oars, for the wind was against them, at about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea; and He intended to pass them. they supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out; for they all saw Him and were terrified. But immediately He spoke with them and said to them, 'Take courage; it is I, do not be afraid.' Then He got into the boat with them and the wind stopped; and they were utterly astonished, for they had not gained any insight from the incient of the loaves, but their heart was hardened.

You have to wonder if Jesus wasn't holding back a smile when He approached the boat. I mean, c'mon, Jesus was WALKING ON THE WATER. He had to know that would freak out the disciples! I can just see Him on shore before he walks in, saying 'watch this!' Then there's the guy sleeping on the shore, full from the loaves and bread, just waking up in an early morning haze, wringing his eyes in unbelief and thinking he is dreaming as Jesus walks out into the sea on the water! It even appeared to the disciples that He was going to walk right past. I can see Jesus calmly turning his head toward them when they cried out and then telling them not to be afraid! I don't think Jesus was arrogant, but He is God and has the power to do something like walk on water, so why not? We all know that if knew we could do that, we would! Come on; be honest :D
ok, seriously...
Despite what He had just done with loaves and fishes, Jesus does not rebuke them when he gets in the boat for their lack of faith. In fact, the only rebuke that comes is to Peter when he begins to doubt AFTER stepping out of the boat (Matt. 14:30-31). But, in Mark the author notes Their short coming. I think this says a couple things to us.
1. Jesus understood the disciples. He knew they were not at a place of maturity in their faith that they would be able to really believe that Jesus could perform a miracle of that magnitude, even after the feeding of the 5,000. So Jesus went ahead and calmed the winds and they went on to the other side of the lake. This should make us thankful that God still loves us and continues to work miracles in our lives in spite of our lack of faith and failure to recognize the miracles He does do. Just goes to reinforce that God is going to work whether we are with Him or not! Just imagine how blessed we will be when we are with Him!

2. Most of us would think their reaction would not be astonishment that Jesus did it, but rather awe in a new miracle that they should have expected. This is especially true given how often they were around Jesus doing miracels. The truth is probably closer to this: That we doubt just as much, or even more than the disciples did. I look at my own life and see the areas that I doubt and feel some shame in my lack of faith. But, God will continue to do miracles in our lives because He is good and knows that He will be able to use these (at the time) unseen mircales to strengthen our faith in the future when we mature enough to actually believe in the miracles He is already doing!

These stories that highlight God's amazing love and power; and man's continued fallability, continually remind me to thank God for His grace and love. I'd sure be lost without it; and so would you!

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Ephesians 3
The 3rd chapter in Ephesians kind of sums up the first two chapters. In the first verses, Paul continues to emphasize that the 'Great Mystery' of God is that Christ came and made all people one under Him, meaning Jews and Gentiles. This was important for Paul to emphasize. Remember that it took a distict vision from God to Peter for him to go to Cornelius and stoning of Stephen to cause the believers to spread from Jerusalem, in order for the Gospel to be available to those other than Jews.
For many Jewish people (I think including many of the Apostles), there was this idea of a birthright of the Messiah. This thinking pervaded Jewish thought at the time and so it took a Paul, called distinctly to the Gentiles, and other events like the ones mentioned above to reveal this mystery that Christ came to redeem all mankind, not just those of Jewish origin.
In verse 6, Paul starts off by saying 'to be specific;' giving it emphasis so that the Ephesians don't miss that Christ made Gentlies fellow heirs and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Thank God He did that, or I know I'd be in trouble!

Tolkien imitates God?
Eph. 3:9-10: '...and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.'
God didn't reveal His full mystery to anyone, even the angels, until Christ came and rose again. It seems odd that He would withold this information from His most trusted servants. But I think it shows two things:
1. God is the only omniscient being and is the only one who knows all things.
2. Even the angels can't grasp the fullness of who God is and they are always learning new, cool stuff that makes God all the more awesome to them, too!

When I read this, I was reminded of the Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. In his 'prelude' to Lord of the Rings, he explains the how Illuvatar(God) created things. First he created the 'Valar' and then the 'Maiar' which are basically angel type beings. Illuvatar uses them to sing the world into creation. He grants them the ability to see things in the future and how things will go, but it's not always a clear vision. They know that Elves and Men will be coming to earth, but they don't know when. So when the elves arrive in Middle-Earth and the Valar find them, they are amazed and in wonder at this new revelation from Illuvatar. They found that the elves were good and they praised Illuvatar for this new found aspect of who Illuvatar was.

Now, I'm not saying that because the angels didn't know that Christ and what He did for mankind was the great mystery of God, that we are for some reason better than the angels. Rather, what I'm saying is that when God revealed how He would redeem man to Himself through Christ, the angels were able to see the greatness, love and kindness of God in a way they had not experienced before. I think their reaction was awe, wonder and worship to their awesome God.

I don't think the angels will ever know exactly how if feels to have Christ redeem you to Himself, because they never strayed from Him when Satan fell. So we will have that special connection with God that no other part of God's creation can have or experience. Likewise, I don't think mankind will ever know the amazing experience of living in fellowship with God totally free from the effects of sin, like the angels do now. This is something that when we are with God for eternity, we can thank Him for the unique way that He revealed Himself to us, and through sharing that with each other, we will love and worship God even more!

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Dog Poop Miracles!

Tuesday morning I got up to go to the prayer group I gather with. I warmed up the car, picked up a couple guys and then turned on the heater. The car started to smell aweful! I mean, we all almost threw up, it was gross. So I figured a rat or something had died on my engine, so when we got to prayer, I dropped of the guys and went to the gas station and checked under my hood. I couldn't find anything, but my car still reeked. I drove back down and parked it, leaving the windows open to air it out. During our time together, I asked the men to pray for my car that nothing was wrong, because I didn't want to have to take it to the shop to figure out what was wrong with it.
Sure enough, when we left it still reeked in the car. I panicked internally and figured that God had decided not to fix my car stink problem. Then the guy sitting in the passenger seat showed me something on the plastic floor mat, DOG POOP! That's right, he had stepped in it and brought it into the car. That brought a five minute laugh fest from us as we drove back to my place (with windows down, cause the car still stunk). After arriving at my place, the floor mat was washed clean and I'm happy to report that my car no longer smells bad at all!
As I was walking to work an hour later, I realized that I had not thanked God for fixing the problem. Since it was just dog poop, I figured there was nothing wrong with the car and that was the end of it. But, God did indeed answer the prayer to fix my car and that is, at least to me, a miracle. This may seem like a trivial thing to most people, but it's incidents like this that reveal the true selfish nature of man apart from God.
On Sunday, Pastor Mark talked about 'Y give.' He mentioned praying with Lora about a financial gift back in July that they gave out of faith. They didn't EXPECT a return on that, but God blessed them with one recently with not only the signed contracts for his book writing, but also a royalty advance. The Connection of that prayer and this blessing could only be a God thing, because I would never have put the two together if it had happened to me. The point is that when we pray, we need to be waiting in expectation of what God is going to do. Not so we can selfishly recieve his blessing, but so that when we experience that blessing, we can give God the thanks for it and I believe He will give us the discernment to see how and why He did it the way He did, for the benefit of His Glory (and to help us grow in and understand Him better).
God used a stinky run in with dog poop to teach me a valuable lesson of His goodness and faithfulness to us. My challenge for eveyone would be to always be looking at how and in what God is blessing you. It will allow you to always and increasingly appreciate Him and His grace in you life.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Ephesians 2:

I realize that I have not posted on Chapter 1 as of yet. However, I want to get some thoughts down on Chapter 2 before they are gone. We had a great discussion on Chapter 2 at Bible Study last night. Here are a few things that we talked about:

You can't really separate the last few verses of Chapter one from chapter 2, the flow with the thought and point that Paul is trying to make. In Eph. 1:18-23, Paul establishes who Christ is; Eph. 2:1-3 states the condition of man apart from Christ. Eph. 2:4-10 explains the great gift of grace from God and His purposes for us. verses 11-22 Paul lays out how Christ reconciled everyone to Himself and explains that we are all one in Him and that we "are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundationof the aposltes and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone..."(vs. 19-20_

God's amazing Gift

When I look at the description of who Christ is and the condition we are in, it is humbling, exciting and enduces one to gratefulness when we fully understand what God did for us. Paul explains that while we were dead in our sins and transgression, God sent his Son to reconcile us to Him. Some of the words used to describe God as He does this are 'rich in mercy,' 'great love with which He loved us,' 'His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus,' 'gift of God.'
I think many times we think of Christ's sacrifice to reconcile us to Him as an obligation that He did so that maybe He could fix a problem within His creation. However, I think God could have just destroyed us and been done with it. Instead, because He loved us so much, He made sacrifices on a scale we'll never understand to reconcile us to Him. On top of that, He did it out of a free choice to express His love for us. Pretty amazing!
It got me thinking of how I treat others that don't know God or have spoken ill of Christ and rejected Him; I usually write them off and give up. I think God gives us an amazing example to follow. Even when in rebellion against God by people, we can't give up on them becuase Christ hasn't, and we need to joyously do all we can to reach the lost.

Do we abuse God's grace?

Most Christians know that God will forgive us when we sin and are thankful and appreciative of that. However, earlier this week on my way to work, I was thinking about, am I giving my best to God in all aspects of my life? Pastor Mark (NCC, Washington, DC) has mentioned in his sermons and on his blog about being the best at what we do for God's sake. As I thought about this, I was convicted of the fact that I had not given my best to God last Sunday.
I stayed up till 3 am watching season 2 of 24. I showed up tired and a bit loopy on Sunday morning for production. Afterwards I had trouble staying awake and/or concentrating on the sermon (sorry Pastor Mark :D it's not you, it's me!). Obviously I did not prepare myself to give my best to God on Sunday morning, a day I set aside for Him. I asked for forgiveness, knowing I would recieve it. But, if I continually do this, wouldn't that be an abuse of His grace? I think so, only if I don't make an effort to honor Him in this area going forward.
God knows we are going to mess up and He meets us where we are at and will forgive us, that's the greatness of His grace. I know I abuse His grace all the time, and I'm praying that God will reveal to me when I'm doing it so that He can root that out of me.
I challenge anyone reading this to examine your life and find where you are abusing His grace and ask Him to help you not abuse it, take it for granted or anything else that would diminish the awesomeness of His gift to you in your life!

It ain't us, its Him!!!!!!!!!

Eph. 2:9-10 says...'not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works...' Paul just explained God's grace, that we don't recieve it by our works, But we are His workmanship. Anytime we gain a victory over sin or temptation in our lives, it's the Holy Spirit working and moving in our life, not anything we did. The only thing we do is surrender our will to God and allow Him to form us into the Man/Woman of God that He knows us to be; His workmanship!

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Good thoughts from my Dad...

In regard to last night's post...

When looking at sin it is good to look at the origination of sin on earth, as far as we know the original sin would be the events that caused the fall of belzibulb from heaven.

The origin of sin in man would be, as you so aptly stated, the fall of Adam and Eve. But what was the cause of the fall? Genesis 3 tells us that Eve fell for satan's lie that God wanted to withhold something good from her because God did not want him to be as smart as He. Bottom line is that she wanted to be like God instead of being His obedient and blessed creation. That is the source of much heretical thought. Most false religions allow followers to become gods in some fashion. Others come through people who will not acknowledge the Lordship of Christ in their lives. They think they can do it alone and to bring Christ into the equasion diminishes themselves.

The thing we have as Christians is that if we acknowledge our inability to live as Christ designed us to live, sinless, and recognize that it is our weakness that causes this condition not a whimsical desire of God's that we be held under His control even though we are capable of so much more; then we can be free to be used of God without the pressure to live up to some man made standard.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Why through our weakness?

I was reading in II Corinthians this morning and a couple verses address the idea of weakness...
II Corinthians 13:3-4:
...since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me, and who is not weak toward you, but mighty in you. For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. Fore we al
so are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you.

What weakness was Christ crucified for?
I would say that sin is the weakness that Christ died for. That's the sunday school answer, but I think it rings true. Adam and Eve allowed their will and desire to take over when tempted to eat of the forbidden tree. Their initial sin is just a good example of the weakness of Man's will when it is outside of God. In verse 3 Paul says that Christ is mighty in us; and in verse 4 that because of the power of God, we will yet live with Him, that is Christ. When we rely on God's power, our weaknesses won't get in the way of living the life God intended for us.
In II Corinthians 12:9, God says "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." That's a popular verse that most people know and I think that together they show us one way God works in us to accomplish His will! Notice also that he says perfected, rather than just perfect.
To me that's an encouragement when I fail, knowing that God's work in my life to demonstrate His power is a work in progress and that's ok.

I'm sure most people know the phrase "you are only as strong as your weakest link." I think if God were to re-phrase it, He'd say "I am strongest through your weakest link."


Intro to Ephesians:

Here's a simple introduction to Ephesians:

Although there has been debate on authorship, Paul is most likely the Author.
Ephesians is unique to the other Pauline epistles in that it does not address a specific issue within the Ephesian church. For example, in Galatians Paul was specifically addressing the legalism problem arising from the influence of Judaizers. Rather, Ephesians focuses on the glory of God and his great gifts to us. Bible.org has a link to the book of Ephesians by Bob Deffinbaugh, Th.M. that is a much more detailed description. Within, Deffinbaugh breaks down Ephesians in this way...

Chapters 1-3: The Glory of God in the Church
Chapter 1: The glory of God in Redemption
Chapter 2: The glory of God in reconciliation
Chapter 3: The glory of God in the revelation of the mystery of the church
Chapter 4-6: The Glory and Pleasure of God through the Church
Chapter 4: The glory of God in the unity and growth of the church
Chapter 5: The glory of God in the imitation of Christ by the saints
Chapter 6: The glory of God in victory of Christ

My challenge during the study on Ephesians is to take this outline into thought and see if we agree with Deffinbaugh in his assessment of Ephesians.

Above everything, Ephesians is a great reminder of how awesome God is and what he has done for us. I hope that anyone who reads this remembers that and will be able to appreciate God in a new way.

Book of Ephesians

Last week, my Bible study started a study on the book of Ephesians. In an attempt to try and pull more out of the study, I've decided to blog on Ephesians as we go through the study. I've already been told that if I commit heresy, the torches and pitch forks will be ready for me at my door! I hope this addition to our normal study is helpful! God bless!

Why do a blog?

After doing much thinking and not much doing, I've finally set up this blog and have decided to actually use it! My goal is to create a place where I can interact with others on God's Word through my initial thoughts and challenge/be challenged by others and theirs! Proverbs 27:17 says 'As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.' To that end, I hope this can be a place where people can come and be 'sharpened' in faith to Jesus Christ, tacl;e tough questions and anything else that comes up!

Friday, January 06, 2006

Testing this crazy thing!